As many of you know we are out in Vegas at WPPI, so with all the hustle and bustle of this crazy event we are taking this week off from Tips and Tricks and think this is the perfect chance for those of you reading to check into some of the archives of our over 2 years of posts!

Click HERE to see all the past posts and pull out and go over a few of the ones that catch your eye. Remember, next week the tips only go out to our newsletter subscribers, so be sure to sign up HERE if you want in on the goodness! The newsletter is free and has tons of extra content just for you! It only goes out once a month.

See you all soon!!

So below is where you can connect with us and hear different talks and things that we are going to be a part of!

Sunday Morning the 19th at 9am – WPPI Platform Class! “Engaging with the Engaged”

This is a 2 hour talk on how we have built our business grassroots style with clients being our biggest source of referral! You can PRE-BOARD HERE to be sure that you can get in by clicking “ADD TO PLANNER!”.

We have heard, but are not sure, that the pre-board for this this class may be full, so get in now if it isn’t! If you can’t pre-board, make sure that you show up for the class, then once all the pre-boarded peeps get in, if there is room left, you can then get in too! :) Be sure to check your schedule to know exactly where the class will be held.

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Sunday from 2 to 6pm - Get Engaged in Vegas with Zach & Jody – Workshop (sold-out)

For those of you that made it into this workshop, we have sent you the details and can’t wait to hang in our suite with you and shoot an amazingly hot couple on the streets of Vegas!

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Monday & Tuesday at 1pm – Top Barista Training – Zach Gray from Cafe-Z and many others!

I (Zach) as many of you know, LOVE espresso, so me and the awesome team at Showit United are putting on a few coffee-making workshops for those of you who love the brew! I am teaching two classes on how to create the perfect espresso and how to micro-foam milk so it looks like glass and tastes like heaven!

These classes are open to anyone (even though the entire Showit United conference is completely sold-out!) and will be held in the Signature hotel that is attached to the MGM Grand in Tower 3.  Click HERE then click on the coffee icon for more info!

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Monday 4pm - Showit United Panel Discussion – Creating New Clients

Jody and I will be sitting in on a Q and A panel exclusively for Showiteers (those who use Showit) answering questions on how to Create New Clients at the Signature hotel attached to the MGM! This class is completely sold-out, but for those of you who have a spot, be there early to get good seats!!

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Monday 7pm – 10pm – UNITE – A Time for Christian Photographers To Connect & Encourage – Signature at the MGM, Tower 2

This is now the 3rd year of UNITE at WPPI and last year it was standing room only (over 200 photographers!). This event is open to anyone and everyone.

If you are a Christian photographers or interested in talking more about what that means, then this is the place to be! It is about 3 hours long and there will be some discussion from some leaders in the industry, a time of singing songs (like you would at church) and a time to connect with other photographers in your area that want to run their businesses with integrity, honesty and figure out what God is calling them to do in this industry. It will be amazing!!

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Monday 8:30pm - creativeLIVE Meet-UP!

For those of you that saw us on creativeLIVE and love that platform, the team at CL is having a meet-up with some of their course presenters and YOU! If you want to come and hang with us and other creativeLIVE presenters, then this is the place to be!!

The location of the meet-up will be announced on Twitter by @creativeLIVE on SUNDAY the 19th, so be sure to check Twitter and make sure that you are following them! We will also tweet about it, but news will first come from them!

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Tuesday 11am – Westcott Booth Lighting Talk – TradeShow Floor Booth 1709 – Marquee Ballroom

We are doing a lighting demo at the Westcott Booth on the tradeshow floor from 11am to 11:45 and this is open to anyone! Want to learn some of our lighting techniques first hand by the company that we use to light our clients?? Then this is the place that you want to be!! Come and check it out!

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Wednesday 1pm – ShowitUnited Meet-up – Private Q & A

Is it just us, or is Showit United the place to be this year?? :) For those of you that have seats we are excited to hang! We are doing a private Q and A with us and you (15 photographers) for an hour at the Signature hotel. This event is also completely sold-out!

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Wednesday 2pm – 2:45pm – Showit United Conference Room B – 3 Steps to Bigger Sales

Jody and I are giving a talk on sales for Showit United, again, exclusively for Showiteers (those who use Showit), so if you have a ticket, be there early to get a good seat! This event is also sold-out.

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WPPI Survival  Guide!!!

New to WPPI or not sure what to do, bring and go to? Check out Karen Stott’s blog post HERE to get your ducks in a row!!  Definitely a must-read!

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Those are all of the official events that we are doing and we will be walking to and from various places and know that we will see and bump into many of you! See you all in Vegas!!!!

Check out the hotness of our bride with these images shot at her private home in TN!

Taylor’s mother was dying to get some shots of her in the snow, and sure enough, we got some just as we started to shoot!!

This last one was printed on a stand-out and shown at the wedding which was really fun! In TN, having images like this before the wedding to show at the wedding is a big deal. We were so pleased with how amazing Taylor looked and can’t wait to share the wedding!

Today, we are breaking down an image from our January wedding we shot of the amazing Taylor and Matthew. These two were a JOY to work with and we got to shoot so many awesome portraits of the two of them! We are going to break down one of the more difficult scenarios that we had to deal with, and show you exactly what we did to make sure the final result was something our couple would want to hang on their wall.

After we had shot their portraits and after the wedding ceremony was over, Matthew and Taylor wanted a few shots in one of their favorite spots in town, the Nashville walking bridge. This location was tough to shoot at because it was freezing cold (24 degrees out!), has cool light on the bridge, but no lights on our couple, AND had the potential to look less than dramatic if not shot right. So we made sure to bring our Elinchrom Quadra lighting rig (our gear list can be downloaded HERE) with our new Elinchrom Deep Octa 39 to rock this out!

This is the before..

Here, in this natural lit photo above, you can see just how awful the existing light was. The lighting is flat, has no (good) contrast on it, and their eyes are dark from the direction of the light. This image was also shot at ISO 6400 at 1/60th of second, and the noise is getting pretty bad. The color tone of these lights cast a purple hue, and the light on their faces is not super flattering or awesome looking! But, the great thing about bringing your own light, is you can add it anywhere that you want to make it look awesome!

The other problem that we ran into, was as we rushed out to get set-up so the bride would not freeze, we forgot our light meter! Without the light meter, we have no way to tell how bright our strobe is, so we had to improvise and make it happen on the spot!

Here is how we did it.

We positioned our light to camera right about 30 degrees which gave us a really nice highlight and shadow on each side of our clients faces. Any further than 30 degrees or so, and we would run the risk of having a shadow cast from the bride’s face onto the groom’s face, which is not pleasant. So when doing your own shoots, watch when you have the light off to one side with two people so that the light does not cast a nasty shadow on the person further away from the light.

Since I did not have a light meter, what I did was use the in-camera meter as a starting point and set my ISO, F-Stop and shutter speed so that if I took an image, everything in the background of my subject would be exactly one stop under-exposed (or a little bit too dark) by having my in-camera meter read minus 1.  We set our camera like this because ultimately we want the background a bit darker than our subject once we have the strobe on. In this particular case, with this very low light situation, that reading (the background being one stop under-exposed) came out to be:

ISO 400

f/1.8

1/100th of a second

When I took an image at these settings, the background lights were all visible, but not overly bright. Perfect! I also checked my histogram after determining my under-exposure of the background lights, and the histogram confirmed that everything was a little too dark. It looked like this (the dark side of the histogram on Canon is to the left).

So you can see that by using the in-camera meter to start, then checking it on the histogram, we get the result we want which is simply a background that is slightly too dark.

Now, all we have to do is fill in the gap with the strobe! We need the strobe to fire at the same brightness as our under-exposed background which would give a perfect exposure on our subjects. If we had the light meter, all we would need to do is power the light up or down until the meter read what our camera reads (ISO 400, f/1.8 at 1/100th of a second). But since we did not have the light meter, and the in-camera meter can’t read manual flash, the only thing left to do was use the histogram as our guide.

So, we powered the strobe down very low (to about 15 watt seconds) since the ambient light was very low, and simply took a shot, then checked to see if the histogram went up or stayed the same. If it had stayed the same, we would know that the flash is not bright enough to make the correct exposure, then we would simply power the strobe up. If we took the shot, checked the histogram and the histogram looked like this:

We would immediately know that the flash was too bright. As long as the ambient light has not changed and the only thing we are adding is the flash, we know that the flash (and what it is hitting) is what is changing the histogram and in this case, there is too much flash and the subject will be over-exposed. So we can then power the strobe down until the histogram just barely hits the side wall of over-exposure (on Canon, this is the right wall) and then we have a perfectly exposed shot.

So we then powered the strobe down slightly until the histogram looked like the one above. This histogram is just to the edge of the right side (on Canon, that is the bright side) which means our flash is lighting up our subject and they are just to the edge of being over-exposed, but are perfectly lit the way we want. Bam! We are ready to shoot away!!

Final image shot at ISO 400, f/1.8, 1/100th of a second. Minor editing of the RAW image in Lightroom 3 (turned back into a JPG).

That is how we did this shot with no light meter on the fly! Set up time was maybe 30 seconds! :)

Ready to come out with us and do this on-location with real models and learn how to master this system yourself?? Click HERE to sign up for our IN-CAMERA workshops spring tour!

Happy shooting!

It’s crazy to think that THIS Saturday we fly out for WPPI 2012!  For those not familiar with WPPI, it’s only the biggest wedding and portrait photographer convention in the US (if not the world…)!

We love going every year! Seeing friends, meeting new people, having fun, gaining knowledge – it’s just awesome :)

Last year we were invited to lead a Masterclass, and this year we are doing a Platform class!  Platform classes are open to all and it will be the same format like in the image below from our talk at New Orleans at the PPA convention.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
Sunday morning, 9AM is our platform class
(Yes, this is in the morning.  Sunday morning classes are new this year).

Title:
Engaging with the Engaged: Growing your business cost-free

It’s going to be a blast and we cannot wait to meet you all!

Classes are filling up so  make sure to add our class to your planner!

It gets even better because we use some AMAZING companies that we use and not only will we be giving away some goodies in our Platform class, but we are giving away some awesomeness THIS WEEK!

YOU CAN WIN:

#1: An Expo Disc by Expo Imaging (This will change your shooting & editing life forever! Read our blog post HERE about it)

#2: An 8 gig memory Vault

(A cool way to deliver your clients their images – tested to support data retention for up to 100 YEARS! Comes with custom cases and engraving)

How to Win:

Tweet the following message (maximum entry – 1 time per day)

Text for you to copy:
Don’t miss @ZachandJody’s Sunday 9:00am platform class at #WPPI! Pre-board & tweet to win free stuff! More info: http://tinyurl.com/88ean2b

Prize Redemption:
Winners will be contacted Friday, Feb 17th via a Twitter DM, and it will be the responsibility of the winners to respond back with their mailing address within 24 hours or new winners will be chosen.

Restrictions:
Prize cannot be redeemed for cash.

Happy tweeting and see you all THIS SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This cracked us up – enjoy!

Registration is LIVE for our 2012 IN-CAMERA Spring Workshop Tour!http://www.zachandjody.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=14746&action=edit

REGISTER HERE!

Newsletter Subscribers got first dibs on the seats for 24 hours, and now those not subscribed are able to sign up!  It’s been 24 hours and some cities are close to a sell out.  Don’t miss the chance to have your business forever changed!

PHOENIX, AZ
Shooting & Post – 5 seats remaining
Light - 5 seats remaining

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NASHVILLE, TN
Shooting & Post -SOLD OUT
Light - SOLD OUT

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SEATTLE, WA
Shooting & Post – 6 seats available
Light – 8 seats available

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CHARLOTTE, NC
Shooting & Post – SOLD OUT
Light - SOLD OUT

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ATLANTA, GA
Shooting & Post – seats available
Light – seats available

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DESTIN, FL
Shooting & Post – 5 seats remaining
Light – 3 seats remaining

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VANCOUVER, CANADA
Shooting & Post – seats available
Light – seats available

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NEW YORK, NY
Shooting & Post – 8 seats remaining
Light - SOLD OUT

On creativeLIVE you saw us using reflectors (and yes, if you missed it, you are able to purchase all three days for $149. This is an absolute STEAL and your purchase helps supports creativeLIVE and enables them to keep bringing out amazing photographers for you to learn from for FREE when watching live), so in this month’s newsletter we share with you a video on the ins-and-outs of reflector usage :)

Only those who are subscribed to our photography newsletter get to register FIRST.  They have 24 hours before registration opens on Wednesday to the public.

Make sure you’re signed up!

We are coming to:

PHOENIX, AZ

NASHVILLE, TN

SEATTLE, WA

CHARLOTTE, NC

ATLANTA, GA

DESTIN, FL

VANCOUVER, CANADA

NEW YORK, NY

It’s great to learn and better your photography, hang out and meet new photographers, but what if we told you that by attending our workshops YOU could actually make a difference in someone else’s life?

For those of you who may not be aware, since 2011 we have partnered our workshops with  Thirst Relief International.

Thirst Relief was started by a photographer, Jim Davis Hicks, who simply has a passion to help those that need help the most. Those who don’t have something as simple as clean water. One of the biggest causes of disease and death in third world countries, especially among children, is water-born illness. Children in these countries drink unclean water, get sick, and their fragile bodies can’t fight it off. Jim Davis realized that he could do something about this problem by bringing in sand filters that are easy to maintain by the locals and easy to use, and thus was born Thirst Relief. Every filter can last for up to 25 years and can help a community live longer lives by having clean water to drink, and they have now helped thousands around the world fix this problem! How cool is that?!

As we have been out speaking and meeting so many amazing photographers around the country, we have been asking the question, “do you want your life to be about something bigger than yourself?” And we have heard a resounding YES; all of us do!! We want our lives to impact others and help others. Nothing in life is more fulfilling than when you take your resources and help those that can’t help themselves. That can be anything from an encouraging word, loving someone who is hard to love, helping someone get treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, or simply giving a cup of clean water to a dying child. So, we ask you again. Do you want your life to be about something bigger than yourself? It can be!

One way that we are getting involved is through a brand new initiative from Thirst Relief called PLUS ONE.

Here is how it works. We have opened up one extra seat in all of our workshops that are the PLUS ONE Seats. If we sell all 16 seats for the workshop, then that final 16th seat is donated directly to Thirst Relief! It takes exactly $5 to give one person clean water for 25 years, and every time we sell that PLUS ONE seat we give $600 directly to Thirst Relief which in turn can help 120 children get the clean water they need! So, no matter what seat you may buy to one of our workshops, you are getting us closer to the goal of helping someone else!

This workshop tour has the potential to give almost TWO THOUSAND people (1,917 to be exact :) clean water for LIFE!  Be a part of the change that you want to see in the world!

Our time in Seattle has been absolutely AMAZING!  After creativeLIVE concluding on Sunday, we, our in-studio audience, and a few of the amazing creativeLIVE crew (Kenna, Kate, & Stephen) took us to the very first Starbucks!!

(Thanks to one of our in-studio students, Valentina for some of the images!)

Watch a little video we recorded inside :)

Behind-the-scenes to the video making :) ha ha

We got our mug!

Having fun in the store :)  Here is the fabulous Kenna from creativeLIVE.

Us with our fab creativeLIVE in-studio audience. Thanks to Kenna for capturing the below images!

(Samantha, Z, J, Valentina, Janelle, and Kris)

Yay for happy times in Seattle!!!!