A Great Class: Beauty Photography & Editing Intensive with Sancho Smalls.
Subtitle: Get to any class Sancho Smalls teaches. Shout out to MUA chynahmo also.
Wanted to broaden my horizons a bit and take a class. That was the thinking when I first saw a multi week street photography class hosted by MODA (Mecca of Digiarts) at the Harvey B. Gantt Center. I had a great time at a 2021 one day photo walk hosted by a Erskine Isaac’s Gordon Parks Photography Collective FB group in NYC.
Even took one of my all time favorite family portraits that day during the Harlem stranger portrait portion of the day.
So I was all for it until it dawned on me…
Drive two hours each way for four weekends in a row. Are you nuts?
Then I looked for a one day class, found Beauty Photography & Editing Intensive with Sancho Smalls, and immediately signed up.
Everything was fine until I arrived in Charlotte. Traffic. Turns out there was an NFL game the same day. (I do not follow sports at all.) I was running out of time, thanks to the traffic, even though I had given myself a buffer. Fortunately, I was on the phone with my wife when my frugal side scoffed out loud at a sign for a $20 parking lot. My wife said, “Eric, park in the lot.” And I did as I was told. She is brilliant after all. Made it in the door 2 minutes late. But I had not missed anything as everyone was caught in the same traffic.
I’ll keep it brief, although it is already too late for that. Bulletized highlights.
- Sancho Smalls is a gifted photographer and instructor.
- Folks were nice.
- Met some gifted artists of all experience levels. Models were great to work with.
- Came away with some photos I am very happy with.
A great value and I highly recommend taking a class there, especially if Sancj Smalls is teaching.
Gear corner.
Digital side I brought only Fujifilm this day. My all time favorite portrait pairing.
And of course I brought along its little brother.
Hype and instathreadface pixie dust hype set aside it is the most overachieving little camera that I have ever seen. And as I shared with my prior Scenes Seen post…
…it was the camera I turned to when I wanted a wider field of view.
It more than held its own. Also brought along a film camera, naturally, and those pics can be found in this post.
But this here post? It will focus on the pairing mentioned above. Here are the pics. I will include a mix of model pics and behind the scenes pics.
Ok. Sancho started us off with strobe lighting. Manual settings. I was first up since my camera had a flash port. I started out using constant lighting…
…and manual flash (mentioned in this post)…
…before Godox came in and provided an affordable path to TTL.
When using TTL with flash the camera is provided with information to predict the resulting exposure. With manual via the flash port not so much. So with the necessary settings for the flash power…
- ISO 200
- f/8
- 1/125 SS
…I was left with a dark screen, guessing where the model is. Exposed properly. But framing was a challenge, to say the least. So after standing up in front of the class, fumbling through the menus, wondering where Fujifilm decided to put the exposure preview settings in the menus. Finally found it, and I was good to go.
Do not ask me where this is in the menus now, though. I have already forgotten.
Sancho then went on to walk us through constant lighting.
Sancho then went on to walk us through his editing workflow.
And the rest of the time was spent taking photos and meeting other photographers. So. A great time. Here are more pics from the class,
Bonus round.
While talking with byquispe I showed them around the manual focus aids for adapted lenses. So not only did I get a few pics of me with them at the wheel…
…I got a few pics I like with a favorite lens…
…as well.
Thoughts.
An awesome class.
Awesome people.
And I came out of it with some photos I am really happy with.
A good result all around.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 
One Reply to “A Great Class: Beauty Photography & Editing Intensive with Sancho Smalls.”
Comments are closed.