The Art of Photography Meetup and Behind-the-Scenes Filming

I'm excited to announce that I'll be attending The Art of Photography Meetup on Sunday, July 7th, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at B&H. It's going to be a fantastic opportunity for me to meet with fellow photography enthusiasts and share some behind-the-scenes footage from my upcoming episode. I'd love for you guys to come along and join in on the fun. We'll likely hang out, grab some food, and maybe even take a stroll through Central Park or do something else that sounds like it would be a great way to spend an afternoon.

In preparation for this event, I've been busy packing up my camera gear, including two Sony Nex cameras - a 5 and a 7. While these cameras are compact and easy to use, they do have one major drawback: their CMOS sensors can overheat after about 6-7 minutes of filming. This means that if I'm shooting an interview for too long, the camera may shut down due to overheating issues. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is something to keep in mind when planning my shoots.

I've also brought along some additional audio equipment, including two Lavalier microphones and a small recorder. These will allow me to capture high-quality audio for both the interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. I've got enough CF cards and SD cards to handle everything on this shoot, so I'm feeling pretty confident about how things are going to go.

I've been using these Sony Nex cameras in my previous episodes, and I have to say, they're fantastic little cameras. The image quality is excellent, and they're just so compact and easy to use. If only they were all the same size and design, it would make filming a lot easier! As it stands, I'll be relying on the courier service to bring my equipment over, which does give me a bit of anxiety.

Despite this, I'm feeling pretty positive about how things are going to roll. The studio lights will be available if I need them, and I've got a great setup in place for capturing some amazing footage. I'll be doing a casual video interview with the curator, as well as some behind-the-scenes shots of the art pieces themselves. It should all come together really nicely.

One thing that's not going to happen on this shoot is the use of strobes or other heavy lighting equipment. That's just not something I want to deal with, especially when I'm trying to get natural-looking footage. Instead, I'll be using some studio lights to add a bit of depth and interest to my shots.

I've also been thinking about how I can share this behind-the-scenes content with you guys. Since I won't have access to the internet during my trip, it may take me a week or so to upload everything when I get back home. But don't worry - I'll be tweeting plenty of updates and behind-the-scenes peeks at what's going on during The Art of Photography Meetup. Follow me on Twitter (@TedForbes) for all the latest news and photos from this shoot.

Overall, I'm just excited to be a part of this event and share some amazing footage with you guys. It's going to be a great day out, and I hope to see you there!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody Ted Forbes here from The Art of Photography I'm going to do another Vlog post today and I want to talk about where I am on this trip to New York that's coming up and uh some of you have asked me some questions about it and somebody asked the other day if I'm going to be showing behind the scenes video of the actual shoot and the answer is yes I am in fact I've rented a little GoPro camera so hopefully I'll be able to mount that on top of my camera and we'll be able to get some behind the scenes of the actual photo shoot as well so you guys can kind of see what goes into this and what all is involved um for today though I want to talk to you about you know if if you're not familiar if you haven't watched the last couple shows and know what I'm doing uh basically I've been asked to go up to New York um and the job is I'm going to be doing a still session and a video interview with an artist whose name is Jim Hodges uh Jim is an amazing artist I've interviewed him twice before and he's kind of a hot item right now and uh in the art world uh he's very big and he does wonderful work um his work is really exciting and that makes the job a lot of fun for me because it's something I'm really excited about doing and like I said I met Jim before and he's a really nice guy so that's who we're working with I'm going to be going up to New York with um the museum curator of Contemporary Art and their education director who is going to be dealing with a lot of helping with the interview stuff like that and I think this is going to be a whole ton of fun and so what we've been doing the last two weeks is we've had a lot of meetings uh with the marketing department we're trying to figure out what all we need in the end as far as Stills Go and as far as uh video goes one of the things that they're going to be doing this as far as usage goes is they're going to be doing smartphone tours for the actual exhibition which will be at the Museum in November I believe and so you'll get to see the artist talking about the piece you're in front of and the other thing we're going to be using this for is they're going to do some online advertising um I don't think it's finalized but it'll be things probably Pandora probably Hulu stuff like that so we're going to do some 15 and 30 second ad spots for those too um so it's going to be really really cool and I'm really excited about um so what we've done is we've gone through we've done our shot lists um we've covered all the pieces that we want to do and I think from an artistic perspective personally and I've been harping on this is I don't want to plan this down to the bone to where it becomes very cold and stale feeling particularly the video stuff I want it to flow I want it to be natural I think we need to just be able to capture Jim's personality and get him talking about what makes him take as an artist and I think that's really about the best you can do and so anyway so that's kind of what we're doing but the shot list does serve so you know you don't get back to Dallas and realize that there's two pieces in the show that you never got him to talk about so we've at least de detailed it down to that um I mentioned in last show that I wanted to be doing 35 mm for the still stuff because I wanted a film look to it I'm not sure that's going to be possible and the main thing that concerns me is I was talking to the marketing people and one of the things that is a possibility is if we can get some nice Studio portraits is they want to use one of those to blow up really big to put on the side of the museum on a big banner um when the shows on and I'm afraid that if I do 35mm and we decide to go that route there's going to be issues with enlargement on it because 35 mil is pretty low f um I probably could do medium format but the camera's bigger so I think just in the interest of time uh efficiency of space space and what I'm packing the best idea is just to use the Canon 5D Mark III and call it a day um I'll get an image that's big enough and they can deal with it and I won't have to deal with film scanning or any of that so um that's an unfortunate thing we'll see I may throw a 35mm camera in the bag if there's room and um anyway um so as far as equipment goes too the other thing is I have never been to a studio before when I've interviewed him before it's been in Dallas and so I have no idea what we're dealing with so I he's got three assistants at the studio I sent them an email and said hey can you guys get some iPhone pictures just so I can see the space they did that sent them to me huge help so now I know what I'm dealing with uh he's got a beautiful studio in Manhattan and there's a bunch of Windows on one side and it makes an l-shape around there's art on this wall we'll probably do the video interviews there um but then there's tungsten light which you're probably going to get mixed with they lights so what I've decided to do on this is atarama uh in New York does rentals and I decided to go ahead and rent my lights and my C stands and tripods anything that I don't necessarily need to deal with a whole bunch that's just going to serve a static purpose I went ahead and rented um they have a messenger service so they'll deliver those to the studio on Monday morning before we get going and so that'll help immensely plus I do not have an assistant on this shoot which is well it's crazy but that's just how it is and so I'm going to need to be very familiar with stuff so like cameras and stuff I'm going to be using my own stuff and I'll pack those and take them I've got a bag for that uh but packing and taking lights is very difficult and I'm not going to be dealing with strobes on this at all um he's got enough natural lights so I think we'll get some great still photos and we'll just work with what we've got on that um so the lights that I do have though are continuous lights and what I've done is I've rented there's a company called light panels that makes these one foot square they call them one by ones and they're filled with LED Banks and they're diable which is nice and also they're call what they call by color so some of the LEDs are tungsten balanced some of the LEDs are daylight balanced and there's actually a dial where you can dial in the exact color temperature and mix of the two to get what it is you're trying to match so I think those are going to be the most versatile and like I said I don't need to necessarily have my own on that so I've rented those and then I'm going to bring them over I've rented three of them so we'll be able to get a nice um three-point light set up for the interview stuff and uh hopefully that'll provide enough flexibility to do what we're trying to do um as far as what I'm going to bring definitely the the Canon 5D like I mentioned um because it'll do video and still and I'll probably use that when we walk around and we're looking at various pieces that are set up in the studio they actually got two Studios so we're going to go on location and I'll probably take that for that and I have a Sony fs100 that's a video camera that I'm going to be using for the bulk of the interview footage now um you guys have heard me talk a lot about these little Sony NX cameras I've talked about the seven and I've got a five also um I wish that that were all I had to take cuz I think they're actually good enough to do it in terms of image quality um and how cool would it be just to have a little tiny bag rench your lights show up but some tripods and be done the problem with the Sony NX cameras is that they have camos sensors in them and because of the size and the design of the camera they get hot and after about 6 or 7 Minutes of filming you can have overheating issues with the sensor and if that's the case the camera shuts down and so not ideal for shooting an interview yet um it'll be another couple years before they get well hopefully maybe even sooner before they get the design worked out to where that's possibility um and so wow wouldn't that be amazing to take those I I think they're good enough to do it and I really wish I could just take a couple Sony little mirrorless cameras and call it a day because it would be just amazing I wouldn't have to haul anything uh as you can probably tell because I don't have an assistant and I'm relying on a courier service to bring equipment over that I'm a little nervous about it so it'll go fine um we'll have about an hour hour half a setup and then we're going to get cooking for the next two days and so we'll be doing you know casual video video interviews uh some conversation with the curator we'll probably go and look around at some art I'm going to do all the behind thes scenes stuff um I also didn't talk about audio um to bring in my cameras I'm also bringing my own audio stuff I've got two wired lava L mics so I use a la when I do this this show so I've got two of those and they go into a little more ants recorder and so I'll I'll have the curator in one channel I'll have the artist on the other it'll just stay on and record pretty much the whole time and I've got enough CF cards and SD cards to handle everything on this so it's going to be pretty cool um I don't anticipate much in the way of trouble on this I think it's a minimal enough setup but it's still a lot of stuff to to bring and that's just how it is when you have video that's introduced into the uh into the mix so anyway we'll be able to use the studio lights if I do need lighting for the Stills but I'm just not going to deal with strobes on this so anyway so I'll be uh packing one bag with with my cameras and audio equipment in it and that will go on the plane with me carry on and then I'll probably have a second bag with my clo and I'll check that so that's probably about the least amount of gear I can get away with on this so we'll uh we'll just kind of see how that rolls anyway like I said um I figured you guys would be interested in this I'm going to do some behind the scenes filming depending on internet access while I'm in New York I may not be able to upload those during the time that I'm there I may have to edit them and and then upload them when I get home so it could be a week before you see anything but uh I'll be doing some tweeting and stuff like that so follow me on Twitter my handle is Ted Forbes on Twitter so twitter.com Ted fores you can follow me there and uh I'm pretty excited this is going to be cool and we are having the Art of Photography Meetup and that is on Sunday the July 7th 2013 at 11:00 a.m. we're going to meet up at B&H so if you're in the neighborhood want to come say hi um we'll probably screw around do the Highline eat some food I don't know maybe Central Park came up as a suggestion so we'll figure it out we'll have a good time and you guys can come just meet and greet and hang out and I'd love to meet you guys as well so I think it would be a lot of fun anyway I'm going to get packing CU I got a lot of stuff to do and uh I got to make sure my episode's ready for Sunday cuz I won't be here it needs to be in the can early so anyway guys once again it's been The Art of Photography and thank you for watching I'll see youhey everybody Ted Forbes here from The Art of Photography I'm going to do another Vlog post today and I want to talk about where I am on this trip to New York that's coming up and uh some of you have asked me some questions about it and somebody asked the other day if I'm going to be showing behind the scenes video of the actual shoot and the answer is yes I am in fact I've rented a little GoPro camera so hopefully I'll be able to mount that on top of my camera and we'll be able to get some behind the scenes of the actual photo shoot as well so you guys can kind of see what goes into this and what all is involved um for today though I want to talk to you about you know if if you're not familiar if you haven't watched the last couple shows and know what I'm doing uh basically I've been asked to go up to New York um and the job is I'm going to be doing a still session and a video interview with an artist whose name is Jim Hodges uh Jim is an amazing artist I've interviewed him twice before and he's kind of a hot item right now and uh in the art world uh he's very big and he does wonderful work um his work is really exciting and that makes the job a lot of fun for me because it's something I'm really excited about doing and like I said I met Jim before and he's a really nice guy so that's who we're working with I'm going to be going up to New York with um the museum curator of Contemporary Art and their education director who is going to be dealing with a lot of helping with the interview stuff like that and I think this is going to be a whole ton of fun and so what we've been doing the last two weeks is we've had a lot of meetings uh with the marketing department we're trying to figure out what all we need in the end as far as Stills Go and as far as uh video goes one of the things that they're going to be doing this as far as usage goes is they're going to be doing smartphone tours for the actual exhibition which will be at the Museum in November I believe and so you'll get to see the artist talking about the piece you're in front of and the other thing we're going to be using this for is they're going to do some online advertising um I don't think it's finalized but it'll be things probably Pandora probably Hulu stuff like that so we're going to do some 15 and 30 second ad spots for those too um so it's going to be really really cool and I'm really excited about um so what we've done is we've gone through we've done our shot lists um we've covered all the pieces that we want to do and I think from an artistic perspective personally and I've been harping on this is I don't want to plan this down to the bone to where it becomes very cold and stale feeling particularly the video stuff I want it to flow I want it to be natural I think we need to just be able to capture Jim's personality and get him talking about what makes him take as an artist and I think that's really about the best you can do and so anyway so that's kind of what we're doing but the shot list does serve so you know you don't get back to Dallas and realize that there's two pieces in the show that you never got him to talk about so we've at least de detailed it down to that um I mentioned in last show that I wanted to be doing 35 mm for the still stuff because I wanted a film look to it I'm not sure that's going to be possible and the main thing that concerns me is I was talking to the marketing people and one of the things that is a possibility is if we can get some nice Studio portraits is they want to use one of those to blow up really big to put on the side of the museum on a big banner um when the shows on and I'm afraid that if I do 35mm and we decide to go that route there's going to be issues with enlargement on it because 35 mil is pretty low f um I probably could do medium format but the camera's bigger so I think just in the interest of time uh efficiency of space space and what I'm packing the best idea is just to use the Canon 5D Mark III and call it a day um I'll get an image that's big enough and they can deal with it and I won't have to deal with film scanning or any of that so um that's an unfortunate thing we'll see I may throw a 35mm camera in the bag if there's room and um anyway um so as far as equipment goes too the other thing is I have never been to a studio before when I've interviewed him before it's been in Dallas and so I have no idea what we're dealing with so I he's got three assistants at the studio I sent them an email and said hey can you guys get some iPhone pictures just so I can see the space they did that sent them to me huge help so now I know what I'm dealing with uh he's got a beautiful studio in Manhattan and there's a bunch of Windows on one side and it makes an l-shape around there's art on this wall we'll probably do the video interviews there um but then there's tungsten light which you're probably going to get mixed with they lights so what I've decided to do on this is atarama uh in New York does rentals and I decided to go ahead and rent my lights and my C stands and tripods anything that I don't necessarily need to deal with a whole bunch that's just going to serve a static purpose I went ahead and rented um they have a messenger service so they'll deliver those to the studio on Monday morning before we get going and so that'll help immensely plus I do not have an assistant on this shoot which is well it's crazy but that's just how it is and so I'm going to need to be very familiar with stuff so like cameras and stuff I'm going to be using my own stuff and I'll pack those and take them I've got a bag for that uh but packing and taking lights is very difficult and I'm not going to be dealing with strobes on this at all um he's got enough natural lights so I think we'll get some great still photos and we'll just work with what we've got on that um so the lights that I do have though are continuous lights and what I've done is I've rented there's a company called light panels that makes these one foot square they call them one by ones and they're filled with LED Banks and they're diable which is nice and also they're call what they call by color so some of the LEDs are tungsten balanced some of the LEDs are daylight balanced and there's actually a dial where you can dial in the exact color temperature and mix of the two to get what it is you're trying to match so I think those are going to be the most versatile and like I said I don't need to necessarily have my own on that so I've rented those and then I'm going to bring them over I've rented three of them so we'll be able to get a nice um three-point light set up for the interview stuff and uh hopefully that'll provide enough flexibility to do what we're trying to do um as far as what I'm going to bring definitely the the Canon 5D like I mentioned um because it'll do video and still and I'll probably use that when we walk around and we're looking at various pieces that are set up in the studio they actually got two Studios so we're going to go on location and I'll probably take that for that and I have a Sony fs100 that's a video camera that I'm going to be using for the bulk of the interview footage now um you guys have heard me talk a lot about these little Sony NX cameras I've talked about the seven and I've got a five also um I wish that that were all I had to take cuz I think they're actually good enough to do it in terms of image quality um and how cool would it be just to have a little tiny bag rench your lights show up but some tripods and be done the problem with the Sony NX cameras is that they have camos sensors in them and because of the size and the design of the camera they get hot and after about 6 or 7 Minutes of filming you can have overheating issues with the sensor and if that's the case the camera shuts down and so not ideal for shooting an interview yet um it'll be another couple years before they get well hopefully maybe even sooner before they get the design worked out to where that's possibility um and so wow wouldn't that be amazing to take those I I think they're good enough to do it and I really wish I could just take a couple Sony little mirrorless cameras and call it a day because it would be just amazing I wouldn't have to haul anything uh as you can probably tell because I don't have an assistant and I'm relying on a courier service to bring equipment over that I'm a little nervous about it so it'll go fine um we'll have about an hour hour half a setup and then we're going to get cooking for the next two days and so we'll be doing you know casual video video interviews uh some conversation with the curator we'll probably go and look around at some art I'm going to do all the behind thes scenes stuff um I also didn't talk about audio um to bring in my cameras I'm also bringing my own audio stuff I've got two wired lava L mics so I use a la when I do this this show so I've got two of those and they go into a little more ants recorder and so I'll I'll have the curator in one channel I'll have the artist on the other it'll just stay on and record pretty much the whole time and I've got enough CF cards and SD cards to handle everything on this so it's going to be pretty cool um I don't anticipate much in the way of trouble on this I think it's a minimal enough setup but it's still a lot of stuff to to bring and that's just how it is when you have video that's introduced into the uh into the mix so anyway we'll be able to use the studio lights if I do need lighting for the Stills but I'm just not going to deal with strobes on this so anyway so I'll be uh packing one bag with with my cameras and audio equipment in it and that will go on the plane with me carry on and then I'll probably have a second bag with my clo and I'll check that so that's probably about the least amount of gear I can get away with on this so we'll uh we'll just kind of see how that rolls anyway like I said um I figured you guys would be interested in this I'm going to do some behind the scenes filming depending on internet access while I'm in New York I may not be able to upload those during the time that I'm there I may have to edit them and and then upload them when I get home so it could be a week before you see anything but uh I'll be doing some tweeting and stuff like that so follow me on Twitter my handle is Ted Forbes on Twitter so twitter.com Ted fores you can follow me there and uh I'm pretty excited this is going to be cool and we are having the Art of Photography Meetup and that is on Sunday the July 7th 2013 at 11:00 a.m. we're going to meet up at B&H so if you're in the neighborhood want to come say hi um we'll probably screw around do the Highline eat some food I don't know maybe Central Park came up as a suggestion so we'll figure it out we'll have a good time and you guys can come just meet and greet and hang out and I'd love to meet you guys as well so I think it would be a lot of fun anyway I'm going to get packing CU I got a lot of stuff to do and uh I got to make sure my episode's ready for Sunday cuz I won't be here it needs to be in the can early so anyway guys once again it's been The Art of Photography and thank you for watching I'll see you\n"