On the unseasonably warm night of December 9th, the air hung heavy in NYC as a steady downpour hindered travel from morning through nightfall. Fortunately, Mother Nature was no match for the group of passionate photographers who turned out for the highly anticipated “Big Light, Small Light Demo with Joe McNally” at the Adorama event space located inside its flagship store at 42 West 18th Street. The evening was the launch to an exciting week of holiday shopping sprees, product giveaways, and free instruction by top-notch creators, including a DIY fashion portrait session with Lindsay Adler and an analog film shoot and onstage darkroom printing session by Adorama’s very own Daniel Norton.
A Sliver in Time at the Adorama Event Space
The best part? What attendees experienced here in just one week is merely a sliver of what the Adorama team puts together. This happens all year long. Education-hungry creators who want to expand their horizons and network become part of a vibrant community.
First, Some History: Who, What, Why
The Adorama event space is a dynamic venue and learning hub located right inside the flagship NYC store. It was reopened in September 2023 after being shuttered during COVID. Here, photographers, videographers, and other content creators have unfettered access to a plethora of products, launches, and hands-on demos. Beyond that, there are artist talks and panel discussions. Additionally, portfolio reviews, a weekly podcast, and so much more—both in-person and online. The space is welcoming, well-equipped, and well-outfitted. The Adorama event space uses six Nikon Z 6II cameras. These capture events that are live-streamed in full 4K several times weekly to the Adorama Events YouTube channel. In addition, some events are streamed directly to AdoramaTV’s over 1 million subscribers.
Enter Seth Miranda
Special effects photographer and Adorama content producer Seth Miranda runs the space with everything he’s got. He’s a ringleader, host, and presenter, as well as an instructor and even builder. Seth can often be found up on a ladder in the space fixing or painting something. He is extremely dedicated to inspiring and educating photographers and videographers on a daily basis. Miranda is a fireball of a human who is extremely passionate about his craft while helping others hone theirs. Seth’s energy never runs out! *However, he did lose his voice at the end of the week. Understandably, after leading the audience in a welcome scream every night!
No Hype, Just Education
When brand new equipment comes out, Miranda is right there to break down the hype. He allows attendees to decide for themselves if they need it or not. “We never hard sell anything here,” he told me. We sat ensconced behind V-Flats in the stage area where he and Norton had recently built a darkroom. This for Norton’s “The Art of Analog Photography” being presented that night. “Our goal is to help everyone in the community improve upon their craft. No matter their level of experience,” he described with a hint of proud papa vibes in his voice. “We are here to inspire and get your creative juices flowing.”
The creativity flowed during this special week, as did last-minute gift ideas. There were gear demos by brands that included Canon, Fujifilm, Nanuk, Nikon, and Panasonic LUMIX. Not to mention SanDisk, Tamron, Tiffen, Unistellar, Videndum, Zhiyun, B+W, OM System, Schneider Kreuznach.
Big Light, Small Light, and Some Special Off-Script Moments
One impressive ingredient of the Adorama event space is the caliber of talent it attracts. Including award-winning creator Joe McNally, who, wherever he goes, other photographers and creators follow. The acclaimed photo legend and Nikon Ambassador did not disappoint. His Big Light, Small Light demo flowed with the innate skill and humor that one comes to expect from McNally. This was especially true with Miranda steering the ship. The camaraderie and the banter between the two were just as riveting as the demo itself.
As McNally demonstrated how light can be used to shape and communicate a subject’s personality and story, he also drove home the point that these demos are “not about me, they’re about you. It’s not a lecture; it’s a discussion.” The icing on the cake was the “brand, spanking new” battery-operated, 750 w/s Profoto B3 that he was using for the one-light part of his presentation. “I’ve never even seen it before, so why not use a piece of equipment I’ve never used,” McNally laughed. The audience also chuckled as McNally tried to make sure not to “blow the model to the back of the store with the monster Profoto light!”
From there, he grabbed his Nikon Z9 and 24-120 lens: “It can almost double as a micro, but it’s also very sharp, very durable, and has a very handy set of millimeters—I can do a portrait; I can do a scene, I can be on the street, or I can be in the studio with it. No matter what you’re using,” he added, “you can always achieve control via your f-stop, shutter speed and ISO.”
Learning to Think on Your Feet
Joe’s model, with her Josephine Baker-esque hairstyle and chanteuse vibes, proved the perfect subject, but that didn’t mean things couldn’t go wrong or couldn’t be challenged. As Miranda mentioned to me later in the week, that’s real life. “When you are on set working with an art director or a photo editor, things can go wrong, or they might want something different than the idea you came in with. You might be challenged, so you must learn to think on your feet.”
One young visual storyteller, Alex Franklin from Canada, asked McNally at the end of his demo, which involved portraits of Giselle with colored backgrounds, “What if the client wants a white background?” At first, McNally let out a sigh, but then he excitedly looked at the audience and said, “Okay, let’s do that! I’m a big fan of seeing where it takes me, and ‘mistakes’ are all part of the game. What I would say is that I wouldn’t light a white background with one light; I would use two lights and V-flats. But let’s do this quick and dirty…” Of course, it came out great!
Catch Joe McNally’s full lighting demo and discover how the silver side of a “Seth Miranda” pizza box was handily used as a bounce board here.
Holiday Flair: A DIY Holiday Shoot with Lindsay Adler
The next night brought another crowd of photographers who, this time, were excited to witness where NYC-based fashion and beauty photographer Lindsay Adler’s ingenuity would lead her during her DIY Holiday Fashion Shoot. Adler’s fun and festive set involved using “dollar store couture” styling that included a life-size red bow and a glitzy red cocktail dress. (Spoiler alert: Adler’s results were dazzling and looked ultra-rich.)
“Every single year at the holidays—Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s—I like to produce content for two main reasons,” Adler told both the in-person and online audience as Miranda managed the livestream chat from his corner of the stage. “One, it is good to have shareable, relevant content that you can market with and share online. The other reason is that if you are ever running out of creative ideas, you can give yourself an assignment that you can think about ahead of time. I know what holidays are coming and when, so I can start getting creative in advance.” Best of all, her creative shoots are designed to not cost a lot of money. “Otherwise, it’s a reason for me to not do them,” she admitted.
Discover how Adler took ordinary objects and decorations, including a $5.99 wreath, a $5.99 snowflake stencil, and a $12.99 pack of snowflake stickers, and turned them into extraordinary looks on her gorgeous model here.
Fujifilm’s Frame.io and C2C
On Wednesday, December 12th, the Adorama event space was transformed for a special panel presentation that included Fujifilm Frame.io and Camera to Cloud expert Rob Loughlin, as well as photographers Alison Conklin and Shotti NYC. Seth Miranda moderated this panel, asking Loughlin to kick things off by explaining what exactly Frame.io is, what Camera to Cloud really does and means, and how the listeners can do it themselves.
“Frame.io is the perfect way to centralize your collaboration and workflow online,” said Loughlin. “It started out with video only, but now it supports any media type you can upload. You can basically bring all your collaborators into one space, share what you are working on, and get the feedback all in one spot, so you don’t have to go chasing emails, texts, Slack messages, or whatnot.”
Loughlin went on to describe how with the launch of Camera to Cloud about three years ago, users are now able to connect their camera directly into frame so that they can collaborate as they are acquiring their content. Listen to the full presentation here.
A Film Shoot and Some Darkroom Magic
The weeklong series of events culminated in great fanfare and darkroom magic during the final night’s demo on December 12th, an onset presentation by Daniel Norton titled The Art of Analog Photography. And trust me, it was worth the wait.
“Today, we are doing something we did many years ago, and we are doing it again,” Norton told the overflowing audience as Miranda stood by. “We are going to shoot analog, or film photography, live. Back in the day I thought, ‘How can we do a film photography presentation live?’ We could shoot the pictures, send them to the lab, and have everyone come back a week later to look at, but that didn’t seem so good…”
Instead, he and Miranda built a darkroom in the event space. Norton then shot negatives on photo paper that one would normally print on. A Nikon Z6 II hanging in the darkroom, lit with a red “safelight” bulb, was set at 51,000 ISO so that the online audience could see the prints being developed in the darkroom as they occurred. The 4 x 5 rail view camera being used was loaded with paper with an ISO of 8! Talk about a contrast. The darkroom setup was a simple one that Norton said anyone could essentially fit into their bathroom. Several audience members got to go hands-on as well, shooting and developing the portraits of model Sara and each other. Witness the creativity for yourselves that resulted in very artful and, at times, haunting portraits here.
Lessons Learned
Each night featured problem-solving at its best and awesome raffle giveaways! These demos and setups came to life via some of the best in the biz, taught in easy-to-understand ways that are used to guide creators into thinking outside of the box. Most importantly, everyone had fun! “This is like our very own comedy cellar,” Miranda summed up. Copy that!
Want to know what’s coming up next at Adorama? View the Adorama calendar of upcoming events here. Check out the AdoramaTV channel on YouTube here.
