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.

Tip on pointing the meter

Often I’m asked where to point the meter when metering.
You have to realize that the light meter is an incident meter, meaning it meters the light falling on the meter…. so if you know which part of the subject you want to be lit correctly you hold the meter in front of that part. In the studio this often means you meter towards the light source, however sometimes you don’t, like in this shot that I took during the Photokina.

Frank Doorhof Leaf 0221

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The power of the portrait

Often people struggle with getting that little bit of extra out of a portrait, now I never claim to be an expert on this (I think no-one really is), but over time I found out that it often helps to let the model “act”, in fact I always describe photography as acting on 1/4000 of a second.

 

This is our model Bertrie and she is going through several expressions, by converting the images to BW I added a little bit of extra mood, which for me works very well with these shots.

 

When you’re shooting a portrait try to work through different emotions with your subject, some can be subtle, some can be extreme, but keep playing. Now some people will say “my subject doesn’t have any emotions to go through” and I disagree, of course she/he may not be as expressive as this model (and many others) but there is always something you can squeeze out of your model. It often helps to first play around with them, have some fun before the photoshoot, make some jokes, make them laugh, but most of all make them feel relaxed.

 

A good photoshoot should never feel like a photoshoot, it should feel like “fun” or “acting” in other words a “flow”, as soon as you let your subject pose too static I often find the results lacking and “boring”. So the next time you do a shoot make sure to COACH your model, and I think you will be surprised.

Bertrie September 11 2014   (130 of 161)

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Some random shots from shoots

Today some random shots from shoots we did over the last few weeks and did not fit any blogposts.

Petra Bouma Juli 22 2014 59

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The subway in New York

During my travels one of the things I really like is to do some street photography.
Recently we visited New York and because we only had 2 days of free time I did not have a lot time to do street photography, and when I’m “stressed” for time I always try to squeeze at least some subway shots in. The great thing I like about the subway is that there is always something to shoot 🙂

 

Here are some of my results.

Augustus 26 2014 NYC  (96 of 130)_DxO

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