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.

I’m not a wedding photographer, although……

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When one of your favorite models who has been one of my muze s for many years asks you what can you say ?

Marie joined our models some years ago and has been in some of my favorite concepts and locations. Her casting was one of a big reset, she mailed me many times to join the model group I was working with at that time and to be honest the images she mailed me did not convince me…… however finally I decided to give her a chance (hopefully after that she would stop mailing :D), she came in and was more interesting than on the webcam shots she mailed me, but I was not convinced yet. Her posing was not that good and she was obvious nervous. After 10 minutes she said “Wait a minute Frank” went to the makeup room and stayed there for a few minutes, she came back a model…. her posing was awesome and she really was someone completely different after the big reset.
After this test shoot Marie joined me on countless photoshoots, workshops, advertising campaigns etc. etc. there was no idea to crazy of Marie would be up for it and she always nailed it, I have only a few models that I trust with almost every assignment and she is one of them.One day during a workshop she was not feeling well but she really shined, the best images I ever got from here, until I turned around and heard a big bang. Marie collapsed and was totally out. Now one advantage when you call 112 (911) and say that a model has fainted in a photo studio is that within 3 minutes there was an ambulance and they took good care of Marie. The good news arrived a few weeks later…. Marie was pregnant.
We never lost contact but it was quiet for some time, getting a child is a huge change of course. But a few weeks ago Marie got the urge again to pose and who did she ask…… 😀 yep she still got it. During that session she told me she was getting married and wanted to invite me…. yeah sure….. and yes very soon the question followed that she would love me to take the shots after the ceremonie, and what can you say to one of your favorite models ? “yes I will”.

The shots during the normal day were in the capable hands of another of my favorite models…. Corine 😀 yep she also picked up the camera and is doing some fine work, so it was fun in the church with both of us shooting the ceremonie because let’s be honest as a photographer you can sit front stage and when you already have your camera with you, what else to do to kill time.

I won’t bore you with the normal ceremony shots but I do want to share these shots with you, it was raining and they had to go the diner of course so I had to work really fast (although they had given me all the time, I just don’t feel it’s proper to take more time than needed). With this kind of sessions I always aim for 2 great shots that they will love and can hang on the wall, however I understand it are no model shots so I try to coach as little as possible and just let them be themselves and a good couple they are to shoot.

Technical information:
Camera : Canon 5DMKII
Lens : Canon 24-105 f4 IS L
Strobe : Elinchrom Quadra with 1 head and a shoot thru umbrella
Session time : app 10 minutes

From this side I would like to congratulate Marie and Symen (and Tijs) wish her all the best in her future, and of course hope to see her many times in front of my camera again.
And hoping for a lot of crazy themes, outfits and locations.
Marie you still rock 😀

Getting ready for Dublin….

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I’m always excited for the workshops abroad, and this year has been crazy with workshops in Conventry (UK), Bristol (UK), New York (USA) and on schedule are Kent (UK), Dublin (Ireland), Italy, Belgium and of course the photokina on which I will be demoing at the Elinchrom/Leaf booth this year.

But first there will be Dublin.
On September 7th I will teach a free seminar during the photovision roadshow, followed by a small group workshop the day after. Most of the time the smaller workshops are with groups ranging from 5-8 people, with these I like to keep the groups small to make a nice and personal experience for the students. Now what do we have to do for the workshops ? maybe it’s fun to take a small look backstage what goes into organizing the location workshops.

Preparing the trip
In the case of the UK we often drive with our own car but with Dublin it’s a bit far so we will fly in and rent a car. For the UK and Ireland we often arrive one day before the seminars and leave one day after the workshop, with Dublin we will probably add one day for some sightseeing. Because we want some nice locations for the workshop (always preferabel to a studio location for me personally) it’s important to plan something that has both inside and outside options, especially in the UK it’s always a guess what the weather will be, for example in Bristol we had half of the day very nice weather, even hot and the second part there was so much rain that you couldn’t walk outside without getting soaked in a few seconds. Most of the times we will book a hotel that has a nice ambiance and in places like the UK and Ireland and Scotland that’s often not a problem. However getting permission to shoot in a hotel is sometimes a bit more difficult, that’s why we often choose hotels that are run by families or ar part of a very small chain, those will often give you permission rather easily.

Preparing the material
Well one could think that I have lots of material lying around for the workshops because we teach them so often, but nothing is less true. For every location I try to make a different program, first off to make it interesting for myself, but most of all to teach a workshop that is fitting for the group and location and not something that is standard. For the free seminars I will often use the same material for one tour (the photovision roadshow) for one year, meaning everyone can see the seminar independent of their location, and because we plan the dates we participate in far from each other there is hardly no overlap, although some people follow us around 😀 (thank you) but I always try to teach the seminars slightly different, which is not that hard seeing the seminar we are using now is a 2 hour seminar I have to teach in 1 hour…. so lots of room to change the story per location.

For the workshop itself however it’s more difficult and I often have to “wing” it depending on the weather, location and of course the needs of the students.

The gear
I’m lucky with my contacts with several importers and dealers, and can often get the gear I want on location. We do travel however with our own cameras and laptop. The Elinchrom gear however is often borrowed to us from local dealers or is rented out in some locations. For the locations we drive ourselves I always carry my own gear somehow that works best for me. So how does the gear for a location workshop look, what do we carry ?

1. Cameras (Canon 5DMKII, Phase One DF/Leaf digital back) and lenses
2. MacBookPro + applejuicze external battery
3. 2x Ranger RX speed + accupacks
4. 1x Ranger Quadra + accupacks
5. 2x Elinchrom heads BXri500
6. In case of emergency a small generator
7. several skyports
8. 2 ipads (later more on this)

On location we use a powerstrip and one convertor to have 4-5 poweroutlets to charge all the accupacks on location.
now why the 2 iPads ?
During the workshops I shoot straight to the laptop and because having 5-8 people stand in front of the laptop can be a bit crowded we use the Leaf Capture utility that will show a full screen image of the captured images on the iPad and iPhones the students hold, this is an awesome way of showing your captures to different people, they can zoom in, scroll through the images etc. Especially with location workshops this is just perfect.

The workshop itself
EVERY workshop is different but somethings will of course always be there like :
1. Working with lightmeter
2. Calibrating the lightmeter
3. Working with the colorcheckers
4. Using natural light
5. Flash ranging from fill in to day to night
6. Dragging the shutter
7. Posing and coaching the model
8. Finding your angle
9. Story telling
and lots lots more, well let’s say it’s intense.

Although we always plan the workshops between 10:00-15:00 they often run a lot longer and are also in most cases ending with a nice group talk while enjoying a drink at the bar and in some case ending in diner….. it’s a lot of fun for all parties.

Throughout the post you have seen some images from the Bristol workshop, let’s hope that Dublin will be similar to location, we have something in mind that’s very interesting…..
At the moment we have 4 seats left, so quickly surf to www.frankdoorhof.com/uk and book your seat.

13 Augustus 2010 Fighting sleep

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I love to travel of course, shooting on different locations, meeting beautiful and friendly people, what’s not to like.

Although at this moment I’m in that moment that I think every dream job also has nightmares.

It started this morning in Tampa at 6:00AM, getting up and getting ready to drive to Orlando to catch our flight. That was no problem at all and we had time to kill, great to see that airports are now really starting to support free wifi everywhere, I build half my site today on the airport.

After boarding the flight to Washington should be an easy one, only 2 hours so that’s easy, and in Washington a clear 90 minutes of rest before we would be boarding to Amsterdam, all was well….. Until I noticed that we passed the same cloud quite a few times. And yes there it was “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have some bad news, due to the weather all traffic to and from Washington is stranded, we cannot land, but….. we have enough fuel”.

And although you know that your flight will wait for you because they also can’t get out it’s still a reason for some stress.
Finally we landed with 10 minutes to spare, so we jumped out of the plane, grabbed some sandwiches and some water and jumped straight into the next plane. Now I have to add I’m a tall guy and airplanes are not what you would call comfortable for me :D, so we decided to upgrade to Economy plus, this probably saved a lot of my day because…..

We were on board, still catching our breath from jumping around with heavy backpacks with all our gear when the speaker announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have some bad news”….. Oh no, not again….. well this time it was something minor, they had to change a tire and then we would be off, 10 minutes max…. ok that’s no problem, let’s get comfortable, or in other words, let’s lock myself up in the seat and see if I can use the iPad in a way it will work for 8 hours…….

After 10 minutes the engines started to roar (still love that sound) and we were ready to go…….
Well…….
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have some bad news….. (heck no)…. due to the bad weather we are not allowed to fly and will report back in 30 minutes to an hour.
To make a long story short, 2 hours later we were in the air on our way to Amsterdam……….

Friday the 13th ?
Never believed in it……..

But maybe ?

Anyway, lets finish up with a shot I have fond memories off, taken by our friend RC at Kelbymedia.

A new blog, a new site ?

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Hi,
Welcome to the new www.frankdoorhof.com
As you can see a lot has changed, but nothing is finalized yet, to be honest we are working at it from many different viewpoints. If you have suggestions or ideas, just let me know.

The old www.doorhof.nl/blog will be transformed to a real forum where you guys can hang out, ask questions, share images etc. Actually it’s the way it always was, expect now it’s not the blog anymore, which you can now find here.

Commenting should be a lot easier now, so try it out and let me know your thoughts. Again, we are working on everything, if you find something that does not work as it should please let me know, if you know cool additions also let me know.

As you might have read on twitter we are back from filming at Kelby media for www.kelbytraining.com it was a blast and I’m sure you will love the classes that will be online soon (a few weeks).
I’ve had a lot of fun but the heat was terrible, also the ants during the BMX shoot were not that nice 😀

Again, enjoy the new blog/site.