I really love the power of light.  It gives me options.  It gives me control.  As I’m downloading images from today’s shoot with Nic Cowan, I have been looking at some other images from this year and came across some shots I did at John Michael Cooper’s Very Alt F workshop here in Atlanta.  I don’t think I ever posted these.  John and I tag teamed part of the shooting one day.  He approached the subject one way and I went another way.

Here is the environment we were in…

With four lights I killed the ambient light… 

Alien Bee 1600 with 20 degree grid on her face.  SB800 at full power zoomed to 105mm  for the hair.  A pair of bare bulb Sunpak 120j’s under her dress at 1/2 power each.  

Off to trick or treat with the kids!  Have a safe Halloween y’all!

Cheers,
Zack 

Companies pour tens of thousands of dollars and up into their booths and presentations material when they are slinging their stuff to the industry.

Of all the amazing booths, presentations, and half naked Craig’s List models standing under softboxes, Megavision gets the “lawn of the month” award at this show.  Simplicity is key.  The symmetry of the chairs, the boldness of their signage, the turning of the table so that it transforms from your day to day square to a diamond.  Diamonds are classy you know.  The subtle use of trade show blue carpet says to you, “Hello, we are Megavision.”  

In fact, their whole presentation sort of wraps up their new marketing campaign.  ”Hello.  We are Megavision.  We’re so good we aren’t even going to show up.”

Highlights thus far?  Metting David Hobby face to face!  After three years of emails, David and I got to sit in and listen to UK photographer Drew Gardner speak about his work.  I was so humbled and honored when David introduced me to Drew and he said “OH yeah, yer that OneLight guy. Yeah.  Love what yer doin’ mate.  Ya should come to London and do one.  That’ll be fantastic!”

Jason Groupp’s party was the place to be earlier this week.  I would say “Jason Groupp’s party was the place to be _______ night.” but I can’t remember what day it is right now.  

Of all the things that had to get done here at PhotoPlus, the OneLight planning meeting for 2009 was crucial.  I’m pretty sure we did that yesterday. Erik, Kara, Meg, and myself sat in the hotel lobby bar for four hours looking at the schedule for 2009 and framing in a schedule for the new workshops.  I’m sad to say and happy to say that there will be fewer workshops in 2009.  Happy to say that because the travel has been taking a toll on me and my family.  Sad to say that because I love traveling so much.  

We also had a conference call with Ross from FloSites.  His crew have been working on the new OneLight site.  It will be launching soon!

I think we had that meeting yesterday.  

Lastly.  I can not get over the fact that the best BBQ I’ve ever had in my life was in Brooklyn.  Really?  It was at a place called the Smoke Joint.  Look it up the next time your here.

TGI?

Cheers,
Zack 

One more day in NYC.  I’m taking something more than my camera phone out today. Maybe I should have borrowed a camera from Megavision. Oh wait. They didn’t even show up. Well done.

Yo.  Ay.  I’m shootin’ ‘ere!  :)

I have had a great time up here in Jersey teaching a double header OneLight.  BIG thanks to Bryce York for bringing me up and opening his home to all of us. Meg and I are now heading into NYC for a few days.  I’m really looking forward to meeting many new folks and connecting with old friends at Jason Groupp’s pre Photo Plus party tonight!

Cheers,
Zack 

As hard of a time I have judging photo competitions, I have taken on the role again!  I’m a sucker for punishment.  This time I get to sit alongside fellow ATLien Rachel Niesen from LaCour, Cliff Maunter, my new friend from the One Conference Jenn Bebb, and crusty ol’ me.

I’m a judge and sponsor of the Winter round of the WedComp competition. Check out the WedComp site for details about this great wedding photography competition.  I didn’t even place last time so I’m going to take out my bitterness as a judge.  Legislate from the bench!  I’m joking!  Really.  :)

Cheers,
Zack 

I am back from the dead!  At least that is how it feels right now.  It has been an overwhelming few weeks as we get DVD’s out the door, conduct OneLights from the East to the West, and finish the studio build out.

For those who have been around on the OneLight Forum you probably have noticed the insane amount of spam that was taking over.  We’ve gotten it cleaned out and have changed the registration process for new users.  Hopefully that will take care of the spam issue.

Who is heading to NYC next week for Photo Plus?  I’ll be up there with the entire OneLight / UsedFilm crew this year.  I’m looking forward to Jason Groupp’s annual party.  What other parties should I be aware of?

Are you hot for Apple?  Are you hot for the new MacBook Pro?  I have been waiting for a laptop upgrade for a few months now and I just got my hands on the new MacBook Pro with the multi-touch pad today.  I have been doing ok on my MacBook until I’m conducting a workshop and trying to run a flat screen, Lightroom, and PhotoShop. As soon as Steve Jobs announced that they would be available today in the stores (via his media event yesterday) I got on the horn to my local Apple business rep and secured a spot in line.

I’ll put more of a formal review up later.  I’ll just say it is by far the greatest computer I’ve owned.  By. Far.  And no… I don’t mind the glossy screen at all.  I know some are not happy that a matte finish screen is not available for this machine but dang it all… After the first test run of images through Lightroom I have zero complaints.  Zero. It is so fresh off the line that when I registered it online today, I got an email from Apple thanking me for registering my iPod Touch. Nice.

I hope you are all doing well.  The DVD is in stock and shipping all week while we are still in town.  The price jumps to $250 in the morning!  Get on it!  We will not be shipping next week since we will all be in NYC for workshops and Photo Plus.  We will resume shipping after we get back on the 27th.

I’ll be resuming regular blogging by the second week of November. Between the buildout, new branding, workshops, shoots, and time with my family, the blog has had to take a break for a few weeks. Be sure to use an RSS reader so you’ll know when the posts start up again.

Please check in with me in the comments. Let me know what’s keeping you busy these days!

Cheers,
Zack 

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for another podcast this week. I met Ron Dawson of Cinematic Studios this week at the One Conference.

You can find the interview here. We re-capped the ONE experience and I talk about my personal life a bit more and the road I’ve walked to get to this place…

Here are a few images of the new studio space that we are building out right now. This is how it looked when we signed the lease. Previously the space was a hair salon.

Here is the exterior view from the street.

I have an insane few weeks coming up. Heck, I have an insane 6 weeks coming up. As I have time I will be documenting the studio build out here on the blog and discuss why a studio is the right decision for me. I hope you’ll follow along!

Cheers,
Zack

I had the privilege of being interviewed by Bill & Ed over at LightSource for their pod cast. I really hope to meet these guys in person one day. I love what they do and what they give to our industry through the LightSource pod cast. If you aren’t familiar with them you really need to go dig through the archives. They have some amazing photographers in the archive to listen to.

You can find the interview here.

For those of you just coming around to my blog, I’ll be posting photos this week of the studio build out (as seen above) that I talked about on the podcast. I will also be talking about my philosophy of keeping a studio vs. working from home. And being this is my first REAL build out of a studio, I will be documenting the process that goes into it and how I’m making the space to fit my exact needs. I hope it will give you ideas about studio space as your business grows to the point of needing one. I’m also hoping I’ll hear from you folks who have a studio who have ideas and tips that I haven’t thought of yet.

Cheers,
Zack 

Meg and I just got home from Washington, IL where we have just spent an AMAZING 3 days at the ONE Conference hosted by Jeff & Julia Woods.  I have much to say about this coming up. MUCH to say. I had the honor of speaking and attending this conference. MUCH to say about this coming up.

I’m glad to be home because I was on a plane last night that lost all of its hydraulic fluid for the tail section from pulling out of the gate to nearly taking off.  We were next in line for take off when a warning light came on.  The pilot aborted the take off, pulled back to the gate, and the mechanics soon found a massive problem with the hydraulic system.  Thank you God for having that happen on the ground and not in the air!

DVDs?  Yeah!  I know!  We are waiting on them as well!  We have 2 of the 3 shipments we need.  We are tracking down the other.  We were expecting them yesterday but we are dealing with UPS here so please pray for us.  I have really had it with UPS this year. More to come.  

I need some serious amounts of coffee today.  

Cheers,
Zack

PS - Thanks to Andrew & Rachel from Lacour for putting the above image on your blog so I could rip it off from you quicker than downloading my own photos.  :)   

Family news :: First of all, thank you everyone for your thoughts, prayers, and condolences during our time of loss in the past week.  I shared this with my mom and she was brought to tears by it. Thank you.  I’m back in Atlanta until Friday then we fly out to Dallas for Craig’s memorial service there.  Craig was born and raised in Dallas so there is a huge community of family and friends there waiting to pay their final respects and Meg and I are flying out to be with family there.

Speaking of family news. It is interesting to me to see a weird progress on my facebook wall.  Over the last 6 weeks it has tracked from friends and colleagues congratulating Meghan and I on our marriage to condolences for the passing of my step father to congratulations again for… a new baby on the way!  We didn’t waste anytime at all did we?  We just found out on Sunday.  I came home from shooting a wedding and she asked me to close my eyes and put out my hands. She placed that EPT stick in my hands and “Surprise!”

Meg’s sense of smell went up about 100 notches this weekend along with other first tell tell signs of pregnancy.  So she, ya know, peed on a stick and without question, she is baby positive!  The cycle of life continues on.

DVD news :: We FINALLY have tracking numbers for our next round of supplies.  We’ve been waiting and waiting for this next round to get out the door.  If you have been waiting since the 23rd, they start shipping out tomorrow.  Thank you for your patience.  Trust me, we are as anxious to ship as you are to receive! We air shipped enough supplies to get all orders placed to date ready to ship out this week plus another 100 or so after that.  The back-end of the shipment will be in by the 14th and I figure we will have enough to last awhile.  The rest of it is coming via the pony express or something evidently.

Studio news :: I’ve never been happy with this studio space right now.  If you have followed my white seamless tutorial you’ll know that I’m in a pretty cramped space.  The leasing company that owns my current spot just had an opening at another property a little closer to downtown.  It isn’t much more square footage than what I have now but it is an open floor plan instead of a two story like I have now.  It also has much taller ceilings!  Tall enough AND wide enough to build a cyc wall!  If I can move my lease to that spot then we are building a cyc!  I’ll document the process here on the blog so you can see what goes into that process.I’m off to meet with my friend Scott to get a bid on the cyc wall.  Thank God this space is owned by the same folks I rent from now so I can just move my lease without paying deposits and all that jazz. Otherwise a move would not be in the tea leaves right now.

BTW - The image above is a shot I’m on the fence about from my shoot with Jay Clifford last week.  Jay, as some of you indie darlings may remember, was the front man for Jump Little Children.  He’s doing well with his solo career now.  What do ya’ll think of the image?  Like it?  Love it?  Hate it?  I feel all those things about it right now.  Then again, I am an artist.  :)

Thanks again everyone for all of your support and encouragement.

Cheers,
Zack   

It is with heavy heart that I have to report that we lost my step father this morning. Craig had been suffering from ALS over the past year and a half. It is a nasty disease that leaves your mind but takes your body. I haven’t lost a lot of close people in my life. My grandfather was the closest person I have ever lost and I regret so much that I never made a portrait of him. I just have these grainy disc camera photos of him to remember him by. Nothing that really says who he was or what he was about.

When I was working at Kinko’s I nearly lost my job twice. Both times for the same reason; enlarging prints for someone’s funeral. I would meet a customer at the counter and with red puffy eyes they would slide a dog eared, scratched 4×6 print across the counter. This person in the photo had just passed away and they wanted a 16×20 made to place by the casket. It wasa always some horrible photo. Never a great portrait. There would be a laundry basket in the corner. The drapes on the windows were stained. Reflections in glasses. Scratches on the print. I would take the job, put everything on hold and start to work on the scan in PhotoShop. This is a soul’s last known image on earth. They deserve better than this. My manager didn’t think this way. Scan and print. That’s it. I revolted and continued working on images for funerals. She wasn’t cold hearted enough to actually fire me for the few hours I would spend on those images but she wasn’t at all happy with me either.

That planted a philosophy I have on every single photoshoot. “I’m shooting for this person’s funeral.” I better make images that people will want to see and remember this person by. Something that shows who they were and what they did and how they were living their life pursuing a dream. I’ve made as many visits as I could over the last year to my Mom and Craig. They live in Elkin, NC. I knew this year I had to get Craig to sit for me. I had to photograph him before I lost him. Craig was a retired homebuilder and was now preaching at a church near Elkin. He was born and raised in Dallas, TX but moved with my Mom to Elkin for a slower change of pace and to be near my Mom’s family there. He loved the community and the church he landed in had him start preaching because they were in need of a new preacher. That dying little church began to thrive.

Knowing that things would escalate quickly I had prints made and shipping arrangement taken care of well in advance. Also knowing how many people loved Craig in his community, I had dozens of 8×10 prints made of this for folks to keep.

On my last trip up there a month or so ago I photographed Craig watching the kids play in the backyard. Goodbye Craig. My gosh we are going to miss you. You’re home now though. Finally in a place bigger than your home country of Texas. Are you photographing those you love? I’m not. Not like I should be. I have a big long list of people to get started on. You always think you have time. Sometimes you do. Most of the time you don’t. Had I not known that we would be losing Craig this year, I probably would have never gotten around to making the images above. Sad isn’t it? Me. A photographer who can’t turn a camera on to his own family. There’s your challenge for the week. Family portrait time this week.

Cheers,
Zack

PS - Needless to say I am leaving the studio for the next 3 or 4 days. All normal business will proceed later this week or the start of next week. If you ordered your DVD last week before it sold out, it will be out the door by tonight if it hasn’t already gone out the door this weekend.