My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

A social media tip that saves you a lot of money

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We all have a limited amount to spend each month and let’s be honest whenever you can shave a few bucks every month that’s a good thing right? Especially if you actually get more than the more expensive option.

Now for years I’ve been running my YouTube channel and I love putting material out for you guys. So if you haven’t already please subscribe and share the link with your friends, here is a direct link to subscribe, and don’t worry it’s 100% free.
Subscribe to our free YT channel

One of the biggest problems when uploading videos is music.
Especially in today’s market you get claims all the time, even if the music you use is yours or under fair use, and even when you have a license it’s still not warranty that you won’t be claimed, and in all honesty it’s a huge frustration and a lot of work. So thankfully there are now sites that offer you a humongous library with music that is all labeled and tagged so you will never get a claim again (well at least it didn’t happen to me yet on any of those videos).

One of the sites is called Epidemic.
Epidemic gives you weekly new albums and you can choose from any type of music, vocals or instrumentals and you can download the complete song or even stems, in other words it’s fricking awesome.

Now normally Epidemic charges $13.00 a month which in all honesty is pretty ok for what they offer. But how does $7.99 sound?
A lot better right?
Well I think so too, and that’s why I’ve been using a partner site called Talentsy for quite some time now. I mostly only use Talentsy for the Epidemic link but they offer a lot more.

Talentsy
When you join Talentsy it’s a bit overwhelming but in short for $7.99 a month you get of course the Epidemic subscription but also accounts at for example spreadshirt, a website where you can design shirts/sweaters etc. and host your own store, in case you want some cool Learning with Frank clothing check out Frank Doorhof Merchandise

But it doesn’t stop there.
You also get a nice dashboard with analytics about your channel and although YT also has some cool dashboards options the Talentsy dashboard is a great addition and makes it a lot easier to read when you’re in a hurry.

One of the things that’s also very nice is the “tag creator”, just type in what the video is about and voila, the tag creator gives you suggestions for tags.

But one of the best things next to epidemic is actually TubeBuddy Pro.
With TubeBuddy pro you get a lot of extra information on your YouTube channel and you get a lot of extra options for cards, comments, bulk actions, statistics, ranking etc. this gives you actually an awesome inside into what your video and channel is doing and which things work and don’t work, this is without a doubt a must have if you’re serious about your channel.

Add to this the design options from Talentsy and their boost support and you get a lot of value for just $7.99

Conclusion
You can spend a lot of money for music and real handy statistics and a merchandise shop, but for $7.99 a month Talentsy literally just covers it all, are there any downsides? well yeah, for Epidemic you have to authorize via Talentsy every time you visit the site, but this is maybe a 5 second delay, so in my book it’s more than worth it.

So head on over to Talentsy (use this link and you also support our work) and get going.

Tip on props

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Tip
When you don’t have any more props. Go for the simple things. Like this old pallet. The only think I did was put my foot on it to break it. Put our model behind it and make her scream.

It might not be a stellar shot but it was a lot fun and we created it with next to nothing.

Much more tips in my book mastering the modelshoot or our full length tutorials on www.frankdoorhof.com/videos

Bad reflections…..

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Sometimes you don’t really have a choice and you have to work with what you got.
Especially during tradeshows it can sometimes be a little bit tricky to create good shots, not because the sets are often really small (especially on booths) but also because sometimes the backgrounds are not really what you ordered.

Take this shot.
I asked for a black or very dark background, I knew the space would be really small and I would be close by so doing several demos a day with a light background can be pretty boring, but with a dark background at least I can play a bit more with contrast. Arriving on the booth we already saw that although the background was black it was a pretty reflective background, this means that a lot of angles will give you reflections, not really a perfect situation. Now you can do two things (well you can do several but let’s keep it simple), you can complain and demand something else (and trust me that will be your last show, unless you’re David Lachapelle or similar of name) or you can just adjust and make the best of it.

For me it meant, making the best out of it and actually using the background for that reflection, and in all honesty after the second demo I loved the fact that it was reflective. Now to understand this you have to know a little bit about me, I love my work but I don’t want to repeat the same thing over and over again, some people love doing this, they work out a look and stick with it for years, it can be highly successful but it’s not my thing, I love that people will come up to a demo and never know what to expect, it will always be slightly or totally different.

In this case we used a gridded striplight and placed it really close to the backdrop just feathering over Nadine our model. The effect was in my opinion pretty awesome, especially realizing it’s only one light and we didn’t use anything on the background, add to this that I’m literally max 1 mtr away from Nadine and you realize you can do this in almost any studio/location, you just need something that semi reflects 😀

So the next time you shop for a background, take something that reflects, good luck.

Some cool colors from the sky

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Couldn’t resist to also take the drone out for a little spin.
From above everything always looks different.

Images shot with the DJI Mavic Pro 2 (Hasselblad).
And yeah the colors really pop like crazy.