It's about observation.

Tonight was the first night of my advanced lighting class at SAIT.  Once I give the lecture and I shoot a few frames I then let the students have their opportunity to work with our subject.  While they do this I answer questions, solve camera problems and in general observe and make suggestions.  In my talks with the students this evening the theme of observation came up a number of times.  I always instruct my students to observe the light and how does it fall on the subject.  I tell them to observe the pose, the framing and the expression of the person they are photographing.

In a conversation with one of my students I started to discuss my photo a day project and how it has helped me with my awareness of my surroundings.  I have said it before but I will say it again, there are many opportunities to create images all around us as long as we look for them.  Today's Instagram 366 photo is a good example of that.  I regularly buy ham and turkey from the deli at Safeway to make sandwhichs for my boy's.  Today as I was waiting to be served I observed this wonderful pattern in the way this fresh cut Black Forest Ham had piled on the tray.  It almost had a look of a flower and so I snapped a photo through the plexiglass cover before the server arrived.  Very little post processing was done here other then cropping and slight vignetting in Snapseed.

So I invite you to explore and observe your everyday environment and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us, even in the most simple of things. 

This photo is of the lovely Breanna from tonight's class.  This was shot with the Canon 7D and the 24-70 f2.8 lens,  100 ISO, 1/125 sec at f5.6.  Three Alienbee 1600 lights were used.  Main was to the left with a small Chimera strip box, fill was a silver reflector on the right.  Hair light was a small Chimera soft box and an accent light was behind right with an 18x46 Larson soft box.