WoW To and From the Strobist

There's a double meaning for my use of the term "WoW" in this post's title: "WoW" as in "Wow!" and "WoW" as in an acronym for "Words of Wisdom."

If you haven't visited the Strobist site, I highly recommend you do so.

The Strobist is full of great information, keen insights, and practical advice. Although it principally focuses on the use of strobes (i.e., on-camera type strobes or flashes--think Speedlites if you're a Canon person--whether that strobe or flash is mounted on-camera or not) I think you'll get a lot out of what the Strobist has to say whether an on-or-off-camera flash is part of your usual lighting regimen or not. I know I do.

A recent, 11/21/06, post on the Strobist is titled: The Lighting Journey: Where Are You? It begins by discussing something or other about images posted on the Strobist's Flickr group, but then dove-tails into the truly sage part of this post; something the Strobist calls the Seven Levels of Lighting.

I read the Strobist's Seven Levels of Lighting a couple of times with great interest. It put a lot of things into perspective for me. For one, I realized where (in terms of glamour photography) I believe I currently exist on the The Lighting Journey: I figure I'm at Level 5: The Bag of Tricks

Here's how the Strobist defines Level 5 shooters:

"Most competent magazine / agency shooters live here. He knows what works, and he can make money with it. She experiments, but a has a collection of techniques that she can choose from to craft almost any situation into a beautiful photo.

Grid spot, soft box, flash drag, you name it. They know them all and can cycle them to the point where their pictures do not appear to be cliches of themselves.

To someone in phase one, two or three, they appear to be the ultimate destination."

Do yourself a favor and check out the Strobist on a regular basis, I think you'll find it's worth the time.

The pretty girl pics accompanying this post are of Nautica. They're from a series I snapped 5 or 6 months ago.