Results workshop Groningen

Today some images from the workshop I taught on November 29th in Groningen.
The location was an abandoned building and our model Anna Matthea, of course the styling was by Nadine (and Anna herself).

 

During location workshops I always try to not see the location before the workshop day, this way the group can really see what goes through my mind while setting up the scenes, in my opinion this is the best way to learn, I don’t feel people learn all the techniques when during a workshop there is no attention for the way something develops, and it also keeps me on edge of course. On some locations there are many opportunities and in some locations you really have to look for them. In this case it was a bit of a mix, the building itself had many great locations, but it hasn’t been abandoned for long yet so the decay still has to set in so to say, thanks to the layout however there were more than enough great photo opportunities, in fact I could shoot there for a week I think and still find new things.

 

The first set we did was in a small hallway and explained the mix between focus and broad light, but also the mix with the ambient light, but most of all it was about finding an interesting angle.

Anna Matthea Groningen  31 - November 29 2014

The second set was in a large work area where I used the small “lunch building” as my main area.
We pumped the area full of smoke (make sure there are no smoke detectors and make sure you have everything set up correctly because going into the smoke was not fun) and used an Elinchrom Ranger RX inside to light the scene from the inside and give it a mysterious look.

 

On the model I used another Elinchrom Ranger RX with a beauty dish and grid.

Anna Matthea Groningen  75 - November 29 2014

Anna Matthea Groningen  90 - November 29 2014

Although the full bodies were the actually idea of this setup make sure you also shoot some close ups to get a totally different look.
Anna Matthea Groningen  92 - November 29 2014 v2

Anna Matthea Groningen  92 - November 29 2014

The next setup was a 3 strobe setup.
One strobe on the background to light the “Fire Door”
One strobe from the side on Anna and one strobe backlighting the smoke.
In this shot we experimented a bit with story telling, but most of all it was just fun to get one of the attendees in front of the camera in a different role.

Anna Matthea Groningen  172 - November 29 2014

For the final setup we thought it would be cool to take a shot with the factory in the background….. yeah……. cool it was indeed….. VERY cold and windy, so much respect to the model. As you can see we used a blanket to keep the model warm, I made one quick testshot to show and explain the lighting setup while the model still wore the blanket, it was never the idea to shoot it like this but I loved the final result so I added the shot to the keepers.

Anna Matthea Groningen  187 - November 29 2014

After this shot it was time for the final setup, we really had to rush these because my model was slowly turning into a smurf (getting blue from the cold).

Anna Matthea Groningen  198 - November 29 2014

Anna Matthea Groningen  200 - November 29 2014 1

Anna Matthea Groningen  207 - November 29 2014

 

Many thanks to the group of attendees
Jan Kruize for the location
Annewiek Doorhof for the assistance and video (will be released via our YouTube channel)
And of course our model Anna and stylist Nadine.