Nananananananana Phatman!

Hello and welcome,

I hear an echo: sounds empty in here. Kinda weird starting a blog knowing that I have no audience.

I've been blogging for a while at my customer site and kind of missed blogging for the photogs out there. This is just for you.

A bit about me: Greg Howard AKA Phatman. Why Phatman? Well I'm not as skinny as I used to be. Besides, I liked the play on words. I've started on this wonderful journey as a photog at a pretty young age. My dad would occasionally let me take a picture with his Canon 35mm. As a young teen I bought a used Nikon 2002 and a 35-70 3.5 and started snapping. That camera got a lot of miles on it and now resides on my desk next to the printer. I drifted away from photography for a few years and made my pictures with point and shoots. Last year, with a baby on the way, I managed to convince my wife that I needed an SLR for my birthday.

Well that cost a lot more than she expected... less than a year later I'm a full time self employed photographer. It's been a hair-straight-back crazy stressful ride and I'm loving it. This is were I want to share the trip with you as a sort of open journal how to type of place. I hope you enjoy!

Here are a couple pictures from a walk through the mall parking lot in the first sunshine I've seen it what feels like a month. It felt great to get out and just look for a picture for me. That might sound funny but I get so busy making images for other people that I don't get a blank sheet very often. I think I need to make more of an effort to do it.

Stay tuned for more great Phat-news coming up. I'm collaborating with some great talent to start putting on some how-to seminars. We'll be starting by demolishing the mysteries surrounding flash photography... and I'm not talking about Paparazzi style on camera flash, I mean getting a light off the camera making a picture. I'm psyched to share what I've been learning about speedlights and studio lights and share some great little tricks to make big light on a little budget.

I'm arguably just past the brainstorming stage and have a ton of work to put this together but it's defiantly a go. Learning lights for me was a revelation. Colours spring to life, things have contrast, and I began to learn how to put light on people and things that made me really happy. It's a whole new world.

Like so many things, it seems like a huge leap from our comfort zone. But really it's just building on the skills you have already developed. It's empowering to ad light into a scene ad craft it into something out of your imagination. This is what I meant about making a picture instead of taking it.

Having blabbered on about lights for probably too long, here are some pictures made with only sunlight:

... Phatman