The Fourth of July is just around the corner and Americans are looking forward a long summer weekend of barbecue, neighborhood parades and family picnics. Get ready to kick off your holiday weekend at creativeLIVE! This Friday July 1st at 10am Pacific Time, John Cornicello will be teaching us his tips & tricks for getting fireworks to jump out of your photos like they do in real life. This free class will be a blast!

Want to see your images on creativeLIVE? We’re asking all of you to submit your favorite fireworks photos to our creativeLIVE Fireworks group on Flickr . John will be using images from the worldwide audience to illustrate his class. The more people who submit fireworks photos, the more fun this will be!

This July 8th-10th we are welcoming Gale Tattersall to creativeLIVE for a HDDSLR Filmmaking Workshop! Gale is a renowned Director of Photography in Hollywood recognized for his work in movies such as Pushing Tin, The Commitments and Wild Orchid. He received an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Cinematography on the TV mini-series From the Earth to the Moon and was nominated for Best Cinematography for his work on the TV series House. The television and film industries have been revolutionized with a DSLR camera capable of shooting 1080p HD video and Gale is leading the way.

Today Andy and Mikey of Lighten Up and Shoot invite YOU to come to Seattle to be a member of the in-person audience for their FREE Street Photography workshop at creativeLIVE July 29-31st.

Here’s what you need to do:
1. Create a 60-second video explaining why YOU want to give up pixel peeping and be part of the in-person audience at creativeLIVE in Seattle.
2. Post your video to YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
3. Tweet @creativelive a link to your video including the hash tag #lightenupandshoot. That’s it!

Video submissions are due by 5pm Pacific on July 8th. As always, the workshop is free however all travel expenses are the responsibility of the participant.

Social media seems to be taking over! We tweet, Facebook, blog, chat and socialize everywhere from Flickr to YouTube. But believe it or not, the majority of the world is still without a profile picture. Kenna and I may be social media mavens now, but I’m fairly new to Twitter and until recently used Facebook for communicating with close friends. Luckily for me, Kenna was in the game early and saw a tweet from our local camera store about a free online photography class at creativeLIVE. Coincidentally, I had just enrolled in an introductory course in digital photography at a local school, which set me back about $650!

If I hadn't heard about the class from Kenna, I might have missed the opportunity to take over 30 photography courses at creativeLIVE in the last year and a half.