My MAIPP Experience

A few of my shots from MAIPP 2012.

(First off all let me send a huge THANK YOU to the MAIPP board for the awesome opportunity to serve for such a highly respected organization! Without all the work put in by Fred Fiddelke, Barb Grabill, Steve Kelly, Eric Niceswanger, John Mohr and countless others, none of this would have been possible! I also want to thank the University of Northern Iowa for providing awesome facilities to work with that were clean and comfortable all week long!)

This past week I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve as a consultant for the Mid-America Institute of Professional Photography workshop that was held at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

MAIPP is, according to its website (www.maipp.com), "an affiliated school of the Professional Photographers of America" and has been around since 1980. For what it's worth, that makes it one year older and wiser than me. :)

From what I knew prior to taking part is that MAIPP is a unique opportunity to join other photographers, of all talent and experience levels, in a hands-on environment to learn a variety of topics. You choose a speaker when you register and spend the entire week with them honing in on a technique or topic.

Let's just say, this experience ROCKED!

The guys of TriCoast (Cody left, Mike right)

I chose to serve as a consultant for the guys of TriCoast Photography (http://www.tricoastphoto.com/) and their seminar titled "Sexy Light - Wireless Flash and Strobe Tips and Tricks". Made up of Mike Fulton and Cody Clinton, the guys at TriCoast were INCREDIBLE not only in their knowledge of the subject they were teaching but also in their ability to get their message across without putting you to sleep. And to be honest, they were goofy as hell which made the learning experience that much better!

The course was designed for those participating to "learn simple-fast-effective methods of capturing images using Canon, Nikon and others eTTL/iTTL wireless flash without all the techno-geeky talk".

For those that don't know what TTL is, simply put it's a system designed by the camera companies to allow your camera and flash to "talk" together to figure out the best amount of light needed for a specific shot. (If you'd like to learn more about TTL metering check this link out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w3iPO1oznU)

I had some experience with TTL prior to taking this class but was blown away with how much I walked away with. We did both indoor and outdoor lighting situations and got a lot of one-on-one attention with the instructors.

On top of learning about TTL they really focused on the power and ease of "high speed sync" flash photography for situations when you want the sync of your camera's shutter to go faster than what your camera is capable of handling. This comes in very handy out in mid-day sun, one of the worst and most unflattering times to photograph somebody.

Here's some examples of what I came away with: 

The sun is super bright in this image and is coming from above her left shoulder. The high speed sync that we used with just a Speedlite (Canon 580XII) was able to overpower the sun, dim the background with exposure compensation and give us a really rich and powerful image.

Believe it or not, that is NOT sunlight hitting her cheek. That is light from a Speedlite that is being held over her...talk about AMAZING!

One of the aspects of high speed sync that I really enjoy is how rich and vibrant the colors are. This image almost appears to be of HDR nature but truly was done with just a camera and an off-camera flash synced at a higher than normal shutter speed.