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.

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/

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...

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

Buggenhout bos

Buggenhout bos, world famous buggenhout bos...

First day of the year i felt that Mister summer is on his way to Belgium, looked quite "sunburn red #016" when I came home (no pictures please !! )

We went shooting with Karen in Buggenhout and I mean, Bert Meskens as Assist and Michelle De Raedt as MUA in the "we"


For this first shot, which was in fact one of the last on the shoot, i decided to use some strobe power, a lot of it, 800Ws into a Silver Umbrella, as in the past this gave us f32 at ISO 200, combined with 1/250 th shutter speed we where seriously overpowering ambient!
Check the sunny sixteen rule which states ISO = shutter speed @ F:16 for correct exposure in bright sunlight

I Also used a 3 stop ND filter (8x less light, that's why it's also called 0.8 ND filter) so i could open my aperture from f:32 to f:11 which gives better results on a normal DSLR

This is about the same lighting setup only that we replaced the silver umbrella by the Hensel Parabolic white umbrella, lost about 0.3 stop of light more with the white one, overall light qualtity is a bit softer as expected from a white umbrella...

You can see the setup in the reflection ;-)

Different locations, different light setups but yet consistent results, this is something i find very important but still difficult to achieve.

We used the Sunbounce PRO zebra as main, Sunbounce Mini , Silver as Fill en the sunbounce Oval sunmover, silver as extra light source to add some extra sparkle...

An idea of lighting setup in the last picture of this post!!

- Credits for this picture go to Bert Meskens -

(I'm the dude with Pro screen :-p )