OneLight - Photography Workshop 2 DVD Photography tricks [Zack Arias]

Link to site: https://williambeem.com/review-onelight-workshop-dvd/


At the end of yesterday's post, I told you that this is the DVD to buy if you could only afford to buy one. That's because this is the training material that I felt did the best job of presenting a complete guide to lighting and reinforced it with examples demonstrating the lessons. It was very well produced, well paced, clear in its purpose and teaches you how to think for yourself so you can solve lighting problems outside of the examples provided in the training.

That last line is what really matters to me. At the end of the training, can I come up with my own, original idea and know how to light the subject to capture the image I visualize without merely replicating a scenario that was presented in the training? That's the test. Anyone can take a great picture using the “monkey-see, monkey-do” approach. That's replication or mimicry. You know you've learned the material when you can use the knowledge presented to create your own, original pieces of work.

Setting the Tone
Zack starts off by setting expectations. He lets you know that there's going to be a lot of technical information (flash to subject distance, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash power) and it can initially seem intimidating. Then he tells you that this kind of thing needs to become second nature. You don't want to be “tweaking out” this stuff in your head while your subject (client) feels disconnected from you. Basically, he's telling you that you need confidence and experience in the technical aspects of lighting so you can spend more time paying attention to your subject. The information he provides over the course of two DVDs delivers that capability so you don't look like a fool in front of your client and you can earn their trust.

Once that introduction is over, he dives into the variables that affect your exposure, the kinds of indicators you should see to recognize a correct exposure. It can be a bit subjective, but he gives clear examples of skin tones, for instance, that are exposed correctly, over and under. The brochure inside the DVD case also provides examples of how changes in your exposure affect skin tone.

Perhaps most importantly, he stresses that everything being taught will be done in Manual Mode. You need to understand what is happening and why it's happening. By setting both Camera and Flash into Manual Mode, you control every aspect of your exposure. Automatic modes take control away from you and make decisions without letting you know why something changed. When you work with an evaluative system like TTL, minute an imperceptible changes may vary the amount of light delivered from the flash. You use Manual Mode so that you know that the amount of light being delivered is consistent from one shot to the next. If you're in control of your ISO, shutter speed, aperture, flash power and the relation of your flash to your subject, then you can expect consistent results.

What if those results are consistently bad? That's why you need to understand the relationship each of these elements has with the others, and how they effect your overall exposure. The meat of the lesson is how to see changes in your exposure by manipulating one or more of these variables. Zack's intent with this course is to show you how to think for yourself and manipulate these variables to get consistent and correct exposures.

The Lecture – Characteristics of Exposure


The Gear
Photographers love gear. Every course, every workshop, every session I've watched has had some segment on gear. The advantage of performing in Manual Mode is that you can use a variety of different types of gear. However, there are four elements you need:

1. A flash
2. A support (e.g., light stand)
3. A trigger (e.g., sync cable, Pocket Wizard)
4. A modifier (e.g., umbrella, soft box, reflector – something to shape the light)

It doesn't matter if you use a cheap flash you got on eBay or a studio strobe. You can use the elements he taught in the basic lecture to manually control the power of the flash. What you need from that point is a way to hold the light, trigger the light to fire, and modify the light. He discusses his thoughts on some specific brands of lights, pros and cons of different triggers, and how various light modifiers (e.g., reflector with grid, big softbox) modify the quality of light that falls on your subject. It's useful information, but you don't see much here in the way of examples. In the next segment, he starts shooting and you see how all of these elements come together during a session.

Live Shoot – Lessons in Practice
The rest of the first DVD gets divided into a couple of sessions – an indoor studio session where he covers examples of how to achieve a specific look by either changing exposure variables (e.g. darkening a background by use of shutter speed) or by using different light modifiers. Zack also gives his thoughts on how to work with models, composition and other aspects of photography. One of the interesting techniques I liked was when he placed a single bare-buld light behind his model and used the ceiling and walls to reflect light around. He mentions that he's a fan of having movement in his photos. After shooting a few frames to cover the basics, his gets his model to start moving around, whipping her hair and creates some very energetic images – all with one bare bulb standing behind her.

The benefit I got from watching the live shooting sessions was to see how you can use the lessons to add creative impact to your images. You can see how he sets up his shots and he consistently tells you what settings he's using. If he changes something, he mentions it and tells you why he's making a change. All of this adds reinforcement to the basic lessons provided in the lecture and you see the immediate results. The video post-processing team did an excellent job of showing the images as he clicks them, so you don't have to wonder what's happening on the shoot – you see every frame. If there's a problem, he discusses it and how he changes something to remedy the issue.

The second DVD gives you the same kind of insight, but with a slight difference. Instead of using a model he hired for training, you go along with Zack on live shoots with actual clients. As much as this is a learning device about lighting – because he still reinforces everything by telling you what settings and changes he uses – you also get to see his creativity in action. You see how he deals with his clients, changing locations, using resources he finds along the way.

At the end of the second DVD, he covers a bit about his post processing in LightRoom. It's not a LightRoom tutorial, but once again, it gives you insight to his vision and how he expects the resulting photo to look. For example, there are some shots he made where he knew he was looking at the result in Black & White. He goes into his thoughts about the elements that help him decide what to process.

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