Friday, February 19, 2010

Sick model on such a wonderfull misty day



Nice misty days, we don't get them that often, this sunday was just perfect for what i had in mind!






And you have to know that this particular shot is in my head for more than a year now, no way to do this in the studio or with fakery i needed real mist and a real model!
Sadly that last thing was the problem because Aurélie Sonck called in sick and she should have been my model :-( . I hate it when shoots get canceled last minute ...

ANYWAY! There is a new bridge (for cyclists, not cars) between Vilvoorde and Steenokkerzeel that caught my eye some time ago as a possible location for model shoots, so i decided to go and check it out!



Wednesday, February 17, 2010

1212 Haiti - Mudwrestling for a good cause

Something different! Bart Henseler, a fine photographer i know from the fotoclub Klik-Klak asked me if i was interested in making some pictures from a mud wrestling for women, these women where not wrestling for fun but for money, money to help the victims from the Haitian earthquake!

This is Bart @ work with his strobist gear, you can see his speedlight lying a bit further on the ground and the PW on his camera ;-) (had to crank up the ISO on the D700 as there was almost no ambient light, ISO 6400 & f2 50mm prime)



Mud wrestling seems to be very physical, or where the athletes not in good shape? (70-200 VRII f2.8 ISO 4000 + speedlight attached to a banister and aimed to a white wall on camera right 1/8 power, you can see the effect on her back, this would have been very dark as there was no other light source in this area, triggered with Cactus V4 which had a hard time powering up, but once they work, no misfires this time)



Give it all you can girls! (70-200 vrII f2.8, ISO 4000, AF-C with the 3d following mode), there is some motion blur, 1/125th is not quick enough to capture this fast action, but i was at the edge of what is possible with my gear






Once again you can see the effect of my speedlight aimed at the white wall (could post some pics of it in action if you want, just request them)





A much closer approach when i switched from my new 70-200 vrII to a 24mm prime, so close in fact, the mud hit me more than once :-p (but still a lot less than Bart, he and his camera were literally covered with mud at some moments) anyway, it was fun!






btw, the new Nikon 70-200 f2.8 vrII is a really remarkable piece of glass, perfect color and contrast rendition, quick and very accurate AF (no hunting in these low light conditions), perfect VR, i love it!

Jona

Just some photo's from a shoot with Jona in an old beer brewery, Jona is not a real model, she wanted to do a shoot for the fun of it and to have some pictures for later...

But she brought a rather impressive dress, and what is a more classic shot than to shoot this one on the stairs (stairs are not easy to place your light stands!)



Just ambient ligth this one, ISO 1600 50mm f2






this was a test to bring some depth to my ringflash shots, extra Octa on the left side and a 1/2CTO speedlight on the right for a left and right rim light, it's better, it's less flat but not quite there yet, have to work on this strange lightsource but i love what it does with the skin!



Workshop strobist II advanced

What we learn in this "advanced" strobist course: - Learn to read an existing photograph and imitate the light setup, Blend color temperature with gels, special effects with gels, set the mood, overpowering the ambient and selective lighting, I'll try to make some more photos on our next workshops :-)

The foreseen model Femke had forgotten that she had to be there, so a few days in advance I had to find another model, Luckily i now some people i know i can count on, Dagi was our new model for this workshop!


Overpowering the Ambient by 1 stop



Special effects, colored gels



Blending flash light color temperature with ambient color temperature

Uniqmix @ Mechelen

Uniqmix a model with Italian and Filipino roots contacted me for a fun shoot in Mechelen, sadly the day of the shoot it was raining, well sadly, not so sure about that, the low ambient light levels and the specific color temperature make room for some other lighting :-)








Here we go again... flat light






Simple white shoot-trough umbrella



Silver Umbrella, speedlight 1/4 CTO gel


Sanne in Eijsden (NL)

Sanne wanted to do a "snowshoot", we went to the East looking for snow, i thought that near the German frontier there would be some snow left, but no, no luck, this was going to be a no-snow shoot :-p

The classic against the wall ringflash shot (still waiting for my softflood reflector btw:-( ) so this is "bare-bulb" ringflash



Something more lighting 101 stuff, speedlight behind camera on left side, pointed to the white wall on the right to serve as big bounce surface, 1/4 CTO to add some warmth




Even more basic , shadow fill-in white shoot-trough umbrella, look at the catch lights for position



More difficult lighting, what do you think I used for this shot? let me know :-)


Workshop studio for beginners I

This is one of our workshop (www.strobista.com) where we explain all the basic practical stuff about working in the studio, what you need to get the job done, how to use and/or abuse it, grids, reflectors, softboxes, where do you place'm and where you better don't place'm :-p, how to control your studio heads, triggering, etc... and also more important stuff like what's the difference between soft light and hard light and how this transforms to the transitional area between the highlights and shadows, explaining there is no "bad light" there is only "bad use of light"
Subject for this workshop was Saar, she is still quite young but I'm sure she has the right looks to become a great model,I don' t want to push here in particular direction, she's the one who has to decide what she wants to do with her future.

(I always end up not taking enough pictures at our workshops :-( )




reflector + grid on black background , softbox high camera right and white reflector @ left, duotone converted in Lr, no further PP

Sunday, February 7, 2010

There are worst things to do on a friday afternoon ...

Friday afternoon is like getting ready for the weekend, charging all my batteries and checking gear for the upcoming shoots or workshops . But not this friday, we planned an extra shoot, but the model, Angélique (19) had a tiny problem when she got to the set...
(Which was a small but very fine hotel in Antwerp btw)
She forgot her suitcase with her clothes so we decided to give it a more glamorous approach ...
(The hotel was filled up with photos from master photographer Marc Lagrange so the mood was set completely)

Most of the pictures where "strobist" with just a small speedlight (or two) with cto gel to match the ambient light sources, I was going to shoot a large apertures (f:2 / f:4) anyway so there was no need for gigantic power sources :-)