The year 2010

At the end of every year you see a lot of tv-shows with the best (or worse) events of that year, for me personally it’s always nice to see the year in such a show and remember certain events you forgot, and to be remembered to events you will never forget.
So every year on my blog I also try to do something like that, and so I will with this blog post, feel free to add your own personal opinions and highlights to this post with the comment button, everything goes.

For me (us) 2010 has been a very successful year with a lot of highlights and only one really big negative event, so let’s see what happened in 2010 in my live. Of course I will only pick out the big events otherwise I think you would still be reading after the new year 😀

Castle workshop in Belgium
The year started with a workshop in Belgium, the organizers rented a beautiful location, a castle just over the border in Belgium.
The first day was planned for a seminar and the second day we took the whole day with a small group of students to explore the options inside the castle, location wise a stunning location and I also got some great shots for my own portfolio.

Professional Imaging 2010
The pro imaging is a huge event in the Netherlands with everything about photography, during the pro imaging there are several guest speakers and often also some big names. This year it was Scott Kelby who would be the guest speaker that would draw the crowds. And of course as expected he did.
As most years I was doing some demos on the Elinchrom booth and met up with Scott several times before and during the show and I think it’s save to say we connected very nicely. To make a long story much shorter I ended up doing a guestblog on his blog and a few weeks later I signed a contract to become the first European photographer to join kelbytraining.

Workshops in New York
I love to teach and most of all I love to teach abroad.
In 2010 we did a lot of workshops abroad but the most spectaculair had to be New York.
The City that never sleeps…. well that is without a doubt true.
A photographer from Boston called Brendan Stewart (make sure you check out his work at www.symbolphoto.com) mailed me if I would be interested in doing a series of workshops in the Boston area. We quickly found out that moving the workshops to New York would give us much more options, so we did.
Luckily for us a Richard a local NY photographer also helped out and before we knew it we were in full swing.
As a location we choose a very characteristic studio building owned by a one time big photographer and to put it mildy it was a location with loads of challenges…. Originally we planned two workshops but very soon we found out that we needed to go to three because the students kept coming in, we could have done four but that was something I could not fit into the schedule (we will be back).
During our stay in New York we made several new friends and we are still totally overwhelmed with the kindness of the people. Via this blogpost I love to thank Brendan, Richard, Amy, Mark, David, Neil (who scared me half to death during a car ride) and Stefan (Yankees rules, he gave me probably the highlight of my trip by taking me and Annewiek to a Yankee game)

It was a disaster getting to New York due to an ash cloud which gave the flying traffic a lot of problems. In the end our flight was cancelled three times and we ended up with a really tight schedule to make it to the workshops, on the morning of that flight however that was also cancelled and we decided to take the change and drive to Frankfurt to catch the flight there (our connecting flight was cancelled), I can tell you we never drove that fast (luckily in Germany there is no speed limit), and we barely made it.
Getting back also almost was a problem, when we returned from our Yankee game with Stefan we could nog get to our hotel because there was a bomb very close to our hotel, so we ended our last night in New York sitting on times square waiting to get into our hotel…. overal an exciting trip I think 😀

for more New York see www.frankdoorhof.com/portfolio under Personal New York

Exposition and workshop Groningen
During the summer my work could be seen at “lichtzone” in Groningen.
The owners of the gallery attached a month of model photography to this exposition which I started with a workshop in Groningen.

The UK/Ireland tour
During the Photovision roadshow in the UK and Ireland I was a guest speaker for the second year in a row in 2010.
Andy asked me to join the roadshow and combine it with a workshop after the show which I think worked out great, in 2010 we joined the show in Bristol, Coventry, Dublin and Kent.
The workshops after the show were always interesting location wise.

Bristol
due to the weather we had to change locations literally at the very last moment, we choose a beautiful church next to our hotel. However getting the church was not an easy task, I had to “defend” myself in front of a church board and show my work on the iPad…. I never thought we could really use the location after this but we did, without a doubt this was a stunning location (without a doubt in the top 3 of this year).

Coventry
In Coventry we used our hotel for the workshops, we often try to book a hotel that can double as our hotel and location for our workshops and the hotel in Coventry was more than suited for this with it’s very classical looks and wonderful stairs and rooms. Coventry will also stick in my mind due to me being very close to arrested because I took some shots of my wife in a shopping mall and refusing to delete the images (in the end I did and recovered them back at the hotel room), it landed me on the front page of a local newspaper because as it seems photographers are having a really hard time in England, and I can confirm this… during the last trips in the UK I’ve had several “collisions” with security guards who told me I could not take photographs, even out on the street.

Dublin
Oh do we love the landscapes of Ireland (and Scotland), but during our stay in Dublin we also saw a lot of the city and the people, often the trips are a bit too short to really see something of the countries but we always try to stay at least 5 days (2 days work, 1 day real free time). In Dublin we also used the hotel and the surrounding areas for the workshops and also here we came home with some great portfolio shots.

Kent
Kent was last on the list for the UK this year.
For the workshops in Kent we rented a seminar room in a wonderful remote hotel/spa with beautiful gardens and outside locations. The photos from this workshops are probably some of the best I did lighting wise in the UK tour, but I also played a lot with the natural light. This was the smallest group of students we had during the UK workshops but it was worth every minute.

EOS Digitaal dag
Without a doubt one of those highlights of the year.
A full day on a nice location with loads of photographers.
I always try to book this date in advance to be part of it and I can already confirm I will be there in 2011.
During the day I teach several one hour workshops showing the different concepts of working outside with natural light and strobes, the fun thing this year was the fact that although the group would be a maximum of 20 people during one headcount we went well over 65…. next year we will do that slightly different to keep order in the chaos 😀

El Paso
In September it was time for a second workshop in Belgium, well actually we started out in the Netherlands.
As with most workshops the first day is a seminar day and we did that one in our hotel which was still in the Netherlands but close to the Belgium border.
The second day we rented out El Paso.
El Paso is a western town located just over the border from the Netherlands and Belgium.
To say we had a great a time is a HUGE understatement, without a single doubt this was one of the most spectacular workshops I taught location wise in 2010, the two models Koen and Nadine also totally took in the atmosphere and looks of the old west, heck Koen could have lived there. In El Paso we used some smoke, some light, some styling and threw it all on a big pile to make in my opinion some amazing work.

Florida (Tampa)
Visting the USA is always a treat, somehow I just love the US, it’s not one thing I can point out, I just feel very alive and at home over there, yeah I know it sounds strange for a 100% European Dutch guy to say that 😀
In June we visited the Kelby headquarters in Tampa Florida to film 5 instructional videos for Kelbytraining (2 of which are now already online).
One can of course plan trips like that to work in nice weather but somehow we planned wrong (also due to our schedule), getting there in June during a heatwave was not the best idea this year I have to admit. I normally never sweat but oh my I now know exactly all the spots you can sweat from, never in my life I experienced that much heat and humidity, it was terrible. To give you an idea …… no I can’t just imagine being really really hot and imagine that we would probably than say “ah nice, it’s a little less hot now”.

The videos turned out great thanks to the great kelbytraining team, from our side we wish to thank the whole kelbytraining crew who made us feel right at home and with friends but most of all Erik (my assistant), Adam (mr. awesome), Scott himself (we have to play guitar once), Matt, RC and the always lovely Kathy (and I know I forget a lot of you people but there were just to many).

Photokina
Now we’re talking about a big photography event.
Photokina in Koln is without a doubt something every photographer dreams to visit, and to be able to teach there is a dream come true.
For Leaf I already demoed on the previous photokina and this year you could find me on the Elinchrom booth demoing the new Mamiya grip, Elinchrom gear, Leaf backs, Phase ones Capture one for leaf and much more.
Highlights were meeting up with Joe McNally who’s work and method of teaching I’ve admired for some years now and in real life he is just as friendly as on the videos I can tell you and of course the many responses I got from people who visited almost every demo although some were repeated over the day.
But the negative highlight must have been the pure horror when we discovered that my Canon 5DMKII was stolen from our booth during one of my demos, with all due respect but who thinks about stealing a camera from a photographer who is teaching for them ?? well some things I will never understand.

Some photoshoot highlights
For me personally the following photoshoots really stood out in 2010.
GodFth PrtIII (infamous mob) : a new york rapper who was visiting the Netherlands for the filming of a clip and ended up in our studio for some promotional shots.
Barbara Gwanmesia : a southafrican singer with a wonderful attitude
Paul Abma : Inspirational Coach extraordinair 😀
Penney de Jager : Famous dutch dancer from the 80’s working on her spectaculair Burlesque show which we shot for her and immensely enjoyed.
Sym advertising campaings : In 2010 we did several sessions for Sym scooters for their european campaigns, and the 2010 give away for a fireworks firm.
Martijn Wensink : Musical can do it all, works with Penney de Jager but has an even busier schedule than me I think, great guy.
Annemarie Kremer : Dutch Opera singer, I did several promotional images for her which landed at least one cover at the moment.

2010 was also filled with publications for Leaf, Elinchrom, Mamiya and several publications for Wibi Soerjadi.

DIPP associate and Portfolio of the year
2010 also was the year I decided to join the associate program from the DIPP, during the judging the jury was impressed with my portfolio and I got my associateship. However much to my surprise I had to climb on the podium a second time… my portfolio was also given the Portfolio of the year 2010 award. Of course I’m more than proud of this honor.

Light III
My 7h instructional DVD (6th in English) was released in May 2010.
It focusses on concepts, groups and styling plus it contains the workshops in New York.
As with the other instructional DVDs (especially the light series) sales have been very strong for this DVD, due to my contract with Kelby new DVDs will probably pop up in 2011 under their brand.

iPhone and Android app
2010 was also the year both the iPhone and Android apps were released.
Both contain of course links to my work but also a chatroom were you can ask questions and chat with other app owners, loads of tips and tricks, feeds to other photography feeds, wikis, news, updates about photography and much much more. The apps can be downloaded in the app stores and are priced at 0.79 euro cents and 0.99 dollar cents.

Workshops Apeldoorn, were it all went terribly wrong
As you can read my schedule is pretty packed, and don’t get me wrong I won’t complain I love what I do (understatement) however it seems the human body can take only that much and the 23th of October I found out the hard way.
We just returned from England and I was supposed to teach 6 workshops during the strobist festival in Apeldoorn.
During the trip back from England we had a lot of stress due to network problems at home that needed to be solved and a lot of traffic jams. Just half an hour before we had to leave for Apeldoorn we got everything working and we left for Apeldoorn with some spectaculair shots in mind. My model for that day was Corine and she brought some amazing dresses for the final workshops. The first three workshops were going as planned but during the break everything fell apart.
Because it was cold I decided to walk around a bit and talk to some other photographers, half into the break I however felt a bit tired and decided to go back to our spot and just take some relax time and sit down…. well I never reached that point, I talked a bit with a student and before I knew it I had to fight to stay “awake” and was sitting down in a chair.

To my horror there was no EHBO (first aid) at the event and I was talked to by a stewart of large airliner who understood what was going on (later on he was right), because I was feeling very terrible and had the feeling I could very well die at the spot I asked for an ambulance. The ambulance arrived in about 10 minutes and very soon it was clear that although I was still scared out of mind there was no immediate danger of me really collapsing, everything checked out 100%. The best description I can give is that you feel like you can collapse any moment with a mix of dizziness and feeling drunk (I’ve been drunk once in my life and multiply that feeling with 100).
The conclusion of the ambulance and later my own doctor was that my body simply shut down due to over-exhaustion. Because I’m not THAT addicted to my work we cleared my schedule till the end of the year (that’s why you haven’t seen that many updates) and decided to do only a small amount of workshops and only the really necessary photoshoots.

Of course there was so much more in 2010, but I’m already on a lot of words and I want to keep you interested to the end so I’ve decided to leave it at this.
Feel free to add your best shots of 2010, your top stories etc.

That takes me to the end, what is my best shot of 2010 ?
It took me a LONG time to decide this and I can’t really settle for just one shot, so I included some of my personal favs from this year (and sneaked a few in during this blog post).

What will 2011 bring ?
Well a few things I can already tell you for 2011.
In March you can see me at Professional Imaging again in a totally new environment, also in March I will teach several seminars at Photoshop world in Orlando.
In May we will host a big weekend of shooting and teaching on a large ship which will sail for 2 days during which we will do photoshoots, portfolio reviews, BBQ, chit chat sessions and more photoshoots.
Workshops are being planned for Italy, Croatie, Boston and Switzerland.
I will be at the EOSdigitaal dag of course, and 2011 will see the premiere of the small flash workshop.