In studio Boudoir

New in studio Boudoir setup for the upcoming lingerie sessions this winter (renting Hotel rooms is nice but often too expensive for my clients, so this is the cheaper alternative for my clients)

Skindeep (NSFW)

I really love skin, female curves, sensuality, .. this translate nicely into a form of photography often called "bodyscapes", imitating landscape photography by using the curves of the female body.

For this video, i wanted to take this idea to a new level and i hope you enjoy the results (NSFW warning!)

You can watch it on Vimeo --> https://vimeo.com/46944490

Afro-Latino 2012

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Photographing musicians while performing on stage is great but in my humble opinion some things are 'a must' to deliver qualitative results, a good camera with a usable range around 800 tot 1600 ISO, good low light auto-focus (no manual focus for me please) and some good glass to put between the artist and your camera.

My chosen setup for the Afro-Latino festival of 2012, including some rented material because a lot of this stuff does not come for free, is The Nikon D800e, the Nikkor AF-s 70-200 f:2.8 Vrii and the AF-s 300mm f:2.8 Vrii.

I'm impressed, really impressed by the quality delivered by the optics regarding the demanding 36Mpix sensor in the 800e, the details are mind blowing, sometimes there's even to much detail ;-)

I'm impressed by the Dynamic range of the D800e, even at ISO 1600 it is super, the conditions on stage are ever changing, dynamic, light changes direction every 2 seconds, etc

I tested the 3D AF-C modus on the D700 last year with mixed results, so i went back to the AF-s and a single AF-point. The 800e being a new generation camera i tried the 3D following mode again and it's "wow", it's so good i used in 90% of the photos. Really great for tracking artists with too much energy.

My camera setup is almost always the same, White-balance is set to sunlight, ISO 1600 (or 3200 if necessary) Shutter speed at 1/125 and Aperture set to full open f:2,8.
I tried automatic modes in the past but they are easily fooled by the constantly changing conditions, the full manual control gives me the best ratio of acceptable results, to give you an idea on the 3 days I made about 1600 pictures and i uploaded 505 out of them which i found to be good pictures, about 30% is not bad. the trick is to not get carried away with some acts and keep photographing after you are sure you already nailed "the shots", also make sure you make the safe pictures of the main artist as soon as possible because it can happen that you are only allowed to photograph the first 3 songs or even less....

This picture was made from about 20meter distance with the 300mm, hand-held, i was standing on a chair to shoot 'over' the public, Mr. alpha Blondy decided to give us just 3 songs of front stage access so we had to move a little further.

Alpha Blondy

I want to place a big thank you to all the people involved who made this possible and friends to make it a good weekend to remember!

Some results after the jump : (make sure you also check the pictures of the Fire breather )

Belgian Sahara with Natalie and Evelien

Many years ago this place was only a large plane of sand around a small lake but nature is slowly fighting his way back and new plants are starting to grow everywhere, but people in this region keep speaking about "The Sahara"

In fact it's just a tiny beach around a tiny lake with a lot of pine trees around it, not the usual backdrop you would find in Belgium and that's why i love to shoot here.
There's also at least one reason i don't like to shoot here ... you have to drag all your material through the loose sand and it's a 20min walk, even my UberFantastiK Beach Rolley equipped with super extra big sand tires is a pain to pull here.

I'm not even sure why i brought all this material, oh yes, wait.. i remember now, i had a very specific shot in mind but there was so much wind and i forgot the book at least 8 assistant to hold everything in place so i went for plan B = keep it simple without flying away :-p

Evelien Van Tiggel did not only do the very nice make-up and the hair but also all the sunbouncing with the Zebra / White Pro screen as this is was the only light modifier used for this series.

So everything shot with my finger and the Nikon D800e + 85mm Af 1,4G

All pictures (c) michelengelen.com !!

I also like the black&white version, hard to choose ...

And the amazing details of the 36Mp D800 sensor, the left image is not even a 100% cropped part of the photo on the right...

Lalala-Laura-Laura

Pretty girls and fast cars, i love both but to combine them in 1 photoshoot is not my cup of tea, it has been done so often and all the pictures resemble one another.

Model: Laura Theys, MUA :muaDjenien, Assist: Luc

But here we where, Laura was ready to model and the new Ferrari 458 Italia was screeming for some attention (which is off course what's it supposed to do anyway)
I watch out not to fall in the typical girl-car shoot, so i decided to keep the car in just a tiny pit of the frame, even with only a small part of the bodywork i'm sure almost 90% of the people would recognize the car is an exotic anyway

The next thing was a bit of a try-out, it's something i wanted to try for a long time but never really had opportunity to do it. 1 side is lit with the Apollo Westcott softbox (SB-900) and on the other side a simple shoot-through umbrella (Af-540-fgz). I had 1 misfire on the SB-900 probably due to me shooting faster than the recycle time but i really loved the result, it's amazing to see how much detail is retained in the shadow area with the Nikon D800e, this is also a situation where the extended dynamic range comes in handy.

and some more soft, very soft stuff ...

Wild horses

The Nikon d800e, what an amazing piece of engineering, sharpness and "micro contrast" are redefined for what is possible on an FX size sensor but keep your feet on the ground, the more than 36 million pixels are unforgiving on your shooting style, motion blur is easily revealed because of the enormous amount of detail, even the smallest amount where the focus is off becomes painfully visible at a 100% view.
Only the best lenses will be able to deliver good detail resolution, so using top quality lenses is mandatory.

I have to say that the Nikkor Af-s 24-70 f:2.8 never really convinced me on the D700 (soft corners - focus shift) but it seems to perform a lot better on the D800e but i'll have to use it more before i can come to a "real world usage" conclusion, two lenses that have really convinced me so far are the Nikkor Af-85mm f:1.4 G and the ever amazing Nikkor 14-24 f:2.8.

The Af-s 70-200 Vrii that performed very well on the D700 seems to be able to justly keep up with the demands of the D800e, if you don't need a zoom in this range i would certainly recommend switching to primes like the 85 f:1.8G or f:1.4G, i don't own one but i wonder how the 200mm f:2 would perform on this body...

About Moiré = not really an issue until now and not much worse than the regular D800 from what i've seen

Obvious question = Will a client see the difference between a  800px downscaled photo from the D700 or the D800e? No probably not, neither will he see you had to crop to 25% of the original and still have about 10Mpix files, that's at your advantage, so is sharpness and the really comfortable dynamic range a low ISO

Enough of the technical mambo jambo, time for some real life results i would say:

This is a "landscape crop" downscaled to it's websize:

You can find the full resolution file on my flickr stream,  >click here for 20MB of detail<

But if you don't feel like going for a walk on my Flickr stream here is a crop!
I had to downscale it to 75% to be 800px wide.. just a tiny amount of wtf goes around when looking at these files i can tell you!

But Mike wouldn't be Mike if he didn't have a model to shoot ;-)

Model is Julie Ghoos (She got a pretty score at the latest Miss Belgium contest. )
MUA / hair : Sophie Adam.

All was shot with the Nikon D800e + Af85mm 1,4G and Af50 1,4D

 

 

Details, details, details ...

This was a soft-focus technique to show the difference between a "normal" picture and the less contrasty one, feels a lot like a David Hamilton and that was the purpose because i was going to need some similar effect for my next shoot

BigBag Bigmicmacbag a sosobag by bigsoso

BigSoSo, the transport Bag for your Apple!

So it is advertised on the WorldWideWeb, as i needed a transport protection for my 21.5" iMAC i ordered one and today the packet arrived from LaPaz Bolivia.

It looks really well built, good first impression, quality materials and the iMAC fits perfectly

Plenty of protection mousse all around, but i would not try to throw it to see how far it can fly...

As i was a big soso lazy today i made the pictures with my phone :-)