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This past week I had the opportunity to attend the final stop on the Flash Bus Tour with David Hobby and Joe McNally in St. Louis, MO. The event was being billed as a seminar, and not a workshop, so my expectation were set pretty low. I expected to glean a little information from Hobby as he discussed the ins and outs of manual flash, and then an enjoyable afternoon watching Joe McNally in his element, working with models, and directing light with eTTL.

It is a pretty sweet bus.

The event started at 9:30, and I had decided to try and get to the venue early in the hopes of securing a seat near the front. I pulled up to the hotel 45 minutes early and spotted the tour bus parked outside. I’ll admit, I was pretty excited. As I entered the hotel, I quickly returned to reality as I spotted a line of at least 200 photographers weaving through the hotel lobby, ending at a small desk between two large doors. It appeared everyone else had arrived early for a good seat as well. Oh well. I stood in line between two competing wedding photographers who spent the next half hour talking over me, passively assaulting each other with recollections of booked calendars for the coming year and how their business were doing better than, “you can even imagine”. I periodically checked email on my Ipad 2 just to keep them in check. As the doors finally opened, we all began shuffling our way towards the tables. I squeezed past the wedding photographers, cutting a spot or two because quite honestly, they owed me. At the entrance to the conference room, I showed my printed out receipt, and was given a wristband, and a extremely light goodie bag, and was herded into the room.
The conference room was terrible. Dimly lit in a yellow hue that made the green florescent lights of my office feel comforting. There was about 500 chairs, setup in four groups for attendees. I felt fortunate enough to get a seat about 4 rows back, on the right side of the room, near a large projection screen. To my right were a couple girls who were joint holding a canon t1i. One kept pointing out McNally and explaining to the other girl how awesome he was. To my left were a couple breathing corpses, they must have been in their 90’s. I am pretty sure they were talking about their adventures exploring the streets of New York with Weegee, but I was distracted my the smell of my grandfather that seemed to emanate from them. I took the rest of the time looking through my goodie bag at least five times, sure that I would find something cool if I looked hard enough. No luck. The only thing I was excited about was the offer for a free Frio.



David Hobby takes the stage.

David Hobby finally got up on stage and introduced himself, and did a quick summary of his resume. He was set to speak for about 3 hours in the morning, before we would break for lunch and finish the afternoon watching McNally work. I had no real expectations for Hobby’s portion of the day. I have read Strobist.com, and poured over a lot of the photo 101 stuff he has published, but in reality I kind of equate him with hacky light modifiers, and occasionally some work that makes me stop and look twice in my feed reader. Unlike McNally’s portion of the day, David was only speaking to a prepared keynote presentation, and answering questions for the audience. No really photography happening. I assumed this would be a waste, but as he walked us through his methods for lighting and his unique approach to setup, I was really blown away. Maybe it was just me, but his explanation of layering light made a lot of sense, and really clicked for me. His slides walked us through exposing for our ambient situation, adding key and fill light, and finishing up the shot with any additional accent lighting. His whole philosophy is that light is additive. Overall, it was a great presentation that really changed my thinking in how I approach light. He has a DVD coming out soon called Layering Light, and I think I might try to check it out. His technique is very clear and concise, and the results are great, and very approachable in a real life situation. After listening to his talk, I felt confident that I could approach a shoot regardless if it was with 1 speedlight or 8 strobes.



Portrait setup.



Setup results.



Setup template used for Social media headshots. Instead of doing shoots around the country, he sends this diagram to local photographers to emulate his look.

After lunch, we reconvened to watch Joe rock the show. He was slated to talk all about eTTL, and how it fits into his everyday practice. He started his talk with a slideshow of his career and the sampling of photos that have become synonymous with the name McNally. I had read Hotshoe Diaries, and have always been a fan of his work. While sometimes I think his use of colored gels verges on ironic, I respect the dudes work, and his old school approach to photography. After Joe’s slideshow, he went right in to shooting. Utilizing one of the tour’s assistances, a Justin Bieber look-a-like, Joe worked through a typical shoot, wrestling with the terrible ambient light and visual aesthetic of the room to create a shot that kind of worked. It was interesting to watch, but at the same time, McNally is so scatterbrained, and spontaneous that details were lost, and it was more of a mind-numbing series of shots with no clear direction in mind. I got to hand it to him to stand in front of an audience of 400+ photographers and grope around in the dark trying to find a concept, but as for educational value, I found it lacking. After working with his assistant, he pulled some people from the audience and created some very nice portraits. The best being this lumberjack looking guy, and in typical McNally style, a firefighter. My biggest expectation for the McNally session was going to be his explanation of eTTL, and how he works with it. I have always found eTTL worked best for me when I am doing off the cuff shots, in varied lighting situations where I don’t have the luxury to constantly be adjusting my exposure. After watching McNally work, I found it to only be more frustrating than I would have ever imagined. There were plenty of times throughout his presentation where eTTL would just backfire, and he would be scrambling to solve the issue. Constantly adjusting flash compensation to make it work. He is basically working the flashes as if they were in manual mode, with a little bit of chaos sprinkled on top to ensure an inherit lack of consistency. My final take away from Joe’s session: Manual is the way to go. 



Audience member gets the McNally treatment.



Resulting portrait.



What luck, there happened to be a firefighter in the audience!



Turned out to be a great portrait.

At the end of the day, I found the Flash Bus tour to be inspiring, educational and worth the $99.00 for the ticket. The Hobby portion really gave me a solid foundation in how to approach portrait lighting, and proven techniques that will give me the opportunity to focus on my creativity and concepts, and less time worrying about my setups. I’ve gone from throwing up a shoot-through umbrella and smothering my subjects in light, to being more deliberate in my setups, and sculpting the light around my subjects to create depth and dynamics. McNally really presented a great look at how to stay cool under pressure, and how to adjust on the fly for unforeseen problems. Don’t get me wrong, while I wasn’t blown away by McNally’s session, Joe really is bad ass, but his style of teaching doesn’t gel with my style of learning. Final thought…this was a great seminar for someone like me, who is self taught and has been shooting with flash and strobes for the last year in a purely exploratory fashion. It has completely transformed the way I approach lighting, and I can’t wait to bring this knowledge into my everyday work.