The new workshop Fashion shoot A-Z

I’ve been thinking about this workshop for a long time.
In almost all workshops you follow (including mine) there is often a lot of attention for a specific area of photography, for example “Small flash”, “Glamour”, “Model coaching and movement”, “Photoshop and Lightroom” etc. and this is of course to be expected because a day only has so many hours right?

Well I had the same problem so at the moment I teach a lot of workshops all with different topics, in these workshops I will start out with a theory part, which is rather intense and contains information that will without a doubt take you at least a few steps further as a photographer, after this it’s time to bring the learned material into practice, meaning a real photo shoot and before you know it the day went by.

A lot of students asked me if it would be possible to teach a workshop where I would go from A-Z in just one day, and at first I said this was not possible, because simply put there is so much going on that to cover something from A-Z would take way too much time, but I kept thinking about it and the more I thought about it the more I was beginning to feel it would be possible. As you might (or might not know) I’m finishing my book at the moment that will in fact be a complete guide to model photography (we don’t have an exact title yet), meaning…. well you guessed it everything from A-Z and while going to the final edits of the book the workshop “appeared” in front of me, and yesterday it was the first time I taught it.

Now with almost all of my workshops the students can shoot their images, but for this workshop I made an exception, it’s a so called “listen, ask, learn” workshop meaning the students can ask whatever they want, participate in the thinking process etc. the only thing is, they don’t shoot images and this saves a lot time and makes it possible to teach the A-Z workshop indeed in a one day workshop (although it’s tight).

Now which topics are discussed during the workshop?
First of all I want to say that you really have to be there to get it all because there is so much going on that everything I write down is actually not the complete story containing all topics, so I won’t even try…. but here a small overview of some of the topics.

How to get the model you need
How to create moodboards and share them with the team
How to build your team
How to prepare for the shoot
Building a web-presence
Talk about updating your site, using social media
Warm and cold introductions
Networking
Working with your model, MUA “and stylist” towards the result
Finding the proper background
Setting up the lights fitting for the background
Coaching the model
Finding the right angles and light
Being creative with lights
Use lights different
Using the light meter
How to get a perfect calibrated workflow
Shooting tethered
Selecting the images
Working with DAM within Lightroom
What to look for in an image
Learning to not “spray and pray” but take the shot
Composition
Integration of Lightroom and Photoshop
Retouching within Lightroom and Photoshop
The use of filters OR not
How to work with Lightroom for file management during retouching
Creating an unique look
Working on skin
Working on backgrounds
Getting the images online
Building an order section within your website
Getting the customer happy
How to export from Lightroom quick and easy
And much much more…….

 As you can see a lot of topics are covered, and again this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Today was a test workshop, meaning the first time it was taught…. and it was a success so I will be adding this workshop to the line up.

During the tour through the UK in May I will use a similar concept so if you like what you read here… be sure to check out the dates in the UK.
Now you also want to see some of the images of course…. all images were shot and retouched during the workshop, so no work was done outside that time (in other words you can retouch very quickly if you take care of your lights and you know a bit about Photoshop and workflow) I strongly believe that photographers loose A LOT of time because the workflow is not 100% as it should be, and by first taking that under consideration and work on it speed will quickly start to happen 😀

Many thanks to our model : Lenaa and my favorite stylist in the world Nadine 🙂