Just completed the post production for the shoot I did with South 70 last week. We were only kicked out of one location. Not too bad. You’ll notice guitars showing up in this shoot. I typically avoid including instruments in my press and promo work because it can become cliché very quickly but there are times I break that rule. It has to just “work” and I feel with this shoot it worked. They’re a little bit country and a little bit rock-n-roll and I need that guitar in a few shots to bridge the gap visually. Not only that, when the guitar was on set it was being played. When the guitar was being played everyone started to sing. When everyone started to sing everyone forgot about the camera. When everyone forgot about the camera something genuine would happen… like the image above. As a photographer you sometimes just need to create the environment, set the light, and then wait for a moment to happen.

Aaaaaaaaaand… then you go back to directing things.

Thanks to the crew!

Cheers,
Zack

That guy above is hip hop legend 8 Ball. I had the opportunity to photograph him about three years ago. We shot in the studio and then headed out on location in his completely tricked out Hummer. * Ball came up in Memphis with MJG. You may not have heard of 8 Ball. If you like any sort of hip hop coming from the south then you most definitely have heard his influence. Everyone from T.I. to Luda to Andre 3000 all talk about how they were influenced by 8 Ball and MGJ early on in their career.

I was, of all things, folding socks this morning thinking about anything but folding socks. There are some who look at me and say, “Wow. Zack has made it.” From my view point I will say I’ve “made it” when I don’t have to fold socks ever again in my life. That got me thinking about 8 Ball and I thought I would share this interesting personal story…

As I was steaming Ball’s 6XL shirts for this shoot I was asking him about his career. I asked one question and he told me something that has stuck with me ever since.

I asked… “When did you know your career was to the point that this was now your job? Like, you made it.”

Ball stopped rolling his “smoke” and sat back and told me about growing up as a kid in a poor neighborhood in Memphis. He lived with his mom and grandmother in a shotgun shack. He slept in the den. One of his daily chores was going around the house and collecting the mouse traps in the house, take them outside, and get rid of the dead mice. Then he had to reset those traps and put them back around the house. He told me that he knew he had “made it” when he could throw away the whole mouse trap and reset a new one. He was making enough money in hip hop that he could just buy a new bag of traps every week instead of using the old ones.

8 Ball bought his mom a house. He’s doing well. He’s influenced an army of rappers. He knows he made it when he didn’t have to use a used mouse trap.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to make it does it? He made it but still had to set those traps. He still had a long way to go before he could just buy his mom a new house. It’s such a great story. For those of you who just discount hip hop as “crap” you ought to listen beyond the ho’s and rims and hear the stories of people who came out of nothing and into something. There are a lot of stories of redemption that come out of hip hop. Not exactly your Sunday school stories of redemption but redemption all the same. Go watch Hustle & Flow. It’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. It’s about a small time pimp coming up in hip hop in Memphis. 8 Ball, of course, is on the soundtrack.

Here’s another one…

Cheers,
Zack

I get asked a lot about where I get my inspiration. That’s a hard question to answer because there are so many things and people in my life that inspire me. Let me tell you a story about a white guy from Arkansas that raps.

More after the jump ::

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Last night Meg and I were able to get a babysitter and go see our friend Dan Smith play a show. His project is called “Listener“.

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Dan has a schtick. A persona. A presence on stage. He does this “thing” that is amazing. Dan does “talk music” and it is his own thing. Love him or hate him, when Dan takes the stage people get off their phones, stop chatting, and watch. His stage persona is mesmerizing. It never bleeds into background music. His music isn’t ever going to make the top ten on the billboard charts and I think that’s just all right for him. He’s not following. He’s not replicating. He’s not trying to find what is popular and pursue that.

I met Dan about six years ago when he was more of a hip hop artist than folksy/indie/something/talk music artist. I was introduced to him through this cat in Nashville named KC Jones. KC said to me, “You gotta hear the Listener. He’s a white dude from Arkansas that raps.” That introduction was enough to pique my interest.

The first song I heard was Train Song (mp3 download).  ”It’s my habits that make my fingers weak…” Listen closely to the story. Pretty amazing.

Decadence (mp3 download) is one of my favorite tracks from his more hip hop centric era. It also features Manchild who has a flow like no other. Yes, I do have permission to link to these files.

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It’s been interesting to watch him change. To watch him find who he is. To start at one place and end up somewhere else and to see he’s not “there” yet. Dan has always been Dan, yet with each new part of his project he is becoming more true to his core. He’s walking through the shit of life and stripping off the non essentials and building back from there. It’s really an amazing process to watch from the outside.

I need to sit down with him sometime and see what it’s like from his perspective because I know for a fact it will be much different than my perspective. Maybe I’m wrong about how I see Dan. Maybe Dan is wrong about how he sees himself. Sometimes people on the outside see the real you. The “you” you can’t see. And sometimes people from the outside have the wrong idea about who you are. Hmmmm. This reminds me of something Meg is working on but that’s not for this post. (Dan, next time you’re back in Atlanta let’s talk it out)

If you listen to his older music you can hear the framework of his newer work. Meaning, you can look back and see the progression but you never see it when you are moving forward. The same thing goes for photography. It’s called personal style and it takes years to develop and you can’t really see your style until you have some years under your belt and can look back.

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Dan is a huge source of inspiration for me. That inspiration doesn’t change how I look through my viewfinder but it changes how I look through the eye in my brain if that makes any sense at all… Which it doesn’t. I went to public school so trying to flowchart how inspiration works for me is a bit difficult. My brain eyes connect to my face eyes which connect to my viewfinder so maybe he does inspire how I see the world. How “inspiration” like this works for me is the music gets in my head. I listen to the stories in the lyrics. I connect the dots from the songs to the dots of my own life and those thoughts sort of lead me down a path of more thoughts that eventually lead to actions with my camera and with my business. Inspiration for me isn’t seeing one person do something and then I go do something similar to that. I think that’s more like plagiarism than inspiration.

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Dan’s magic really comes through his show. He’s brave. He’s full on. He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t care what he looks like. He just lets the f#ck go and pours it all out. I’ve seen him perform to a packed venue and to 8 people in a living room and he brings everything he has to the stage with every performance.

You can find his new album here. Be sure to give “Wooden Heart” a listen. Buy a copy and support an artist. Don’t you want someone to give you some support in your endeavors? Pay it forward.

You can stream his new album. Sorry iPhone/iPad users. These are flash embeds.

This is his last album. It’s called “Return To Struggleville” and it’s about a traveling knife salesman and it’s brilliant.

His songs are stories. They are pulled out of his head and out of his experience. He’s living his story. Are you? Are you aware that you’re walking out your story? Are you keeping your eyes far out ahead and busting your ass to get there or are you sitting around on said ass looking backwards? How’s that working for you? I saw a great quote on Twitter yesterday…

“Don’t ask God to guide your footsteps if you aren’t willing to move your feet.”

Dan’s played more than 800 shows and he has 800 more to go. He’s doing it. He’s sharing his life. He’s changing. Growing. He’s moving his feet. Stripping it down to the essentials. He’s inspiring thousands. He’s just a white dude from Arkansas that raps and he is a really important character in my own story. Fun trivia – His 800th show was at a Mexican Restaurant. 800th show.

Where are you getting your inspiration from outside the photography world?

And…

Are you moving your feet or sittin’ on your ass? I’d rather have sores on my feet than on my ass. There’s a t-shirt.

Cheers,
Zack

I dig “photo aware” shots sometimes. At least that’s what my BFF Kevin calls these kinds of shots. Do you? I know some folks who hate these kind of shots.

We snuck a last minute shoot in tonight for one of my favorite MC’s in the Hip Hop business. That would be Manchild and he’s the one on the right. He’s half of Mars ILL. The other cat in this photo is Playdough.

24 hours until we take off for Seattle.

Cheers,
Zack

I just finished editing my first music video this week. I shot this in New York last fall thanks to the help of friends, twitter, and Kmart. Read a little story about it after the jump.

I had a few extra days in New York last fall and I spent those days shooting as much personal work as I could. I was in the area to shoot a wedding with Marc. Assistant and intern extraordinaire Brian Hall was along for the ride as well. I reached out to as many people I knew with connections in NYC to find musicians to shoot. It turned out that Snowden frontman, Jordan, was in the city at the same time. Snowden is one of my favorite bands in the world and I’m blessed that they are from Atlanta and I’ve been able to work with them a few times.

Jordan and I decided we would meet up Sunday night and shoot some new promos for him. He sent me a few of his new songs for me to listen to before our shoot. I heard this song Lemon Peel and loved it right away. Saturday night I’m riding the train and I decided we should shoot a music video instead of portraits. I sent Jordan a text and he was down for whatever. Sunday morning I put out a message on Twitter that read something like,

“I need a rooftop. In Manhattan. Tonight. With a garden hose.”

Ten minutes later I get a message from Neil at Nomadic by Design. He had access to a rooftop on the upper west side and it most definitely had a water hose we could use. The only caveat was we couldn’t make a lot of noise because we would be standing over his friend’s apartment and their two year old would be asleep. So no screaming, jumping, playing loud music. Ok. No worries. I thank Neil for helping me out and we plan to meet at his place later that evening.

Now then, I had flashes for portrait work but I sure didn’t have any video lights with me. The 5d MkII does pretty well in low light but not in no light. I knew that I wanted to build off of the water references in the song and I knew that water looks best if it can be back-lit. I also had to do this on a budget of “not much”. Like, less than $50. I went to the Kmart at Penn Station and bought six flashlights. I would have bought some more but that was all they had and I still had another band to shoot AND take 10 portraits of 10 strangers so I didn’t have a lot of time hitting up the entire city looking for more flashlights. On a tech note, these are those focused LED beam lights and they were making odd patterns of light on the roof behind Jordan. I needed to diffuse them to get rid of the pattern so I used the white plastic Kmart bag they came in to do that. I ripped the bag up and put pieces of the plastic over the front of the flashlights and that got rid of the patterns. Ghetto Video Dot Com!

Marc and Brian came along for the evening. Marc was on the flashlight lighting Jordan. Brian was on the water hose. Everything and everybody was soaked by the end of the sixth take. The wind was really unpredictable and we just had to deal with it. Jordan’s MacBook playing the song was wet, the 5d was dripping wet, and Brian turned out to be just as soaked holding the hose as Jordan did getting hit by it. All in all… it was a great night.

So why did it take me so long to edit? Because the idea I had for the edit sucked and I couldn’t re-envision the project. I had it set in my head that it was going to be one way but that way turned out like crap and I couldn’t “see” anything different. That happens to me a lot. I get an idea for a shot. I see it in my head. I pick up the camera. I take a photo. The photo sucks. It is nowhere close to what I see in my head. In photography I have learned to let those things go until another day. I couldn’t let this one go until one evening this week. I’ve been editing images for a new portfolio and this Snowden video was bugging the hell out of me. Jordan froze his ass off for this video and I still haven’t pulled anything out of it. I divorced myself from my first plan and just started fresh and new without a plan and I knocked it out in one night. Seriously. One night. Done. WTH? It’s like doing taxes. No, no it’s not.

So yes… my first music video. I’m happy with it. I’ll hate it soon enough but for now I’m really glad I dropped my first idea for the edit and went in a different direction with it. Am I going to sell my self as a music video director? Nope. Do I want to do more of these? Absolutely. Yes. Just spoke with a past client last night about another one of these. Hip to the hippity hop!

Cheers,
Zack

PS – I won the last GOYA shoot out! I really thought it was going to be Robin (photographer E). I’ll do another post later.

There is a nagging question that haunts photographers…

“Do I have the right set of lights?”

This question is bugging me right now.  I do not have an answer for you just yet.  All this question has done for me in the past year is create more questions.

I’m going to get a bit nerdy on you here and take this post from looking at lighting systems to looking at camera systems.  I really don’t nerd out about gear on my blog but you need to be warned… Total nerdom after the jump.

“Do I have the right set of lights?”

Even the Grand Poobah of lighting, David Hobby, has been asking this question of himself lately.  He’s been testing Elinchrom, Profoto, and AlienBees systems.  David and I both are big believers in the power of small hot shoe flashes.  I have been able to build a career off the back of four AA batteries but there are situations you will find yourself in where those hot shoe flashes will leave you heading down that proverbial stream of excrement without a means of locomotion.  As a working photographer you have to figure it out and make the most of it but you spend a lot of time cursing and praying for more light.

How I work around the lack of having more powerful lights has been a mixture of booking location shoots closer to dusk, flying scrims, working in the shade, etc.  I can’t tell you how much the lack of power from lights effects how, where, and when I shoot.

A year and a bit ago I added an AlienBee B1600 flash with a vagabond battery pack.  That’s been a pretty good set up so far.  There are times I would like about one more stop of light from it but I figure it out and it works well. One issue I have with it though is the dang Vagabond alone is 18 pounds!  I’ll be traveling more this year and I would love to find a system that provides more light and less weight. Another issue I have with the AlienBee system is how slooooooooow that flash duration is.  Firing an AlienBee is like lighting flash powder.  They burn slow.  If I need to cover the entire frame of an image with light from the flash I usually lose 1/3 of a stop in shutter speed just to make up for the slow duration of the AlienBee.  It is the only light I’ve used where I have this issue.  Faster duration flashes do not give me the same issue.

If you are unfamiliar with how larger lights are rated let me break it down for you.  The power from a hot shoe flash is typically rated as a guide number.  This flash has a guide number of 130.  That one has a guide number of 95.  The higher the guide number supposedly the more light it can emit.  Guide numbers are a tricky way to really figure out how much light one flash can produce than another and at the end of the day you are really just comparing a Camry with an Accord.  More powerful lights are rated in “watt seconds”. Watt seconds tend to be a more honest way of rating the power of a flash.  Guide numbers can be fudged to meet marketing demands.  Watt seconds can be measured under a little more scrutiny.  To be honest, I don’t know my watt second from my guide number but I understand how it works in the field.

When you double flash power you gain a stop of light.  So let’s say a hot shoe flash is 100 watt seconds.  (That’s being pretty liberal with ratings too.)

If you find a flash rated at 400 w/s then you know that will give you two more stops of light than your typical hot shoe flash rated at 100 w/s.  100 doubled is 200, and 200 doubled is 400.  My public school education can handle that much.

So if you get f 5.6 out of a hot shoe flash at full power then you can expect to get f 11 out of a 400 w/s light.  (Please note that this is just a hypothetical scenario you might find yourself in.)

100 w/s = 5.6
200 w/s = 8
400 w/s = 11
800 w/s = 16
1,600 w/s = 22

Since there are a number of options out there rated at 1,100 w/s or 1,200 w/s then they would fall (in this example) in between  800 w/s and 1,600 w/s.  A 1,200 w/s light in the example above might mean you’ll get somewhere around f 16.5.  The AlienBee 1600 is rated at 640 w/s so that will get you in the range of f 11.5 in the example above.  AlienBees has this odd rating of “Effective watt seconds” and “actual watt seconds”.  That makes no sense to me and when you meter the things you’ll find that it makes no sense in exposure.  It’s like saying a car has 100 “actual” horsepower but when you drive it, it “feels” like it has 200 horsepower. At the end of the day, the thing has 100 horsepower.

More power means more weight, and more importantly, more money.  Below, I’ll list the lights I’m looking at.  I’m going to add a Nikon SB-900 in the list so you can see where it falls in the line up ratio of power/weight/price.  If your jaw drops to the floor when you start seeing prices for these systems get close to $3,000 I want you to consider this…

A Nikon SB-900 costs $460 and gives you, more or less (mostly less), 100 w/s of power.  Let’s look again at our hypothetical situation above.  At full power the best you can get out of that SB-900 is f 5.6 but you want to shoot at f 16 so that you can overpower ambient light.  Just picture this flash in a 50″ softbox that is five or six feet from your subjects.  As you double flash power you gain one stop of light.  From 5.6 to 16 you have to double your power 3 times.

1 SB-900 = 5.6
2 SB-900′s = 8
4 SB-900′s = 11
8 SB-900′s = 16

Eight SB-900′s cost how much?  $3,680.  That’s how much.

If you are asking why you can’t just increase ISO in order to increase aperture remember that as you increase sensitivity to your flash by raising ISO you also raise the sensitivity to ambient light and there you go… right past your sync speed.  You may ask about high speed sync.  Well, as cool as that is and all, I can tell you that you can not get f 16 from a 50″ softbox with a hot shoe flash and high speed sync and all the rest of the voodoo you do.  There are all sorts of tips and tricks and doodads that can squeak out a bit more sync but at the end of the day, if you can not natively sync at higher speeds then you. need. more. power.

You could also ask about neutral density filters.  ND filters cut the amount of ambient light but they also cut the amount of light from your flash.  If you are in a five stop range between flash and ambient and you need that to be a three stop range then ISO change or an ND filter situation isn’t going to change that lighting ratio for you.  You either need to increase shutter speed to cut ambient or introduce more flash.  If you are at the limits of sync then your next option is to increase light from the flash.

So, seeing as how eight SB-900′s are going to cost more than a decent used Honda, looking at a light that is $1,500 to $2,500 is a walk in the park.  But $1,500 to $2,500 of cash outlay is NOT a walk in the park.  I think the commitment level to buing into a system of lights is just under the commitment level of getting married.  Once you buy into a system you’re in it and you can plan on spending a lot more than $2,000′ish dollars for the life of your lighting kit with whatever rig you decide on.

Let’s look at the kits I’m considering…

Nikon SB-900 • 100 w/s • 1 lb • $460 (just here for comparison)

Elinchrom Quadra • 400 w/s • 4 lbs • $1,540

AB1600 w/ Vagabond • 640 w/s • 23 lbs • $659 (already own it)

Elinchrom Ranger w/head – 1,100 w/s • 19 lbs. • $1,755

Profoto Pro 7B w/ head • 1,200 w/s • 27 lbs • $5,100

Hensel Porty 12 w/head • 1,200 w/s • 16 lbs • $3,895

I’m not looking into Dynalite, Lumedyne, Speedotron, Norman, Photogenic, Broncolor, Comet, etc for a number of reasons.  Some are price. Some are scalability. Some are for no other reason than I don’t like how they look. Yeah, I can be that shallow.  All of these lighting systems have their strengths.  What I find interesting is how David and I have come to the same three companies to look at for bigger lights.  That’s not saying the other’s that I just listed suck. Far from it. My buddy Marc shoots with this 400 w/s Lumedyne kit and swears by it.  It just isn’t the kit for me.

Let’s look at this photo again…

Hanging on that light stand is the Elinchrom 1,100 w/s Ranger.  When you fire that thing off at full power it allows you to get this…

Side by side… Available light vs. Lit.

That is some ambient light killing strobe right there.  The kind of light you can walk into just about any situation and be in total control of the final image.  You can turn day into night with that kind of light.

That modifier is an AlienBees 86″ para. It’s massive. It needs a lot of light.  It also had to be rigged onto the stand with an Avenger D230 Super Clamp Grip Head because Elinchrom, for whatever reason, uses a 7mm umbrella shaft size on their lights.  Yes, yes, the Ranger has this doohickey thing-a-ma-jig on the big heads to accommodate larger shaft sizes but it’s a two person ordeal to mount any umbrella shaft larger than 7mm to those heads.  One person could do it easily provided they have three arms.  That’s almost a deal killer for me on Elinchrom lights but dang it all, they are amazing rigs.

So if that’s 1,100 w/s poppin’ off imagine how much 100 w/s would not even begin to be enough light to get me to where I want to be.  High speed TTL?  It would not result in the photo that the 1,100 w/s light gave me.

At 1,100 w/s we are talking about 19 lbs of gear.  Throw two of those into a Pelican case with chargers and all that and we are near 60 lbs of gear to throw into a belly of a plane or lug around on location.  60 pound extra baggage fees?  Don’t talk to me about that.  It sucks.

What about the 400 w/s Quadra?

It’s a good 1.5 stops less than it’s big brother, the Ranger 1,100, but at four pounds for the whole rig that would fit in my camera bag… Are you kidding me?  I rented one last weekend and I might just be in love.

I could take this review into all sorts of measurbating f-stops and meter tests and side by side reviews but let me just say this…

The Quadra system is a thing to behold.  It’s so small.  It’s tiny.

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(Image courtesy B&H)

One of these kits with a batter and a head could fit in a shoulder bag.  You could throw four of these kits in a case and have 1,600 w/s of power for the same weight as one 640 w/s AlienBee head with a battery.  Four Quadra kits are going to run you $6,000 though.  Gads. At that point you might as well start looking at something like Mamiya’s new medium format system married up to one of their new leaf shutter lenses that can sync up to 1,600/th of a second.

Pfffftttt. Digital Medium Format. Who needs that?

You’d be surprised.

You thought this post was going to just be about lighting systems didn’t you?  So did I.

In my quest to start looking at new lights I began looking at medium format systems for the exact same reason editorial photographers the world over used medium format in the days of film.  So far in the digital revolution the cost of MF backs and systems were out of the range of many of us.  $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 for a medium format digital system when a $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 DSLR would do the job? The choice was simple.  Now that Mamyia has dipped below (just barely) the $10,000 mark for an out-of-the-box MF system then you need to take a look at what is going on in the MF world.

You know why medium format ruled the world in the film days? Final image quality is a great reason but dang it all… it was sync speed that really pushed MF past 35mm.  When you start looking at killing ambient light by a stop or two and you realize how much money and weight that takes  to do the job with light you start to wonder about the fact that all you really need is a faster sync speed to do the job.  A faster syncing shutter weighs A LOT less than more light… but it costs a lot. Well, more light costs a lot too.

250th/sec @ f 16 = 500th/sec @ f 11 = 800th/sec @ 6.3

Some will ask about new triggering technologies that allow you to hyper sync your camera’s sync speed.  You only catch a fraction of the light coming out of your flash so you can’t hyper sync at full power.  For every compromise there is a …. compromise.  Faster sync but less light you get capture.  Fast sync at FULL power… that’s something.

To be honest with you, this is a conundrum I have yet to figure out myself.  What if I could find a balance between a faster sync and less powerful lighting system?  I’m in love with 4 pounds of 400 w/s.  What would that look like married up to a faster sync speed?  That is where my next demo is going to go I think.

I’m going to drop something here as well.  I would love to get back into medium format.  It’s been more than eight years since I’ve shot that format in film and I’ve never shot it digitally.  I have three specific reasons why I want to move back to MF.

#3. – Image quality.

#2. – Sync speed.

#1. – _________

Can you guess what the number one reason is?  It ISN’T having a better camera on the job then the client / photographer down the street owns.  When I really put thought into this I have found it has nothing to do with lighting.

With a sub $10k medium format camera now on the market you better believe we are going to see a shift back to that format.  As soon as the sub $5k back hits the market then MF is going to be back where it was in dominance.

Or maybe the Scarlet is going to own the world.  Who knows?  All I know is a search for a new lighting system has not only left me with more questions about lighting systems but it now has me thinking about a different format of camera.

At the end of the day, it all doesn’t matter.  You do what you have to do with what you have.  That’s the long and short of it.  But at some point in your career you’ll find that the vision you have in your head requires a different set of tools and damn it all if those tools aren’t a bit more expensive and require a lot more thought.

More thoughts will be coming on this as I work my way through rentals and demos.  I just wanted to get the initial thoughts down first.  I apologize that this blog post doesn’t really have a ton of value or direction but I know some folks like to see the process as much as the result.  I’ll answer my #1 reason….

Medium format will slow… me… down…

Am I convinced the Quadra is the answer I am looking for?  Nope.  When you marry a girl you marry her family.  Same goes for lighting gear.  You buy into one light rig you are buying into the system.  There are are many things to consider going into it.  The next pack I’m renting is the Profoto.  Looking forward to that test.

More later.

Cheers,
Zack

I would post more images but it is 2:23 am in NYC and I’m on day 3 of shooting up here with one more to go tomorrow. This is an image from a shoot I did with Greg Holden yesterday.  He’s an amazing musician from the UK who will be on tour with Ingrid Michaelson for the next six weeks or so. You should check out his myspace page to see if he’s coming to your town.

More to come.

Cheers,
Zack 

I’m shooting my tail off in NYC this week.  These are a few images from my shoot with Treasure Fingers.  He makes music that makes you shake what your momma gave ya.

Many thanks to Brian for coming up from the A to help me shlep my gear around the city.  He just won Best Portfolio of his graduating class!  Congrats!

Here’s a funny little grab from some video I was shooting in Times Square. Notice someone else’s flash firing off in the background the same time. One tourist helping out another with some rim light. The world is a good place! :p

Cheers,
Zack 

Dallas Austin ::

Vistoso Bosses ::

B.o.B ::

Animation guru Craig Hartin for Relevant Magazine ::

Atlanta music legend Butch Walker :: His band :: His BMW

My friends Mike & Priya got hitched ::

Been shootin’ a lot of headshots like these of local actress Brenda Weitzer. ::

Mark Adams of LaCour Photo came in to speak to the three day Photo 101 workshop I held a week before last :: Uh-Maze-ing time to be had. Thanks to you fine folks who traveled in for the workshop!

Here are some images from that workshop. We set up some chatoic real world situations that beginning photographers may run into. Like… Shooting a family of seven at 10am in the front yard.

And how to take on headshots without a flash and without a studio. It’s an exercise in finding light for portraits of any kind really.

Shot some pictures for local musician Jeremy Agers ::

Had a great OneLight workshop after the Photo 101 with our friends Jonathan Baker and Julia as our clients to photograph ::

Oh man… I had Phive Starr in for a shoot. This production duo is un-freaking-believable. Super stoked to work with them. ::

I haven’t even talked about my experience at Twitter and Google yet! This is @ded. He brought me to Twitter because he works there, he is awesome, and he is a kick ass photographer.

I did a OneLight workshop for a bunch of google folks at the Googleplex. I can’t even begin to describe what an amazing place that is filled with amazing people who love their jobs. Here’s a few from that workshop. ::

Lastly, another one from my shoot with Stephanie Lawrence a few months ago ::

I have yet to catch my breath and we leave for Australia tomorrow. That flight is going to suck but the experience there is going to make up for it I’m sure. Sorry for sucking up your bandwidth with this post! I just had to purge.

Cheers,
Zack

PS – While I’m gone somebody keep the photography campfire lit!*

*Twitter ref. this week.

I have a lot of blog posts to make with recent work and very little time to make them. These images are from my shoot with Living Things. This was an assignment for Nylon Magazine. I’ve completed four assignments for Nylon and as they hit the shelves I’ll blog about them. The assignment was to shoot the band, individuals, and cover their show here in Atlanta. I haven’t worked with a better group of artists than these four guys.

I put out a question on Twitter during this assignment asking if I should take a 5d with a 90mm lens or a D3 with a 24mm lens. The D3 combo won. I finished the assignment with one camera and one lens.

Living Things are an effing amazing live band. If you ever have the chance to see them live don’t pass it up.

I shot typical live shots like this…

But… I wanted something different than straight forward live shots. Being I was shooting with the D3 I put the camera in multiple exposure mode and lit a fire of creativity under my arse. I’m now experimenting more with multiple exposure. Yes, you can shoot single frames and then composite them together in PhotoChop, but sometimes you need to come up with something different while not depending on software to do it later.

Shooting a live show with multiple exposures is maddening because you can’t be exactly sure what you are going to get but that is the payoff. Sometimes it surprises you in a good way.

Do any of you experiment with in camera multiple exposure?

Cheers,
Zack