Nikon World Article Online

The recent article about me in Nikon World Magazine in now available online.

Ballooning Over The Dubai Desert

After a week of conducting workshops at the 2012 Gulf Photo Plus, several instructors including myself went for a balloon ride. It was an early morning for all of us, 4 am wake-up call for a 4;45 am pick-up at the hotel.

I grabbed this photo of David Nightingale snoozing during our drive to the desert.

There were two balloons waiting for us when we arrived at the launching site. The morning temps were cool with a light breeze. I had been in a balloon only once before, a much smaller one. This balloon held a total of 16 people, we sailed to 4000 feet above the ground.

After only a few minutes of heat being added to the balloons, we were off the ground. If you have never been in a hot air balloon before, it surely is a must do. One strange thing you notice right off the bat, as soon as you take flight any breeze you felt on the ground ends. Since you travel with the wind, there is no visible reference of wind other then the ground moving below you.



At an altitude of 4000 feet we could see the Rocky Mountains of Oman. The pilot was very insistent that we not land there....

My friend and fellow instructor Chris Hurtt is seen enjoying the view standing at the edge of the basket. There was no shortage of cameras of the trip.

Here are a few shots of the desert sands which passed slowly beneath us.


I'd like to thank Brenden Jack for arranging this wonderful adventure for us. It was a balloon ride I'll never forget. DT

Photo from Dubai 2012 GPP

I'm headed to the airport just now, but wanted to put up a photo from last weeks GPP workshops. I'm headed to Ghana for a 10 day assignment so I will be pretty much out of touch. Let me leave you with this, and I will explain how it was lit on my return. Sorry for the short post, got a run. DT

As it turns out, I have a 4 hour delay here in DC for my flight to Ghana. Thought I'd run through the process for making the photo above. The location was the Kempinski Hotel at the Mall of Emirates in Dubai. I was told that we were shooting in a $10,000.00 USD a night room. It was a 3 bedroom with a view of the Ski Resort in the mall. Yes, a ski resort in the shopping mall, only in Dubai.

The lighting outside the windows over the ski resort was a Mercury Vapor type lighting. By shifting my white balance on the camera to tungsten, the color of those lights went very blue. The ambient light in the room was a clean tungsten, however the light over the bed was dialed down by use of a rheostat. Dialing down that light made the color temp drop below a true tungsten level. I used a single SB-800 fitted with a Rouge Grid, the speedlight was also fitted with a full cut CTO to balance with the tungsten setting on the camera. DT

Reviews From Dubai

I am currently on day 3 of teaching at the 2012 Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai. One of my students, Marina, from yesterday's workshop has posted her thoughts about her experience at the workshop. Have a look HERE.

Enjoying Dubai

I had my first day teaching my Small Strobe, Big Results workshop at the GPP yesterday. I had a wonderful class and we had a great time using our flashes. Here are just a few from our efforts.


The lighting in this photograph was a single SB-800 shot through a large piece of Rip-Stop nylon taped to a glass door. I used a long lens to compress the background, focusing your eye on the model.


This photo was lit using a large Octa camera left quite far out in front of our model, she is receiving only the feather edge of the light. The back ground is simply the ambient light in the rear of the room.


Here we used only a set of barn doors and the very bright ambient light in a lobby on campus. I would of loved to have the lamp light showing however the ambient levels were so high that they wouldn't hold.

Today is another SSBR workshop, I having fun! DT