Day 1 of the Belgium workshops September 17th

A while ago Johnny van Strijdonck approached me if I would be interested in teaching a two day workshop in Belgium. And because I love to do these location workshops I said yes of course, however (as always) I wanted a nice location, well Johnny delivered 😀
He arranged for the second day to be shot in “El Paso” a western town (street) close to the Dutch border in Belgium. Because I wanted to use the second day to the max I decided to spend the first day only on theory and showing some simple outside setups as discussed in the theory part, but because I choose Nadine as model I could have known that there would be no simple shots, as usual Nadine surprised us all with some amazing outfits and add her posing and expressions with it and you can magically transform even a simple setup into something stunning……

One tip for people planning to go somewhere with a lot of gear to teach….. Make sure you ask if the conference room is on ground level or reachable by elevator. As you might have guessed by now, this one was not and we had to carry a lot of gear two stories high pffffff.

The first day however we did need all the gear for the practice part and you don’t leave that kind of gear in the car overnight.
So we started out with theory which took app 2 hours inside the hotel, the weather was not good and to be totally honest I was very afraid for the following day. But because as photographers (and models) we are not afraid of a little bit of rain (and there were a lot of trees outside the hotel) we did the outside part anyway that day.

We started out in a small bicycle road where I talked about the lines and composition and of course using fill in flash and the posing of the model to create a certain mood and story.

After that we did some small setups to find angles under a very low key setting, it started to rain a bit more but I had seen something that I just had to shoot, you probably know that feeling when you have an idea and you just have to do it, the results are often mediocre but sometimes they hit the spot. I’m still not sure under which category this one falls but I just had to shoot this scene. So as soon as we finished the group exercise I quickly setup for this next shot.

After this is was quickly back inside for lunch, also here some of my teachings was brought into practice by “myself” :D, I always tell my students to keep your camera close and be sure to respond right away when you see something interesting. Or in other words don’t finish your sentence because the moment can be gone, but just shoot, well….. this was such a moment for me. I loved the way the light hit Nadine and the tea, so I took a quick shot and continued my conversation…..

After the Lunch it was too bad outside so we continued the last part inside the hotel. I strongly believe that a good photographer should never “bitch” about a location but just make the best out of it although sometimes it can be hard, but I strongly believe that even with the most uninspiring locations you can make something that is interesting. In this case I opted for a stained glass window, I did not include anything more of the scene, because trust me it was not that interesting…..

After this it was almost time to finish up with some questions but not before I took this shot. Again something I could not resist and it was also handed to my by one of the students who had a similar feeling as I from this situation. The hotel was very nice in the restaurant but somehow behind that it was resembling more of a 1960’s east block look, and this is of course very inviting for some weird shot (again still not sure if it hits the spot, often I will know in a few weeks, but for the story it’s included here anyway).

After this shot we went back to the conference room for some final discussions, image talk etc.
We ended the day app at 17:00 for the students. And we prepared ourself for day 2 EL PASO !!!

Yeah this was something I was really looking forward to…….. I wanted to make some epic filmlike shots and was planning on doing some of my best work to date during a workshop….. if I succeeded ? you can read that tomorrow when I continue this blog post 😀

But first a small backstage video from day 1.
Shot and edited with the iPhone 4.