I walked into Florence James Studios with a notebook and a vague idea of “I probably know some of this already.” I walked out with seven pages of notes and scribbled all over my beautiful Workshop book which Taylah was absolutely mortified by, and a genuinely different understanding of lighting. Here’s the honest recap of the Creative Scoop 2-Day Product & Portrait Photography Workshop.
Day One: Portraits, and Realising I’d Been Guessing This Whole Time
Day one was all portrait work, model in the studio, and it was structured exactly how you’d want a hands-on day to go, camera settings and the foundations explained from scratch, then how a photo actually comes together through colour, styling and creative choices, before moving into lighting, strobes and triggers. After a break, we got straight into different lighting setups and modifiers, followed by proper live shooting time where I was on the gear myself, not just watching someone else do it.
What got me was how much of the “why” they explained. I’ve been eyeballing my lighting for years, moving a stand until it looked right and hoping for consistency. Turns out there’s a whole system to it, you set your key light first (that’s just your main, most powerful light source), and everything else, the fill, the backfill, the glow is lower power and positioned to clean up whatever shadows the key light is throwing. And the wild part? You’re not locked into one light being the key. You can hand that job to a different speedlite entirely just by adjusting the settings.
Day Two: Product Photography, and the Realisation That “Just Photograph the Thing” Is a Lie.
Day two flipped straight into product, building on day one, then moving into styling, set design and composition, before getting into product lighting setups, tools and modifiers. This is the day my brain nearly short-circuited, in the best way.
The camera settings alone were a light bulb moment. Then there’s the shooting order. I always shoot a product front, then flip it to reshoot the side, then the back, moving it around as I go. They shoot every single angle from the front first, then move the whole set-up for all the sides, then all the backs, so the product’s positioning stays identical across the whole shoot. So obvious once you see it, so not obvious before.
And the gels. Using two different gel colours together to create a gradient background, taped onto the speedlites with gaffa tape (never on constant lights, apparently the heat will just melt them), and the weight and density of the gel actually determines how strong the colour reads. I’ve been buying single gels and wondering why my backgrounds look flat, and this is probably why.
My favourite trick was watching the model light on the key light to predict where shadows were going to fall before you even take the shot, a total game changer for not wasting time chimping the back of the camera every two seconds. Also, tilting the product slightly down to kill glare. So simple, so effective, why did no one tell me this before.
The Gear List I’m Now Coveting
I left with a very specific shopping list forming in my head: a speedlite for both product and headshot work, a DJI Osmo Pocket, diffusers and diffuser paper to cut reflections, reflector dishes and a clamshell reflector, a rolling stool (because apparently your comfort affects your consistency across a long shoot), tethering cables, a rolling trolley or tether station, coloured gels, foam board for single-speedlite fill, and Capture One itself for tethering and on-site colour grading. Not cheap, but every single item on that list was justified by something I watched happen in the studio, not just a “you should probably own this” throwaway line (someone tell my boss to buy my wishlist hehe).
Would I Do It Again?
In a heartbeat.
It’s genuinely hands-on the whole way through, you’re not sitting watching a demo, you’re on the strobes and triggers yourself.
And even coming in with a few years of experience, I still walked away with actual, usable changes to how I shoot.
Honestly the biggest shift for me wasn’t even a single trick, it was realising how much of what looks like “natural talent” in commercial photography is actually just a very deliberate, repeatable system. Settings, order of operations, lighting logic. Once you see the system, you can’t unsee it.
If you’re on the fence, or think you know everything already, my advice is simple: bring a notebook, bring your camera even if you think you won’t need it, and be ready to fill every single page. Successful creators never stop learning.
