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.

Working with colors and gels is fun

Colors evoke emotion

Today is the first blog post in a series about color and color manipulation in photography.
We are going to talk about color theory, how to manipulate colors, and how to use gels in a super creative way.
So keep coming back and subscribe to the blog. This part I

Color manipulation

Colors are all around us and are for a large part responsible for how we experience a product or scene.
Think about the movie Titanic in normal colors, instead of the fitting brownish tint.
Or how about the tinting used in The Matrix where green was used inside the Matrix?

Now think about this.
When you are 5 miles below sea level in a concrete bunker,  you turn on the light.
What color is that light?

Most people will answer Blue or are in doubt.
In essence, you don’t have to doubt, you are in a concrete bunker so the light is… well just the same color/temperature as it would be above water.
So why is the Abyss, and almost every underwater movie filtered blue?

Easy to explain, we immediately get a feeling that we are indeed underwater.
And you probably also feel cold 😀

Colors evoke emotion.

Learned or emotional

Now the following is not scientific (I guess) but I use it all the time during workshops.
When we talk about colors and emotion we can expect the following.

Red

Hate, warmth, love, warm, cozy, danger, etc.
The funny and interesting thing is that Red covers both emotions that trigger us, hate and love.

Blue
Cool, distant, uncertain, future, empty, sterile

Green
Now with green, I have to be honest that I don’t have a real emotion.
Of course, we have associations like envy or nature and some people will say calm.

Red is special

This is also why I love using the color red in my photography.
And you can even find it back in our logo. It’s a color that is very versatile.

 

Today we take a look at some images we took from Lois during a recent workshop where I’m using a blue gel as an accent light

 

As you can see I’m using “normal” white light as my main light and as an accent I’m using a Rogue Blue gel on our magnetic system.
The advantage of these gels is that they are thick and give a beautiful deep saturated color, which makes the trick I’m using a lot easier.

Which trick?

When we look at the color triangle we see the colors Red, Green, and Blue.
And in the middle we see the so-called black body curve.
This is where the “white points” are located, a lower color temperature is a warmer white, and a higher color temperature means a more blue color tint.
For calibrations, we use D65 for most photography/video applications.

color manipulation

Just for fun. When you draw a line from the primary color (RGB) through the white point you end up on your secondary color (CMY).
You often see CMYK and K is actually the Key of that color, meaning the brightness, in printers, this often means a Black module, but the K is actually called Key.

By knowing how colors interact we can do some really cool things.
Today I’m showing you something really easy that you can do yourself.

Use one light source with white light and one accent color preferably blue or red.
Now the only thing you have to do is change the color balance in your RAW convertor and you can get some really funky effects like these below.

Because you are using white light and a deep blue you can create a beautiful mix. But if your client doesn’t like the “cool” look you can always go back. This is not possible when shooting with 2 gels.

Color Manipulation color manipulation

An extra tip for color manipulation

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

Must-have for color manipulation is the right gear

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me, this contains a light meter and color checker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the color checker, I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

BenQ

On the side of the monitor, I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great lineup of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colorspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality, most BenQs also support hardware calibration. This means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course, the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European visitors, please contact me for more info.

 

Check this link for part II about Color Manipulation

In our latest video: Inside the Model Shoot we also work with colors and manipulate them

 

 

The Geekoto lantern in action

Today we get to see the lantern in action

You’ve been asking a lot about the lantern. So for today I thought it would be nice to share a video in which I show you the difference between a standard softbox with grid and the new Geekoto lantern.

As you can see they both give totally different looks.
The softbox with grid is great for high-contrast photography and a moody backdrop.
The lantern opens up the background and can still be placed close to the model for top to bottom shots.

You can get the gear I use on our webshop

 

 

Introducing the new Geekoto softboxes

You’ve already seen them

I’ve been posting some images online and on the blog already with the amazing new striplight and lantern from Geekoto.
But today I want to share the official video we made for the Dutch market (and English) about these brand new softboxes.

Of course both softboxes are super fast to setup and collapse plus they both can change the speedring. For the stroplight there is a totally new designed mount that makes assembling even faster (I thought it was not possible).

You can get the striplight and lantern and all other Geekoto gear via our webshop.
On the webshop you find all the gear I use and like.

Let’s take a look at the videos.
I’ve created an English and Dutch version.

Building a cool set with Click Backdrops in your own studio or living room

A background from Click Backdrops helps the story

When I started with model photography studio work was… well studio work.
It was mostly seamless paper and some nice fabrics or canvas backgrounds.
Personally, I love working this way, but I have to be honest my heart always beats faster when I find a cool location to shoot. I was happy to find out that sets are very easy to create with Click Backdrops.

So why not bring locations or sets to your studio?

As you probably know we use ClickBackDrops in our studio, we actually started with my signature series and ended up being the distributor for the Netherlands.
Of course, you can just use the backgrounds as… well backgrounds.
And although that already looks great, you can do so much more.

I already showed you guys some of the shots we took during the clicklive event in the UK where we built a complete set with 3 backgrounds and a floor part.

on click live 2024 we used one of the easy to create sets. The wooden floor, brick wall and factory windows

Click Live 2024 Portfolio pod. Wooden floor, brick walls on both sides, and a factory windows backdrop on the back

easy to create sets

So I thought let’s create something in our studio again a quick and easy to create set with Click Backdrops

During a recent workshop with Claudia, I used two backgrounds and a floor part to create a quick set.
At the moment I was calibrating a projector for a customer that came into a huge flight case so that was the perfect prop to create something cool. When Claudia entered the set I immediately got some huge Freddie Mercury and David Bowie vibes so I tried to get a little bit of that “rock/70’s” style into the shot.

great example of one of our easy to create sets. The parts don't really match, but it worked out fine easy to create sets

As you can see it’s super easy to use two backgrounds and a floor part to create a small set.
Add some props and you’re ready for the shoot.
Now as you can see these backgrounds are not really meant to be shot together, but they still work very nicely I think.

Are you curious about more easy-to-create sets? Visit one of our workshops!

They are in Dutch, but if you book a few weeks in advance we can switch them to English.
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more info and booking your workshop.
Want to buy the gear I use?
Visit frankdoorhof.com/shop