Stan C. Reade and Booth Photographic hosted the Studio Make Over Tour Workshop, with guest speaker the Studio Coach, Jean-Francois O'Kane.  The day long workshop was held at the Elsie Perrin Williams Estate on Sunday September 17th.   A special thanks to the Tour Sponsor Olympus for help making the show possible.
   
Attendies were presented with a two part workshop, the morning session was titled "Photographing Big and Small".  In the past, the proper lighting of small objects has always been left to the pros.  Today however, more and more photographers are being asked to shoot their customer's eBay items, collectibles sets, or items for insurance claims.  Jean-Francois demonstrated how easy you can light and photograph these items with the Digital Photo Box. (see below)



In the afternoon session he focused on "The Studio Toolbox Tune Up", we reviewed the important items needed for your studio.  Barn Doors, Snoots, Gels, Reflectors, Grids, Diffusers and different types of studio lighting and strobes.  Jean-Francois demonstrated one light techniques with reflectors, and used a live model to show the results.

Jean-Francois also demonstrated a new item, which he developed called the Color Balance Coach.  The ColorBalanceCoach is used during your photo shoot, you take a photo of the disc under the lighting conditions of your session, then use it in post production in Photoshop to achive the correct colour and light balance.  No digital photographer using Photoshop should be without one. 

The ColorBalanceCoach disc looks like a photographic reflector and like it, it can be collapsed to use only a fraction of the space, this allowed us to include on the disc the largest grey card on the market, that can still fit in your photo bag. The ColorBalanceCoach is made of 4 distict regions called patches. The largest is the grey patch, made of chromaticaly neutral synthetic material it will remain stable in density and color for years to come. The black patch reflects only about 3% of the light it receives, the white reflective patch will reflect more than 92% of the light and the dull translucent patch will reflect 80% of the light. The transluscent patch is made of 100% colorless white fabric that will allow a shoot through white balancing area as well as a reflected low-light reflected white balance patch.

The ColorBalanceCoach disc is now available from Stan C. Reade Photo, contact us today for details and to order your own ColorBalanceCoach. (see image below)



Stan C. Reade Photo, would like to thank Jean-Francois for a most informative workshop and we hope you will join us again in London real soon. 

Below is some photographs from the day.


Jean-Francois during morning session


Look close at the screen ... Jean-Francois wishing Stan C. Reade Happy 50th


Jean-Francois O'Kane


Olympus is a Sponsor of the Make Over Tour - Thanks to the boys from Olympus


Mike Lake, Sales Manager, Booth Photographic


Jean-Francois and James from Stan C. Reade Photo


Some of the Staff from Stan C. Reade Photo - Doug, Fiore and James

To learn more about Jean-Francois and his Studio Coach program visit his website - www.thestudiocoach.com