Photokina results

We’re back from the Photokina, and what a three days…..
Got to meet up with Joe McNally and saw a small part of his first show and a large part of his second show, without a doubt a reason to go to an exhibition like this, this is the way you should give an entertaining seminar, not much technical information but LOADS and LOADS of stories and a lot of stunning photographs but most importantly people will go away wanting to shoot and with an awareness of why you should shoot, I agree 100% with Joe on this one, although the one giving the assignment is very important, you have to shoot for yourself, if you loose interest in your work you can better stop.
Joe, wait till you get Dutch coffee, you will go even faster 😀

I also got part of the Bill Frakes seminar, Bill showed several videos he and his team shot and it’s an understatement to say it was fun, I loved it…. Also Bill said some striking things that are 100% in agreement with my opinion. Video is getting more and more important and it’s were we as photographers can get more money than staying with stills.

So what did I do ?

I was invited by the firm Profot who is among other gear the importer/distributor of Elinchrom and Leaf in Germany and Switzerland. They asked me for the first 3 days and although I would have loved to stay more it was not possible with my schedule which was a shame because we all had a lot of fun.
Profot arranged a very nice studio space and two friendly and beautiful models.
Originally there was a schedule that I would follow to give small demos but as most of you will already know I’m not a guy to keep to schedules, when I see a group of people standing I will start the demo in between the schedule, in other words we ended up giving several demos more during the day, but hey that’s what I love to do.

It’s always very difficult to shoot during a show like Photokina due to the simple reason that I can’t see what I’m doing, there is a lot of light and they are much brighter than the modelling lights, meaning you’re in reality shooting blind, luckily you can always trust the meter so although I can’t see what I’m doing I did not loose any bets about getting a background black or white 😀

Because I did not have a free day we did not see a lot Photokina itself, most of the time however Annewiek and I tried to run over the floors in between demos, but man it’s so HUGE that if you want to visit the first halls you are 20 minutes on the “road” to get there. Overal however I think we visited most of the booths I wanted to see. Highlights were without a doubt Joe McNally and Bill Frakes (the only ones I saw by the way) but also the new Leaf AptusII 12 of course (man 80MP’s, can’t wait to test that out), the Pentax 645D looked really nice, I hope there will be lots of customers for that, the more MF the better of course. Personally I will stay with a separate back because I don’t really believe in closed systems at the moment.

In the demos on the Profot booth I tried to keep the time short, often running between 10-20 minutes in which I showed the visitors with several light setups what they could do with just one light source. The light sources I used were: the deep octa with the Lighttools grid (that got a lot of attention), the Elinchrom indirect strip and a simple reflector with grid. In reality that is also what I use in most cases (although I also use the maxilight a lot on location). The fun thing to see is that most people are stunned by what you can do by simply just changing your own position, at the end of day 1 I started to call it “my little piece of magic” just because of some the expressions on the peoples faces, some really thought I was practicing magic 😀

In this post you can find some images I took during the 3 days with the 2 models, every demo we tried to have a different theme and look so people who came back saw something new, and to be honest for me it’s a big deal when people visit several demos because Photokina is huge and there is lot to see, and I can tell you that a lot of people I saw several times coming back, so that made my day.

It was not all good however.
During demos I use the 5DMKII to shoot backstage material and sometimes film small videos, so it’s always close to me and always being watched by me or Annewiek. Still someone succeeded in taking away my 5DMKII. During the last demo it still was in his usual place (we have that even on video by accident), a few minutes later it was gone. I can tell you that there is a lot of panic. I don’t really care about the camera (although it’s a lot of money) but what really hurts are the images, you can never get those back. Today I saw on twitter that Photokina is now warning booth holders for a “gang” that is active and that the people should watch their gear. For me it’s unbelievable that people do things like that….. but than again some people just don’t have any feeling I guess.

I have to add that I would really like to thank the firm Elinchrom and Profot for finding a solution for me, I really appreciate that.

Overal however I look back at three wonderful days, worked with a great team of people, shook hands with many people and saw some nice new gear.

Extra news….
Maybe even breaking news for some of you.
As you know I’ve been teaching workshops for a while now, but mostly concentrating on big flashes (quadra, ranger and studio strobes), a few students already asked me during the years but I never took it up, but now…… I will.
Very soon I will also start teaching workshops with small flashes.
I will teach the workshops with Canon gear, so camera, 580EX strobes etc. (the techniques are of course also usable for big flash and other brands), at the moment we are in talks with Lastolite to supply us with modifiers for these workshops.

I think it’s a perfect addition to what I’m doing now, loads of people might think that what I do only work because I use a Medium Format camera and big flash, however they miss the fact that you have to understand light and you can do in fact almost everything you want with everything you have available. That’s also the reason why I will teach this workshop with Canon cameras and strobes. I don’t yet know a time frame for these workshops, or costs but I will probably be a totally new workshop with a small powerpoint presentation about the system and a practice part. If you have suggestions about what you would like to see just let me know.

So enough talks, let’s show some images.
Do remember they were shot under bad conditions and during the demos.