Geez, I gotta follow David Hobby? Did I think that through?

Even though David, in the rest of his life, is a bit of a night owl, he will take on the morning shift, as he says, employing manual control, where the photog drives the train. For me, I will try to wake everybody up from their post-lunch stupor by spinning up TTL solutions and building on David's direction and teaching.

Planet TTL, as I call it, is an uncertain place, where disaster lurks behind every choice of f-stop and power level! It is a bit of a high wire, in which the photog literally consults with the camera about the path and nature of the light, and there is occasional disagreement, or even an outright argument.

That doesn't mean I don't teach manual solutions, and the mix of manual and TTL. Do it all the time. The important message of what I teach is that it is all about the management of light, and it doesn't matter where that light comes from. True, I use Nikon flashes, but I have Canon (and other systems) users in my workshops all the time. Good light is good light, plain and simple, be it a Nikon, a Canon, or a car headlight. (We won't be using those for demo purposes, however.)

What light is appropriate for what face and situation? Hard light or soft light? One light solutions or multiple light scenarios? Lights from up close or and far away? Soft box or umbrella? White light or gels for color? All lighting approaches say a different thing, and describe the subject at hand differently. It is language that we speak.

The afternoon session will be filled with real time demo, and playing out another round of the ongoing game of making little lights look and feel like big lights. Under that umbrella (ouch!) anything goes.

David Hobby here, AKA the "morning guy" on The Flash Bus.

Some folks have asked for a little more "specificity" about the day. And after looking that word up, I think I can answer! Well, at least for my time slot.

I'll be teaching lighting and light design from a full manual perspective. Meaning, you control everything. Because everyone should know how to drive stick.

We'll be in F/stop and shutter speed mode, too. So you should know what those things are. And if you look like you don't, I just may quiz you. Also, we won't be thinking in terms of cookie-cutter recipes. They tend to fall apart in the real world, where everything is relative and nothing is absolute.

So "relative" is the route we'll be taking. Solve one variable. Get one thing nailed down. Then build on that one step at a time.

Being as though we are working in manual, the morning will be very transportable to whatever brand of gear you use. True, I am a Nikon® shooter, but the physics of manual control work for all. So no brand "specificity" (fresh vocabulary FTW!) is required. That said, I guzzle Diet Mountain Dew®, eat at Chipotle® and live in R.E.I.® cargo shorts. And this post is being typed on a Mac®.

Seriously, everything in the morning (and much of the theory the afternoon) will be very transportable, regardless of your brand of camera or lights. But please understand that this stuff will only work if you use Manfrotto® light stands.

Kidding! Gravity is brand agnostic!

But speaking of brands, Adorama and our sponsors do have some things in store to amp things up a little. More on that front soon enough.

Some of you have asked what kind of photography we'll be centering on. As far as photographic subject matter, we will not be teaching any one specific genre other than to say that Joe and I are basically people shooters. So don't expect a day on how to shoot car brochures or Architectural Digest spreads.

And as for my segment specifically, I'll spend the first 30 mins or so hitting the basics so we don't leave anyone behind. (And/or to allow some of you to fully wake up. Including me, not being, technically a "morning person".)

But by 10:30 I expect to be (mostly) awake and theoretically capable of forming complex thoughts. So who knows how far we might get before lunch time.

Mmmmm… lunch time…

Numnuts here. 13,000 miles. Cross country in 42 days. Geez, that’s a lot of turns of the wheel.  When I graduated college, there were two main mandates one had to follow. First was, don’t get a job. Being a largely freelance shooter for more than 30 years, I figure I’ve fulfilled that one quite nicely. (Or, if you did have a mind towards gainful employment, it had to be radically, you know, out there. One of my friend’s entire business plan for post-college life was to go to Katmandu and sell Swiss Army knives. Hmmmm. Haven’t heard from him in a while.)

The other was go cross country, man. (You can supply the inflection—Tommy Chong, Spicoli, Firesign Theater.) Never did that. I mean, I’ve logged lots of miles, but it’s never been in a string that starts on one side of the country and ends on the other. Come March, David Hobby, Drew Gurian, myself and crew start playing out that long held string.

And we go in style. The bus looks amazing. I have questions about it. Top end? Capable of a wheelie? Can I drive it for a while? I drove a bus in college, and I’m sure it would all come back to me, just like riding a bike. David’s already filled you in on URLs for video, tweets, and Flickr groups. We’ll be heading to 29 cities, spread over 5 weeks, and hitting rest stops, truck stops and f-stops (couldn’t resist!) all along the way. We’ll tweet locations and routes. We’ll publish, ahem, behind-the-scenes videos of life on the bus. It'll be a blast, and a touch on the weird side. (Huh? Let’s be straight up here. It’s going to be really weird, and a ton of fun.)

Really, really excited about something else. The opportunity to teach with David. We both get to the same place, which is good light, but come at it in very different ways. It'll be a good mix, and a great day of teaching. 

So keep checking here, David’s blog, and my blog for updates. The road is calling, and there’s a bunch to do. 

David Hobby here. Welcome to The Flash Bus blog. 

Someone has to write the first blog post. And since Joe and Drew are in Asia, it falls to me. And I don't mind telling you that I am at once totally stoked and scared to death at the prospect of 29 cities and 13,000+ miles in 42 days. 

Best road trip ever? Yep. 

Complete insanity? Also, probably, yes.

We have seen the bus and it looks totally off the hook. There's basically a chill room at each end and rows of bunks in the middle. On the one hand, it is most certainly the slickest ride we will ever live in for over a month. But on the other hand it could quickly devolve into a 55-foot long rolling Dutch oven, too. 

(If you have to ask, look it up.)

But I am sure of this: Spending that much time trapped on an awesome bus with McNally and crew will certainly provide lots of blog fodder. Some of it will pop up on Strobist and Joe's blog, but you'll get the Full Monty by keeping tabs here. 

So bookmark us, or just go ahead and sign up to the RSS feed. You might also want to follow us on Twitter, where the tour is launching its own stream. That's to spare our normal (admittedly, perhaps the wrong word) followers the Flash Bus Tour blow-by-blow -- and to allow us to occasionally get a little weird on the tour tweets. Fair warning.

For the most part, the posters here will be Joe, Drew Gurian (Joe's first assistant) and yours truly. But look for behind-the-scenes stuff from the rest of the crew, too. Heck, we may even rope in the bus driver for some words of wisdom. (I'm expecting Otto, from The Simpsons.)

Oh yeah -- and we're looking for your stuff, too. Drop your pics from the tour, pics of the (insanely cool) bus, etc., into the tour's Flickr group. They might end up on the blog. You can join in the discussion there, too.

We want your video'd lighting questions via YouTube, too. (We'll pick the best ones and YouTube the answers.) Just tag them "The Flash Bus" and we'll see them. 

That's all for now. Lots (and lots, and lots) of work to do as we prep.