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)

Charlotte, Peggy, MAS and me

Mua : > Peggy Timmermans <

The date for this shoot must have been set since ages, it's not easy finding a common date when everybody involved has a busy schedule.

And to make things a little harder Charlotte did not have a lot of time so we had to hurry up, think fast and good... My first idea was to keep things simple : camera + 50mm and 1 round reflector = it works.

I think that we weren't shooting for more than 10 minutes and the first swedish sailor wanted a picture with our beautiful model, can't blame him ;-)

I warned him the picture would be published and he would become world famous lol, but nevertheless here is our hero of the day:

trying some unusual angles




Inside MAS, pretty special architecture but a lot of red reflection!

Is it necessary to expose for the models skin or can it be more creative?

North side natural light

Thanks Charlotte and Peggy for this great cooperation :-)

Jolien D

Even with good preparation you're never sure of a good outcome, so many things that could go wrong but not on this shoot ;-)

In post I tried to add a little touch of retro feeling to the pictures, part of the pictures shot with the 50 Af-d 1.8 and partly with the 135mm f2.0 DC...

Make-up done by Evine Smeets, Assistance kindly provided by Dirk Coryn.

It's not always easy working with a damn good photographer as an assistant because he also has an eye for photographic "nice light" opportunities but I think we got along well!

Some behind the scenes

A lot of wind...

Typical effect of the 135 DC

I'm happy with the results!

Afro-Latino 2011 edition

Once a year I'll annoy you with my festival pictures from the exotic - Ras Tafari - "Afro-Latino" festival, sorry for this, but this blog is like my photographic diary (maybe photographic diarrhea for some)

Dj Lass & Angel Vibes :

Third World :

Nomfusi :

Juan Luis Guerra y 440:

Blitz the Ambassador :




Miss Kat DeLuna :

Miss Kat DeLuna's shoes from act I

Crowd :

Jimmy Cliff's background singer

Mr Jimmy Cliff !




Calle 13:

Okay this guy had a lot of energy, not easy when doing concertphotography...

I don't mind a little motion blur as long as hte artist can be recognized :

I had to seek the higher ISO sensitivity (ISO 6400) to get stop motion shutter speeds (between 1/500 & 1/1000th)

Check the reflection of his hand on his Skin = Mr Energy

Also used the continuous AF mode with 3-D tracking on the full 51 points, works like a charm, even in these very low-light conditions...




Thanks to Bart "Bitbanger" Henseler for providing us with the opportunity to be part of the show