Thanks!

Cheers,
Zack

And the winner of our NYC shoot-out last week is… Jason Groupp.

NOT only did he whoop me on single image votes but he also won most votes overall for his five images against mine. He won 1,451 votes against my 1,242 votes. His single best image won with 867 votes. I came in second place with 509 votes with this image…

In the original post Jason’s photos were 1, 3, 4, 7, & 9. Mine were 2, 5, 6, 8, 10.

It’s always fun to go out and shoot with another photographer you admire and respect. It’s even more fun to go out and shoot with a photographer you admire and respect and make it a competition. Then it is interesting to see how the public views the outcome of the images when it goes to a vote. The big take away from this is… None of y’all know great photography when you see it!!!  :) I’m just kidding.

Jason… Congratulations. Enjoy your sucksess for the next year. Maybe you should even start placing “Photographer of the year” in your bio and on your website. Know this… I’m coming back next year to this light fight as Iniogo Montoya…

We’ll have the BTS video that Jason’s crew shot online this week AS WELL as a post about the “light saber” I was using for this shoot-out. There’s a new modifier in town and it’s pretty awesome. But evidently not awesome enough for me to win this shoot-out.

Cheers,
Zack

Today my good friend and collegue, Jason Groupp, and I had a shoot-out in the streets of NYC. We have been talking smack for two weeks about this on Twitter and we now have the results of our bravado.

******* Voting is now closed. Results here. *******

Click “more” to see the rest of the original post and photos…

Here is how it worked. Jason booked Amanda and Sean to be our subjects. Jason set up the first shot and he had five frames to execute it. Then I had to use the same location and execute a shot in five frames. I then chose the next location, shot five frames, and then Jason would shoot five frames. We piggy backed like that for six locations. At the sixth and final location I challenged Jason to tape his LCD screen. I did the same. We had five frames to shoot, with lights, without meters, and no chimping. It was a blast!

We have now picked our top five images and you are going to vote on who won best image of the shoot-out. This will be like a presidential election. One image will be the top photo of the day and then we will tally the votes of each image and see who received more total votes than the other and they will be crowed “President of Light” or something stupid. I have a feeling this might just be an annual thing.

So here are the images. Vote at the bottom of the page. Voting will continue through PhotoPlus this weekend and we will announce the results at the first of next week along with a behind the scenes video of the shoot and some of our out takes.

Thanks for voting!

Cheers,
Zack

We all live in a big a$$ yellow bus. We are on the road with our OneLight Family Tour!

We are currently in Asheville, NC. As soon as we wrap up the OneLight here tonight we drive all night to DC. With the exception of Pittsburgh we are having mixers in each city and we would love for you to come out and catch some live music, win gift cards from B&H, OneLight DVDs, and network within your local photographic community. The mixers are free and open to the public. Here is where we will be…

7/1 :: Washington DC

7/6 :: Cincinnati, OH

7/8 :: Indianapolis, IN

7/11 :: Chicago, IL

7/13 :: Saint Louis, MO

7/15 :: Nashville, TN

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for all of the details as to places and times in these cities. Hope to meet you soon!

Cheers,
Zack

I can’t tell you how overwhelming this past weekend has been for me on all fronts. Hundreds and hundreds of man and woman hours went in to pulling this three day live event off. It was frantic. It was stressful. It was exhausting. It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever been a part of. Thank you one and all. Here are a few selects from the weekend.

More images after the jump…

The shot above and the shot below were using the same background.

There are some other images on this blog post from the weekend.

Want to find out about the class I taught? Check it out here.

Many thanks to ::

Zaac Pick

Head Like A Kite

The Fences

Affix Music (provided the bumper music on Friday and Saturday)

Seattle Models Guild

B&H Photo

Westcott

The MAC Group

Chase Jarvis

And the entire crew who made this thing happen.

And you know what? I would not be able to do this had Marc Climie not put a camera back in my hands 6.5 years ago.

We have more material, videos, and stuff coming to the blog from this event.

Cheers,
Zack

This is the live blog post from my creativeLIVE class going on right now. I’ll be updating this through the weekend. You can watch it live here.

Here is the Home Depot tag for the shiny tile board stuff I’ll be using on the white seamless. I typically can find this stuff at Home Depot and Lowes in the paneling or bath section.

Find the list of gear I’m using via this link.

See more images after the jump…

Impromptu “family” photo after the class…

More blogging and photos to come in this post through the weekend.

Send questions to us via twitter with the #AskZack or in the creativeLIVE chat room. I would not suggest sending questions via the comments on this blog post as we are not going to be monitoring this as close as we are the Twitter and chat room feed… but feel free to leave comments all the same. Ok, I’m being called on set. More to come.

Cheers,
Zack

I really did start my studio on the streets. As seen in the photo above.

Update – Thank you one and all for those who worked so hard behind the scenes and those thousands and thousands of you who tuned into the live event! More to come!

As we get closer to this weekend’s creativeLIVE studio class I wanted to go ahead and share the rough time frame and course material for the weekend.

There are a lot of things I want to cover in this class and I know I’m going to run out of time at some point. That’s why we have spread this out over a weekend. As far as subjects we will be photographing go we are going to be working with emerging models, musicians, and regular folks off the street.

Keep a few things in mind… This is live Internet we are dealing with so all sorts of things can go astray but rest assured there is a full pro crew behind the scenes ready for anything the internet can throw at them. The times listed below are approximate aside from start times. Keep an eye on my Twitter account as the weekend goes on. We will be updating events there. IE : “Going to start shooting the band in 30 minutes.” “Almost done with lunch. Going live in 10.” “Talking about grip right now.” You get the idea. I have a basic outline in my head of what I want to do but I’ll be working in a new space and may change things here and there as I go but always teaching why I’m changing things and what’s going through my head as I try something different.

All start times are PDT (or -8 GMT)

Friday June 11th – 1:30pm – 4:30pm’ish / 5:30pm’ish
• My personal philosophy of having a studio space
• Considerations for getting a space of your own or turning a space you have into a studio space.
• The basics of exposure when using flash in studio. We will be using hotshoe flashes and strobes.
• Working with multiple lights and working with different lighting ratios
• Using a light meter and how to figure it out on the fly without a meter
• Overview of the modifiers we will be using over the weekend. Those include…
••• Straight flash
••• Umbrellas
••• Softboxes
••• Octabanks
••• Beauty dish
••• Ring flash
••• Grids
••• Flags/Silks/Reflectors
••• DIY modifiers
• Q&A

Saturday June 12th :: 10am – 1pm’ish
• The many uses of white seamless. I’ll be walking you through the entire process of shooting on a white seamless and getting the most out of one simple background
• Post production on the white seamless
• Q&A
• (lunch break somewhere between 1pm and 2pm.)
• Building a set. It will already be in place. I’ll just talk about the basic modular set pieces that went into making it.
• Grip equipment. How to put stuff together and do stuff with that stuff.
• Slowly moving away from the seamless and onto other background choices. IE: Fabric/Walls/Sets
• Working with subjects. Interaction and Posing. (I’ve had a lot of questions about this so I’m spending a lot of time on it.)
• Musicians. Duo and Trio. Group shots plus individuals. White seamless and other backgrounds + a simple set.
• Q&A
• In order to conclude in time to rebroadcast over night we can only teach for 10 hours a day. So the latest this day will run is 8pm. Don’t know if it will go that long or not.

Sunday June 13th :: 10am
• Quick recap of previous day and previous information about exposure. Not going to spend a lot of time on this but just a quick recap for those just joining.
• If I don’t cover the grip equipment on Saturday I’ll most likely do that Sunday morning.
• Art Direction! I will be pulling people from the live audience and giving them assignments to see what problems they run into and guide them through the process.
• More shooting. Different modifiers. Improv.
• Q&A
• (lunch break somewhere between 1pm and 2pm.)
• Working with a four piece band.  Individuals and group shot.
• More shooting. Whatever we decide to do making sure I’ve used all the modifiers from the list above.
• Q&A

————————

I will be online live with Chase Jarvis tomorrow, June 9th, from 1:30pm till 3pm for a live Q&A leading up to the weekend. If I haven’t covered something in the notes above then hit me here in the comment section or tune in here tomorrow and ask while we are online.

You can sign up for the class here and see all the swag we have to give away during the weekend! We have stuff from B&H, x•rite, Pocket Wizard, Westcott, and Sekonic in addition to several copies of the OneLight DVD. Big thanks to B&H, The MAC Group, and Westcott for really bringing the goods. No t-shirts or ball caps in this prize closet. Also a big thank you goes to Affix Music for providing us with some licensed and cleared tunes to listen to while we work this weekend.

Questions about the class or something you might want to see covered? Drop them in the comments.

Cheers,
Zack

We are a week away from the creativeLIVE studio class!

I typically do not like promoting my stuff over and over and over but I am honestly and truly excited about this class and I love the fact that this is being set up so you can see it live… for free.

We are still working on the final schedule for next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Look for that to be posted on the blog sometime this weekend. I’m in the middle of a Photo 101 right now and Meg is having ear surgery as I type, so we have just a few things on our plate but save the date for next weekend. It’s going to be awesome.

Sign up for the class here.

If you can’t attend the class live you can pre-purchase the class for download for an amazing $79. It will be $129 after the class. A blog reader here felt that was a bit like a used car salesman pitch and I get that. In fact I get it so much I made the video above! But I will tell you this… I am putting everything I have into this and I promise it will be worth it. Even at $129 it’s going to be over delivered and under priced. This isn’t going to be a fluff and no stuff kind of workshop. We will be working with small flashes, studio strobes, several kinds of modifiers, and we will be working with individuals and groups. We are also going to have a lot of time set aside for Q&A during the live session. Not just five minutes here and there.

Cheers,
Zack

We are one month away from our weekend studio class that I will be teaching for CreativeLive. The class will be broadcast out of Seattle June 11th – 13th. If you are unfamiliar with CreativeLive let me give you the bullet points…

• They bring live teaching to you for free. Yes. Free. If you can tune in while the class is going live then you can kick back and watch it for free.

• This is a highly interactive process. People are monitoring the CreativeLive chat room and twitter feed during the class and fielding your questions to the instructor during the class. If you have a question you can ask it. I’ll be scheduling blocks of times during the weekend I’m teaching just to sit down and get through as many questions as I can in addition to the ones that will be fielded during the instruction time. I love the Internets. Don’t you?

• If you are unable to sit through an entire class, series, or the like then you can purchase that class anytime afterwards. The downloads pay for the bandwidth and production to bring it live. It’s a fantastic model for education that really doesn’t have an equal in our industry right now and I’m honored to have been asked to come on board as this thing launches.

• You can “enroll” for a class or just show up on their site the day of the class and watch it. The enroll feature is the best since you’ll get that reminder email before your class goes live.

• For those of you beyond the continental United States who don’t want to wake up at 3am to watch a free class the good folks at CreativeLive have come up with a solution for you. They will replay that day’s class overnight! Are you kidding me? That’s very awesome of them.

Check out some of the videos from Vincent Laforet’s HDDSLR class. Hours upon hours of discussion and teaching over the course of three days and you can download the whole dang thing for $129. I paid $400 to go to one of his workshops here in Atlanta and that was for one day and I can’t play it back. I downloaded this one right away. If you are wondering what the “edited videos coming in X days” means; if you download the video now you are getting the straight RAW feed that was the same as the live course. The edited versions do not cut the content. CreativeLive just goes in and cleans up the video and might make a change in cuts from one camera to another. The edited video has a bit more polish but all of the content as the live feed.

So…

I’m doing a studio class over a weekend in June. It will start with an intro on Friday night and then run through Sunday. The final schedule is still being drafted but what I need right now from all of you is this…

What would you like to see in a studio class?

I’ve got 2.5 days to pack in as much as I can so hit me in the comments of specific or broad topics you want to see happen live. I have a basic outline of things I know I’m going to cover but I want to make sure I’m hitting points you all would like to see.

Lastly, we have six seats to fill with people during the class. We have a little idea for a contest for folks to win a seat to be there. I’ll announce that in a few days. Do remember that this is going down in Seattle. You don’t have to live there but travel will be on your dime.

Questions?

Cheers,
Zack

I’m pretty stoked about a new project that Chase Jarvis has been working on for the past year. Chase has teamed up with the good folks at CreativeTechs to create a portal called CreativeLIVE. CreativeLIVE is bringing free education to us!

Here’s the breakdown of how it works…

You check out the schedule on the CreativeLIVE web site. You see a class you want to take and simply log on to http://www.creativeLIVE.com/live when that class is taking place and you get it for free. There aren’t just photography classes though. You’ll be seeing more classes about other creative and technical disciplines as well. Painting, video, programing, etc. The classes will be available for download after the class has completed. There will be a charge for the download. That’s how they are going to be able to offset the cost of doing it live for free.

I’m going to be teaching a studio lighting class. White seamless and beyond. Models, bands, etc. In order to maximize this for as many people as possible to see it live and for free I will be teaching the class over a weekend. Probably about six hours of live training with live Q&A and critique. I’ll be announcing the date here, twitter, and FB once we finalize the date.

I don’t do very well speaking straight to a camera so I’ll be doing some sort of twitter something or another looking for five people to come to the class, in person, for free. I do better if I have some real people to interact with but I’ll make damn sure that the viewer’s perspective isn’t just one of a camera on sticks in the back of a standard workshop. More details on that once we nail down the date.

Since this is a new venture they would love to hear from y’all about what kind of classes you would like to see offered. If you have some ideas drop them in the comment box here. Who else would you like to see teach? Let me know and I’ll pass it all along to the folks running this venture.

Cheers,
Zack