I was hired by Harvard Business Review to photograph Muhtar Kent who is the CEO of The Coca-Cola company . I thought I’d post about the process of an editorial shoot from start to finish instead of just showing the photos.

The art direction for the shoot was to photograph Mr. Kent at the headquarters building in Atlanta. The editor asked for two portraits. One was to show some architectural details of the building. “Maybe with a bank of windows or something in the background.” The other shot was to incorporate something with Coca-Cola branding. The name, the Coca-Cola red, a bottle, etc. After that I was free to grab anything else I had time to which, on a job like this, means anything I can grab with the extra thirty seconds I have to work with. An editorial shoot is usually a few hours of standing around and a few minutes of taking pictures. You’ll regularly spend more time emailing with the editor then you will clicking the shutter release of your camera. I was also instructed that while they wanted a mix of vertical and horizontal images, they used a lot of square crops as well so the images needed to work well 1:1. The full process after the jump.

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Had another shoot for my faces and spaces project today. This is Jan and she’s adorable. She is a very talented artist working at her craft each and every day. She has more hustle then most artists I know who are still in their 20′s. That’s some of her work on the wall above. Her house is filled with art and she makes an amazing cup of green tea. Jan asked me several times to filter my lens to get rid of all her wrinkles but in my professional opinion she’s beautiful just the way she is. All of us could only hope we have so much grace as we move on through life as she does.

This is a personal portrait project focusing on subjects 70 and older. If you or someone you know lives in the Atlanta area and would like to be a subject for this project please email us at studio [@] zackarias [dot] com. Shoots typically take about thirty minutes and I’ll travel to you.

The reason I started this project is two fold. I was showing my portfolio last year in New York and some consistent feedback I received was I needed some more age diversity in my book. Most of my work for the past eight years has been working with musicians so the “age” of my book are subjects 30 and under. Second, two photography regrets I have is that I never got a great portrait of my grandfather nor my dad. If I close my eyes I can see the portraits I would shoot today if I could but unfortunately I’ll never have an opportunity to make those portraits. This project is sort of my way of giving families images of their elders that I wish I would have shot of my own family.

Lastly, some of y’all have asked how I shoot for this project. Here’s a quick shot of my set.

The set up here is an Einstein as the main light in a PCB 22″ white beauty dish. That’s hanging out on a 40″ C-Stand with an arm acting as a mini boom. That flys right over my camera and we put a 25lb sand bag on the stand just to make sure it doesn’t go over. The background is a large pop-up scrim/reflector that is A clamped to a stand. It’s lit with another Einstein with a PLM reflector on it. Both lights live in the 1/4 power range. The PLM reflector gives a nice wide coverage on the background without spilling onto the subject. That pops the background to white. For this project I wanted a consistent set up that had a small footprint. I can set this up in just a few square feet of space and it gives me a consistent look no matter what location I’m in. For the spaces shot above I took the dish and pointed it to the back of the room and ceiling. I typically shoot the spaces part with natural light but we just didn’t have enough here due to it being a very overcast day so this one had to be lit.

Walking through the door we have three cases. My ThinkTank Airport International bag with camera gear. A ThinkTank Logistics Manager with all the lights, cords, grip, and two small light stands. Finally the beauty dish has it’s own bag that also holds the pop-up reflector. The C-Stand is just on it’s own. It’s a beast.

You can see more of my Faces & Spaces images on my 500px portfolio. I use 500px as a holding area / dumping ground for images that either do not fit on my main site or for projects that aren’t completed enough to make it on my main portfolio page.

Cheers,

Zack

PS – The only thing stopping you for doing a personal project is … Oh yeah. There isn’t anything stopping you from doing a personal project.

Meg and I are hosting our first ever live critique night at our new studio in Decatur. A few years ago we started doing critiques online. You can see our 14 episodes on blip.tv.

Now that we are in the new space we are going to start doing these as a live event. We don’t want to make this a drab academic experience so here’s the deal. Bring a chair and the drink of your choice and show up at our studio this Saturday, February 18th at 7pm. Drop your beer in the cooler and drop your web site / flickr page / thumb drive / etc in the critique box. Meg and I will start randomly pulling sites or thumb drives out of the box and giving critique.

Our critique is not the stuffy, bokeh magnifying, type of critique. It’s as if you came over to our place, pulled up a chair, grabbed a beer, and we just honestly talked about your work. Oh wait, that is exactly what we are going to do.

Here are the rules ::

1. You can’t take it personally. Even if we laugh at your photos. We are here first and foremost to help and that means we aren’t going to just hand out pats on the back and pump up your self esteem. Honest critique is needed by all of us in order to grow. It is always my goal to point out strengths and weakness. I will always let you know my strengths and weakness as well as a critic of work. We all have to grow. None of us have this all figured out. Just remember that.

2. You can’t explain your work until after the critique. You could show a mediocre photograph and then tell us the saddest story in the world about the photograph and suddenly we want to like the photograph. A picture stands on it’s own or it doesn’t. Let your work speak for itself. We can have a discussion about your work after we’ve had our say first.

3. You aren’t guaranteed a critique. We have no idea how many folks are going to show up. That’s why it is a bring your own chair sort of event. If 10 people show up then we’ll get to all of you. If 100 people show up, well, you know that would be impossible. Sitting in on the critique is always a good learning experience though. You don’t have to put something in the box to attend. You can rubberneck if you want.

4. Bring a chair. Our floor is concrete so you might want to grab a folding chair from home.

How it will work ::

We’ll have a projection up for everyone to see the work and we’ll just start picking sites and going through them. I speak to the work as a working photographer. Meg speaks to the work as a member of the general public. She could not care any less about lenses, f-stops, softboxes, etc. She’ll tell you how she “feels” about your work. Whether she would want to hire you or not. If she laughs at your work (when one is not supposed to laugh at it) take note of that right away. Others are doing the same. We don’t filter ourselves here too much, if at all.

We will be recording this for the blog. Some have asked if we would do a live stream but dealing with this live is a pain and something I’d rather not deal with. We’ll screen capture the critiques and post it later.

Open call to Photo Editors, Art Directors, Creative Directors, and Art Buyers ::

This is going to be a regular event at our studio. If your job is that of looking at photography everyday we’d love to have you be a guest critic. Anytime we have a guest in for critique then my work goes in the box as well! If you dish it out you have to be able to take it as well.

We’re looking forward to this because instead of dropping critiques on people and then getting follow up via email that no one sees, you’ll have the chance to ask questions and have a conversation about the work in person. It’s also going to silence the haters who say that we’d never say the things we do to someone’s face. Oh yes. Yes we will. It’s going to be fun. We’ll all have some laughs and get to the heart of the matter of growing as photographers. It’s going to be good. I hope you can make it.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments.

Cheers,

Zack

Big thanks to Heather Hamilton for tweeting, “The overload of photography rants r getting on my nerves. While I agree with some , I just think our time can be better spent. Like shooting.” There’s been a flurry of new gear announcements lately and I’ve been guilty of talking about gear this week instead of using gear this week. Michael Friberg pretty much summed it up well. Heather was the voice (twoice?) I needed to hear today to fire the Internet, get off my ass, and go shoot. Isn’t that ultimately what it’s about? Thanks Heather.

I saw the gentleman above through the window and had to, had to, had to, get a portrait of him. Everyone was more than willing to let me photograph them today. No one turned me down. Must be that big ass camera. Today was a good day.

“I’m an inventor and I also can rap my ass off. I need a good manager. Danny East. Tell ‘em not to bury me!!!”

Hell yes. I love to see hustle in all shapes and forms.

These street portraits were all shot with the Phase One IQ140. I am still learning this camera and going out on the streets and working in various lighting conditions gives me a good idea of what it can and can not do. I do miss my x100 though. (It’s in the shop) [sticky aperture] poo.

GO SHOOT!

Cheers,

Zack

I’ve recently moved to a digital medium format system and I thought I’d blog about the process of choosing a system and why making this jump was worth every hard earned penny to do so. But first, let’s enter the way back machine. If you are fairly new to photography and DSLRs have been your entrance into this industry then this an important part of the blog post. Bear with me. All of it after the jump. (If you don’t see the video above just hit refresh. Not sure what’s going on with the embed code)

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I’m still working on my Faces and Spaces project. Today I had the pleasure of photographing Thad Taylor. Mr. Taylor is a photographer as well. He got his start after WWII and the stories he has to tell! In fact, I’m going back to see him soon to record some of his stories. The experiences he’s had are relevant to our times today as photographers.

I really appreciate everyone who is helping me with this project. Basically it’s a portrait project I’m doing for personal work. If you or someone you know is over the age of 70 and lives in the Atlanta area please email dan [at] zackarias [dot] com and we’ll set up a shoot. The shoots typically take about thirty minutes and I’ll drive to you (them). As this project goes forward the people I’m getting to meet get more and more interesting. Personal work is a great way to build a new portfolio but it’s also a great way to build your own character as a photographer.

The face shot above is from my new PhaseOne IQ140 back on the PhaseOne camera body with the Schneider 80mm. You could extract your subject’s DNA from these files. I can’t believe the level of detail this camera is able to capture. The 5d came into place for the “place” shot though since that was shot at ISO 1600. DSLR for the ISO. Phase for everything else. I’ll blog specifically about the Phase soon enough.

Cheers,

Zack

Our new studio is officially open! We had a great opening party this past weekend. Big thanks to everyone who came out. Was Cousin Dan not the most amazing show you’ve seen this year? Thanks to Ben Helfin as well for spinning his amazing collection of vinyl.

Now that we are officially open I wanted to let you know that we’ll be having regular events here in the new space.

The first event will be a live critique night February 18th at 7pm. Bring a chair, a beer, a box of tissues, and your work. We’ll have everyone throw their web site / flickr page / thumb drive / etc in a hat and Meg and I will randomly start pulling them out for live critique. We will be screen capturing this for the blog. It’s going to be a good time. We promise not to leave you hanging. I think doing this live instead of at our dining room table will bring the level of critique and conversation up. Critique nights will be a BYoB and BYoChair kind of event as there’s no telling how many will show up. Think of it like a night at the Laser Show at Stone Mountain just completely different.

In addition to critique nights we’ll be having a series of events with guest photographers and shooting/lighting hands on demos. I’ve moved to the Phase One system and I’ve talked to them and the good folks at Capture Integration about doing a medium format night of shooting here at the studio. We’ll set up lights, cameras, subjects, etc and you’re welcome to join us for a night of pitchers and pictures.

All events will be announced via Twitter / Facebook / G+ and our mailing list. Sign up on our mailing list here. Expect to see something happening here every four to six weeks as the schedule allows. All events will be open to the general public and will be free of charge to attend. If you have an idea for an event you’d like to see or a guest you’d like to hear drop it in the comments below.

Upcoming blog posts – Why I had to move to a bigger space (with more photos) and why I moved to medium format.

Cheers,

Zack

It’s been awhile since I’ve won a GOYA shootout! It took going up against some teenagers to finally win!

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My oldest son, Caleb (pictured on the right), just turned 13 yesterday! We have a real teenager in our house of four boys now. I can’t believe it. Caleb only took a passing interest in photography until he got on Instagr.am. You can find him there as @carias. He and his cousin, Grayson (pictured on the left), are both getting into HDSLR video as well. They are currently taking a 15 week Final Cut class at Cue52 so for Caleb’s Christmas/birthday present he got a Canon T2i with a kit lens so that he and his cousin can continue their video work and dive into photography a little deeper. Aside from getting Caleb a membership to Kelby Training, he and I are spending time going over the fundamentals of exposure, composition, and light. (#proudpapa) We figured what better way to get out there and put this into practice than do a GOYA shootout! Each of us had to find our own photo, edit our own photos, and do the post production on them. No one got any help from the others.

GOYA is my little term for “Get Off Your A$$” and go shoot. We used to do these on a more regular basis but life and work got in the way. Damn life and work. So Caleb, Grayson, and I hit downtown Atlanta yesterday with our cameras to shoot something in motion. Caleb picked the theme. It started with “people in motion” then we found lots of pigeons, cars, water, and other moving nouns so it became “Verbing Nouns”.

Here’s how this works. Below are three photos. Photographer #1, #2, and #3. You choose your favorite photo and use the poll code box to vote. The winning photographer will get a $25 B&H gift card. Also, if any of you leave a constructive critique of any or all of our photos I will choose one of you to win a $25 B&H gift certificate as well!  Here are the photos…

Update :: Voting for this shoot out has ended. You can see the three photos we entered and the poll results after the jump…

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I’m still seeking subjects for my personal portrait project based in Atlanta. It’s called “Faces & Spaces” and I’m seeking subjects 70 years or older for this project. This is the General. He’s 94 and served in an Army artillery unit in France and Germany in WWII. The best part of this project of mine is not the photographs I get to make but the people I get to meet. The purpose of this project is to expand my portfolio to subjects beyond musicians. I’m not selling these for stock or commercial uses.

If you or someone you know who is 70 or older and lives in the Atlanta’ish area and would be willing to be part of this project please email my studio manager { dan @ zackarias . com }. I need about six more subjects to finish this project. I’ll drive to them and they and their family get images from the shoot. I’m typically need about 30 minutes for a session. I shoot an environmental portrait and then something like this…

What a face right? He is that kind in person! Such a wonderful man. You can see more from this project on my 500px collection.

Cheers,

Zack