Today my friend Melinda came to town for a day of camera talk that included hours of laughter and reminiscing—we go back way before the camera thing. We spent the day sharing photo tips and practicing portrait photography before her husband, Lonnie, finished his work meetings and returned to take us out to dinner, where there was much more laughter and reminiscing. Melinda let me try out her SB-900 speed light. I was thrilled to be able to use it and I expect one will soon have its own place in my camera bag. Melinda also gave me lots of Photoshop tips (I let her do most of the editing of her own photo) and showed me how to set custom white balance on my camera. We definitely need to get together more often. She did learn one thing from me, so I contributed to the knowledge sharing today as well.
I used Melinda’s speed light on all the photos I took today. Although I took quite a few posed shots of Melinda, the best photographs were not posed at all and were the first couple of shots I took with the speed light. Over time, I have found that if I try to improve upon a photo that I like, I rarely get a better result. So, when at the end of the afternoon, I decided we needed a photo together, I liked the first shot and so that’s all I took.
So here is one of the first shots I took of my photo buddy Melinda today (she did most of the editing in Photoshop so I could watch an expert in action) and the one shot I took of Melinda and me (I edited this shot, cropping it a bit and changing it to sepia).
