Michel Engelen

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Sharon B

Can you deliver me some pictures in "Boudoir style" Mike? Well we can give it a try I said ;-)

I asked Google what is "Boudoir style"? It seems to have something to do with bedroom photography, intimacy, hidden stuff you normally would not see, lighting style should look more like natural light, less "light it all" used in the more glamorous style of photography.

So high ISO 800 / 1600, wide open apertures 1.4, 2.0, 2.8 and normal to long lenses, 100 / 135mm to keep a lot of the natural mood and light into the pictures

Monday, November 8, 2010

Loft

What an amazing location this loft, and the luck of having 2 beautiful models and the superb work of Doenja with the make-up, lucky me! (Doenja, Make-up artist: http://www.doenja.be/ )

Well Lucky me, Bart Henseler also got lucky on this shoot, I invite you to check out his results on his Flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitbanger/

Laura Theys, window-light

More Laura Theys and even more window-light ...

100% natural portrait, only some processing on the B&W contrast

Karen de Wilde, bathing in natural light, clouded, cold and rainy day outside

Hotels, motels and B&b ..

With the winter period peeking 'round the corner since a few weeks interior locations are more than welcome, so I've been shooting in a whole bunch of hotel-rooms, bed&breakfasts and sort-like locations.

The higher ISO setting of the D700 are absolutely welcome in these conditions ;-)

These are some results from a shoot with Anna Wegener, Mu is provided by the amazing Sanne de Wolf, window-light is amazing and should be used whenever possible if you ask me, just add a reflector to fill up the shadows and keep separation from the background

Blending flashlight with window-light is tricky business,

If you can tell the natural light shots form the strobe-lighted shots, just let me know...

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Hey, I like those pictures

Hey Mike, I like those pictures, can you make me some in the same style? That's how this shoot with Steffi de Greve and Aaike make-up started out.

Once again we were in a hotel room, in my previous shoot I used 1/4CTO gels to enhace te skin tones a bit and warm up the feeling, this time I used the 1/4 Bastard Amber gels from Rosco. The difference is that the amber has more pink in it and will throw a very soft pink color cast over the subject, the CTO will be more orange. off course you can enhance this in post but never in the same way as shooting without the gels.

the walls were not suited as bouncing surface because of their color and shapes, luckily i had my 28" westcott with me.

Steffi wanted a lot of black 'n whites so I made her a few ones, I think they worked out great.

Aaike & Steffi

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Confined Spaces

Working in confined spaces like small hotel rooms can be very challenging for a good shoot result.

Wide angle lenses, no place to set-up the lights, not enough ambient light to have decent results, but after years of practice I'm getting into it, the results from this shoot make me happy and give me the strength to go on with it!

This shoot was with Laura Theys as model and Tina Calzetta as Mua, they did a fantastic job!

I used 2 bare flashes to light op the room, both with 1/4 CTO to enhace skin tones, next time I'll try the Amber gels ;-) ISO 400 and f:2.2 up to f:4, most is shot with the Nikon 85mm 1.8

Legs, legs, legs...

This shot made me think of those French actresses from the 70's

This is really out of cam, just removed the color information an boosted contrast a bit in Lightroom. It's done using one of the David Hamilton techniques....