What is a strobist?

Strobists are basically geeks, er people who like to light things with off camera flashes (strobes). The name comes from the site at strobist.com, where a community of like minded individuals can converge to learn new techniques and find out about what other photographers are doing. There is a small group here in the Portland area that meets up about once a month with a group of models at various locations for some hang time. The models and make up artists come do their magic with the condition that every photographer that works with a model provides an image for that model's portfolio. We geek out about equipment, argue about pocket wizard and skyport channels, and have a good time. Here are a couple of images from the last meetup at the Treehouse in the Beaverton area. It was a sweet location.

Strobists meet at the Ballyhoo studio in Portland

The PDX Strobist group in Portland, Oregon had their meetup at my Portland Studio for November. What was intended to be a small and intimate meetup became a crowded and overflowing studio packed with photo geeks and models. The chaos was awesome. My studio is just under 800 square feet, with two main shooting areas. Add food, cameras, bags, makeup, props, lightstands, and a dozen models and I think we ended up with about 15 photographers. It was intimate, but not quite what I had in mind. It was more like shoulder to shoulder shooting with people spilling into the halls for setting up lights and models.

One of the photographers, Scooter, is a student, aspiring photographer, and quite a sport. Another photographer and I dragged Scooter and two of the models into the non-functioning elevator in my building for a shoot. It was a struggle to get started, as the space was so tight and the widest lens I had was my 24-70 canon lens. Nice and wide, huh? Well, I shoot a 40D, so you can multiply that lens size by 1.6, making the widest setting a relative 39mm lens. Not that wide. I had about 5 feet to move in front of the elevator shaft, so that was about 15 feet deep. My three victims, er models were good sports and put up with me. These images are from the series. This one is my favorite from the day