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

Sitting in the coffee shop today with Meg and Dan. Dan and I are doing some research on agencies. Meg is compiling tax forms. I think Dan and I are having more fun than Meg.

Everyone is talking about the Old Spice commercials and how they are currently a tour de force in advertising and culture at the moment.

I love the first commercial the most because it takes a bizarre and disgusting twist on a fairly conservative brand and makes it awesome. I would buy my eyeglasses from that company. I love “the flip”. I always have. Anything that involves juxtaposition. Contrast. Competing forces. Mash-ups. Oil and water. Well, except for BP. That oil and water isn’t anything to get excited about yet someone has taken a massive disaster, mixed in over the top humor, has raised awareness and cold hard cash for a good cause. That’s why I love BP Global PR.

It just takes an idea. A spark. But more importantly it takes execution on that idea. Got an idea? Are you taking action on it? I have tons of ideas. I lack the execution of them. I don’t know which one to start on. I need to take my own advice to others and just pick one and run with it. Ideas don’t change anything. Ideas are worthless without action.

I sure do love the Internet.

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

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 saw this picture five miles away. I knew exactly what it would look like…

Five miles away.

Tonight we had what we have been referring to as the “OneGuy” workshop. Some of you may remember that Meg and I got stuck in Italy thanks to the Ksadf;ljasdflkjsdikill volcano in Iceland. Because we were stranded there for an extra six days we had to cancel a OneLight workshop. That was a mess.

One of the guys who signed up for that workshop wrote to us and said that if he could just come in for an evening one on one session that would be good. He needed some specific answers to some specific questions. Since we had to cancel the workshop we were willing to do whatever we could to accommodate his request. So tonight, we had a OneGuy workshop. Well, that’s not completely true, OneLight alum Perry came by to hang out as well. Perry brought Lauren. Lauren was our subject for the evening.

So we worked inside a bit and then got in a few cars to head out on location. I had one specific spot in mind with a great east facing shooting position with a nice big view of the sky. I love sky shots. I just do. Anyway… As we pulled out I looked to the West and the most brilliant cloud formations were popping up. The sky to the East was blank. Nothing. Not a single cloud. My mind started going through all the west facing locations that I knew of that were in close proximity to the studio because we were losing light and I had to get those clouds.

My mind was racing and as cliché as it may seem for Atlanta, the only spot I knew where I could get those clouds in a shot and get there in time was the Jackson St. bridge. It is “the” ATL skyline shooting position. I can’t tell you how many hip hop videos have been shot on that bridge or how many photo shoots you can see on any given day happening there. Heck, when we rolled up there was an engagement session being shot there.

… But I saw this picture. I looked at the clouds. I saw the frame they were making in the sky. I knew if I dropped down a bit with my 35mm lens I could place Lauren right smack dab in the middle of them and the exposure of the sky was to the point that I should be able to pull this off at f2.8 and a decent shutter of 250th or 125th. I knew I wanted f2.8 so that the clouds would go out of focus. I knew my 35mm lens would hold enough depth of field to see the texture of the clouds but not be too sharp. I knew the location and I knew I could not only frame her within the clouds but within a few buildings in the skyline. I knew exactly what this frame was going to look like while I was still driving down the street.

I’m not trying to show off. I’m not trying to act like a photo ninja. I’m trying to drive home the point that IF you know your gear you can pre-visualize the pictures you want to make. You can be driving to a location knowing exactly which lens you are going to grab, which modifier you want, and what the basic idea of exposure should be. How do you come to this intimate knowledge of your gear, your light, and your exposure? How?

By shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, and shooting some more.

If you aren’t actively working with your gear and shooting pictures on a regular basis then you aren’t learning and you aren’t growing and you’ll never get very far with your craft. Plain and simple.

I quit my day job 6.5 years ago to become a full time photographer. I’d say I hit this level of comfort with my gear, my light, and my exposure in the last year or so. Let’s just say it took five years of shooting two to four jobs a week to get there.

The photo above isn’t the best shot I’ve ever taken but it is exactly how I knew it would look when I was still five miles away from the spot.

How much are you shooting? Enough or do you need to be getting out there some more? I’m not shooting enough. Yes I can nail this shot but the next shots in my mind… I don’t know how I’m going to approach those yet. I still have a lot to learn.

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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Ok. Are you ready to get your nerd on? Calling all pixel peepers! Here are the images for the modifier run down we went through on Day 03 of the creativeLIVE studio lighting class. I’m not sure which took me longer… Shooting all of these images during the class or prepping them for the web.

Before we get started with the images there are some things I want to go ahead and cover with you before you check these out.

This isn’t the most comprehensive light modifier test in the world. It isn’t even half way scientific in approach. There are real issues with comparing modifiers like this. I’m telling you right now that this isn’t the true proper nerded out way of doing this kind of thing. While we strove for consistency and Dan and I spent some time in the morning before the broadcast testing things out, remember there can be variations 1/3 of a stop from pop to pop with those Alien Bees. That’s why they are affordable.  With all that said let me now say… if you run through some modifiers in this way you’ll learn a lot. I do this kind of stuff when I’m checking out a new modifier.

Why do I feel the need to give this big disclaimer? To ward off the measurebators that are about to descend on this post. The guys who look at photos on the photon level and lose all the soul of this craft. I like to nerd out from time to time and discuss CMOS vs. CCD but never at the cost of losing the soul of the craft. So… enjoy this comparison. There are things to learn.

Things to look for ::

• Take a look at how the modifier effects the exposure on the subject and the background.
• Watch the transition from highlight to shadow. How hard is that line?
• Take a look at the catchlights in the eyes.
• How effecient is the modifier in terms of lost light from the standard?
• Look at the difference in the quality of light when some of them are moved closer than the standard shooting point.
• Moving the light closer to the subject changes exposure so I didn’t list the change in aperture for those images since they deviated from standard position.

I’ve highlighted a few areas here to watch in the photos below… Look at this crop between the 7′ and 4′ Octabanks…

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Notice how the transition from highlight to shadow is much more gradual with the larger 7′ Octa. Notice how the shadows are more open with the 7′ as compared to the 4′. Notice the 4′ Octa has a brighter catchlight. Notice they have about the same effect on the exposure of the background. The background is important to watch with these. There are times I pick a modifier based on how it is going to throw light on or flag light off of the background. Here is the same image without the circles. From modifier to modifier some areas will change dramatically and some will barely be noticeable.

The following image is the “standard” for this test.  It is an Alien Bee with its standard 7″ silver reflector in place. The standard exposure for this at this distance is f13. We then paraded different modifiers off of the same light stand position. At times I moved the stand to demonstrate a distance I would more likely be using that particular modifer.

Here is a crop of the 7′ Octa (our largest modifier) in comparison to the standard 7″ reflector. Notice how light from the Octa wraps all the way around to her ear.

Want to pixel peep? Here you go!

If you look at a few of these and say “I can’t really tell any difference between the $30 modifier and the $800 modifier!” then note the disclaimers above. There are ways of shooting a shoot through umbrella in this kind of situation and make it look a whole lot like the Octabank. Then there are times that one will absolutely run circles around the other and the difference is night and day. To walk through each of these drastic and subtle usage changes would have taken the entire three days of teaching. Your goal is to get to know YOUR modifiers and be educated about the basic differences between different kinds so you can make educated choices the next time you go buy one of these.

As Bill, one of the creativeLIVE crew members, said so well… “There’s no morality in choosing a light modifier.” Let that sink in. Sometimes I pick a modifier based on… “Ummmm. How about…. Uh. This one.” Other times I walk in a room and I know that I want my 28″ Westcott Apollo and there is no other modifier in the world that will do the job. Sometimes I pick a modifier because it is more efficient with light than another that is similar to it in look. Note how the reflective umbrella lost 2 stops of light as opposed to the 4′ Octa. Sometimes that stop is a make or break situation on a job.

At times there’s “just something” about one modifier over another. You can’t quite put your finger on it but you just like “that thing” about that modifier. That’s how I feel about the 22″ beauty dish. I could get a very similar look from the 28″ Apollo or a small silver umbrella but there is just “something” about how the light feathers and falls off with the beauty dish that makes me pull that out over a small softbox. Sometimes I just like the catchlight more.

I like circles.

Sometimes.

Other times I like rectangles.

There’s not a moral issue on the table here.

Another issue with this test is we aren’t shooting full length. You’d see a BIG difference between a 60″ umbrella and a 7′ Octa when shooting full length. I tested that out and went back and forth on it. The reason I decided against it was our awesome subject, Lou, would have been standing in one spot for a long time. That little stool she was on was bad enough. I felt standing for as long as we needed to run through this would have been too much to ask. Remember, we are in the service industry. Serve your clients. Make them as comfortable as possible. I guess I could have had her lean on something. That would have been a light stand or a broom handle. Neither make for the best props.

My last caveat to all of this… Go shoot your own lighting tests! Seriously. You’ll learn so much doing this. Change the distance, the angle, the height, etc. Watch what your modifiers do full length vs. head and shoulders. LEARN YOUR GEAR!!!

All the images and download links after the jump….

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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…

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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…

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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!

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