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…
Hi,
1. This was my first workshop regarding photography, so I can’t really tell the difference between this one and others, but what I can say it’s that it exceeded all my expectations.
2. Constanta, Romania.
3. I saw only the 3th day, but it was more than ok. I haven’t slept for 3 days and I stood awake until 4 AM too see all. The fact that everything was happening live, all the talking, tehnical informations, different sets, answering live to online questions, underwater shooting, it was a great experience for me as a rookie photographer. Congratz to Zack and all the team, all the people that made this possible.
Q: Can you help describe this format to someone who’s never seen it?
A: Yes! I told my friends everything that happend in full details!
I can’t remember exactly how I learned about the very first class offered by (then) CreativeTech, but I was very impressed with the way in which the classes were presented. Several classes later (John Greengo’s was the most recent one) I was very impressed with the amount of information Zack presented over the 3-day course. He (like John Greengo) is an excellent instructor!
1. What makes the approach so effective is that I was able to view the classes live in the Central Time Zone at a reasonable hour and in the comfort of my home. The soccer matches were relegated to the DVR. Additionally, the Chat feature makes it possible for many pressing questions to be answered by the instructor during the class. The staff did an excellent job with the technical issues that made me feel like I was sitting right there with Zack. John Greengo deserves a new nickname, “Mr. Steadycam”, as his video work was excellent, particularly because he was hand-holding all his shots. He also gave us views that those in class probably couldn’t see as well. One very effective tool was that of Zack being able to shoot tethered to the computer so that we could see results and comparisons very quickly. I also appreciated Zack posting his gear lists and many photos from the class on his blog. I had not heard of Zack before the class and have found his website to be a wealth of information. Unfortunately I never was able to access the Chat function to ask a question but with so many participants, I realize that technical issued prevented that from happening for many folks.
2. I live in Montgomery, Alabama.
3. This Live worldwide format works well for me as I am retired and have a more flexible schedule than many of those who had to work. I am sure your retransmissions were greatly appreciated. In closing, it was a nice touch to see many of the staff who helped put on this and other CreativeLive course presentations. Perhaps in future courses, in addition to showing the names of the folks working that course, a photo of them could also be shown. I find it helpful to be able to put a face the the voice/name. Again, my sincere thanks to all those who worked such long hours this past weekend and to B&H and others for helping to sponsor the course. I look forward to future classes from the CreativeLive team.
1. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse? How does our class format compare to others? What you can get for free is amazing, however, being at home makes it tough to dedicate the time if you have family. With that said, you roped me into buying the Zack Arias seminar.
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? Ohio. I watched the second half of Friday first, then caught up on the replay. I was at work when it started. Saturday I watched most during replay, Sunday some live. Purchased it Sunday to see what I missed.
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 format for Zack’s was great. I would describe it as a live seminar in your living room. I asked a couple questions and received answers. It was like I was there.
First let me congratulate Zack, the crew, the models, and the participants on putting on a great class.
To Answer your questions:
1Q. What makes the creativeLIVE approach different, better, worse?
1A: The live streaming, multiple camera angles, and view of the computer screens made it as good as being there or better. My only complaint is that I would have rather that the crew keep the audio feed from the microphones going during the breaks instead of piping in the music. It would have felt more like I was there taking a break with everyone and hearing the tidbits of off-camera conversations.
2Q. Where do you live?
2A. South Florida. I watched mainly all day Saturday and part of Sunday.
3Q. 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?
3A. It works superbly! The experience was awesome. I could interact live if I wanted to yet I could still walk away and take care of other things without disrupting the class. It also saves a bunch on airfare and travel expenses if I would have taken the workshop in person.
Thanks Again Chase and company. I look forward to the next class (and hope that I’m not at work that day(s) ). BTW – Saturday live courses work well for my schedule. During the week is tough because I can’t watch it from work during the day.
GQ
I’ve watched 2.5 events now and bought two: Zarias and Fundamentals of Digital Lighting.
1. The only thing I have to compare it to is online training such as Lynda.com and Kelby Training. In my eyes Lynda.com is still the king. What do I like? Well, watching Zack work with the models was great. You can’t get that in a class. It made it feel like more of a workshop as compared to Fundamentals of DIgital Lighting (loved the animations) and Aperture which felt more like a classroom situation. What doesn’t seem to work – the inconsistencies in volume and the moving cameras (get them steady cams and rolling tripods) – not switching to a new camera when the active camera guy starts walking around. Also, I started watching my Fundamentals of Digital Photography today and the volume level from one download to the next (as well as the syncing of the audio to the video) varied wildly. These are things that Kelby Training and Lynda.com have gotten much better at resolving. So to me production has got to be nailed. Also, some of the topics in the Q&As can get the instructors really off track. John G was very good at putting questions off knowing he would answer them later. One thing that humored me with Zack is the questions flying through the forums – he would usually answer their questions BEFORE they got to the Q&A sessions.
2. Watching from Athens, GA, USA.
3. Don’t know if it works or not since I live in the states. I saw a lot of questions asking about gear in other countries (esp. alien bees).
4. I’ll add this: who would I like to see? Joe McNally doing a Nikon CLS class. I’ve watched everything he has put on Kelby Training – but I know that is highly edited. I’d love to see him do a live Nikon CLS workshop for a couple of days.
One more negative: please get a new system for picking prize winners. The one used for Zack stated that it only picks from 1500 retweets (not even original tweets), yet I’ve heard reports of up to 60,000 people being tuned in at any one time. But even with the 20+ thousand watching on the window I was on, picking from only 1500 is hardly right. That is like having a raffle and throwing out 93-97% of the tickets.
One more positive: what was the animation software used by John in Fundamentals of Digital Photography. His illustrations were the best!