Worldwide Photowalk 2014 Tilburg

October 11 was Worldwide Photowalk day.
I always try to host one of the walks and this time (due to other appointments) the city would be Tilburg.

 

The group assembled at camerastore “Foto Tuerlings”
A small shop with heart for their business, just the way I love them, so if you are in that area make sure to check them out. Foto Tuerlings arranged some nice warm sandwiches with “kroketten” and drinks. During the walk our attendees had the choice of several Sony cameras and lenses to test out in the field, in my opinion the best way to test out cameras 😀

 

Most of the time I spend talking to people but I still managed to get some shots that are fun to share on the blog, so here we go 😀

Photowalk 2014 Tilburg  (8 of 203)_DxO

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Some classic portraits with Manon

We recently started with a completely new workshop line up, all the new workshops in Emmeloord now have a certain theme.
Recently the theme was “vintage lighting and fashion”
After explaining the approach of the techniques to the attendees I started adding some more modern twists and today you can see some of the results.

 

Model : Manon

 

Manon October 3 2014 2019BW

Manon October 3 2014 0531

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Tip about posing and motion

Often people think that when you shoot an image you have to “pose” the model, and although this is true in some cases, for me it often works best to let the model pose “freely” let her/him find the poses that are comfortable and from there on I will slightly adjust the pose to make it “work” for me.
Adding motion brings in a whole new dimension, don’t let the model jump, but ask her to very slightly move her body away from the floor (yeah I know it sounds weird) this will not only give her/him a good laugh but also actually says exactly what she/he has to do.
Now if the model has a problem with the mouth (often it can be a bit “weird”) tell them to scream (without making sound) or shout “Shabang” (LOL) this will help enormously with relaxing the mouth or in other words not making it look funky.

 

An extra benefit of the small “jumps” is that it can also be done with strobes that have a slightly slower flash duration or if the model is wearing high-heels, because trust me… you don’t want a model to jump high with high-heels…. well actually the jump is not the problem but the coming down 😀

 

Good luck.
Manon October 3 2014 0874

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Tip for light meters and ambient light

Often I get messages from people that their light meter is not reliable outside, inside no problem but outside…..
Do always remember that outside there is also ambient light.

Let’s say you have a small flash system (the system flashes like Canon/Nikon/Sony) and your shooting full manual and get a reading of F5.6 inside, now when you go outside a day later and you get F11 don’t expect that the strobe is actually on F11, it could very well be that the strobe is outputting only F8 or lower.

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The meter works very simple
When you press the button to meter in strobe mode (the lighting bolt) it will actually wait for a pulse and start metering, now the pulse from the strobe is registered of course and the meter does it’s work BUT if the ambient light (on the giving shutter speed) is higher than the strobe the meter will of course give you the F stop for the ambient light (since it overpowers the strobe).
So the next time you’re outside and want to check if your strobe is registering, or if you suspect a problem…. first set the strobe on the lowest setting and meter, now start raising the strobe and if the meter value doesn’t change you know you’re metering ambient (or in other words, ambient is overpowering the strobe).

 

So don’t bash the meter, understand how it works 😀

now let’s look at some solutions….

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