Waterlicht… an unique look at my area

As you might or might know we live on the bottom of the sea, and no I’m not spongebob. The area we live in was “won” back from the sea.

Last week we visited an art piece by Daan Roosegaarde very close to our home (actually it’s on my bike route) in Schokland (Unesco heritage) which was an island just a few decades ago. With lasers and smoke the water like it was in the past was simulated and for just a few nights Schokland was an island again.

Images doesn’t really do it justice, but I think you can get a pretty nice idea about how it was.
Now for our region this was a huge event with over 10.000 people visiting each night so all roads were closed and we had to travel with special busses to the location, which brought me to say “Finally full busses in Emmeloord” 😀

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Waterlicht  (5 of 80) December 29 2015

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The shot below must be my favorite shot of the event… I did fake it a little bit by opening up the top part of the shot to show the stars.

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Waterlicht  (39 of 80) December 29 2015

 

Small spaces are limiting? … nah

One of the most heard excuses is “my space is too small for a good shot”.
Well you might not be able to shoot a model in front of a white seamless, or fit in a whole family, or make a model jump (although that could be funny… for the photographer, not the model,….. nah don’t do it), but in essence EVERY location has potential as long as you use it to the max.

 

In this case we used a small staircase that is located at the back end of our studio and leads up to the “stage”. Our building is actually and old “church” and this was where the preacher was standing, it’s a tight space but for me it’s always fun to shoot there.

 

As you can see in the following shots I used some smoke to give the scene a bit more of an edge, but I also used my lighting to the max by moving around my model. Now always remember that smoke acts as both a diffuser and reflector so the more smoke you get… well let me put it this way, it’s always different. Also remember that as soon as the smoke gets in between the model and the front light source “all bets are off” smoke will start to act as a reflector and it will be one big white out.

 

We used one Elinchrom beauty dish with grid from the front and one gridded (and later open) reflector from the back with a blue gel.
Styling and model : Nadine

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For the next one I left in a bit more red.

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But you don’t always have to use the same pose of course…..
Why not shoot one from the back for example.

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And while you’re at it. Why not move around your model and get a completely different look?

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As you can see with the same light setup and the same very tight space you can create something really cool… just think outside the box… or in these kind of cases probably inside the box 😀

 

Good luck.

How a shot comes to be….

One of the questions we always get is “How do you think while doing a shoot?”
Now some shots are of course planned and totally worked out before the shoot, where we actually always change things around during the shoot, and some shots are born literally 100% spontaneous, to be honest most of my portfolio work is actually shot during workshops, and because our workshops are always 100% flexible we actually never know what’s going to happen so it’s always a surprise.

 

Now some things are always a guarantee for some cool shots and one of those is working with our stylist/model Nadine.
During the workshop this weekend we started with a vintage outfit and I thought it would be nice on our stage next to the brown background, because I wanted to add something for Nadine to pose against we used our “fake fireplace”, but that was a bit… well empty so we dragged in our larger than life Tweety bird and eded up with this.

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As you can see a bit of expression goes a long way 😀
We loved these shots but we decided to also add another prop in the form of a suitcase….

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As you can see somethings looked planned but are in fact 100% spontaneous, the best thing to do when you are shooting is to be 100% open for changes, 100% flexible and you will find out that you are way more prone for cool end results. But it also means that you can “rescue” the shoot when something doesn’t go as planned.

 

Are we happy with the shot?
Well for what it is, yeah.
But if I would have planned the shot it would have looked different, location and set dressing would be more “cartoony” and maybe I would have added an element of drawing to mimic real life and photo…. but we can always do that later 😀

A new model : Kimberley

Today some images I shot from our new model Kimberley.
She was also the winner of the miss beauty contest and also selected as miss photogenic 😀
And I think that’s 100% true.
We will be seeing more of her in the near future during our workshops and shoots.

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Kimberly December 29 2015 0332 bw

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