Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
The annual Gulf Photo Plus Shootout never ceases to impress. If you aren’t familiar with past years’ format, “it pits two or three photographers against each other in a room full of photographers and they have to shoot, edit, retouch and present a photo within 20 minutes to a brief that is revealed at the event!”
This year, it was Zack Arias against Italian photographer Sara Lando. And, man, they were both great!
Photography Q&A: 100 Questions and Answers is a new book that is the product of Zack Arias’ Q&A tumblr, on which he has answered more than a thousand photography-related questions. The book culls down to more than 100 of the top questions he’s answered.
Photography Q&A: 100 Questions and Answers retails for $29.99; however, it is currently available for pre-order on Amazon for $16.80.
Zack Arias is known for his OneLight mantra and has been making waves for the past few years as a standout commercial and editorial photographer in Atlanta. Kai over at DigitalRev got him out in a Chinese back alley for a round of Pro Photographer Cheap Camera.
In this episode, Zack gets stuck with a full-auto Kodak C142 digital camera and a single speedlight. Then, he has to figure out how to make the two work together and turn out something respectable.
It’s worth a watch to see just how much Zack can pull out of a $79 camera and a single speedlight.
The above video is from Gulf Photo Plus 2011. In it, you’ll see JoeyL and Zack Arias going head-to-head in photo shootout, where each gets 20 minutes to photograph, edit and output an image of a subject they’ve never seen before. There’s also the nice bonus of Gregory Heisler dogging both contestants throughout their shoots.
Also check out Zack Arias’ post on his thought process during the shoot. Good stuff Zack.
[via Vimeo]
If you happened to catch the Zack Arias session on creativeLIVE last weekend, you saw that one of the things he did was shoot a live comparison of a number of light modifiers, ranging from a 7′ Octabank down to 10-degree grid.
Zack has posted all of those images over on his blog at zarias.com for everyone to check out. He’s even put them all together in a .zip file for you to download if you want to look at them on your own screen and compare different modifiers side-by-side.
If you want to learn off-camera lighting, Zack’s creativeLIVE session is a great way to jump in to it. It’s three days packed full of lighting knowledge with Zack’s practical approach. While it was free to watch the 3-day session live, you can download all three days for $129 and put them on your PC, iPhone, iPad, or whatever. I didn’t have the ability to sit through all three days of the sessions non-stop, so I stole it for $79 before the session ended (Lord knows I could use some help with my off-camera lighting). At $129, this is still an absurd bargain.
You can order Zack’s creativeLIVE session here.
And, again, the light modifier images are on Zack’s blog here.
And just so you know, I’m not pimping this class because I get anything out of it. I get nothing, and neither Zack, nor anyone else from creativeLIVE asked me to say anything about it. I just want to make sure that anyone who reads Photography Bay and struggles with off-camera lighting is aware of this.
As you may have heard by now, Photoshop World 2010 in Orlando was stellar. While Photoshop World leans very heavy toward post-processing and all the goodness that Photoshop lets us do, there is also a healthy serving of photography mixed in. Lighting, in particular, was a huge theme in this year’s photography sessions. If you are passionate about photography (or post-processing) and have never been to a Photoshop World, you owe it to yourself to attend one soon.
Unfortunately, I cannot convey in words just how much fun Scott Kelby and the rest of the NAPP gang manage to stuff into a few days. Instead, I’ll just share the 10 (totally subjective) best things about Photoshop World 2010 and leave it to you to make it to the next one and experience it for yourself. [Read more…]
Some of the most compelling words I’ve heard spoken by a photographer.
This is worth your time.
More of Zack at ZackArias.com.