Bio

Bobbi Lane is an award-winning commercial photographer specializing in creative portraits on location and in the studio. Lane's multi-faceted approach to photography incorporates over 35 years of technical experience with innovative artistic interpretation. Her corporate and editorial work includes corporate identity, business websites and annual reports. Bobbi’s honest and fun connection with her clients allows them to feel relaxed and authentic.

Bobbi spent 25 years in Los Angeles shooting everything from Mattel Toys to annual reports to vans and buses in 6000 sq. ft. studios. Primarily known for her insightful portraits, she keeps her product and location skills sharp providing complete services to a variety of clients. She left Los Angeles for Connecticut, just 50 miles outside of New York, and worked with many local and national companies for 10 years. Bobbi returned to her roots in Southeastern Massachusetts in 2011. She and her husband, photographer and retouching master, Lee Varis, bought a house in Carver, MA in 2016. They now are specializing in working with local companies, bringing their many years of experience and expertise to Plymouth County.

As a dedicated photo educator, she brings insight and enthusiasm to her students in workshops held worldwide. Bobbi is known for teaching lighting techniques for portraits, both natural and artificial: studio strobes, speedlights, LEDs, and daylight fluorescent. Bobbi's excellent rapport and communication with her students inspires and motivates, while her straight-forward teaching style reaches students of many different skill levels. Her dynamic workshops are always both educational and fun!

Combining her love of travel, photography and teaching, Bobbi also leads international photo travel workshops. In the past few years, she has been to Cuba, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Turkey, Oman, Venice Carnival, Hong Kong, Iceland and Dubai. These travel tours offer students the opportunity to see in new ways and learn lighting, landscape, people and processing skills to enhance their vision.

Bobbi is the author of two books: “Creative Techniques for Color Photography” and “Advertising Photography: A Straightforward Guide to a Complex Industry”, with Lou Lesko. She currently has three photo educational DVDs: Portrait Lighting Techniques, Portraits Unplugged and Posing and Directing, with more in production now. The Bryan Peterson School of Photography offers two of Bobbi’s classes online, Portraits Unplugged and Posing and Directing. Craftsy offers The Essential Guide to Posing.

Bobbi is a featured speaker at many photo conventions nationally and internationally. Bobbi offers custom mentoring programs for emerging photographers, designed to help business development and improve photography techniques. A strong advocate for business education, she was honored with a Special Recognition Award for Education at APA National’s 25th Anniversary.

Topic: I will be presenting Dragging the Shutter during this evening's webinar. This presentation explores all the various techniques of “Dragging the shutter” or balancing the exposure of strobe and ambient light sources in one photo. For example: taking a
photo of someone outside at night by using a portable flash and also capturing the city lights in the background. There is quite a lot to know about this technique because it involves color balance as well as exposure balance. Bobbi explains
how to determine the proper balance of exposure between the two light sources - flash and ambient - then how to creatively play by shaking or spinning the camera, zooming the lens, panning and more. The flash will light the subject and
freeze any motion, and then moving the camera will blur the ambient light in the background in a variety of ways. Adding gels to the flash can making the color of the light sources correct, or for creating unusual effects. This technique can be used for people at twilight, product shots, flowers outside, etc. It’s a creative and fun way to make your photos more dynamic and effective.