New gear testing
I haven’t been posting a lot about new gear because it has been incredibly busy but at the moment we are testing some very interesting nice new gear. Make sure to read on….. Read more
Something old…… or not ?
Lots of photographers started with shooting analogue and I’m no exception.
I remember vividly that my parents and grandparents always were busy with photography and of course they had their own darkrooms, first only B&W but later on also color, and I loved it…. So I guess that’s were I got bitten by the bug called photography.
I’ve shot many rolls of film as hobby on my Practica and Kodak cameras, mostly of ducks, cats, nature and streets.
Nothing too spectaculair.
Then came digital
Wow, that’s cool you don’t have to change rolls and you can shoot lots and lots of images wow.
Well as with most wows there is always a catch.
My first point and shoot camera was awesome, although very expensive and less than 1MP, but I still loved it and took it with us on our honeymoon, and to be honest although the resolution is totally laughable now the quality was not even that bad. My next camera was more advanced but I more and more missed that great DOF I got from my 35mm practica, but hey what can you do digital is IT………
I tried one more P&S camera, the HP850 and although this was a more advanced camera with aperture settings (what I wanted) I still could not get that nice DOF I wanted back, so I decided to look further……
Soon I ended up with the Canon 10D, my first digital SLR and man did I love it, the 10D was followed but the 20D and after a few years I decided it was time to go to Full Frame and enter the original 5D, times were perfect and everything was great.
Well until I got my hands on a medium format camera, listen to me NEVER but I mean NEVER try that ?
You will fall in love, wake up in the middle of the night craving for that camera, and to be honest all my 5D files looked flat and soft. So I upgraded to a Mamiya 645AFD/II which was a nice camera, for the back I first tried the ZD from Mamiya but I did not like the quality of that back and within a few weeks I got my money back and I upgraded to the Leaf Aptus22 which till today I still love (although I upgraded to an AptusII7 for other reasons).
Back in time
When I taught the workshops in Los Angeles one of my students pointed me towards someone who was selling his analogue back for the 645AFD/II and because the pricing was right I decided to buy it and experiment with film again. I bought my first roll of MF film at Sammy’s and shot some graffiti and developed the film the same day. That was the begin of a strange love affair with film.
Bad is good
Somehow with digital you always know what you’re gone get (with a good workflow).
With analogue this is also true for many photographers who stacked their fridges with the same stock to get the same outcome over and over. But to be honest when I shoot digital I’m 100% satisfied with the results and there are hardly any surprises…… So were am I going with this story.
When I dove into the analogue again I decided to first buy some different roles of film and just experiment with the different looks you could get, and let myself be surprised every time the roles came back, see something I like and maybe buy some more roles of film. But in the end I ended up hunting down film that was over the date and I love underexposing it, or overexposing and just see what happens, luckily we still have a lab were I can order my negatives to be done manually with the speed I tell them. It’s never 100% perfect compared to digital but somehow I just love the outcome but sometimes I also think it was a waste of time and money.
B&W
What I love however about shooting analogue is B&W.
There are great filters like NIK silverfx or Alienskin but when I load the Mamiya with a 3200ISO Illford or a 400ASA Tmax I know I’m gone fall in love with the outcome. In this blog post you can see some images that have one thing in common, they are all shot on film, and as you can see they are not perfect. All the film is over the date, a little or a lot. Most are underexposed and corrected in development, or in other words this is just my fun pool. I will always shoot analogue and digital from the same scene to make 100% sure I also get the digital files.
6×7 the real deal
Although 6×4.5 is great, I really got a feel for shooting analogue when I bought the RZ67ProII, a monster camera that to be honest I only bought for shooting film, nothing else. Well that was until I looked through the finder and thought that digital would be incredible with this camera, the lenses are mega sharp and the contrast is great, and to be honest I just love the way the shutter sounds and the camera looks. The main advantage from shooting MF digital is that you just remove the back from the 645 and mount it on the 6×7 (welcome crop factor, ouch). I stil love to shoot film with the 645 but I actually shoot most of my film with the RZ67ProII of course, when you get the film back from the lab the large images jump of the film. The first time I got the film back the man behind the counter wanted to look at them and was in awe of the colors (slidefilm) and the sharpness.
Scanning and polaroid
Many people ask me what I do to get the images in the PC/Mac.
Well I keep it simple. I use an Epson V700 for scanning the negatives/slides but I do use a betterscanning unit to get more sharpness in the scans, the original Epson holder is nice but far from perfect. And as mentioned before, shooting film is my “fun” and the scans from the Epson can be printed to A2 size without a problem so that’s good enough for me.
The most recent addition to my film shooting experience is the polaroid back for the RZ67ProII.
When I grew up my parents used polaroids and I did have one laying around in the studio for ages but never used it anymore, expect maybe as a prop, but with the new found love for analogue I decided to buy some film for it (still available at that time) and fell in love with the instant “mess” you could get from the polaroids. The version for the RZ however really surprised me, I’ve scanned some polaroids and they make great A4 prints compared to the consumer polaroid I have here that’s a huge difference. At the moment polaroid is saved by the impossible project and I still have to order something from them and keep telling myself I will soon……….
I don’t believe in the stories that analogue is better than digital, both are different but when handled correctly I strongly feel that digital is much more “perfect”, film however has that “rebel” look, that unpredictable cast, that amazing hues, the amazing “noise” in B&W and the incredible….. oh well…… you know what I mean.
If you have an old camera lying around, load it up with some overtime film and shoot some images.
Send them to me and I will post them on the blog, if you’re an avid film shooter, send me some files and I will also post them.
If you’ve never shot film, buy a cheap camera and have fun I tell you you will love it.
When shooting ASA3200 film try to push yourself to experiment with very little light, the last image for example was shot with just a bare lightbulb.
Besides models…..
Although you might think I’m only shooting models you are not 100% correct.
My passion for photography goes much further but over the years we have become so busy that in practice indeed it’s almost only modelphotography I do, but hey you don’t hear me complain of course 😀
Being abroad
However when being in other countries for workshops or seminars I’m always carrying around a camera and I often shoot way too much material, my wife often claims I look like the stereotype japanese tourist that shoots everything standing still or moving and I guess….. well as always she probably is right. But how can one resist, there is often so much going on and because I only have the opportunity during those trips I want to use it of course to the max. As a country I just love the states, the open roads, the billboards, the people, the cities and nature it’s all for me shoot worthy. My record at the moment must be New York however were we returned home with over 350GB of material (including video) and to be honest I already deleted while in New York what I did not want to keep. You can see the collection on www.frankdoorhof.com/portfolio by the way.
Recently I visited Florida to film some classes for www.kelbytraining.com and as with all trips to the states we try to have a few days free time before and a few days free after the workdays, often not that much but just enough to get a good impression from the area. One would expect a photographer to be drawn to nature or skylines or beaches etc. and I have to admit we visited a lot of those places and the files are still waiting to be sorted and worked on (can take several months) but the images that always really catch my eye are those that are not what a normal tourist would shoot. I’m always drawn to those areas were you are often warned for, for example I loved the series I shot in South Central in LA, or on First street in LA both areas where they say you should better not go. Call me crazy but I don’t want to shoot the same image of the Statue of Liberty that everyone has, I want that area were people would say “where is that ? I’ve never seen that, and I’ve been there many times”.
My luck is that Annewiek (my wife) also is not someone for the tourist traps, of course we want to see Universal, and next time we’re in Florida we want to go to Seaworld but often we are done very quickly. A student of mine once organized a three day sightseeing trip, he would drive us around and show his area, three days ? we were finished at the end of day 1 😀 why spend 90 minutes at a location were you can see everything in 10 minutes ? I guess we want to maximize the time we have. So in other words we are always looking around for strange and not touristy like options to take a quick shot.
The normal thing
For me during our Florida trip the following images are the ones I love and wanted to share on my blog. Because we also have some dirty clothes during several days (as most of you) we have several options, we can let the hotel do the washing but somehow we always end up in the coin launderettes not because it’s cheaper but while sitting there you can often get a few nice shots.
Feeling like a criminal, but not always
Things have changed since 9/11 and to be honest a lot I agree upon and makes me feel a little bit safer, but as a photographer lives has become harder and harder. It now is at a point that I often feel like a criminal just because I love taking images. On a recent trip to Coventry it all came to a climax for me (and I think my experience is peanuts compared to what happens to others) when a security guard forced me to empty my card….. it made the frontpage of the newspaper because I blogged about it so a lot of photographers are having this frustation.
You must know that feeling when you enter a nice restaurant with wonderful decorations (let’s say Johnny Rockets) and you want to take a shot of the interior, in the time of my grandparents, personal would pose and act funny and you could take a shot. Today I have to almost secretly quickly take an image when I’m sure no one is watching, and even then sometimes the manager will come and ask not to shoot in side (he saw it on his security camera)…. what’s wrong with taking an image for my own collection… it should be a compliment that I love his restaurant so much I want to save it for future memories.
However it can also be different I found out during our trip in Florida.
While our wash was getting cleaner and cleaner we ended up in a small sandwich place next to the launderette to get something to drink and eat, and I don’t have to tell you I love those kind of places, very photogenic and always different. The guy behind the counter saw my camera and started talking to me, in my head I thought “ok, no images here he spotted the camera” but within a minute or so he asked me if I wanted to take a shot while he was preparing a pizza….. well of course I want, I wish everyone asked that 😀
And to be honest why not ? I really don’t understand that whole issue about photography, I gave the guy my card and he has some nice images and I have a great shot I can keep for my memories of this trip. That’s the way photography should be, great memories captured forever. Both parties benefit.
Are you a professional photographer ?
How often is this question being asked to you ?
“can you shoot the moon with that lens ?”, “Look honey that’s the camera I want”
We all know these probably.
But what happened to me on the way to the airport back from Tampa was new.
We stopped at a wafflehouse to have some breakfast and when we left an nice older gentlemen approached me and asked me if I was a professional photographer, because I already took my “secret” shots inside and he did not look like management I said “Yes”. As it seemed the gentleman was running for a place in government and wanted me to take his portrait next to his car, well how often do you get a change like that out of the blue, and I don’t mean to shoot a maybe politician but I mean a real character (and I mean this in the positive sense of the word), I love to shoot real people with what they love and I have way too little time for that and often the people I want to shoot have similar schedules to mine, so I jumped to the opportunity. The next photo is the one I choose for myself, and I send a few more to him. Somehow people have a certain expression of pride or passion when you shoot them in character and that’s something that I often miss in the modeling world and what I’m after during those trips, but as mentioned before since 9/11 it’s just very difficult to shoot people on the street let alone really focus on them….. Maybe I should just walk up to people more and ask ?
Do you have stories to share, opinions, tips etc. use the comment button on top and post your comment…..
New shots Nadine
Yesterday it was time again for the Advanced workshop.
In this workshop there is always a lot of attention to finding the correct angles and working with more advanced story telling, movement and posing. As with all the workshops there is a clear difference in approach between the different workshops. In this case most of the shots you see are done with one lightsource but as a theme for advanced it meant to really look at what you’re doing and being able to let the light do what you want it to do.
For the first series we used the Elinchrom Deep Octa with a grid attached.
And as usual there is also some attention for the different lens choices, and the difficulties that this brings in posing and distortion.
After this the difficulty is moved up a bit by using a striplight with grid to make the light a bit more difficult to steer exactly where you want it, attention had to be given to the staircase but without the staircase and the wall taking away from the model. In the workshops all the light setups are explained with light metering to predict exactly what the light does, this will help the students in situations were there is no dark studio were you can see the modeling lights, but were you have to work with natural light that is added to the strobes and washes away the modeling lights, or when using speed-lights where there are no modeling lights. I’m a strong promoter of using a light-meter and by showing this kind of setups and explaining how easy you can measure it and this way letting the light do exactly what YOU want has often pushed the students to using the light-meter (again).
So here a sample of the strip-light shots.
After this setup it was time to play a bit with motion and freezing jumps, falls, dance etc.
For me personally always one of the most fun things to do, every jump shot is different and can never be repeated exactly the same way, for the blog I choose not a jump shot but these two just for fun “freaking Nadine” shots.
Finally it was time for the story telling part, as usual with Nadine she always prepares something special for the end of the shoot and this time it was not different. The most difficult light-setup is used for this setup with an Elinchrom Maxilight with custom grid aimed through the stairs. The difficult part for the students is to find the angles and also the light. First I started with a normal lens and switched to the wide to show the impact for the story telling factor that a different lens choice CAN introduce.
This ended the workshop for this Friday.
I’ve been teaching the workshops for several years now and the most asked question is “Do you still like it ?” well I have to say that I understand the question, I teach app 2 workshops a week in our studio in the Netherlands so one could think that it becomes routine, however there are some things that I do to make sure I enjoy the workshops still the same way the first time I started with them.
By changing the studio often and introducing different themes in the Advanced en Glamour workshops I keep not only the workshops interesting for the students but also for myself. During our stay in Florida for example we got a whole new floor above the makeup and relax room, to get there we need a staircase and as you can see in these images that staircase is of course used immediately in the workshops. For the students this is interesting because they learn how to use something you can find almost everywhere and not only in a studio, for me it’s interesting because I can work out many new ideas (this is just the beginning). In a few weeks we will invite some painters that will paint the new walls into a themed setting like they did with many other walls in the studio.
Working this way and also by refreshing the workshops theory part often the workshops are still very much fun to teach but also for students to come back to time and time again…… it’s always new and fresh.
Add to this the workshops I teach on the most beautiful locations in the states and Europe and I can honestly say…. Yes I still love it every day 😀
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