When you follow my work online and see my videos you already know I always tell people to maximize your locations. Walk around your model, take images from different angles and experiment with your strobes, if you have a 3 strobe setup try at least a few shots with 2 or 1, just to see what it does for the atmosphere.

Now for me atmosphere is also something else.
Color is emotion, Black and white is emotion.
So what to choose….?
Well why not use it all?

Well that’s simple to explain.
When I shoot a series (like a real series, not 3 images from the same setup) I of course want them to look the same, so I choose on look and apply this to all images in that series. However you have to realize how much color/BW/tinting etc. can do for the look of a shot.

Let’s take a look at these three images.
All shot during the workshop “Classical lighting” with Joke.

First up we build a little set in our studio mimicking a hotel room, or a room on a higher floor. (light is coming from slightly below).
Now the first shot is using a little bit of tinting.

Not much wrong with this shot, I actually like it a lot.
But let’s make it appear a little bit later at night.
By simply adding a little bit of blue in the mix it almost seems later at night.
But of course we can also make it black and white.
So let’s do that.

And again…
From exactly the same scene we get a different look.
It’s up to you which one you like the best.
And trust me…. it will also depend on your mood, so revisit this blog post in a few days and look again.
Although a lot of people will actually go for color or BW and if you go for BW you will probably stay with BW.

Of course we did some more.

Same principle but different shot.
What you also see is that shot is slightly more compressed.
I used a slightly longer lens, the first series was shot pretty wide, and these are a bit more zoomed in.

But remember I also talked about different locations.
See how this story TOTALLY changes by adjusting the shooting angle.

Where in the first shots it looked like our model was looking outside the window, we now also include the strobe outside and now the story is complete…. what’s going on outside? is it a car, is it a plane… no it’s….oh sorry different movie. But you get what I mean right? It’s more a story because you have an element that you actually see that can trigger your imagination.

Ok that’s it for today.
Please leave comments below, see the BTS video on my YouTube channel and of course I would love to see images you shot in this style.