I have always been intrigued by others’ work and art, and constantly wanted to learn on how to improve my work. I learned from books, other photographers, online articles, videos, seminars and workshops. For seminars and workshop, I am usually rather picky in selecting them because they are not inexpensive, especially workshops. Great workshops would cost thousands. I have to be careful in investing on them, sometimes prioritizing based on my needs.

The first time I heard about the Illumination Experience seminar/workshop was from the promotional email from MZed. I’ve attended great seminars and workshops under MZed, for example those taught by Jerry Ghionis, Lindsay Adler and Lou Freeman. However, they were all specifically for photography. The Illumination Experience was actually for cinematography, for film making – a different field from my profession. Usually I wouldn’t really care for film making workshops. However, this workshop was different. Although it was not a photography workshop per se, what made me curious to dig in further was that the instructor, Shane Hurlbut, ASC, was the cinematographer of multimillion dollar blockbuster films such as Terminator Salvation, Need for Speed, Act of Valor, Drumline, Greatest Game Ever Played, and many others. He also had worked with famous celebrity actors and actresses such as Russell Crowe, Zoe Saldana, Jane Fonda, Kevin Costner, Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Eric Bana, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Keaton, Paul Walker, Josh Brolin, Will Ferell, Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Alba, Shia LaBeouf, and many more! I immediately thought, “Whoa!”
Alright that surely caught my interest, but then I wondered what would I get from the class? What would Shane be teaching?

(more…)