photo editing workshop on 5/21 + behind the scenes

You have seen Kirsten Kapur's Shawl Book One, haven't you? I'm super proud to be the photographer.  Since I need to also let you know about the upcoming LIVE Interweave webinar I'm doing Thursday May 21st on PHOTO EDITING, I'll use an image from the book to show exactly why Photo Editing is so crucial.

register for the webinar in advance

 The Before is an idea gone bad. Too much blue sky distracting from the model and more importantly, the Cladonia Shawl. Shadows in the wrong places. Dirt (or maybe that's a bird flying by, in the sky). Phone lines, bad cropping,...you get it. It's not a successful image out of the camera.  The shawl is not the star of the visual story.  But it is, in the After photo.

Photo editing can't make a bad picture good, but it can make a promising picture pretty wonderful. Join me and see how easy it is using a free/inexpensive online software --no PhotoShop needed. Register here. It's about an hour long, and you can listen to it again, recorded, later on.

Book link--digital or printed--or both.

We shot the whole book in one day, although many days of prep work went into it. That calls for another BTS post, I think, or this one will go on for too long!  Kirsten wanted to shoot in my neighborhood in March. I live in an old beach neighborhood with lots of character. We dress super casually, it's a running joke that you can wander around the neighborhood in paint splattered shirts and mismatched ripped shorts and look amazing, but if you forget to pull yourself together before wandering into town, or go to work or---horrors- travel the 100 miles to New York City--you look raggedy. If not deranged.  My brain apparently couldn't process that I was doing my real job for a client, yet staying the the 'hood. Hence, it turns out this is what I looked like  as the book photo shoot got underway. Thanks to Kirsten for catching the styling, it cracks me up.

and here's me in action. You can tell it was still chilly out by all the crew's layers. Shawls, of course.

 I'll leave you with something nice from the book, the shot we were actually working on.  The Ulmus shawl, modeled by wonderful Katrina. More views in the shawl link.

postcards from Rhinebeck 2013

Thanks to all who let me know they enjoyed the Rhinebeck Style video. And mwah! to those who re-posted, or FB'd or tweeted. Feel free to share  You totally get me. Work on the book version proceeds, with a bit of fire under me now.* 
 It was a weekend where everything comes together:  perfect autumn weather, great energy, beautiful yarn, stellar community, and oh! the knits everywhere. Plus sheep and alpaca and goats.This year I taught workshops on the weekend mornings: Photo Safari: NY S&W Festival. Love my  students who gleefully joined in as we photographed the fair, as our subject and our backdrop. My assistant Ariana was along to pose in knits, for exercises shooting backgrounds & angles. **. She's wearing a Through The Loops Vestry Street. I know you want to know.We visited the livestock barns. An experiment with the 2013 festival poster as the background for Through the Loops Germinate shawl. I give it a not-quite-thumbs-up.
I stayed at a shared large house-  Ariana and I missed the group photo but you can see we were in excellent company- organized by Yarny Old Kim, whose scrappy long socks I covet. *** Wish I'd had more time to hang out there, it was full of good cheer. Some parts of our  potluck left me a permanently craving. (hello! Steve's mac and cheese and homemeade kimchi)Foodwise, at the festival: Waiting in line made much easier by knitspotting/knit ogling.Very happy to get our Flammkuchen. Butternut squash, beets, fennel, creamy ricotta cheese (or was it goat?), flame cooked. Kirsten got bacon on hers, and do you love the sweater she's wearing? Design not yet released. <hint, hint cough> 
Jill Draper and her inspiring sweater.The ever stylin' Ellen Mason,aka Odacier, in her Mary Rebecca sweater and  signature cardi/dress combo with plaid scarf, colored tights, and boots. She and my other style muse, Sonya Philip were walking around the festival together. Someday I want to have them style me.  Not for a day.  Like, my whole wardrobe. Thrilled to see the patterns I shot for Green Mountain Spinnery and their new ebook on display at their booth. I didn't get there fast enough to buy Weekend Wool , their new worsted weight yarn - by Sunday they only had a few skeins left.**** True only for their wares.The Sunday morning class had a photo session with a couple of fleecey girls.Shooting at sheep eye level, in open shade. Aren't they gorgeous, even in a crowd?Sheep eyes, Love'em.  • • • • • • • • • • 
Ok, starting next post I'm going to ramp up into gift giving mode, with a bunch of book reviews and book giveaways. I've been saving them for just this time of year. Watch your feed, I'm hoping to git'er'done !  

_____________________and now for the footnotes: 

*La Shannon Okey herself is going to be sitting down with me on Monday, up close and personal, to get this book from almost-done to press ready. I am looking forward to it like crazy. Shannon's a force to be reckoned with. I love me a force, and a good solid deadline.  Like a publisher sitting next to you .

**Ariana will also be assisting me when I teach at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC in January 2014. It helps to have her model,  so no student misses shooting for a minute--and also, for those who don't want to pose in the knits but want them shot on a lovely smiling person. Ariana is a talented film maker & editor herself, and a knitter, so she knows what's what.

*** I don't know why but I can't find a link to her blog! Kim is all kinds of awesome. She organized the house, the potluck, is a brilliant knitter and finished weaving in the ends on those socks Friday night as we sat around eating & drinking , following a breathtaking Hudson Valley moonrise. I know the photos you may have seen signal riotous hilarity 24/7 but Kim and the rest of the roomies are so much more than that. Smart, artistic, talented. And good cooks too.

****I never shop much at the festivals-I'm an indecisive shopper even in a quiet limited setting--but I had a mission this time. Too bad I browsed Saturday and by the time I went back to purchase on Sunday, I missed out on the Weekend Wool selection but also a super chunky hand dyed skein I wanted from Briar Rose was history, so were the skeins I was eyeing from Still River Mill...I did finally buy some yarn. But that's another post.

in which we wander about webinars...

So you know how you agree to do something, like say, teach a webinar for Interweave on Basic Photography for Knitters, and you figure that your presentation  is 90% all there so no need to get fussed about it...

a slide from the webinar revealing  behind-the-scenes glamour

and then when you go put a few last touches on it, you end up spending the better part of 3 days re-doing it? Yes, you do? Oh good, then we understand each other. I am pretty psyched cough understatement cough for this. Sign up any time , we are live webcasting on Wednesday June 5th at noon eastern time--but you can watch it later, all recorded.

the real photo we were making Fussy Cuts blanket fr Craft Activism , designed by Mason Dixon Knitting

Anyhoo, I've been gettting lots of questions about webinars and what they are, and who they aren't so I figured I'd , as Ricky Ricardo would say, do a little 'splaining.

My webinar is a one session online slide presentation--just like watching a normal slide talk without being in the same room as the presenter.   Unlike an online class, you will not see me, the instructor. And me, the instructor, is very thankful, because this way I don't have to worry about what to wear* or that you will  see the shmear of poison ivy  on my cheek this week.

You will receive an email from GoToWebinar with log-on info, and a reminder of what time the webinar begins.  When you log on, your browser window will have my opening slide on it, and off we'll go, I'll change images as we talk about them (I have alot of images and a lot to say). I'll be sitting here narrating the talk by phone, you'll hear it coming out of your computer.  You don't have to download or acquire any software, but you need to be online.

Photography is a subject perhaps uniquely suited to the webinar format. You see a photo, I talk about it.   I have to confess that I love taking webinars, but that is probably because all the ones I take are  about the photo business. I have friends in the corporate world who cringe at the word webinar.  It means they have to watch  stultifyingly dull powerpoints in which the narrator reads  bulleted sentence fragments, all about insurance regulations.

I promise we will not discuss insurance.
Here's a link again.** Best of all--the webinar is initially webcast live, but it is recorded, so if you do not have the free time to join me mid day Wednesday June 5th, you will receive an email within 48 hours of the live webcast telling you to go ahead and log on at your leisure. Those who watched live will receive the same  email, in case you'd like to watch it again . All, or part and return later. Those who are watching live can type in questions. The Q&A will also be recorded, so you miss nothing.

Those who purchase by Wednesday 6/5 noon eastern can either join live, or soon after ( you'll be notified with 48 hrs).  Those who don't sign on on by noon Wednesday will be able to access the webinar, but not till it goes in the Interweave shop, in about 2 weeks. 

If you have questions about this all, feel free to send them to me ezisusATsnetDOTnet.

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*OK, I am going to be honest. Even though no one will see, I am still going to think about what to wear. And keep my fingers crossed that Bobo doesn't run into the room barking.

** just noticed they reduced the price . Costs less than a skein of Silk Garden!

warm welcome webinar wayfarers!

Yesterday Interweave announced my upcoming June 5th webinar :  Photographing Your Knits. poof ! walla ! and ta-da!, I have never had so many visitors here.

Not even that time I was giving away 4 pounds of Starbucks coffee! (Though that was pretty cool,  right?)

Not even right after Shear Spirit came out, and all the sheepy/goat/alpaca folk I'd met in my farm visits and travels came to call.

crias at Victory Ranch in Mora New Mexico

Not even the times my work with the Red Scarf Project /Foster Care to Success got all linked  (you know about the Red Scarf project? If not please take a peek )
The blog's been here for eight years, so browse around and welcome to my world.

a rare appearance by Dave, who appreciates the handknits but models reluctantl

I hope you sign up for the webinar. I got hip to webinars last year.  A webinar is essentially watching a live (or, recorded live) slide talk presentation, with me chatting but your monitor filled with images (photos!). You can type in questions that the moderator , the Knitting Daily Empress Kathleen Cubley,  will ask me, and I'll answer, either during the slide talk or immediately after. I won't rush off, and the scheduling is flexible. The cool thing is you can watch as little or as much as you wish, and then come back and watch the rest--or watch it again. I cram in a lot of helpful tips, so the ability to re-visit is awesome.

an image from Craft Activism, a good example of a simple way to shoot handmade..and a favorite of mine, shot at granny square goddess Ellen Bloom's house in LA. I heart granny squares, and Ellen is to blame.
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My commercial website is Gale Zucker Photography. Plenty of sheep shots there, too. 

we're so chill we wear mitts

Last weekend, no not the one that dumped 36" of snow on me, the one before, I had the honor of teaching a Photography for Knitters workshop for  The Village Knitter . 
This is what it looked like when we strung up a temporary clothesline on Main Street in Babylon NY. 
And here is Stephanie, aka Crooked Knits, shooting. Let's play a game. How many handknits can you spy her wearing? The funnest, if I can mangle English here, part of the workshop is usually the part where we bust out of the room and go all hands-on, giving everyone a chance to try some of the hints tricks direction photobullying I have been laying on them during the slide talk part. This group didn't let a few degrees fahrenheit stop them. 
A class so cool they had to cover themselves in wool. It was a blazing good time, in direct contrast to the icy wind blowing off the Atlantic a block away. Afterward, I ended the day knitting and yucking it up at Ann and Katy's yarnshop , my sponsor, The Village Knitter. This is the kind of yarn shop you hunker down in. Big open table to sit at. Great selection of yarn. Super friendly owners and workers. Talented knitters and raucous conversation. We are already planning a spring/summer Photo for Knitters adventure, to take advantage of the lovely photo opps for knitwear in the town, while not suffering frostbite at the same time.

 On a not unrelated note--you can't ignore the snow here this week, mostly because we have run out of places to put it.

This is not a special pile or even the tallest on the street, it's just your basic corner. Good weather for knitters though. Suddenly everyone loves a wool mitten.

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I'm brewing up a few more workshops between now and the summer-  in New Haven CT, Maryland and Massachusetts. Want one at your guild, shop or group? Give me a shout.