Shoot The Centerfold…

Shoot The Centerfold is an event where you can find 3 top notch photographers teaching you what they know. Now, I put together workshops events, so it will take a lot for me to talk (or kind of promote) somebody else’s event. But this was so worth it that I really want to share my impressions, especially because it was incredible amazing to me how I was relating to so many of the stories and how a lot of the stuff mentioned at the event, are exactly the same way I fell, share, and praise.

For those of you that don’t want to read long, especially a ‘write up with accent’, let me in a summary tell you that the event was worth it every penny and from any angle you can look at it.

I would love to have everybody on the phone and talk about the event, actually more like a sport bar sharing stories with friends, but let me try to give you a chronological summary of how everything happened and my take on the event from my several point of views.

The location: The event was held at the Hard Rocke Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL. I didn’t even know this place existed, and later I found out it is relatively new. I heard it cost $1Billion dollars to built, so you can have an idea of how nice the place was. They rented 3 big rooms on the hotel and created 3 different sets on each one; the creations of the set itself where really impressive to me, you can see how the Hollywood folks can make you believe you are in Paris, France when you are actually in the middle of Calhoun, GA. A great work of production, especially on the set they did for Arny Freytag. But the ones for these other Playboy photographers Jarmo Pohjaniemi and David Mecey were also very nice.

The Flow: My memory is the worse, and I don’t have the agenda with me here, but basically we all went to a big room where Jon (organizer and very pleasant guy), gave us a few words about the event, the photographers, and then of course, the sponsors.

Then the 3 guys came into the room and sat in these director chairs with the Shoot The Centerfold printed into them. Funny how it was not until this point that I realized these guys were actual celebrities, and as such, they were received with celebrity treatment. It was so funny to me to see scenes that I can only describe with a mental picture: Imagine Justin Bieber getting into a room full of 15 y/o girls. That’s what I saw (To the guy that almost fainted, don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody)

They then started sharing their vision for these events (as they, and now I, hope would keep coming), and the motivation was great. They want to share what they have learned in all their years of photography and somehow break all the myths that you so much find on the Internet all over the place. A very funny and entertained conversation where each of the 3 amigos share their view of the event. Another funny fact is that these people kept building the expectation up and up for what was coming.

Then the room was left for each photographer to talk about themselves and show some of their work. Pieces of art! I’m sure even those that dislike what they do would see some of these pictures and go WOW. Here is when one of the main myths was about to be broken: “It’s all photoshop”; well, no it is not!

For the most part they presented their unedited work and yes, the audience was blew away. Perfect images with all the little imperfections that any person or place normally have. Awesome!

After these, they broke the audience into 3 groups. Each group would then go with a different photographer into the ‘class room’.

Editorial Note: English writing is one of the most difficult tasks you can assign to me, so I really don’t like it (hence, communicating using images). So to make things easier and allow me to go back to my 19 kids and wife, I’ll continue this post tomorrow. Be aware that in Venezuela, tomorrow translate into “mañana” and that means not today. Meanwhile, enjoy one of the images of the Shoot The Centerfold seminar.

To Be Continue… (Models, Networking, Shooting, Organization, Learning and more…)

Enjoy,

Rocke
www.rockephotography.com