Whew! What a week it was last week… Last Wednesday, I brought pal and photog instructor guru Zack Arias into my studio for another episiode of chasejarvisLIVE. We chatted photography for 2 hours and took questions from the live Twitter audience via #cjlive. Was a blast. While about 20,000 of you caught the interview LIVE–it seemed like I got at least that many tweets/emails/fbook requests to post it again here on the blog, so… As you wish. Here ’tis.
From there, we shipped Zack and his crew into our creativeLIVE studio where he put on one heckuva studio lighting course all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully you saw the interwebs booming, especially with the @creativeLIVE and #askzack tags. I’m pretty sure Zack swiped some ratings from the World Cup. Or at least we had fun trying. I wanted to give a huge shoutout to Zack and his team for an amazing effort. You guys and gals nailed it. Also a shoutout also to all the manufacturers that kicked in gear for Zack to give away, as well as uber thanks to B&H Photo Video for their support of the creativeLIVE studio and G-Technology for keeping our gobs and gobs of data safe. They support us, please support them. I hope lots of you tuned in. And if you didn’t but wished you had, the course is available for download here.
While I’ve got you, I wanted to ask for your feedback. Not somebody else’s…YOURS. In the comments below, we’re looking to find out a few things with the goal of making creativeLIVE the best it can be. Tell us whatever you want, but please help us by answering some or all of the following particulars about our LIVE, free, worldwide creative education platform:
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
2. Where do you live? We want to understand the breadth of our audience with the comments on this post. Where are you from, and when are you watching the LIVE feed?
3. Does this live worldwide format really work? This is the important part. What does the experience feel like to you? Can you help describe this format to someone who’s never seen it?
Thanks for taking the time! If you’re new here, I invite you to subscribe/follow via links above and to the right. Lots more stuff heading your way soon on all our channels…
I live near Syracuse, NY in the Eastern time zone of the US.
I like the format…there has been some expected growing pains as everyone gets used to the new-ness of it all.
What I don’t like is sessions starting at 2 in the afternoon, ET. I know you are working with a world clock and availability of the presenters but I would like to see the first session get another free play for a 24 hour period before the next session so more people (like me) can see if the session is of enough interest to purchase it.
The Aperture 3 class started at 6pm ET so, even though I knew I’d miss the last one because of travel, by that time I knew I’d want to purchase it.
Zack’s was the first class that I have been able to watch most of the time (I had to take time off of work to do it and it was worth every minute.) The concept is amazing and the raw video download quality is phenomenal.
I think that the concept is brilliant, but can crash and burn with the energy of the instructor; I tuned out to a couple of the courses because it was kind of flat. I look forward to more classes and pimp creativelive.com whenever I can to everyone. This can only get better with time. Cheers to the geniuses behind it.
I’ve watched Art Wolfe and Zack Arias so far. I didn’t watch Vincent Laforet because I didn’t have a camera that did video at the time. Just got a 5DII, so I’ll be looking to purchase that course (after I get my 60″ umbrella from B&H through the affiliate link LOL).
1) The Zack Arias course was the single most practical photography educational experience I’ve ever had. I’ve read books and articles on lighting before, and have been fumbling along in TTL mode for a while, but there’s nothing like actually seeing someone demonstrate what’s being taught. A lot of what I had read about previously just kind of fell together in my head as I was watching Zack. Now, I get to go out an put it into practice.. Zack’s price for a 3-day workshop was mentioned once, and I really feel like he delivered that much value and more. The weekend long format is pretty intense, but I expect attending a weekend workshop in person would be even more intense, so that’s fine. I set aside that block of time just as I would have for an in-person workshop, made sure everybody in my circles knew I was attending a lighting workshop, and it worked out great.
2) Mid Ohio – Eastern time zone. The time frame happened to fit my schedule pretty well.
3) Love the worldwide format and the replay for people on the other side of the globe. The interaction with “The Internets” was great with the chat room and twitter. Top notch production all around – KUDOS to the production team and everybody else it took to pull this off.
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others?
I’ve had the pleasure of watching John Greengo, and most recently Zack Arias. While both classes were different, both were similar in some ways.
I would say – the entire creativelive process is different in the respect that it’s real. It’s real people teaching what they know, and doing it well. The live Q&A from twitter/chat is awesome.
Free is awesome. I realize that the classes can be purchased and downloaded, but at the point I’m at in my life, I can’t afford it. From what I’ve learned this weekend, however, SOME DAY (soon I hope,) I will put that valuable knowledge to use, and make money with it. I personally feel obligated to, some day, purchase Zack’s course as a thank you. I’ll also reference creativelive through B&H when purchasing future photography items.
2. Where do you live? We want to understand the breadth of our audience with the comments on this post. Where are you from, and when are you watching the LIVE feed?
I live in Spring Hill, Florida. I was watching the live feed when it aired live the first time. Zack is an amazing photographer, and I’ve been following him for months. I took time off of work to watch Friday afternoon, and set the time aside Saturday/Sunday to watch, glued to my computer the entire time.
3. Does this live worldwide format really work? This is the important part. What does the experience feel like to you? Can you help describe this format to someone who’s never seen it?
The experience – in the case of Zack – again, was “real.” It feels like I’m there. There were small problems from time to time with audio/video, etc., but I quite honestly didn’t care. I didn’t mind those minor issues in return for receiving such valuable information for free. The twitter chat was awesome – everyone seemed to use good netiquette. The free prizes were awesome, even though I tweeted and retweeted my ass off, but didn’t win anything. I wasn’t in it for the prizes, though – I was in it for the knowledge. I actaully, for a lack of better terms, felt “high” after watching such as amazing photographer let us view, first hand, his craft and learn such valuable information.
A sincere THANKS to all involved!
1. It’s live, thats the most important aspect for me. You can really feel the live spirit in courses. They are much more catching than thousand times edited tutorials on DVD or short crappy stuff on youtube
2. I live in Brno, Czech Republic ( It’s in the middle between West and East Europe). Times of courses aren’t always pleasant (like Aperture class starting at the Midnight), but Zack’s weekend class had good starting times, so I could have watched the first half live and the second half from replay.
3. It’s different! For me, it’s gorgeous use of modern technology, I can watch in real time class overseas and at the same time tweet about it. Complains can be made about audio quality or lagging video, but this is fine in comparison with amount of information and inspiration.
Thanks,
Jan Hrubý