My Evolution With Lighting, and just give you a little foreground. This is also kind of still a little bit of the introduction. I wanna emphasize here that lighting is a long-term learning process. It's not like you're gonna come out of this class and know everything there is to know about lighting. I've been using artificial lighting for 12 or 13 years now, maybe a little bit more than that, 14, 15 years now. I started out, I've been working 21 years as an adventure sports photographer. I started out as just shooting rock climbing, pretty much was my sport I photographed all the time. Then I moved into mountaineering and ice climbing and at some point just decided I'm gonna be broke the rest of my life if I don't start shooting some other sports and burgeon out into this bigger world. And it was about that time I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I've been living there for the last 20 years. And there's a gentleman named Rob Haggart. Some of you may know him. He runs the blog of photoedi...

tor.com. He also runs photofolio.com, which is one of the premier pro website companies for templates. And he was the photo editor at "Outside" magazine, which is maybe the biggest outdoor magazine on the planet, for five years. So I used to meet with him once a month every once and a while for lunch or whatever. And one of those meetings he told me, this is about I think 2001, 2002. In one of those meetings he was like, "You adventure photographers, you can't light your way out of a paper bag." He's like, "For me, I can't hire you because you can't come back with a decent portrait." And I was like, whoa, okay, that's pretty serious stuff. And he's like, "My advice to you is go by a hasselblad, go buy some lights, and figure out how to shoot a decent portrait because if you can do that and capture the action, then you'll be way more useful to me." And he's like, "Right now I would rather hire the fashion guy than you because at least they can cut a decent portrait. And the action won't be as good as what you could get, but they'll get some action." So that was pretty direct. I mean, he said that very boldly and bluntly because he knew. This was his job, finding photographers. He knew a bunch of the photographers in the adventure sports world as the photo editor of "Outside" magazine. So a few months later, I saved up some money. I went out and bought some lights and I bought a used hasselblad, whatever I could afford. And this is back in the film days, early 2000s. And I started trying to figure it out. And for like two years I perfected the one light thing, at least for the exposure. I wouldn't say I perfected it on any level, but I got about as far as I could on my own before I needed to get somebody else in there. So I ended up taking Joe McNally's workshop. This is like 2004 I think, 2005, which was great. Joe was an awesome instructor. He's one of the best workshop instructors on the planet if you ask me. Incredible guy, super nice. He's here at Creative Live because he just did something a couple of weeks ago. And I learned a ton about using one light, multiple lights, and just the whole basics of lighting. And from that I could experiment a bunch on my own. And I switched to Elinchrome at that time just because it worked better for the outdoor sports that I shoot. And I continued to learn on my own, and then I also continued to learn by taking other workshops. I worked with Andrew Eccles. I took a workshop last year actually with Albert Watson. So I continued to learn myself. And I work a lot in the studio to perfect these lighting techniques so that I can take them outdoors and apply those studio techniques in the outdoors as well. So I just want to emphasize that it's a long-term process and I've still got a long ways to go before I consider myself good at lighting. I don't feel like I'm a lighting master by any respect. Every time I shoot, I learn something. As you'll see in these videos, sometimes I don't think it all the way through, and like, oh, well, I gotta switch to this or that to figure it out. But just so you understand, this is the beginning of a lighting, a beginning of your evolution in lighting, not necessarily the end or the middle. And I think for any of us that are photographers, lighting will take our photography to a whole other level 'cause it'll force us to look at light in a different way.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Reference Guide

Chapter 2: ABCs of Lighting by Michael Clark

Advanced Lighting Keynote PDF - Day 1

Advanced Lighting Keynote PDF - Day 2

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Michael Clark

Michael Clark is an internationally published outdoor photographer specializing in adventure sports, travel, and landscape photography. He produces intense, raw images of athletes pushing their sports to the limit and has risked life and limb on a variety of assignments to bring back stunning images of rock climbers, mountaineers, kayakers, big-wave surfers and mountain bikers in remote locations around the world.

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topics covered in this class

Adventure & Sports Lighting Digital Photography Digital Photography Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student

Great course that combines the technical aspects of shooting with light in different situations, with the art of making a great image of athletes. Michael is a great teacher and I'm sure his lessons will continue to help guide over and over again!

norah levine

This is a course that I could watch repeatedly and be able to learn something new each time. Michael is a truly an expert in his field and is so generous with his knowledge. This course really breaks down the process of adventure photography, but it's more than that. I don't think you need to even be an adventure sports photographer to get tons out of this course. Michael is really good at breaking down some very complicated technology. Thank you!

Jeph DeLorme

Great class with dozens of tips, ideas and lighting strategies for tough outdoor lighting challenges. Advanced class taught in a way that allows even a beginner to get a handle on lighting tough situations. The location videos provide real life examples that make this class a definite must have for my Creative Live collection. Thank you Michael Clark and Creative Live! Jeph DeLorme

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Evolution with Lighting

Evolution with Lighting

Lesson Info

2. Evolution with Lighting

Lessons

Class Introduction