Yesterday it was time again for the Advanced workshop.
In this workshop there is always a lot of attention to finding the correct angles and working with more advanced story telling, movement and posing. As with all the workshops there is a clear difference in approach between the different workshops. In this case most of the shots you see are done with one lightsource but as a theme for advanced it meant to really look at what you’re doing and being able to let the light do what you want it to do.

For the first series we used the Elinchrom Deep Octa with a grid attached.

And as usual there is also some attention for the different lens choices, and the difficulties that this brings in posing and distortion. After this the difficulty is moved up a bit by using a striplight with grid to make the light a bit more difficult to steer exactly where you want it, attention had to be given to the staircase but without the staircase and the wall taking away from the model. In the workshops all the light setups are explained with light metering to predict exactly what the light does, this will help the students in situations were there is no dark studio were you can see the modeling lights, but were you have to work with natural light that is added to the strobes and washes away the modeling lights, or when using speed-lights where there are no modeling lights. I’m a strong promoter of using a light-meter and by showing this kind of setups and explaining how easy you can measure it and this way letting the light do exactly what YOU want has often pushed the students to using the light-meter (again).

So here a sample of the strip-light shots.

After this setup it was time to play a bit with motion and freezing jumps, falls, dance etc.
For me personally always one of the most fun things to do, every jump shot is different and can never be repeated exactly the same way, for the blog I choose not a jump shot but these two just for fun “freaking Nadine” shots.

Finally it was time for the story telling part, as usual with Nadine she always prepares something special for the end of the shoot and this time it was not different. The most difficult light-setup is used for this setup with an Elinchrom Maxilight with custom grid aimed through the stairs. The difficult part for the students is to find the angles and also the light. First I started with a normal lens and switched to the wide to show the impact for the story telling factor that a different lens choice CAN introduce.

This ended the workshop for this Friday.
I’ve been teaching the workshops for several years now and the most asked question is “Do you still like it ?” well I have to say that I understand the question, I teach app 2 workshops a week in our studio in the Netherlands so one could think that it becomes routine, however there are some things that I do to make sure I enjoy the workshops still the same way the first time I started with them.

By changing the studio often and introducing different themes in the Advanced en Glamour workshops I keep not only the workshops interesting for the students but also for myself. During our stay in Florida for example we got a whole new floor above the makeup and relax room, to get there we need a staircase and as you can see in these images that staircase is of course used immediately in the workshops. For the students this is interesting because they learn how to use something you can find almost everywhere and not only in a studio, for me it’s interesting because I can work out many new ideas (this is just the beginning). In a few weeks we will invite some painters that will paint the new walls into a themed setting like they did with many other walls in the studio.

Working this way and also by refreshing the workshops theory part often the workshops are still very much fun to teach but also for students to come back to time and time again…… it’s always new and fresh.

Add to this the workshops I teach on the most beautiful locations in the states and Europe and I can honestly say…. Yes I still love it every day 😀

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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.