Spring Photography Workshop Part 1

Arizona Photography Workshop

In honor of my third up coming workshop I thought I should at least showcase some of my favorite bits from most recent spring photography workshop. I hosted my second workshop in the late spring this year. This workshop was on a much smaller scale offering more time to really answer any questions in full detail without feeling like I might not be giving other individuals the time they needed as well. You can see a big difference in color scheme and over all theme here, which I was really excited about. I love bright, rich colors and textures. This was a stretch for my dear gal pal Paige from The Love Designed Life, you can read more about that HERE. She goes into detail about how she masterfully thought and brought to life this amazing table-scape. Her florals were purchased from Arizona Flower Market.

BHansen Photography Workshops

Before I go into detail about the workshop, I want to comment about how truly important it is to me to support small business, local small business whenever I can. Shopping local means not only are we keeping money in our communities, we are helping feed the families of those business owners, helping them pay their electricity bills, and encouraging them to continue to follow their passions. Sure, I can buy a lot of things from big box stores, and surely I do, but I spend quite a bit of money in my community, in the surrounding communities, and in Arizona in general. One of our local vendors for our most recent workshop was Mamas Cold Brew Coffee company. Check them out, Jennifer the owner is amazing and I have developed such a great relationship with her and her company. We worked out a trade, coffee for my attendee’s for family portraits to be taken this fall. I will share those when they are all complete.

BHansen Studios Workshops

We also found a local baker who made the most delectable donuts you ever did taste! Big and rich and flavorful, what more could you ask for? Grano de vida is so tasty. We purchased them from The Simple Farm. Lylah, is a beautiful local caramel maker who is a huge advocate for creatives and makers all over the valley. You can read about her goat farm HERE.

Fresh Guacamole and salsa

In addition to the perfect pairing of coffee and donuts, I added in some of my own homemade fixin’s. Fresh guacamole and heirloom tomato pico de gallo. Alright, alright, that’s the jist of some of the amazing parts of attending one of my workshops. There is soooo much that happens behind the scenes to put a workshop on. I want to create a workshop that both attendee’s and small businesses want to be a part of. Bringing together community, business, and art. Now let’s get into some of the teaching portion of my workshops.

Desert Florals

This picture is exactly the same… or is it? Which one do you like better? This lesson was all about depth of field. You control your depth of field by changing your Aperture in your manual settings. Depth of field is the amount of subjects or objects in your image/composite that are in focus. You can change depth of field to create more stunning and powerful images by adjusting aperture to a higher or lower number. A lower aperture (also known as f/stop) means your lens is open wider, creating a smaller depth of field. This is great for portraits. A higher aperture or f/stop creates a larger depth of field, resulting in more subjects/objects in focus. An example of when a higher aperture is required is Landscape photography. You would need as large of aperture your lens will offer you.

Now that we have covered aperture, which photo was taken with a larger Aperture? The left or the right???
If you guessed the right, you are correct! The photo on the left was taken at an aperture of 2.8, the photo on the right was taken at an aperture of 10.

To learn more about shooting in manual mode, stay tuned for my up coming workshop schedule!

BHansen Photography Workshops

This is an example of what a practice set up looks like. The areas are designed with the attendees in mind, spacious areas with multiple pretty things to photograph. Each attendee has room to shoot and then share some of their images with myself and others. We compliment each other and help each other achieve the lighting and focus we set out to.

In my workshops we cover the four key components to shooting in manual mode; ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and white balance. Let’s be honest folks, having full control of your images saves you so much more time in the long run. No more long nights trying to fix things in some free or cheap editing programs, no more masking your color problems with Instagram filters, and no more wondering why your kid isn’t in focus but the pile of laundry right behind them is clear as a blue sky!

Bhansen Photography Workshops

Bhansen Photography giveaways

Oh, and I have some pretty awesome giveaways. I like to keep things exciting. This last item won is a personal favorite of mine. One that I use almost daily. It was an EyeFi SD card. It transfers your images to any smart device immediately using internal wifi.

styling by The Love Designed Life

This last photo is a taste of what’s to come in Part 2 of this post. This little Romper is featured in the live shoot out we conduct at the end of each workshop. Each attendee gets to see me in action with a perfectly styled family, by The Love Designed Life. There is time to ask questions, see the images on the back of my camera. Learn to pose families, and much much more!