Morton Visuals photography blog

ASMP San Diego presented a Pro Workshop Series on Saturday August 22. The workshop consisted of three 2-hour segments concentrating on product photography, fashion lighting, and sports/action photography. Lon Atkinson hosted the event and demonstrated how he builds the lighting for a western gun and holster and then fine-tunes the image captured on the medium-format Sinar camera. Studio J owner William Morton demonstrated fashion lighting for different types of fabrics and wardrobe. William provided an exemplary demonstration of Murphy’s Laws in all their glory, as first one lighting power pack smoked and then a backup pack failed halfway through the segment. Added on top of two models canceling the day prior, two laptops not talking to either the projectors or the camera, and software failing to initialize, William certainly had his hands full as he worked around the multitude of problems to get working solutions.  Fortunately photo assistant Jesse Dhein helped tremendously. Eventually last-minute-volunteer models Heidi Lee and Stephanie June posed while William illustrated the key features of the dresses provided by stylist Susan Linnet Cox, who also demonstrated how she makes the wardrobe “fit” the model.  Makeup Artist Mary Erickson transformed the models’ to make them “camera ready.” The attendees commented that they appreciated seeing a shoot that didn’t go flawlessly, as the real-world scenario illustrated the importance of not only having a Plan B, but a Plan C, Plan D, and Plan E as a minimum. Perseverance pays off! Sports photographer Stan Liu finished off the workshop with a frank discussion of the sports photography industry, his stellar imagery, and a demonstration outside with a well-armed high-jumping model. All-in-all, it was an info-packed day for the attendees. A few candid images from William’s segment are included below, compliments of Wayne Richard, as well as a couple of William’s shots.