Workshop Rowhill Grange

What more could you wish than beautiful weather, a stunning model, a good MUA and some fine students ?
Well a nice location maybe ?
All was there today.

One little point of attention, the two images you see during the blogpost and the ones in the video are STRAIGHT from the camera right after they were shot and shot with my iPhone, so don’t expect any quality, final results will be posted on Friday.

Today it was time for the workshop, the location workshops are always so much fun to do, every location is different and every location has new challenges. During the workshops I always try to teach my students something about light, controlling it and most of all how to use a lightmeter properly. And today was no exception.
I have to add that I’m always a bit shocked how many people simply don’t measure the light, for me that’s something I really can’t understand. Maybe it’s because I mainly use the “big” strobes where you have to everything without TTL, but even than having a lightmeter with a TTL system gives you a lot of extra options and it makes live simply put much more easy.

So what did we do today ?

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Photovision Roadshow Kent 2010

Today it was time for the Photovision roadshow in Kent.
The Photovision Roadshow is a traveling roadshow with attention to a lot of photographic gear, software and of course books and much more……
The Roadshow runs several dates during the year in different locations in the UK, Scotland and Ireland, I’m not on all dates but this year I was teaching a seminar on four of them, Coventry, Dublin, Bristol and today Kent (last year we visited Edinburgh and Hertfordshire), after the seminar day I always teach a one day workshop to a small group of photographers (which will be tomorrow).
I would love to do all of them of course but getting to the UK or Ireland from the Netherlands does take a lot of time to do it every month. Read more

Day 1 Kent, Leeds castle and Photoshop world

Let’s start off with some hot news.
March next year I will be joining my friends from Kelbytraining during Photoshop world in the USA to teach two seminar/workshops during this amazing event. You can image I’m psyched to get there and be part of the “madness” called Photoshop world.

Kent day 1
Today we arrived with the boat at app 7:00AM and drove straight to Dartford where our hotel is located.

First we had to go to a shopping mall to get a new 3 sim card for our mifi and get internet on the go.
From there I twittered if someone had a nice suggestion for us to visit in the area.

Man do I love twitter 🙂
When we arrived at our hotel in Kent I twittered of some people could advise me some places to visit. Of course one could use Google or the flyers in the hotel but I think the people living in the area often have much better advise than the flyers can ever give. In this case I was advised to check out Leeds Castle as being one of the most beautiful castles in the area, well I can say thank you all very much, it was indeed more than worth the time.

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Workshop Glamour 16 October 2010 Nirmala

Today it was time for one of my favorite workshops, the Glamour workshop.
The model for today was Nirmala, in my opinion a model that is literally breathing and living Glamour. For me glamour is making a photo that is not nude or erotic but a real glamour photo should give the viewer a little bit of a tease. With Fashion I always try to give attention to the clothing, the styling etc. with glamour for me personally the model is the main attraction for the viewer.

It’s always difficult to find a real good glamour model and as you can see in these shots, Nirmala is without a doubt a wonderful addition to our models 😀

During the workshops we always work a lot with light and settings, with glamour however it works a little bit differently, due to the nature of the shots I want to take (a little bit of teasing) expression of the model, the light and the styling all have to come together. With Fashion there is also the clothing that is helping with the poses, in other words, the clothing will always cover the model making a lot of more poses possible than with glamour. With glamour everything is shown so for the photographer it’s very important to keep watching the model and make sure her body is in the right positions, and if there is something not so nice for the image due to a pose it has to be covered by for example an arm or hand…… so during the workshops I give a lot of attention to this and learn the students to understand what they are seeing through the viewfinder and how to solve the problems you can get by certain poses and clothing.

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