Saturday, July 23, 2011

3D

As I get an enormous amount of request for free shoots a new idea came to my mind, every month i will be giving away 1 free shoot with mua. The idea is that the applying models convince me with a special idea or special styling.

Qunneth approached me with the idea of combining her dark skin with a touch of color, MUA: Vanessa Cogorno

Front lit with 216cm PLM, back with standard reflector and medium size grid (both f:11)



After that we did some 3D photography ... :-p

(front light = Hensel parabolic)








And i experimented a bit with low-key and dark skin















I have to say that working with dark skin is very challenging in nailing a good exposure, i'm never happy with the results provided by my light-metering method and same post as for Caucasian , so Qunneth was an ideal candidate :-)

Laura in the Jungle

As Laura was in need of new pictures she booked a new session with me, Mu by Eline Van Gils.


"A different corn field"



Jungle beauty









Sunswatter + Sunbounce mini zebra from left (soft fill-in)





When working with the sunswatter to temper the harsh sunlight, the shadow that is cast under the subject may appear very unnatural, if you choose a very low shooting angle / pov you should get away with it easy :-)




group of redhead flowers




We found an old caravan, thought it might produce some crazy pictures...
























Jolien at Sea

As Jolien and her mom heard that I was shooting at sea, she immediately booked a new session, it was going to be a rather short session while the sun was going down.

MUA: Gaëlle Verspeelt

As always in Belgium, the weather is unpredictable, you never know if clouds are suddenly going to appear while the sun moves away and makes room for the "dark night" and yes, no spectacular sunset but thin clouds hide away the beautiful moment of warm sunset colors and color temperature moves up to 6000 - 7000 ° instead of the more flattering 3000° ...







Behind the scenes :-)




The shadow should have been more pronounced for this shot...












Only ambient light, sun is almost gone here







And after the sun settled we shot some more with a small strobist setup, SB-900 in the Apollo Westcott Softbox and the buildings as colorful backdrop


At sea

Nice afternoon shoot with Steffi at our Belgian coast, Mua: Gaëlle Verspeelt

This must be one of my best portraits made with minimalistic setup, Steffi lying in the beach and Gaëlle blocking of the hard high noon sunlight with the sunbounce... keep it simple seems to work more and more for me.



Bit of bounce with the white side of the sunmover, harsh sunlight on Steffi's hair and back, retro finish



more bounce :-)





As we drove by looking for some dunes we just had to stop and take some shots in this "wild flower field".

Whenever I see this kind of pictures I always have to think 'bout the things that you don't get to see or you don't even know as a viewer, Insects going bezerk on the model and me, plants that sting and itch, falling, almost breaking your legs to get to "the best spot" in the field,... writing this I'm wondering why the best spot is always so far away..

Tip: If you plan on taking this kind of "on the field" pictures, tell your model to take a detour or you will be left with a path of destroyed plants on the result



Steffi told me she wanted to try out some less clothed settings and who am I to say no?











Near the water, lot's of people and stuff to keep out of the frame.
Wind, sand, salty water to keep out of the camera.










Laura at Hof ter Saksen

A few days ago Yannick and Bert organized a small shooting day at Hof Ter Saksen near Sint-Niklaas, Model of the day was Laura Davidt, Mua provided by Valérie de Roeck and assistance by Lode Gryspeerdt.

Again, I kept it simple, 1 camera and 1 reflector, well maybe 2, the sunbounce Mini and the Sunmover, Zebra Fabric :-) and 1 lens, the 85mm Af-d 1.8

















































Laura

Meerdaalbos was the setting we chose for this shoot with Laura, Make-up kindly provided by "Giz Makeup"

As it was just me and the model i wanted to keep things simple, it was a slightly overcast day so ideal to use the Sunbounce mini with Zebra fabric on a lightstand as NS-VALS "not so voice activated light stand"

Just bounce some light back and create those nice catch-lights as an extra





















This is the result from my first experiment with bokeh shapes, few years ago i saw these things being sold on the net, cut-out shapes in steel plates that would fit in front of your favorite big aperture lens to influence the way out of focus would hit the sensor.

I cut them out in a piece of thin black cardboard, heart shape to begin with, installing this in front of your lens, makes the internal light meter and AF module go crazy so you are back to Manual Focus and "guessing" the correct settings for aperture (best wide-open) en shutter speed (just shoot, look at the lcd and adjust). When you place this in front of your lens it acts as a fixed aperture, so light meter is way-of by "x"-stops, but also the shallow DOF is lost as this smaller aperture gives more depth and weird things happen on the corners of the frame, looks like a sort of optical compression (just basic developing from the RAW file here)