Archive for '• Workshop':

Meg, Hawke, Dan, Sherri, and I have had an amazing week here in Dubai being part of the teaching crew at Gulf Photo Plus. This is my second year teaching at GPP. Last year, being the new guy, I had to take the group photo of all the amazing photographers that teach at this event. This year Mohamed Somji, the organizer of GPP, decided it would be fun to have a shootout between David Hobby, Joey Lawrence, and myself.

The rules were simple. We would be given a subject to photograph in the main auditorium in front of a live crowd. We would have twenty minutes each to shoot tethered & edit a photo while our images were projected on a large screen. We all would have the same subject to photograph and we were not allowed to see what the other was doing. Hobby went first. I was second and Joey brought it up from behind. We were also told there might be a surprise or two.

The surprise was A) we would have two subjects instead of one and B) Joe McNally would have a microphone and be giving live commentary as we were setting up a shot and shooting. Two people? David and I asked the same question… “Do they both have to be in the photo at the same time?”

No pressure.

So the photo above is what I came up with. It was a great teaching exercise if anything and we all had a fun time with it. Yes… there were video cameras and it will be online as soon as we have links to it. David and Joey will post their photos at some point I’m sure. Joey… well he threw us all a curve ball. Lastly… an official winner was never named so… IMHO the best shot was

Six days of non-stop teaching and the stress of having to perform to a packed auditorium has me worn out. I have two days of personal shooting to do now. Can’t wait to share more images from this trip. I have had such an amazing time here in Dubai. I love this city. Usedfilm Dubai? I don’t hate the sound of that.

Cheers, Zack

I take pictures. Meg makes music. I go out and take my pictures. Meg goes out and plays her music. What if we combined them? And what if we brought the whole family? And made it a road trip with workshops and concerts?

That is what we are doing this summer! The OneLight tour starts this June and we are hitting the road for three weeks. From Asheville to Nashville with photography and music all along the way.

You know those mixers we like to throw before a OneLight? Well Meg is playing our mixers this summer! We are really looking forward to it. We hope to meet many of you along the way. Mixers, BTW, are open to the public!

To make things come together and have a successful tour, our City Coordinator, Kara Pecknold, needs to find city representatives for each city we plan to visit:

June 29/30 Asheville, NC July 1/2 Washington, DC July 5 Pittsburgh, PA July 6/7 Cincinnati, OH July 8/9 Indianapolis, IN July 11/12 Chicago, IL (city rep already found) July 13/14 St Louis, MO July 15/16 Nashville, TN

If you want to work with us on this unique OneLight experience, contact Kara directly and she can provide you with more information about all it entails. kara [at] olivelifegroup [dot] com.

For more information about the dates of the workshops visit OneLightWorkshop.com.

Cheers, Zack

I’m excited to be part of Gulf Photo Plus again this year. I could go on and on and on about the event.  It’s simply one of the most unique series of workshops I’ve seen. There are six solid days of workshops that go from morning ’till night with lots of special events.

The image above is part of a project I’ll be showing for the first time and it will only be shown as prints this year.  There will be a showing of this work later this year in Atlanta.

Normally I would give you all of the details about the conference and what to do in Dubai but David Hobby has done it for me!  :)

For those of you in Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, this is a must attend photography event. I’m equally excited and nervous about an intensive two day, on location, class that I’ll be teaching. No lecture. No power point presentation. Just get on a bus and shoot for two days! It’s going to kick my butt. In addition to this class I’ll be teaching a few OneLight’s and a one day Photo 101 class.

Cheers, Zack

Did some testing with Mych (pronounced Mike) this week.  He has an amazing range of emotions.

Shot with a silver 86″ para on the cyc wall.  I’ll be teaching this technique at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai at the beginning of March and again at Photoshop World in Orlando at the end of March.

Cheers, Zack

Just finished my 2nd day of teaching this week in Texas. Tonight I’m in Austin. We wrapped up at 2:30am. I’m beat but I wanted to share at least one from the OneLight… even though this one is TwoLights.

Cheers, Zack

I keep telling myself… “I just need to make it through November.” If meetings this week go as planned then I may need to start saying… “I just need to make it through December.” Am I running to stand still? Nope. I’m running to grow.

I’m thankful for work. I’m thankful for my wife supporting my work. I’m thankful for the community I’m surrounded with. I’m thankful for opportunities to connect, share, and learn.

All that said, I’m at that point where I wonder if I’m biting off more than I can chew. I’m really glad to be at this point because it means my field is growing and that means I get to bring more people on board. As I grow, others grow as well. We all grow together.

Things I have to get done around these here parts…

• The “Call To Action” update blog post. I’m totally slacking on that one. Sorry! • I have a draft called “Get A Grip” that helps you put stuff together and rig things to other things. I like things. I hope you do too. • October 11th will be our next episode of Critique! Thanks for keeping us to the fire on that one everyone! • I have to tell you all about my experience at the Vincent Laforet 5dMkII workshop. An eye opener. I was like, “Whoa.”

Coming up… I’m teaching the many uses of white seamless at PhotoPlus in NYC later this month. Hope to see you there.

Here’s some pics from last week’s LA workshop. Well, one of them. That was a double header. Big ups to Marc D’Amour for making the LA workshops run like German trains. If you are unfamiliar with the way in which German trains run then let me be the one to instruct you that, according to my high school German teacher, they run real güt.

Know when to turn your light off… Apologies to the synagogue. I had to tag something. It washes off.

We were in Hollywood so all I had to say was… “Cue the birds! And…. Birds in 3… 2… 1… Birds! —- Aaaaannnnnnddd… CUT!” Yes. I’m a dork.

Ok lighting folks… Take a look at the next two photos. One of these was shot in the afternoon and one was shot at night. I was demonstrating that off camera lighting is predictable and can be replicated over and over and over again no matter where you are. Which is which?

More to come?

• The Seattle workshop was amazing. Seriously. Big thanks to the Boone brothers and Chase Jarvis and images and thoughts to come from that. You know, one of these days. I still haven’t put images up from the Australia OneLights. I’m so effing behind on blogging. But you know, it’s not like I’m curing cancer with this thing!

• I twittered about thinking about thoughts while flying home from Seattle. I’ve given myself a deadline of 2/10/2010 to get our new brand off the ground. I wish there were 20 months in the year so I could have until 20/10/2010. I know what I’m going to be doing this winter. It better not be comparing myself to others! Update – It took me until 1/2011 to get it done. Branding takes time.

#MostRamblingPostEver

Oh… Crap. This the wind beneath my wings today…

Cheers, Zack

Had a great time at yesterday’s OneLight workshop. Thanks to all who came out and hung out with us until 3am this morning!

Cheers, Zack

I have a lot of images I want to share here on the blog and very little time to make specific blog posts about each shoot. This is a selection of some of the things I’ve been shooting. I had three more assignments with Nylon Magazine since shooting Living Things for them. For the record, they prefer natural light as opposed to lit photos.

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.

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!

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