Be inspired

I’ve said it many times

One of the best things to look at to find inspiration is movies or and videoclips. Both are not only stories but when you look closely you will see that the power of those stories are heavily enhanced by the use of color and lighting

Imaging a movie like Edward scissorhands in muted colors…. Gets a totally different atmosphere or how about that one in black and white with some cool film noir lighting.

Even better what about a horror movie with saturated colors and flat lighting…. Nah takes away the mind tricks

And there we have it. Mind tricks

Our mind is easily fooled. Take a dark room where you hardly see anything and I’m pretty sure that if we fed you stories about the famous shadow figures you will start to see them, out of the corners of your eyes that is.

Now floor the room with light and…gone is the whole illusion.

So lighting and color for photography are for me the best ways to effectively tell a story.

And the best way to practice this is to actually try to recreate some scenes. The images in this blog where shot during a cosplay workshop (one out of four sets of that workshop) and although it doesn’t really represent an actually scene you can see the inspiration.

The most important thing is not to hit that scene exactly but to get a mood and feel. And I think we succeeded in that one.

Now what is that of use for you?
If you’re training yourself to be able to recreate more extreme sets you start to learn more and more what lighting, color, retouching can do for an image. And when your done with something extreme, the next time a client asks you for a certain mood and feel… Well it will be a lot easier.

Practice extreme to become a much better photographer I would say 😉

Many thanks to Marloes and jamilla for their awesomeness