Guest Post

Drake Busath Teaches Children’s Portraiture at Pictureline’s Digitalfest

The Challenge... photograph Darby’s two exquisite children in front of 25 onlookers at the pictureline Digitalfest 2013. Throw in a last minute rain storm, and off we go. First of all, I have to say that posing in front of a crowd would be daunting for any adult I know, and yet these kids handled it like pros. With the rain, we improvised, using the garage at pictureline for our studio. The open door of the garage provides our main light here, a nice large, soft light source. Our fill light is a white reflector at camera right. We added a touch of separation light with a silver reflector from behind the child, also from camera right. F/2.8 1/250th sec…

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A Misgiving Glance, by Drake Busath

This street portrait makes me think of the title of Joel Addams book “Power of the Glance”. It was a series of glances, really, a conversation we had without very many words. I found myself sitting across the narrow road in Montalcino, Italy from this gentleman. We were both on a break and we shared a nod and an expression of exhaustion after climbing the same steep hill. A little bit a of a smile, when the camera came out he knew I wanted something from him. I’m not the first visitor to want it. Rather than be sneaky, I just raised and shot, resulting in this portrait of misgiving. Afterward, we had a nice chat about his life, post-war…

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Sunny Southern Italy, Made for Black & White, by Drake Busath

Some towns cry out for Black and White like the little village of Rodi, in Italy’s Puglia Region. I recently spent a week in Puglia with writer Ray Ownbey and pro photographer Luigi Barbano trying “think in B&W”. One reason this town was a natural for B&W is that it’s quite colorless.  Duh, you say!  But how many great situations do we walk past because we’re thinking in color.  The south of Italy is plastered in white and gray and when the sun’s shining (pretty much all the time) it presents a full palette of white to black, with accents of deep blue sky.  This image was done with a single exposure, but often in these high contrast scenes I’ve…

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Guest Post, Joel Addams, International Photography

Joel Addams will be the guest instructor on our upcoming "Intimate Tuscany" workshop taking place May 5-11, 2013 in Tuscany. To see details about the workshop visit: Italy Workshops Joel Addams:  "Traveling to me has been paramount in my own survival.  I'm not sure what I would be doing if I hadn't had my eyes really opened to the world in my life.  I've enjoyed most the possibility of discovering it by myself, and then offering others the experience of seeing and understanding some of the great and diverse cultures for themselves.  Photography has been the great communicator for me to do this, and some of my favorite images are those that are unique to a particular situation, a time…

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