A chair and Lenaa

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Remember the blogpost about using a chair as a prop?
Today a series I shot with Lenaa during our workshop “working on location” where we put the chair in the brutal bright sun (one of the hottest days of the year, yeah I did not know when planning the workshop) and shot with very limited means, some images are done with just the sun, some with the California Sunbounce and some with an Elinchrom ranger RX with Maxilight, can you spot the differences 🙂

Lenaa Augustus 2 2013_-104-Edit

The idea is to use props like this in combination with the scene, in this case I loved the brown in the wall and the brown in the chair, but also the contrast with the dress that Lenaa was wearing, making the image complete.

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Natural light and more with Lenaa

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After some doubts for quite some time I recently started using a Californian Sunbounce, and I have to be honest I love it a LOT.
The way it reflects the light is great of course but also the way you can steer the light is very well thought off and it’s a construction that can be easily mounted and held by an assistant, although it’s better not to use a very lightweight assistant on the edge of a cliff probably…..unless…. nah bad joke.

 

In the workshop with Lenaa I actually used the Sunbounce for the first time.
I shot a series with natural light, the Sunbounce and strobes, today the images from that workshop.

Lenaa Augustus 2 2013_-011-Edit

This is a shot with the Sunbounce.

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Video Topaz Clean3

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Today a small video on how I use Topaz Clean3 for skinsmoothing.

 

Topaz labs always has nice plugins for a very very friendly price. Their newest releases are Topaz Clarity and it ROCKS, without any doubt, a plugin you really can’t afford to miss, it’s like tonal contrast on steroids Also check out ReStyle which is an awesome tinting plugin and Clean3 which I use for skin, the way I use it can be seen in todays video.

 

Order them via http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html and also support our blog. Use Doorhof99 as coupon code for a really cool 15% discount

 

See my reviews at :
https://frankdoorhof.com/web/2013/08/topaz-restyle/
https://frankdoorhof.com/web/2013/05/mini-review-topaz-clarity/

Using a chair as prop

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A lot of people ask me “what is your favorite prop” and to be honest I don’t use a lot of props as being my favorite.
So I thought about this and decided to give you some tips on using a prop that is very easy to get by and actually gives you a lot of options….. the chair.
We all have them (although not all are great to use in photoshoots) and we all know how to use them, however for photoshoots the use of the chair has to be a bit different to make it more interesting right?

 

When using a chair as a prop always make sure that you photograph your model as a model and not as someone sitting in a chair, so you can actually work with her body length, by stretching the legs you create more length (which is something models always seem to love).

Esther Juli 10 2013-210-Edit

Esther Juli 10 2013-261-EditBW

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