On Monday Nick and I went to the a lecture hosted by the UC Irvine Photography Club. The presenter was Erich Chen, a southern California wedding photographer. Erich was kind enough to bring Valentine's Day candy for everyone and decided to throw it out to each person in the audience. Well, Erich has great aim and I have slow reflexes. He threw the candy and it hit me right in the forehead. Of course I laughed and I'm still laughing about it, and there was no harm done so it makes for a funny story!

Erich is a totally nice and funny guy and I loved his presentation. He used the analogy that photography is like a video game to describe his approach to photography. I'm not a big gamer but I understand that in some games you have to use your surroundings to progress through the levels, and Erich has applied this to the way he shoots. He uses his everyday surroundings in creative new ways to take interesting shots. You aren't always going to have the prettiest lighting or the most interesting backgrounds to work with, so Erich makes a conscious effort to push himself to think outside of the box in how he uses his surroundings. For example, he was shooting a wedding where he and the whole bridal party were crammed into an elevator. What would you do? Well, Erich pointed his camera up at the mirrored ceiling and got an awesome shot of everyone in the elevator!

It was also interesting to hear how he has grown as a photographer. He described how his shooting style used to be more like a machine gunner (see the video game theme coming through!). He would take a lot of shots and hope one comes out. Now he calls himself a sniper - he waits patiently for the perfect moment, takes aim, and then fires. I like to think I'm somewhere in-between at this point in my development as a photographer. I wonder what's between a machine gunner and a sniper? A rifleman?  Anyways, Erich was awesome and I took away so much from the meeting. It's a great reminder to step outside of the box more when shooting!