For the past 3 days, we’ve had around 20 photographers in our house! We were pleased to host Ben Chrisman, an incredible photographer from San Francisco for our first annual workshop. (The workshop series still needs a name, we’re working on that. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment!).

The idea behind the workshop was to bring a great speaker to us, rather than having the environmental impact and cost of having 15 studios fly out for a workshop. We are happy to say that we only generated one bag of recycling and one bag of garbage at the workshop, which I think is pretty cool.

We got a bonus, Ben brought along his girlfriend Erin, who shoots along with him. We learned so much from Ben and Erin, and I think you’re going to see a change in our photography this year. We’re really excited for all of our upcoming weddings to put what we learned into practice!

Here’s Ben teaching us about composition. For instance, he probably would like me to square up this picture and not have a line cutting through the top of his head.

Ben brought special surprise guests Dave and Quin from DQ Studios in Calgary to teach us about their workflow, and QuiKeys (which we purchased and are very excited to try out when it arrives).

Our living room was the perfect venue for this small workshop. Ben in particular seemed to find it very comfortable .

We had a great opportunity to shoot with Ben. We took models/our clients Stephanie and David to the University to learn how Ben scouts locations and what he looks for when he shoots.

Ben leading a gaggle of photographers looking for good light, location, etc.

Here are a few of my shots:

And these are Michael’s.

There were quite a few photographers shooting at the same time.  We literally had to crawl all over each other to get these shots.

A big thank you to Ben, Erin, and all of the participants for making the workshop such a success!

PS: Our wonderful friends at Finao sponsored a part of the workshop – Ben chose Andrea from Pink Sugar for having great photos, and she will receive a Finao album.  Thanks guys!