Brandon Malone Photography

Every year I take a week off to attend work­shops and classes to fur­ther edu­cate myself.  In fact, doing this is very crit­i­cal to my growth and devel­op­ment as an artist.  Trends and tech­nol­ogy change con­stantly, and there is always some­thing you can learn from some­one else.  And since it’s so easy for any­one to buy a dig­i­tal cam­era, it’s even more impor­tant for the pro­fes­sion­ally to truly set them­selves apart.  But whether or not a per­son is a pro­fes­sion, or a new begin­ner, con­tin­ual edu­ca­tion is essential.

This past week I enjoyed my time in Cape May, New Jer­sey at the Mid Atlantic Regional School (MARS), which is a Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phers of Amer­ica (PPA) affil­i­ate school.  PPA has many affil­i­ate schools, so most peo­ple should be able to find one in their region.  You look at the list of instruc­tors teach­ing for the week, and the topic they are teach­ing on, and then sign-up.

I saw Scott Robert Lim on the list teach­ing about cre­ative light­ing tech­niques that are able to be used in any sit­u­a­tion.  I’m sure my descrip­tion isn’t exactly how it was worded, but it was essen­tially that.  I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle of his in Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­pher mag­a­zine some time back about using your cam­era flashes in man­ual mode instead of TTL.  I was obvi­ously influ­enced, but spend­ing a week with the guy was a whole-nother story com­pared to read­ing a short article.

We went out into the blaz­ing mid-day sun and pulled of beau­ti­ful images.  The two on this post are from that shoot.  We went into a build­ing with tons of win­dows on a rainy day and com­bined avail­able light with video LED lights.  Then on the last day we went to an avi­a­tion museum and pho­tographed mod­els in a few chal­leng­ing sce­nar­ios, which came out amazing.

The first image is closer to how it was cap­tured, which was about 1 or 2 pm.  The sec­ond image is after I fin­ished hav­ing fun with it.  For the effects, I just used onOne software.

Of course we learned a bit more on pos­ing in addi­tion to the light­ing, but it was an amaz­ing week long class.  I soaked up almost every oppor­tu­nity I could to assist Scott, which bet­ter helped me grasp what he was teach­ing, as well as gave me bet­ter insight on how to help an assis­tant that may work with me (usu­ally that’s Amanda).  Any pho­tog­ra­pher that has not had a chance to learn from Scott is miss­ing out on a career chang­ing expe­ri­ence.  (Click HERE to see pho­tos from the class).

The other nice thing about attend­ing a PPA affil­i­ate school such as MARS, or any other, is the ven­dor sup­port that comes to these schools.  Often times you can get some great deals on equip­ment and soft­ware.  Some­thing was really cool this time was that the Can­non and Tam­ron guys where they loan­ing out equip­ment for stu­dents to play with for a day.  In fact, Can­non had a cou­ple of pro­to­type cam­eras they were loan­ing out.  And the last night there, our class assis­tant won a free Canon 1D IV with a lens.

Any young pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher not tak­ing advan­tage of this kind of edu­ca­tion is rob­bing them­selves and doing their busi­ness an injus­tice.  It is expen­sive, but it more than pays for itself as the infor­ma­tion as applied.  Every client I have from this day on will ben­e­fit from the edu­ca­tion I sought and learned.  Next year, I plan on spend­ing my week back at the Imag­ing USA con­ven­tion again since it’s been a few years since I was there last.  So don’t look for me in late Jan­u­ary of 2013 because I’ll be in Atlanta.

The first image is closer to how it was cap­tured, which was about 1 or 2 pm.  The sec­ond image is after I fin­ished hav­ing fun with it.  For the effects, I just used onOne software.

There are more resources than you can shake a stick at when it comes to prepar­ing for your wed­ding.  Most of us dig like crazy to find and use a good amount of that infor­ma­tion because our wed­ding day is one of the biggest and most impor­tant days in our lives and requires enor­mous amounts of logis­ti­cal plan­ning.  Plus it’s some­thing that we don’t do reg­u­larly, so it’s unfa­mil­iar to us.  In plan­ning your wed­ding, you prob­a­bly have or will invest hun­dreds of hours try­ing to make sure every­thing is per­fect.  Yet it’s only for one day.

In the midst of all the plan­ning, how much invest­ing have you done in the mar­riage you’re about to have that will last much longer than your one mag­i­cal day?  For those of you like me that are already mar­ried, how much invest­ing in your mar­riage have you done since your wed­ding day?  Some peo­ple really do invest in their mar­riage, but not every thinks to do so.  Regard­less, I want to pass a piece of advice that I received at one point: read one good mar­riage book a year.  Yes, this applies to both of you.

Amanda and I got mar­ried on June 28, 2003.  Nei­ther of us expected an ounce of the bat­tles we later had to face.  We learned a lot of lessons over the years, and it still requires con­stant atten­tion.  Oth­er­wise the work­ing parts of our mar­riage will become weak, rusty, and in dan­ger of failing.

Most peo­ple never go into mar­riage expect­ing it to crash and burn.  Do you remem­ber my com­ment of unfa­mil­iar­ity?  That applies to mar­riage also.  Dat­ing is one thing, but liv­ing together as a mar­ried cou­ple is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story.  It takes work, com­mit­ment, and self-sacrifice from both parties.

Over the years, Amanda and I have ben­e­fited from read­ing books, lis­ten­ing to pro­grams and ser­mons on mar­riage, and learn­ing to lis­ten to each other openly.  You are either already mar­ried or on your way, so I really wanted to pass along the advice that has ben­e­fited us so much.  So make the com­mit­ment to invest in your mar­riage and read one mar­riage book a year.  I’ll even give you my recommendations.

The first book I’d rec­om­mend is called The Most Impor­tant Year in a Woman’s Life/ The Most Impor­tant Year in a Man’s Life.  The cool thing about this book is that it’s two-sided, being one for the man and one for the woman.  But it’s fun to read both sides and get even greater per­spec­tive.  I really con­sider this a must-have mar­riage book and strongly encour­age you to buy it now and start read­ing it.

The next book I’d rec­om­mend is His Needs Her Needs.  This was actu­ally the first book that Amanda and I went through together, and it helped us out immensely.  What we both remem­ber the most is the Love Bank.  It is an anal­ogy that bet­ter helped us think about what we do and say for each other and how it either hurts or helps our mar­riage.  It’s a great book and also a must-have.

The last one I’ll rec­om­mend is His Brain Her Brain.  No, it’s not the same author, but it’s a great book, espe­cially for us guys.  This one exposes the lit­eral design dif­fer­ences between men and women that some­times make it dif­fi­cult to under­stand each other.  I loved this book, but Amanda wasn’t able to fin­ish it.  Under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences helped me to bet­ter under­stand Amanda.  My favorite exam­ple was that women are equipped to hear more audi­ble tones than men are, so when a woman com­plains about using tones that men don’t under­stand (“don’t use that tone with me”) it’s because women hear what men don’t, literally.

I hope that these resources are a help­ful start for you.  Even if you are already invest­ing in your mar­riage, these are great addi­tions.  Some­times you’ll find what you’re doing right, or you might find how you can do things dif­fer­ently.  If you have other books that you’d like to share, please com­ment on this post so oth­ers can see.  You might help me find my next book as well.

Thanks and best wishes on your mar­riage adventure!

So Amanda and I are get­ting closer to the due date for our first child, Zachariah.  Peo­ple always think that since I’m a pho­tog­ra­pher that we shouldn’t have any prob­lems get­ting pic­tures for my own while she’s preg­nant.  The truth is that as much as I love to, it’s also a strug­gle because I’m always so busy for every­one else.  But I saw an oppor­tu­nity with the beau­ti­ful weather today and put all else aside.  I know we’re get­ting close and I don’t want to miss the oppor­tu­nity.  I can’t wait for Zachariah to arrive, and I want to make sure we have plenty of pho­tos of his mama as she went through the process.  She even did a belly cast recently at the birth cen­ter we’re using (mid­wifes, no doc­tor), so after she paints it, we’ll have to hang it with some of the other pho­tos we’ve done.  I want to take images from dif­fer­ent stages, includ­ing Zachariah as a new born, and make a wall group­ing of gallery wraps to dis­play it all.  We’re both very excited, and we know God is using it to bring not only a new chap­ter into our own lives, but also into that of my pho­tog­ra­phy.  God is absolutely per­fect in His plans and His timing.