CreativeLive Free Workshops

A Learning Experience

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CreativeLive Free Workshops

Did you know that there is a place you can go and attend quality workshops by world famous people without leaving your house and for free?

I listen to a lot of Netcasts (aka Podcasts) and on of of them they were interviewing famous photographer Chase Jarvise (www.chasejarvis.com).  

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Chase Jarvice

Besides the topic of conversation, Chase mentioned at the closing of the Netcast, that he had a new “project” that he was working on, one that would allow people to learn from top notch professionals, on-line and for free.  Both of those terms caught my attention.  Chase (I hope he is OK with me referring to him by his first name, I have never had the pleasure of meeting him)  continued to describe the concept of the “project” and the more he spoke about it the more I was intrigued. I had to rewind the audio several times to get the URL of the website of the project, but finally got it, it was www.CreativeLive.com

I typed in the URL for CreativeLive and on the home page was an advertisement of the next upcoming workshop.  The workshop was on Wedding photography and the guest presenter would be Jasmine Starr (www.jasminestarblog.com) who, because of this very same workshop, is one of Dawn & my favorite photographers.  

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Now, CreativeLive was not just going to offer a workshop on how to  photograph a wedding, they were actually going to put on a wedding...a real wedding!  They asked for, and got, a local couple (Laura and Billy Marchbanks, www.lauramarchbanks.com) that wanted their wedding photographed for free by a world famous photographer (did they think that was going to be difficult?); Found a venue (www.theochocolate.com) to hold both the wedding and reception in; Found a wedding planner (Daniela, www.bellasignaturedesign.com) to arrange the details and of course found the photographer Jasmine Star (www.jasminestarblog.com).  

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Jasmine Star

The live workshop was a five day workshop and I loved every minute of it.  Dawn and I have watched every photography related workshop that CreativeLive has put on since, so when one on posing and lighting came up on the schedule I signed us up for it.  The photographer running the workshop was the one-and-only Bambi Cantrell (www.cantrellportrait.com) one of the top wedding photographers in the business along with Jasmine (as with Chase, I hope she is OK with me using first names).

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Bambi Cantrell

When we watched the first live workshop we watched it on my laptop screen.  Now, it is a 17” 

screen, but it really isn't made for two to watch for five days.  To help make our viewing experience more pleasurable for this workshop, I bought a DVI to HDMI cable so that I could hook up my laptop to our 48” LCD panel up on the wall.  I highly recommend that!  Dawn and I sat in comfort watching the workshop from 1pm to 8pm Friday through Sunday.  

The way CreativeLive works their program is that you can watch them for free as they are happening in real time, then you can purchase them for about $100-$150 per workshop.  We actually had a family and senior photo shoot to do Saturday morning and did not make it back in time to catch the start of the program.  We missed the first two hours, but after the end of the live show, CreativeLive starts what they call a “re-watch”  where they replay the previous episode, so we were able to watch the first two hours that we missed.  That is a very nice feature.

We watched the live show and took a lot of notes because there was a lot of good material covered in this workshop, just as there was in Jasmine’s workshop.  As Bambi (ditto on the first name thing) would cover a topic, Dawn and I would practice what she had just mentioned, many times with one of us pretending  to be the model and the other the camera. “The light source needs to be 45 degrees from the camera” Bambi would say, and we would practice where the light should be on ourselves.

Dawn & I would have loved to have meet Chase, Jasmine and Bambi, but we could not make it out to Seattle, WA where they produce the workshops.  But you could have and can attend the workshops in person as CreativeLive always asks for participants.  Generally all you have to do is submit a short video.

Bambi, and the staff of CreativeLive did a wonderful job in presenting a workshop with high quality and value.  I recommend to all photographers; experienced or not, to check out their upcoming schedule and attend the very next workshop, you will be very happy that you did.