Yesterday I got a chance to travel down to attend the Flashbus 2011 Tour stop in Salt Lake City. For those not familiar with the Flashbus Tour, it’s the photographic equivalent of Lady Gaga and Madonna going on tour together, but replaced by two middle aged men and a room full of photographer geeks instead of screaming fans.

And no, David Hobby of Strobist fame, didn’t arrive inside an DIY egg carried on the shoulders of four photo assistants, and Joe McNally the last full time staff photographer for Life Magazine and National Geographic, Sports Illustrated contract photographer etc. didn’t ride in on a white horse in commander mode surrounded by ten assistants holding 40 Nikon SB900 speedlights.

They just walked in the room, with a refreshingly lack of ego, climbed up on the stage and taught with humor, patience, fun and a sense of giving back to the photographic community that has given them so much. And their “show” lasted much longer than a Gaga Madonna concert—-all day if fact.

David and Joe,  both of whom are “The” two biggest names in photography education working today, decided last summer with an idea that came from Joe McNally’s Studio Assistant, to take on the rock n’ roll lifestyle and get on a bus and tour around to 29 cities in 6 weeks and teach as many photographers as they could, how to remove the flash that most stick on top of their cameras and put it on something else and make beautiful photographs.

They enlisted the support of a bunch of amazing sponsors such as Manfrotto,  LumiQuest, Rosco, Spyder, Tethertools, Peachpit Press, NIKsoftware, Lexar, PocketWizard, Thinkthank photo, Frio and Adorama and others who helped pull the tour together and headed out with the first stop on March 11th in Seattle. The sponsors put together a great swag bag of items that was an added bonus to the show. The tour ends on April 18th in St. Louis, Missouri.

We hear that most of the shows are sold out, but here’s the link to the Flashbus 2011 Tour site if you want to find our for yourself.

The format for the one day seminar is a morning session with David Hobby followed by lunch, and afternoon session with Joe McNally and then a brief question and answer session with both of them on stage at the end of the show.

The morning session started off with David Hobby teaching in easily understood language, the basic building blocks of off camera flash photography. His approach is to use camera flash in primarily manual mode with the occasional need for TTL (through the lens). Manual mode is where the photographer takes control over the creative lighting process by using their flash in manual mode only. The photographer tells the flash exactly how much light to send out and for how long.  TTL is where the photographer uses the flash in an automatic mode where the camera measures the light that comes in through the lens and relays information to the flash telling it how much light to send out to the subject and for how long.

(A bit of a caveat for TTL. It’s not exactly 100% automatic….just point your camera and it will make  your bed, do your dishes, take out the garbage and cook you dinner. No the photographer still needs to give the computer in the camera some basic information to get the TTL mode on the camera headed in the right direction, and that big ball of light in the sky called the sun is still tricky enough that it can fool even the best computer inside of the best cameras made today).

He taught those in attendance to start with the ambient light, add fill light, key light and as he says “season to taste”. David is a wonderful teacher who boiled down some very complicated subject matter to the level that was easy to understand for just about anyone with a camera in their hands.

The most enjoyable part for me about David Hobby’s part of the show was just how humble and down to earth he is. He seemed to easily make a connection with everyone in the audience. And you could see he was really passionate about helping others and showing them how to be better photographers. The three hours seemed to fly by as he interacted with those in the audience answering a multitude of questions in a humorous and informative fashion.

He has some great DVD’s called “Lighting in Layers” that just came out in conjunction with the Flashbus 2011 Tour that I would highly recommend for anyone wanting to make that leap from taking boring snapshots and moving it onto the next level. You can order them from Adorama by clicking here.

The afternoon session with Joe McNally kinda of got off to a rocky start as computer gremlins messed up his tethering system he uses to throw the photos he takes during his live demonstration up onto the screen so he can teach how he solves problems as he lights a photographic situation.

While technicians and his staff worked feverishly to solve the problems. Joe who is also another great fountain of photographic knowledge and down right wonderful teacher, took the situation and made it into a teaching moment for those in attendance by not getting upset or flustered and explaining to all that many times taking photographs is simply about problem solving.

After a couple of false starts and switching out of cameras and computers the show was back in gear. Joe was a whirl wind of information and creative genius. His approach is mostly TTL with some manual flash thrown in to solve problems and situations where TTL just can’t get the job done.

He taught the details of TTL to everyone by using live models from his crew and people pulled from the audience. He showed how he use strobes and reflectors to shape the light on his subjects to achieve the results he was trying to get. And as everything was being done live. He let us in on his thinking/problems solving process and everyone got to see how he fixed things when they didn’t work and most importantly got to see that its OK to make mistakes as we work towards making a good photograph. In fact the big take away for me was exactly that. Making mistakes IS part of the creative process.

Joe is a legend in the photographic world with many books to his credit that should be on the shelves of every serious photographer working today.  He also released a new set of DVD’s in conjunction with the Flashbus 2011 Tour called “The Language of Light” that should be on the must buy list of every photographer out there of if you have an understanding spouse, a great birthday or Father’s or Mother’s day gift.

In the end I think we all wanted to hold up our lighters and try for an encore, but Joe and David needed to roll onto the next stop of the Flashbus 2011 Tour!