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.

Inspired by Gia

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I think we all sometimes have that moment where you watch a movie, a videoclip or whatever and that something hits you like a brick wall…. whatever you do the image is BURNED in your mind…. this can be a bad thing (oh man I saw some scenes that I wish that didn’t burned into my mind) but in this case it was a positive thing.

 

Gia tells the life story of Gia Marie Carangi a stunning model with a tragic life story.
Somehow Gia has an incredible appeal to me, maybe it’s the way she is portrayed in the movie by Angelina Jolie, but I think it’s everything put together. As many of you know I don’t particularly like the “posed” images, sometimes I do, but most of the time I love movement, passion, speed and “style”. And Gia…. well she had it all and I agree with the idea that she is indeed the first real super model.

 

Now I’ve talked before in the past about being inspired and shooting something that inspires you. However I also strongly believe that there is always something that you have to change, making a 1:1 copy is a great learning tool, but if you want to do something for your portfolio I believe you have to make it “your own”, give it a twist, change it……. now in the movie there is a scene where Gia puts on mens underwear and poses for her boyfriend, this scene has actually nothing that could be considered “flat” or “unrated”. But it stuck in my mind like bubblegum. So when Lisanne was in the studio for a glamour workshop I asked her to bring mens underwear (which in fact she had to borrow from her dad because I wanted the really old fashioned ones), and Lissanne of course delivered.

 

I did not want to copy the scene of course, I wanted to give it some “swung”, some “fashion” but keep it “dated” to that period. Now I’m also a fan of the work of Avedon, Newton etc. and somehow I decided it would be cool to mix everything up and create the following look. Now the images you can see when clicking the link below because I know in some countries they MIGHT be considered “not safe for work” although (as you know by now) I disagree 😀

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Light meter calibration revisited

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Over time I’ve written a lot of articles on the use of the light meter, and also some about the calibration of the meter. This has fueled some discussion and also made some people doubt their methods even more than before, so I thought that it was time for a revisit of this topic.

 

Why calibrate the meter
In fact you are not calibrating the meter, but the combination of the meter and the camera/lens combination.
Remember that every camera can be different, and that if ISO100 is correct it could be off for ISO200.
Knowing all this makes it easier to understand why the meter out of the box is not 100% accurate.

 

The quick and easy way
I’ve been experimenting a lot with the calibration process and found that if you calibrate to a QPcard101 and get the numbers to read app 128.128.128 for the gray patch you are pretty accurate. However there are some things you do have to realize.

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Some more from Carmen

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Today some of my favorite shots from the workshop we did with Carmen last week, I already shared the X100 shots, but I also loved these, and these were shot with the Leaf Aptus, light : one Elinchrom Quadra

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Sekonic module for Elinchrom and more

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Today a very special video.
First of all it’s the topic of the video.
For years I’ve been using a light meter and to trigger the strobes I’m using a second sky port (or Pocketwizard) to trigger the strobes and meter the light, however this is of course not perfect. Sekonic already has modules for pocket wizard, but somehow there were no Elinchrom compatible versions so I always carried the second sky port with me…

 

Until a few weeks ago someone got me an interesting piece of gear.
It’s a module that you place in the Sekonic light meter and you can not only trigger the strobes…. but you can do more, for that you have to watch the video.

 

The video is also special because it’s the first video in the “The DOORhof is always open” series.
This is a new videopodcast we are working on and will see regular releases, most videos will be short news, tips/tricks items but once every 4-6 weeks I hope to release a longer videopodcast with a guest and some interesting topics. Because this is the first video I ask you to be gentle, we will learn along the way :-). I want to give my deepest thanks to Aletta Armee for designing the intro and bumpers, you rock.

 

For more information about the DIY module read on:

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