I was pretty excited to find out that David Hobby and Joe McNally were coming to Minneapolis. These two photographers have been a good source of inspiration for me. They both have a ton of knowledge and give it away at the drop of a hat. David’s web site, the strobist, was one of the first places that I saw and dove into on using flash. But manual mode on the flashes still scared me, and I was excited as all get out to come across Joe McNally. I found his material in his books, a DVD with Bob Krist, and got to first meet him at a DLWS landscape workshop in Michigan. I became a TTL fiend, and wouldn’t leave that realm until recently.

Anyway, fast forward to Saturday, and they both rumble into town on the same bus. David with a slide projector, and Joe with an additional 18 wheeler full of gear. Well, maybe not that quite that much, but he sure pulled a lot of stuff out on stage. It was a great smackdown between manual and TT with David taking the morning and Joe the afternoon. Ok, there wasn’t much of a rumble, as both of them are way past arguing whether manual or TTL is better, but it made for some fun jokes.

There was a lot of great information presented. I feel like my understanding of using manual mode flashes jumped considerably. I am sure to use accent flashes more in my shots now. They make a huge difference. I may need another flash though. I am no where near David’s 12, or Joe’s 144. (I made up Joe’s number).

I came to this photography thing, or really any art/creativity thing fairly late in the game. I didn’t study or learn about hardly any painters or photographers that came before me. I started by learning about a handful of photographers in my generation. So I don’t have any real heros per say, but I definitely look up to these guys, so I took the opportunity to get the worst ever pictures taken with them. Taken with an iPhone is very low light by someone with obviously some kind of shaky hand disease. And these are after I ran them through some noise reduction. Quite possibly the worst pictures they have ever had taken of themselves. Hey, at least I didn’t take em!