Sunday, May 29, 2011

Biker Chique




Koen has been nagging me for sometime to take some pictures with him and his Bike, his Triumph Daytona, I thought this would look great with a sunset as a backdrop but after 5 weeks of amazing sunsets we chose the only day with no sunset with a lot of clouds and even more wind...

I was planning to use the big PLM (85") to light the bike but hey hey are you sure you'd like to try the Mary Poppins thing with the umbrella?

So we changed to plan B (always have a plan B in your head, just like those guys from the A-team ;-) )

Luckily we could count an the help and assistance of Bert Meskens :-)

Ringflash 800Ws with 40Cm beaty dish and a big bag filled with rocks to keep it on the ground!!

75% flash to ambient ratio for the lighting geeks ;-)






Along came Nina... wow



-Biker Chick ? -



And Along came the Aston Martin Vantage..


Let's go 4 a ride ...

(beauty dish, camera left = in front of the car)






And beauty dish as 20% fill flash, from camera left but still pretty straight on, soft ambient fill


Monday, May 23, 2011

Bleu de toi

Near Kasterlee there is a small place in the forest where some really weird things happened to the trees.. as time blew away all the sand from between the trees, the roots became visible and gave us a bit of a special setting.

Mua was Sanne De Wolf and Assistants were Kevin and Tom!

Loes made the skirt herself, as this was a special design I thought we could go for a more editorial / high fashion style

(Sunbounce mini -zebra from the right, fill flash on the shadow side of the roots)



A few weeks ago i bought 2 parabolic light modifiers, looks like a big silver umbrella but it is really really different, the reflective capacity is amazing, you get about the same power as bare flash but the light quality is much beter because of it's big size (not easy with wind!)
light fall-off is very dramatic but i expected this!

With my SB-900 i can get f:16 ISO 200 bare flash at about 3 meters (10 feet), the SB-900 in the 59" (150cm) PLM gave me f:16.7 at more than 4 meters (12 feet) ... where is al this light comming from? well it's because the PLM focuses the energy in one beam where bare flash spreads it all around.

I bought it trough ebay check Cotswoldphoto.com

Here you can see the bigger one, 85" 215cm PLM with the FalconEyes 800Ws ringflash (at full power i can easily get about f:64 at ISO 200... not bad if you know that in the Wescott Apollo it gives me f:11.7 at the same distance!)



85" plm from right, ND -3 stops on the Af-s 24-70



Again Sunbounce zebra Mini



85" PLM camera left, flat on the model, 59" plm with SB-900 very far to the left as fill light, natural light was coming from high right (harsh sunlight) again with ND -3 stops on the lens.



85" PLM as flat light source about 6 to 8 meters (+20ft) away, just to give you an idea of the light it can give





There seems to be some interest in the way i carry stuff around when shooting on location, not so long ago i bought an Eckla beach rolley, with big wheels so you can easily transport a lot of material even on rough or sandy terrain... in action shot:





Sunday, May 22, 2011

Kids and Teens

Okay photographing kids is not really my topspecialty but we had 2 very fine (and very young) models today at our kids & teens photography workshop, these are a few pictures i would like to share with you.

The main target was to create fresh, modern and high-key-like pictures without shadows but trying to avoid too flat light, takes a bit of post to achieve this particular look and the help of a few California sunbounces with assistant is just perfect





you are never too young to learn the light meter method...



Big eyes :-)



And the amazing eyes of Estelle



All shot with my not so favorite lens the AF-S 24-70 because i do not find it sharp enough!

Sint Servaas 2011

Every 2 years a bunch of people get together in Grimbergen (BE) to celebrate the voyages and life of a saint, Sint Servaas.

As this is quite a big happening and i do some freelance work for local communities i was there to take some pictures (with 8 colleague photographers)

In assignment to grimbergs.net, a few pictures i would like to share with you from the more than 400 that you will find on www.sintservaasommegang.be

Al pictures taken with 70-200 2.8 vrii .. if all zoom lenses where only half as good ;-)

Every shoot begins with make-up...









This replica was made from a picture i took 1 year ago , i boosted my D700- 12Mpix to more than 40Mpix to get good quality i also took a lot of care in correct colors, from this distance you could not see the difference with the original, only the old fabric is stiffer in the wind.




















Yeah , even Spartacus was here






And Evil


















Pushed a little in Lightroom




And Ben-Hur






This the representation of the Phoenix, a creature the you will find a lot in the history of Grimbergen, with the Basilica in the background





Light was not easy, I worked in manual mode with spot metering to check localy for correct 18% grey exposure at f:2.8 / f:3.2 constantly changing my shutter spead to compensate for full-sun, slight overcast or heavy clouds, automatic modes on the camera did not give me the results I wanted.


Friday, May 13, 2011

Inspirational links




Received an update from Melissa Rodwell's blogsite with some links from various bloggers around fashion and editorial work, I knew the Ben Trovato blog but there is one other site that kept my attention and that I'd like to share with you (oh yes, you should follow Melissa's work too she is amazing at what she does!)

Warning = some stuff might be NSFW

- http://bentrovatoblog.com/
- http://www.calikartel.com/

and than another great site with some cool tricks to keep more money in your pockets when choosing light modifiers and some very interesting articles about pro photographers and "real" assignments.

I've been tricked once in a no-pay editorial and approached several times afterwards so keep an eye open, because some people are only there to take advantage of your skills, time and money..

http://www.zeroplusplus.com/one-light-lookbook-lighting/



http://www.zeroplusplus.com/photography-job-posting-myths/

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Strobistworkshops meeting day Baasrode (B)

May 7th, +25 photographers, 8 models, 4 make-up artists and a lot of sun!!

location : www.scheepswervenbaasrode.be

It was a great day, the weather was on our side, felt like a nice summers day :-)

Our concept is pretty unique in Belgium and I know why... the organisation is a bit of a pain in the a$$, to have 8 good models and 4 Mua's on site does not seem to be an easy assingment but hey we've been there before, remeber out meeting day @ waterschei in 2010

In Total i got in contact with over 40 models, 17 acknowledged to come but as the day came closer a lot of them dropped out, 10 to be exact (and 1 Mua too btw)

So I really want to thank all the people involved who did an effort to make this a great day!!



We've asked everybody to upload there pictures that they are willing to share with us on :

http://www.photobucket.com/baasrode


And some more cool shots from "Macroshopper" :

I hate my job, go figure...


















Monday, May 9, 2011

First Blender Animation

Blender is an amazing (and free!) software to create "wow" video animation with 3D capabilty the downside is the complexity of it all.

Took me a few days to figure out the basics but I'm getting the hang of it now, little by little

So I'd like to share my first "Hello world" animation and it will also be featured on our DVD to fill in the gaps :-p


Gerci at Ranst

We wanted to thank Gerci for her multiple participation at our workshops with a photoshoot, the very nice make-up was provided by Sebastiana-Alexandra Iagaru.

Beside making pictures we also recorded ourselves on video to be featured on our DVD which will be available 'round September 2011

This first 2 shots were done by placing Gerci in the shade of a tree and filling in the shadows with a Sunbounce Pro panel (zebra Fabric)

(Af-D85mm 1.8 @ f:4)








Again the Zebra panel but now the sun settled a bit behind the clouds so the overal light quality dropped to more fill / less harsh












Also did some shots with strobes! (Hensel 1200Ws in gridded beauty dish for a nice beam of contrasty light)




Gerci liked the shot above a lot, myself? I did not like it, not very interesting background i have to say i would have liked some more dramatic clouds in the sky... could have photoshopped them in but that's not my style.

As we where around a medieval church why shouldn't we use it as a dramatic backdrop?

26mm @ f:4