Over the past few months, I have been promoting a photography tutorial series that I have been putting together with the help of RGG EDU. We filmed the tutorial series in June, which highlighted 4 different photoshoots, and was filmed over the course of 7 days. With a heavy heart, I must announce that the production of this tutorial series has been halted indefinitely.
Why Was It Put On Hold?
When announcing this tutorial, I had one goal in mind for the tutorial series. I agreed to do such tutorial series, under the condition that it was the absolute best and most comprehensive tutorial series available for photographers who are interested in increasing their skill using lights on location. The reason for the stopping of production is just that – quality.
Over the course of the 4 photoshoots, we captured some amazing footage, and some amazing photos. I hope you’ll eventually see both of those at some point, but I feel it lost sight of it’s primary focus, which was education. I’m not interested in producing a 10 hour video series that does nothing that promote myself and the brands I use. My purpose is to educate people on off-camera lighting, and drastically improving their skills as photographers as a result. Sadly, that focus was lost by both myself and the production team.
The tutorial series we’ve been working on is massive in size. With over 80 hours of footage taken over the course of a week, we got some insane stuff to work with. We were incredibly ambitious with the project, which was overly ambitious at times. I also think that in our excitement of locations, and talent and everything in between, of the education aspect of it suffered. As said once, and now said again – I’m not interested in making a fluff piece to only further my career as a photographer and educator. I’m here to educate, plain and simple. RGG EDU is in agreement with this decision, as they share the same vision – to provide exceptional education within photography.
So What Does This All Mean?
Well does this mean that I’m not making a photography tutorial series? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I’m taking this footage, watching it closely, and finding what I can do differently to make the best tutorial series available – as I originally promised. My sights are focused on creating a higher standard of education for photographers, and while I’ve managed to do that with the workshops I’ve taught over the last year, I still have work to do on the video side of things. So this isn’t an announcement of cancellation, it’s an announcement of extended deadlines, and with extended vision.
The Future Plans
Some time ago, I started teaching workshops and giving lectures and found not only a lot of success, but a lot of fun from all of it. So my plans? Keep having fun with this. And I’m doing that in a few different ways.
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Workshops
Perhaps the most obvious conclusion I’ve made following this decision is to do more workshops than ever. My workshops have been highly reviewed, and a massive resource for the photographers who have been able to attend them. These incredible reviews and critiques has gotten me some sponsors for the workshops such as LensRentals, Phase One, and many more. These photography workshops have been exceptional, and my goal over the next 6 months to is make them even better & more accessible to everyone.[/column]
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Tutorial Series
I’m still very passionate about creating a tutorial series or series of videos for people to watch and learn from. This one we were producing, is likely to simply be cut up into some amazing behind the scenes videos, but I still want to build something bigger. So I’m punching the numbers to put together my own self-financed photography tutorials, and hoping to get started on that sometime in the next year. Fear not, I’m going to make an education resource available for everyone soon.[/column]
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Print Education
As always, I’m also going to focus on my writing even more so than before. As many people know, I’m a writer and editor for Fstoppers, and I will continue to churn out content for them on a regular basis. I also recently accepted a job for Photofocus, to help contribute by putting out original content to help photographers by sharing my own personal experiences. And yes, I’m still posting articles to local publication Pyragraph, as well as retouching giant Retouching Academy.[/column]
Make no mistake, I am absolutely heartbroken to announce this news. However, I hope to learn from this series of events, and build something even bigger and better than even imagined before. So this is a hiccup, and something amazing is going to come out of all of this. I just ask for your patience, while I turn a few lemons into lemonade.
