New images from Christianne

Last Saturday it was time for the Advanced III workshop with Christianne.
The Advanced III workshop has a very special theme, outside photography, meaning if the weather is “ok” we will go out and shoot. The fun thing about this is that for a lot of people using a light meter in the studio is something they are comfortable with, however as soon as they step outside a small “panic attack” occurs 🙂 while in reality it’s not more difficult, so in this workshop there always is a lot of attention for manipulating and metering the light outside.

So what kind of things do we discuss during the workshop?
The students will learn how to create a scene, in other words how to see what will happen when you look through the lens. Most of the time photographers will just look at a scene, set the model and lights and then find out that through the lens everything is different. Although this seems like a no-brainer, almost half of the students I teach do have problems with this, and just learning them a few small tricks will help enormously.

But of course there is much more.
We will further make setups that will create a nice fill in flash effect, lowering the ambient to create deeper tones in the sky and let the model pop out more from the scene, and of course some day to night setups where the ambient is overpowered by the strobes. And of course natural light shots are not forgotten.

Strobes will give a scene some more “pop”, and in the next sample you can see the difference between a natural light shot and one with strobes.

Both shots have a slightly different photoshop toning and curve to enhance the feel of the light, but I think you see the difference 🙂

And of course one of the best tips for everyone….
Although you set everything up for strobes, make sure to also shoot some natural light shots, this in fact will double the results, and if someone doesn’t like the strobed shots, you have a whole selection of natural light shots. DO however take the natural shots serious, I’ve seen many that will concentrate on the strobes and just take some almost behind the scenes natural light shots, if you do that you are in fact doing a photoshoot without trying to do your best, and that’s always a bad idea, so spend time on the natural light shots, trust me… one day it will save your day.

And of course within the workshop I teach the group how to balance and manipulate backgrounds like you see in this shot. The model is standing in a bike underway which is very dark, meaning if we would have shot this with natural light only the back would totally blow out, which by the way could also be a great shot, by using strobes you can balance these two and even control the outcome, like in this shot where I wanted it slightly darker…. the technique is actually quite simple when you know how to use a reflective meter. Just meter the brightest part and determine how dark or light you want the background to be and balance your strobes on that.

I would always advise to choose the shutter time that is equal to the darkest image you have in mind, by lowering the shutter time you can always make it brighter, however you can’t go higher than 1/125th on most cameras so when you set everything up for a middle tone and want it darker you will have to raise the strobe power which takes time, when you setup for the darkest possible outcome you like you can just keep shooting and in between only change the shutter speed to let in more available light.

When you want to know much more about metering like this and shooting on location..?
Make sure to check out my “Live in Boston” DVD/Download via our webshop at www.frankdoorhof.com/shop2 it’s a DVD/Download which was filmed during a 2 day workshop I taught in Boston and contains more than 130 minutes of intense instruction including small flash, Q&A, location work, meter use, color checkers and of course manipulation of the light/backgrounds.