I’m currently in San Francisco where I will be giving a presentation to the mighty fine group of individuals that have brought Twitter to all of us!  I’m going to be talking about the importance of social media in my life and how it has helped the photography industry build community. Both virtual and real. Twitter is a key to my marketing plans over the next year but beyond that, it keeps me in touch with so many people that I would normally fall out of touch with due to time or distance. Not to mention how many new friends I have thanks to social networking.

So… They say that we are connected to everyone on this planet by 6 degrees of separation. I want to test this by putting a call out to the 4,700+ followers on Twitter and 4,300+ friends on FaceBook surely there is a way for me to be able to photograph two prolific twitter account holders.

1 - I want to shoot a portrait of Coldplay.

2 - I want to hang out for a day and shoot Diddy. I’m locked in Diddy!  DM me!

What does this mean? Someone out there knows someone who knows someone who can connect me to Coldplay or to Diddy. I want to shoot portraits and I will travel for this project at my own expense. If Tom reads this and forwards it to Sally who knows Jeff in NYC who can connect Tom over to Bill who can get back to me with a time and place I could go and photograph Coldplay then this project can work. I’m still working on my list of folks on Twitter who I want to photograph but I’ll start simple.

Will you help me out with this? Retweet my tweets? Let’s test six degrees.

My expectations for this project is it will be a complete bust… But I just have to try it.  Who knows who you know?

Off to Twitter HQ!

Cheers,
Zack 

Needless to say my dear friends, it has been a tad bit crazy around here over the last 6 weeks since last I blogged!MOST importantly - Hawke has joined us May 16th!  He was born at home and both baby and mom are doing great!  I was apprehensive to say the least about home birthing but now I’m all for it.  IF we were to have another (which I don’t think we are!) there is no way we go back to hospital birthing. Ever.

For those who read the blog but don’t follow us on twitter and facebook and all that please know that I have been sharing lots of photos via twitter.  I mean, he’s not completely neglected on the Internet.  But life has been crazy to the point that I have yet to sit down and blog about our new little boy.

I could go into all the details but Meghan already has. Why reinvent the blog entry?

What’s going on from this point? Well, we just got home from vacation where we took all FOUR boys to Florida for a week. They had more of a vacation than Meg and I did and poor Meg got the shortest end of the stick since Hawke is pretty much dependent on her for all of his food. As soon as he was born my schedule blew up and I’ve been trying to balance work and home. You know how hard that is. Some things had to slide for awhile and the blog was one of those things that had to slide to the back burner.  I’m slowly coming back around and Meg and I will be back with some critiques in a week or two.  

I’m now off to San Francisco for some VERY cool speaking and teaching engagements!  Stay tuned!  

We are booked through July right now and we’re expanding the office to include a new face to our lineup in the studio. More on that in August!

Hope you all are doing well! Are you? Is the summer turning out to be busy?

Cheers,
Zack  

The new OneLight Workshop site has just launched!  You’ll find all the dates and cities for the OneLight for the rest of 2009 there as well as information about our new three day intensive Photo 101 workshop. I’ve made the site with a mouse in one hand and our new baby boy, Hawke Danger Arias in the other!  Yes, Danger is his middle name.

Now that Hawke is here and he and Meg are doing well, we are ready to announce the schedule for the rest of the year. The new registration system for signing up is dope! Thanks to EventBrite for making such a great registration system.

www.OneLightWorkshop.com

Hope to see you at a workshop or mixer soon!

Cheers,
Zack 

PS - The “resources” page still needs content. We are off to Grandma’s house so I’ll be working on that later tonight as well as getting to more questions from the PDN presentation post below. Have a great weekend everyone!

Just finished my presentation for the PDN virtual trade show. That was the fastest I’ve ever had to talk! Thanks to PDN and B&H for making it happen!

This post is to answer questions that we didn’t have time to cover during the presentation. Go ahead and post questions here in the comment section. I’ll be working through your questions here on the blog through the weekend.

From what I’m being told… starting today all of the virtual PDN presentations from yesterday will be archived here. You have to register (it’s free!) and Mac users you need to use the latest version of Firefox. If you would like a copy of the PDF I used for my presentation, you can download it here. The PDF link is a link to the actual file. You PC users probably need to right click on that link and “save target as”. If that doesn’t work just his cntrl+alt+del and that should take care of it. ;p

Thank you all for being a part of this! I’m sure I wont be able to get to every single question but I already know that these questions will bring on other blog posts.

Let’s get started on some questions. Check back as I’ll be adding more to this post. I’m adding new replies to the top of the post so you don’t have to keep scrolling down and down and down.

Q :: I wanted to know, how do you deal with over-powering a sun on a clear sky day. If all you’ve brought is a strobe and your 50” Softbox, what would you do?

A :: A small hotshoe flash and the 50″ softbox isn’t going to overpower the sun on a clear day unless the face of the softbox is about three inches from your subject or you are shooting with a D70 or similar camera that has a faster sync speed than 250th of a second. Even then faster sync speeds might not cut it since the softbox sucks so much light to start with. If I am heading out into mid afternoon sun AND I want to overpower a very bright ambient light source like a bright sky then I’m going out with my Alien Bee 1600 and the Vagabond battery pack.

Now then, I’ve been shooting full time for 5 and a half years and I’ve only had the AB 1600 and Vagabond for about the last year. So what did I do?

• I didn’t book shoots that would have me out in the sun at a time that I couldn’t control it.

• If I just had to had to had to shoot in bright sun light then I used straight flash, backed up, and made the shot more environmental in nature since straight flash isn’t the most flattering quality of light most of the time. See the last image of my presentation to see what I’m talking about.

• If shooting straight flash doesn’t cut it, then I shoot available light. Typically backlighting my subject with the sun.

Hotshoe flashes are awesome. They can do SO much but they can’t do everything. You will quickly find their limitations when shooting in bright ambient environments. When I spend money on lighting it isn’t for features, it’s for POWER! Don’t give me TTL and digital this and that. Give me raw stinking horsepower. I buy lights to get the most light per dollar instead of “cool” features.

Also remember that YOU are the pro. You are in charge of making the decisions that will yield the best results for your clients. They are paying you to know what you are doing. If they want portraits on the beach and want to book the job at noon but you know the better images are going to be at 6pm then it is up to you to educate your clients and book that job at 6pm instead of noon. Clients want great images but they also want connivence. If you know the limits of your gear and the images you are wanting to create just can’t be created at noon then it is up to you to drive that boat and get that noon shoot booked at 6pm instead.

Q :: Did you say to DO talk to the model about things like a TV show etc. or just talk to her in the sense of what you’re doing and how many more shots are left and how well she’s doing.

A :: I talk to my subjects about anything and everything! If I’m doing a corporate shoot then I make sure to glance at the business and sports sections of my local paper before the shoot. I’m not a sports fan of any kind but I find talking sports in the corporate arena will keep a subject’s attention off the camera and lights for a little while. I’ll talk about my kids, my dog, a new album I am listening to, etc. I ask a lot of questions as I’m starting a shoot as well. “Married? Kids? Pets? What kind of music do you like? Did you see that movie 7 Pounds? Wasn’t it dark yet beautiful? I’m going to adjust this light. Just sit tight for a second. Are you keeping up with Idol this season?”

I will talk through my thought process as well during the shoot. Things like “I’m going to change this angle, I need you to rotate just a bit this way so I can keep that light pole from growing out of your head.”

The key to all of this is to make sure I’m not worried about the technical aspect of what I’m doing. If I start tweaking out in my head about my gear or about camera settings then I can’t stay focused on keeping a conversation going with my client. I get quiet. I start sweating. I get all up in my head about some technical thing and the flow of the client to subject relationship stops. I avoid that at all costs.

Q :: what would be the essential lighting that you would bring to a wedding? Assuming you are doing both indoor and outdoor photos.

A :: I take 3 Nikon speedlites . 2 SB-25’s and 1 SB-800. I only own the SB-800 because I HAD to have a flash for a job the day after my SB-80dx fried. I had to suck it up and pay $320 for a flash that I don’t use half the features of. I’ve shot entire weddings from formals to receptions with just a handful of these small flashes. I now take an Alien Bee 1600 and a Vagabond just in case I need more power. I rarely do though and it sits unused much of the time but I have it just in case. I have a blog post about what’s in my bag. Just add another bag with the AB head and battery, 3 stands, a 60″ umbrella, a 28″ Westcott softbox, and that is my wedding gear.

Q :: How do you come up with the effect you hope to achieve? Is it all trial and error or do you have an idea when you come into the shoot?

Answer after the jump! ——> (more…)

Y’all, we’ve lost one of our own this week.

Local Atlanta music photographer, Frank Mullen, lost his battle with cancer this week. Frank has been a cornerstone of the Atlanta music industry and has photographed everyone from The Dead Kennedys to Outkast. He was a kind, kind soul who is going to be dearly remembered and dearly missed in this community. I’ve known Frank for five years and he was always generous and open with his time and resources to help me along as I was just getting started in the local music industry. He was the most laid back guy in the pit and he could always pull off that one eye open kind of shooting that I just can’t do!

5/22/09 Update - We had a donation button on this post that ran for two weeks. Thank you to everyone who donated! As a community of photographers, musicians, and friends of Frank we have raised $5,000 for his family. Thanks again for coming through everyone.

Donations are now closed and the good folks at NARAS will be delivering your gifts to Frank’s family.

Cheers,
Zack

I’m giving a presentation on creative lighting May 21st for PDN’s Virtual Trade Show.  The event is free!  I’ll be on at 3pm EST and will be talking about dramatic lighting to change the entire mood of a portrait or environment.  I’m required to phone in from a land line.  I haven’t had one of those in about eight years so I’m going to be broadcasting from my father-in-law’s house!  

Many thanks to my friends at B&H for being a sponsor of this!

Visit the PDN’s Virtual Trade Show  site to register.  

They are having another one on June 11th.  Tune in!

In other news… We will have the new OneLight site up and running by the 21st!

Cheers,
Zack 

This is the first episode of “Step it up or hang it up.” We get a little more directed with critique, we shave off the nice guy act a bit more, and tell it like it is but we strive to do it in love, respect, and keep a good attitude about it all. At the end of the day, none of us are curing cancer. It’s just photography.

This series is now available as a podcast! Just drop the following link into iTunes (iTunes -> Advanced -> Subscribe to podcast) and it will update for you anytime there is a new episode on the blog. Remember to come back here though and join in the discussion.

feed://zackarias.blip.tv/rss/itunes

If you would like to have your site added to the list for a future episode of critique, email a link to your site, blog, or flickr page to critique @ zackarias [dot] com. Notice that my name is spelled with a “k” not an “h”.

So… We could be more Simon and less Paula on these. I think we run a pretty balanced and fair critique without being ruthless. What do you think?

Cheers,
Zack and Meg

This is my lovely wife who complained in the last critique that I don’t take enough photos of her.  I’m calling this a maternity portrait because she is 9 months pregnant. We’ve been married for 9 months and 5 days. Do the math!  Yes… this is my maternity portrait of you my dear Meghan. Because it is a portrait of you while you are pregnant.

You see, I shoot portraits of musicians but it is a rare, rare, rare instance that I photograph musicians with their instruments. All the portraits I have of myself, a photographer, are without me holding a camera. So, a maternity photo, to me, isn’t about the belly. It’s about the place in time of the woman who is pregnant.  Meghan is going to remember this time because there she was, at Lenny’s Bar of all places, hanging out with me while I was shooting an assignment. That assignment was shooting portraits of musicians. None of them were holding anything they make music with. Still a portrait of musicians. 

Meg… I love you!  I hope you like this portrait of you! 

Nerd talk - Shot with a Nikon D3, 24mm 2.8. No post processing. Straight from camera. I was going to work with it a bit but decided it was perfect just like it is… just like my wife.

Cheers,
Zack 

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More after the jump… Plus a tip on finding a cool location vehicle.
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My friends Iain (upper right hand photo) and Jamie (lower left hand photo) came in this week for some images they need for their company Ticket Alternative.  These guys are giving folks like Ticket Master a run for their over charged convenience fee money!

Iain is one of the first guys I met when I entered the Atlanta music scene as a full time working photographer. We have collaborated on a number of projects since then and I had the pleasure of shooting his wedding a few years ago.

Cheers,
Zack