Eleven - The Flash Master

In April I had the good fortune of attending The Flash Bus, a cross-country-by-bus photography seminar that was visiting Indianapolis for the day. The main draw of this seminar were the two photographers leading it, David Hobby, aka Strobist, and Joe McNally. They are two sources of great information and inspiration, and were extremely helpful to me when I started diving in using off-camera flashes. I not only attended, but thanks to my quick response via Twitter, I got a front row seat for the whole enchilada - the seminar, behind the scenes, and the bus itself. Both guys, actually everyone on the tour, were so friendly, down-to-earth, and fun to hang out with. 

I got lucky on this shot of Joe McNally, as I grabbed it just as he was firing a shot off of one of the audience members. I thought it was pretty fitting - a photo of Joe should have a lot of flash in it.

Click for larger view.

Bonus... Here's the photo Joe took of me... As he took a picture, it went directly to his laptop and displayed on two large projector screens so we could all see it. I grabbed a photo of it while it was still on the projector screen.

P.S. If you missed the Flash Bus when it was coming around, don't despair! Just this week they released a two DVD (or digital download) set containing 5 hours from two of the stops - Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

A Few More Squarespace Thoughts

I've spent some more time playing around with Squarespace. I really like it. Sure, there are a few things I would like to be different, but all-in-all, it's pretty solid. I wish Apple would take some clues (or Adobe for that matter) and deliver something like this in a desktop app. This is really what a WYSIWYG editor should be, but with all the power available as well. Web design/creation applications for some reason have not kept up with the web itself, in my opinion. I think that is why a lot of people are really excited about Squarespace. They should be. It's a great app (yep, I'm calling it an app), easy for beginners (and probably a great tool in learning about CSS to a degree too) and powerful enough for those that know what they are doing (I'm in the middle of those two categories somewhere).

The other thing I really like about Squarespace is it is not reliant on Flash. I'm not a fan of Flash. The app or the resultant movies and websites that require them. Squarespace based webpages look great on the iPhone. You can embed Flash video into them if you want, or Quicktime for that matter. Just one more reason why robchinn.com will be living here soon.