OneLight Workshop in Seattle

On Saturday I attended the OneLight Workshop by Zack Arias. I’m sure most people are familiar with Zack by now so I won’t go into details of his past, how he got to where he is now or what he shoots on a day to day basis. All you need to know is that he’s a very talented photographer and photography teacher.

The night before the workshop there was a ‘mixer’ at Chase Jarvis‘ studio, yep…THE Chase Jarvis! Chase was there and he was a really nice guy, very open to answering questions or discussing his work. The photographs from the mixer are on Gabe & Boone’s blog Update (9th of October, 2009): They just added a video too!

The workshop started around 10:00am and kicked off with a good few hours of talk about equipment, exposure, the inverse square law (fairy dust I believe!), grown men that take photographs of squirrels in their parents garden, and a nice amount of info from Zack on his previous mistakes and what he’s learned from them.

Following this we did some headshots in the studio to reinforce the theory that we had just run through, I think this was an essential step for many and it really helped to set us up for the shots we were to take later in the day. One thing I took from this part (well, actually the whole workshop) was that the 43″ umbrella I bought is just a wee bit too small to give the really nice soft light I’m looking for, I’ll need to upgrade to the 60″ that Zack is such a big advocate of.

We then headed down to Gasworks Park in Seattle which is an amazing location with a great view out over the city. We stopped just outside the park gates and saw how easy it is to replicate the same sort of light over and over again, this part was an eye opener for me as I have generally struggled to produce consistent exposures over and over again. As you can see from the shot below we were using the 60″ umbrella, a piece of equipment that I rapidly grew to love.

Next up was a trip to the waterfront part of the park where we took shots with the ambient changing rapidly, I think this was the location I liked the most and it produced the shot that heads up this post. There were a lot of people in the park and they watched with interest/bemusement as our poor models stood freezing in the cold Seattle air.

We rounded off the evening with some more practical examples in the studio, another nice chat from Zack and a great Q&A session. Even when just watching Zack work I learned new stuff, I had a discussion about something similar to this with a surgeon at my work last week. We were discussing how sometimes he’ll just step back and watch the more senior surgeons work and even though he’s not doing anything he’s learning because these guys are just that good. That’s the exact scenario I was in watching Zack interact with the models, direct Erik with the light, adjust his settings etc. I could pick up little things here and there just from watching him, he’s that good!

The night ended around 00:30. At that point I was pretty tired but left happy and stuffed full of new knowledge and ideas.

The whole OneLight experience was a blast, I got to meet some great people and get a glimpse of a life I’d love to live. Unfortunately I have a day job, a boring day job, but it pays too well to just abandon it and head off down some other risky career path. That’s the part that sucks but I have no idea what to do. I can’t spend the rest of my days in a job I’m bored with just because it’s a risk, right? Right now I feel like the guy in the song “Clocked In” by the mighty Black Flag! I guess for now I’ll practice and practice (if anyone wants their photo taken for free) and try and work out some sort of plan.

There are two areas needing work though:
1) Zack, your choice of beer is terrible! Newcastle Brown Ale is the work of the Devil.
2) Lose the smokes, you’ll be thankful for it in years to come.

Finally, a big thanks to Zack, Erik, Ashley, Lorna, Meg, Kara, Sherri, Gabe, Boone, Chase, Norton and everyone else involved in this event or that I met. I had a great time and I can wholeheartedly recommend this workshop to anyone who wants to improve their skills.

If you were at the workshop (or even if you weren’t) please follow me on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Blog, Portraits and tagged with Chase Jarvis, One Light, Portrait, Seattle, Workshop, Zack Arias. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.