Blake Lauder!

As always this shoot was plannend weeks in advance, but last minute changes are never far away...
The day before the shoot i got a phone call stating that Blake Lauder had to go on a casting with Mr. Edouard Vermeulen from royal-famous Natan and she might be a little later on our shoot appointment, no problemo, these kind of castings can be very important in a models career.
And yes Blake got selected together with 2 other models and she arrived perfectly on time for our shoot appointment!! Congrats Blake :-)

Natan launched a competition between the winning girls so Blake started up a serious campaign to promote herself in Flanders and they used my picture on the 24.000 flyers!

Be sure to follow her career I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing a lot more from this girl!

Open shade area, lit with the world famous shoot-through white umbrella and an SB-900, compo picture made with the always amazing photoscape software.

MUA: Sandra De Moor

Sunbounce pro zebra +

Sunbounce 2/3 Sunswatter and shadow fill with Pro zebra panel

This is not something i would do quickly but the sun was at just the right angle, lit by.. Sun only

Just ambient light, slightly overcast moment

And the very cool "Ugg's under dress" shot :-)

Bellis Perennis (NSFW)

Bellis Perennis, wild growing beautiful little flowers, an ideal match for a more than inspiring model :-). This was going to be one of these very quick "tussen de soep en de patatten" shoots that are usualy only mediocre in results, but not this time, Maries did an excellent job with styling, posing, emotions and i really love these shots that show a lot of her skin, so NSFW warning here (Not Safe For Work, sorry dudes)

We started out in a little field, under a tree that provided us with a little shadow, but still there was a lot of light at noon (sunny day) and i really wanted very shallow dept-of-field (DOF) so i used about f2.2 / f2.5 on the 85mm Af-d nikkor, problem is that at ISO 200, the shutter speeds easily exceed 1/250th of a second an climb up into the 1/1500 to 1/4000...

As we were in a shadow area i needed to add some light... Luckily, last year i ordered the Flashzebra Nikon TTL extension cord (7.5m) so i was able to light this with the SB-900 on a light stand with white shoot-through umbrella, everything in total Manual control but with the benefit of high speed sync (Auto-FP).

Check the catch-lights for the position of the umbrella ;-)

I think the SB-900 was a 1/4 power with the extra battery pack to get good recycle times but this also prevents the overheating of the circuit in the SB-900 because the battery heat is now generated in the battery pack and not in the flashgun. Nikon battery pack cost me about €160 and i think you could better spend this on a cheaper solution from other manufacturers ;-)

We changed location as too many curious people came by while shooting, can't blame them...

Corn fields tend to present a quick & easy backdrop en shoot location

Lighting setup is just the same as the previous series, but the sun was gone most of the time behind some thin clouds, didn't feel like bouncing that day i guess.

The cornfield is not only a nice backdrop but as you can see it is also a fine item to hide your model behind, or some parts of her in this case

Back to the Bellis Perennis! Little piece of untouched wild nature was going to be the backdrop for this little series, lighting info is still the same, SB900 with TTL cord total manual control and high speed sync :-)

Comments are more than welcome :-)

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