[monicab28]

Wow!  Now you’re accusing her of lying?!  Yes, she worked for NASA, Boeing and Phillip Morris.  I would imagine it’s not on her website because she can’t post pictures that she took as an employee of NASA and Boeing on her personal website!   And yes, she did actually show me a few images from her NASA days.

I’m not going to go round and round with you.  Light does control you because it does force you to use different ways to control the light.   If it’s straight up noon, you are forced to work in the shadows, or choose a different shutter speed or aperture, or use a gobo or diffuser.

I’m not a newbie. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and have a nice little business.  I wanted to up my game a bit and really learn about lighting instead of just guessing at it and only be able to shoot at certain times of the day.  I see it as adding a new tool to my toolbox.  I don’t see a lot of photographers using lighting correctly because there’s an awful lot of flat lighting out there.  I went to someone that I know knows how to use light to my advantage.  At least I’m doing something to make my photography better.

I can take criticism, but what I can’t take is someone being rude.

[monicab28]

Browneyedgirl89, I know that you choose those times of day because of the color of light, but sometimes you have  no choice about shooting mid-day (weddings for one thing), so you need to know how to shoot under all conditions.  That’s what I’m trying to learn.

I do agree with you about her website!  Lol…  I don’t think she even really markets for sessions anymore because she’s too busy with commercial projects and teaching.

[monicab28]

Geez, who pissed in your Post Toasties??!  Do you treat everyone so rudely or do you just save it for certain people?!?  I can guarantee she’s working now because she’s going to NYC next week to work on a shoot, and she’s doing some kind of commercial shoot in a few weeks that she asked me if I wanted to go to with her.  So, please, don’t spout off nonsense that you don’t know about.   I stand by what I said….if you have to wait for certain times of day to get certain colors or certain lighting, then yes, the light is controlling you.  You can use gobos, black flags, buildings or whatever to block light, but you really cannot control the sunlight.  You can’t move it and you can’t turn it off.  If you’re in the middle of bright sunny field, you can block the sun, but you can’t make it go away.   Maybe I don’t know as much as you do, but at least I’m doing something about it by learning.  Even if Allison’s work is dated back to the 40’s, lighting doesn’t change. You still need to know how to broad light, short light, butterfly light etc…and that hasn’t changed in 30 years.  Thanks so much for making a new person feel welcome.  I came here to learn, but I guess I’ll be looking elsewhere…

[monicab28]

Well you might tell NASA, Boeing, Amherst Media and a few other top companies that Allison isn’t a very good photographer.   She’s also a rep for Hensel Lights so someone must think she knows what she’s talking about!   She’s been making money doing full time photography for 30 years, so I think my money is pretty well spent.  I’d rather learn from someone with her track record than someone that’s barely making money in the industry.  She teaches because she loves to teach.  What she’s teaching me goes along pretty well with how Monte Zucker taught and I’m pretty sure he knew what he was doing.

[monicab28]

Hi, all! I’m new here.  Right now, I am actually taking lighting course with Allison Earnest who writes lighting books for Amherst Media.  We were just discussing this very thing last night.  I think the term “Natural Light Photographers” is in most cases, because they don’t know how to use lights, but I also think some people actually do have a grasp on lighting and can do natural lighting.  The newbies that are coming along call themselves natural light photographers because they have no clue what they’re doing, but genuinely think there are some good photographers out there that know how to use the light.  I’m learning off camera flash, because I want to know how to add dimension to my photographs and you really can’t do that unless you use lights.  It’s about controlling the light, not letting the light control you.  You can’t control the sun, but you can control speedlights or OCF.

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