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…
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse?
creativeLIVE is the best thing that has come to the creative community. As a photographer that has decided to do personal work as much as possible and the paid work just to get funds for the personal work, I can’t think of anywhere else I could get this information.
2. Where do you live? I live in New Mexico. I grew up outside of a little hippie community called Placitas in the late 80’s. Both of my parents encouraged my and my brother and sister to explore and that is something I still do today. New Mexico has so much, from dried salt lakes to white sand deserts to 14,000 peaks and alpine lakes.
3. Does this live worldwide format really work? Yes, I love that when I wake up in the morning and my Google Reader account says that the 50+ photography blogs I follow have updates because they are from people ALL over the world. Now the data never sleeps, so my imagination does not have to!
I’ve seen three creativeLIVE courses so far (Art Wolfe, Vince LaForet, and Zack Arias). I purchased the HDDSLR videos (mostly to support creativeLIVE), immediately signed up for Art Wolfe’s seminar tour, and I’ll likely purchase Zack’s course when a bit more free cash comes in the door (I’m not a studio photographer, but again I want to support the team).
The ability to trade time for dollars is so important to so many. As I said, I’m not a studio photographer. Flash is something I use very infrequently. I tuned into Zack’s workshop mostly out of a general curiosity about that type of photography and because I like Zack’s approach in general. As some noted, it was like crack. I couldn’t stop watching. (I missed part of Day 2 because of commitments and ended staying up to 2am watching the replay until my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer…. the format, the high technical level, and the instructor made it more compelling than most training I’ve seen or been to.
Probably the best thing about these courses is that while a professional instructor brings a lot of depth of technical details, I’m also interested in the “meta” things around being a professional photographer. Flash/ambient ratios were important, but watching how someone interacts with models and subjects, hearing from the hair&makeup people, watching someone deal with situation in an unrehearsed way that models what a professional has to deal with in the real world — you just don’t get that with someone who has taught a workshop 20 times. (You get something different, and some people want THAT. I generally get that from books and websites.)
Continue bringing in top creative men and women, place them in slightly uncomfortable situations where they get to show off their skills, and you’ll continue to draw in tens of thousands of us.
I’m on the east coast, Massachusetts. I’ve watched live and I’ve taken advantage of the replay (at the expense of sleep).
I believe the live format really does work and demonstrates a cutting-edge way of getting high-quality information out using “off the shelf” technology. (OK, you guys are pushing the envelope in many ways, and “off the shelf” doesn’t equal “simple” — but I hope you get my point.)
I participated in the chat room for Vince’s workshop and exclusively used Twitter for Zack’s. I found the signal-to-noise ratio much higher in the Twitter feed.
Through the skilled moderation of your team, the good questions get through and, thankfully, nearly all of the inane/lazy questions either stay on the floor or are answered by others. It is imperative with an audience that large to have good filters in place so they aren’t wasting the instructor’s time and energy. (I felt this was done better with Zack’s course than Vincent’s, btw. You improved.)
That said, despite watching from my dark hole, the live multi-camera feed is almost as good as being there and I’m sure the edited versions are off the charts good. (If it streamed to my AppleTV I’d be in heaven… Some day. Some day.)
Thanks so much for the creativeLIVE concept and the delivery – both are inspired and inspiring. I will be doing what I can to support it in dollars and words.
– dave
First of all, I would like to thank All the guys from the CreativeLive who worked theit asses off in order to make 8 hours of live broadcast accross the Internet. That was a real pain, keeping the pace with the tweeter, chatroom as well as several camera channels, sound and stuff. Honestly, i don’t know how you pulled it off with such small amount of people.
Secondly, as i follow Zack for some time now, I must say that he is one of better performing teacher I know, and i’ve seen many on DVD and all arround the net. His way of thinking, sharing information and presenting it to the audience just keeps you glued to the screen and don’t lest go unitl it’s over.
The sudience sound could have been better. Guess it could have been much better with boom mic and not that on the floor stand, as audio eng. had hard time to cover the audience with sound rec. One to two booms and you could coer a whole studio.
Now off to the questions 🙂
1. Major issue where CreativeLive is different is that it’ LIVE! Having that in mind, it opens an array of creative opportunities for photographers to ask and get feedback in real time. That i haven’t heard nor watched before and it is great in every meaning of the word. You could ask a question in chatbox and few minutes/seconds later, there is Zack answering it. That is real difference and what will keep this kind of workshop waaay above all the rest DVD/Internet stream courses.
Being called creative Live, that means calling some creative photographers to do the talking and who would be better in that than Chase/Zack combo?
What could be better?
Some more studio technique like shooting tricky material (velvet, silk, stockings etc..), maybe splitting the work on basic/intermediate basis in order to make the audience more coherent and fosuced, with some that know the basics not boring themselves in the chatrooms.
Other than that, no problems for me!
2, I live in Belgrade, capitol of Serbia. Located in central europe and GMT+1 it was really hard to watch Art Wolfe @8am because sometimes i couldn’t watch it at work (yeah.. some of us still have their boring day jobs), but Zack times were fine and I could watch them online. Yes.. i was in pieces afterwards with almost no sleep at all but it was worth of it!
3. Live format with two way communication is next best thing to being there in person. Great help from the chat room stuff. If next courses are being scheduled to last more than 4 hours, I think it would be great to cut them in half as people would have to do much to free 8 hours of their time. Going on weekend helpped a lot but still it would be nice to give the audience time. The other problem is that it would last longer and it would be harder to produce and organize.. but hell… it is great either way, as long as it is free and that good!
Really really great job from all of You in CreativeLive!! I hope you would keep it that good in the future.
Cheers!!
Comment for Creative Live:
It’s one of the best tools that I have ever seen. I have been onboard with it since the launch. I haven’t seen every episode but I have caught most of the photography related ones. The Zack Arias 3 day event was AMAZING! It was so down to earth and gave the true perspective on many different scenarios. I learned soooo much. The only stupid thing, I did, was not buy the event at the discounted rate.
Looking forward to future events! Great work Creative Live!
1. First, I loved it. The amount of work and technical planning was amazing. Content was great. What I say below is intended as constructive criticism.
a. Scheduling/timing was hard. I never knew when a break was going to actually end or begin or sometimes what was going on if a break went longer. Sometimes it’d be a 10 minute break that went 20+ minutes. I don’t care, just keep me informed that’s what’s going on.
b. Not a dig at all, but Zack talked about how someone would tweet “we’re talking about _________” now so you could tune in for that part. That never happened.
2. Minneapolis, MN. I watched 90%. Between live AND the live replay I was able to catch almost all of it.
3. Format’s OK – just more info keeping the audience informed of what’s happening sometimes (see 1a). I was surprised at the level of audience involvement, I think the moderators did a good job.
The experience is much better than the traditional webinar, nothing beats the hands on being there seeing in person. (i.e. I’d like to have seen the wall jack set construction up closer)
Audio and video had pretty good quality too. N