Everyone wants to be a photographer these days.

Let me warn you now that this blog post is currently in it’s third state of revisions. It’s a real rambler. If you’re up for it, I’m up for it. More after the jump.

(more…)

Friend and colleague, David E Jackson, has recently published this video on his blog about his thought process behind a recent conceptual shoot.

As you are starting on your photographic journey many of your questions will be dealing with cameras and lenses and their settings. What lights were used and with what modifiers. What photoshop actions were used. Etc. Then the day will come when cameras, lenses, lights and all of their settings don’t mean a damn thing to you any more. What you want to know from other photographers is what was the thought process behind a certain photo or series of photos. Dave does a good job breaking that down. Watch the video to hear how he thinks… not which aperture he used.

I’ve been saying for a long time that Dave is “one to watch” and this recent shoot of his only confirms that. Check out his blog for photos and more BTS action for this shoot. Great jorb homestar!

Cheers,
Zack

Anytime I’m traveling to a new place I am always on the look out to shoot some portraits. I put a call out on Twitter last week for musicians in London who might be looking for some new shots and fellow photographer, Romain Kedochim, came through with a great connection to artist Kevin Mark Trail. Kevin is currently working on his second release. You’ve heard him if you’re into The Streets. He’s performed and recorded with them on tracks such as Let’s Push Things Forward. Also, a big thank you goes to Sylvester Nicholson for helping out on the shoot and finding this awesome location to work with.

And for the sake of consistency… Here is the opening shot in B&W.

And now for something completely different… I’m working on another “stranger portraits” project while I’m here. Here is one from today.

Cheers,
Zack

Oi! Man, are we ever having a jolly good time in London right now! I love this city. Why have I never been here before?

This is Carl Spring. He was attending today’s OneLight. He’s an amazingly good dude.

Cheers,
Zack

Just wanted to update you on a few videos and blogs posts we are working on.

I promised a studio tour of our place here in Atlanta and that will be coming up. Currently we have a large job in house and we’re under a pretty tight NDA. In order to do the studio tour we would have to clear the entire space of our client’s merch and that’s just something we can’t pull off right now. We will most likely have some down time in October to get that finished up. Sorry for the delay.

The photo above is our cyc wall. It’s about 12 feet tall, 19.5 feet wide, and has a 3 foot radius. From the cyc wall to the other end of the studio is 64 feet. We’ll show you all that in the video along with grip, carts, workspaces, storage, deals we found on furniture, set pieces, etc, etc.

When we get the studio cleared out again we’ll knock out the color worflow video as well as the grip video. We’ll drop them all at once most likely.

Cheers,
Zack

Thanks to everyone who came to the white seamless session yesterday at Photoshop World. I thought I would give you all a quick link to the tutorial here on the blog so you don’t have to dig through the archives.

>> It starts here. <<

If you have any questions about the technique just drop them in the comments.

Cheers,
Zack

Oh boy. Here we go.

The above image is a contact sheet from my days at photography school. It is has to be circa 1996-97. I recently opened up three 32 gallon totes filled to the brim with negs, prints, and contact sheets and this gem of a contact sheet was nestled in there. You can click the image above for a larger view if you so dare.

Did I seriously photograph a musician holding his guitar while standing next to a brick wall? I sure did. Did I really try that multiple exposure? [Hanging my head in shame] On the same shoot I even hung a bed sheet up on that tree and used that as a background. I’ll save you from that visual pollution. My poor, poor, poor subject. I need to look him up and apologize for wasting his time. Take a look! He did an outfit change in the middle of that roll. I was so convinced we were getting good stuff that I had him come right back to where we were shooting with the first outfit.

Note :  I was really, really, really proud of these pictures back then. I felt it was my best portrait work at the time. I think I was in the fourth quarter at school. I’m so grateful to my teachers and mentors who tore me new a@@holes every time I showed any of these images. I liked them. Everyone else hated them. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t like them. My subject was really happy with them when I gave him some prints. Thank God for those people who spoke truth in my life or I’d still be shooting that crap.

I moved on from there now I need to get beyond where I am today. Always growing. Always growing. Always.

Aside from the bad light, the inconsistent exposures, that truly unfortunate multiple exposure shot, and the guitar+brick wall shots, can anyone else tell me another major mistake that was made with this roll of film? The first correct answer gets a OneLight DVD because I have to pay a penance for shooting these pictures. I’m looking for a specific answer. @Michael Sebastian & @Cary Norton – I imagine you fellas should know it.

Cheers,
Zack

I want to thank all of you for the feedback on the Dubai photos from the last post I made. I wanted to share with you the entire first edit of images for this portfolio.

All feedback and criticism is always welcome around here. Some of y’all had some great feedback on the first post. If any of you want to take a stab at editing this portfolio go for it! Grab the images from the gallery, arrange them however you see fit, spit them back on the web, and send me a link!

Editing your work is half of your job as a photographer. It’s the one thing in this industry that I feel I can not teach. I can sit with someone individually and speak to it but I can’t just make a blog post about it. I know of no academic resource about editing your work… not that I’ve seen them all. I’ve read many articles on the subject but none have stood out as definitive volumes of knowledge on learning how to edit your work. I think the only teacher is experience and feedback from peers. I hope to have a selection of these images printed and ready for critique when I’m at PhotoShop World in Vegas in a few weeks. I’m going to corner McNally while I’m there. He’ll tell me like it is. If you want to get inside the head of an editor make sure you are reading A Photo Editor on a daily basis.

I’m not trying to develop a “travel story” in the traditional sense of the genre. This is more personal in nature as I’m shooting the city as an outsider looking in. These are images or representations that I am drawn to. I’m trying to congeal a visual set of 20 images or less from this set. As I pour over these images I see holes in the Dubai portfolio already. There are certain architecture shots missing. I’ll be back there in March of next year and my plan is to really have this book solidified. I think I need to get this first gallery down to 12 or 15 and then bring in the new work when I go back. Since this is personal work I think of it as an assignment that might have the creative direction of, “Go to Dubai and shoot the city as you see it.” Amazing story line isn’t it?

I’ve done some post production to some of the images. Some are still just RAW files. You’ll find some duplicates here and there through the gallery as well as a few clunker/personal images that are just in that folder for my own reason. Like the one of Joe McNally outside of Ravi’s. Finally, there are a few images in this gallery that are there just for the graphic designer I’m working with to have some extra visual collateral to work with as he designs the new books. I aint no designer. I’m barely a photographer.

If any of you are a working photo editor who feels you know how to speak to editing please leave me a note here. I’d like to speak with you about a project for photographers that I want to do. I just need the right editor who can communicate about the subject.

You can find the first edit gallery of 300+ images here.

Cheers,
Zack

As Lightroom churns through some images I’m working in PhotoMechanic on a few new portfolios for web and print. The one capturing my attention right now is the selection of images from my two trips to Dubai.

I’m still trying to figure out why I love Dubai so much. There’s something about that place and something about the people that has really caught hold of me and I can’t let go of it. I’m sure if I were to go there around this time of year it would change my ideas about the place.

More images and thoughts after the jump ::

(more…)

The great thing about shooting more editorial work is getting to shoot more editorial work. The problem with shooting more editorial work is there are times I have to sit on the images for 30, 60, 90, or more days before I can share them.

This is an assignment I shot for The Atlantan. The subjects are Atlanta Hawks center Zaza Pachulia and ATL restaurant veteran A.D. Allushi. They just opened a new restaurant/bar in Atlanta called the Buckhead Bottle Bar. I shot this assignment while construction was still going on inside their new restaurant & bar. I had one little corner to work in that wasn’t covered in dust and was “nearly” completed. The rest of the place was in a state of chaos as they were trying to bring it all together for an opening a week away. There were a few issues on the shoot. There was only one working power outlet we could use and the lights in the onyx table top were not installed yet. Below is a portrait of the two of them and the table I’m talking about.

Here is where being comfortable with your lights comes in very handy. The lighting and design of this place is as much of the story as the menu is. It was important to show this table lit up so Dan and I spent about 20 minutes testing out several options for lighting the table with flashes. We ended up gaff taping three hot shoe flashes underneath the table and put them on a really low power. These were older Nikon SB flashes that have built in optical slaves in them. We set them to slave so they would fire when the main light fired.

I had everyone take a look at the photos to make sure it wasn’t straying too far visually from what the tables would look like once the lights were installed. We made some changes to the direction of the small flashes until it matched what it would look like once the tables were complete. Again, knowing how to use your lights is crucial to being a working photographer. Everyone was worried what these portraits would look like without light coming through the table. When you can solve that kind of problem you are the hero of the day. Especially when you can do it in camera. If you can impress your client like this then they trust you. If they trust you… they call you again. All that’s left is making the deadline.

I’m currently finishing up the OneLight companion book that’s going out to all of this year’s OneLight alum. It’s going to have images like this along with lighting diagrams and the thought process behind the shot. For the sake of this blog post I’m including the lighting diagrams and camera settings for the two shots here. The diptych above is what I call the grid spot with soft chaser sort of look. The two flashes used for this type of light are on the same axis. You put the umbrella or softbox or octa up and then fly a grid spotted flash right in the center of it pointing in the same direction as the soft light source. You’re looking to get the soft light to be 3 or so stops under the gridded light. It’s the same thing I did when shooting the Fences for the creativeLIVE studio class.

Click on the images below to see them larger.

This shoot is a good example of why having some big lights and some small lights are good way to go when you have to walk into unknown situations on a regular basis. A few Alien Bees and a few old hotshoe flashes will take care of just about anything that comes your way.

As for the Bottle Bar? Come this fall when I’m not traveling as much, I’m going to be hanging out there. It’s a very cool place. You need to check it out if you’re in the ATL. The bottles behind the bar are cool. I wish they were done when I was shooting this so I can show you how cool they are.

Cheers,
Zack