About technique and more.

How to photograph awesome guitars in the studio, and an alien ukulele

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Awesome products to shoot

In todays blogpost it’s time to combine two of my passions, guitars and photography.
It’s always fun to do the Digital Classroom livestreams, and although most is aimed at model photography I also sometimes like to throw in something else.

In this episode I take some pictures of 2 of my favourite guitars and an alien ukulele
I show the lighting setups, how to use smoke, how things go wrong and a lot more.

But before I link to the episode, let’s show the results.

In these images you see the Ibanez Jem guitars.
The black one is the Jem 777VBK (Rosewood fingerboard)
The white one is the Jem 7V WH (ebony fingerboard)

Having some fun with a theme

The final photo is just for fun.
When I saw this Ukulele I just had to get it, not just to experiment with but also to use in a photoshoot, because let’s be honest… it’s cool 😀

During the broadcast I promised I would make a special version of this one.
It’s a bit cheesy, but somehow I like it 😀

Curious how I shot these?

Now you might wonder how I shot these?
Well you are lucky, because here is the link to the full almost 2 hour episode.
If you have questions feel free to ask.

The competition

During the broadcast we talked about the Tourbox give away, if you missed that part….
Create a cool video of you creating your art and tag it with the tags #photographer #photography #tourbox and we will select two winners who will win a Tourbox and a free Lightroom video from me. Make sure you also tag me of course.

The BenQ discount code

For the BenQ 10% discount code email me at [email protected]

What if you lose all your data…. better prevent it now

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The main thing that hit me

When Annewiek and I ran the computer company one of the things that always hit me were the moments when people came in our store because they lost all their data.
Sometimes they still had hope because only their C: drive crashed, but in most cases they didn’t realise that their D: drive was actually just a partition on that crashed drive. In some cases we could get some data back, but it was never a 100% perfect recovery, and especially with file names, dates etc. it often meant we got stuff back, but it was a lot of work for us and them, meaning a huge bill.

The weird part is that they were always happy to pay, even if we got half back.
Now those invoices were often higher than a solution to prevent it all.

Today I wanted to share a video with you in which I explain how we have our backups setup.
I hope it will trigger you to start taking backups serious, unless you already do, in that case… well done.

Dataloss is something we all will experience in our life, it also happened to us a few times, luckily never a lot, but even with a good backup strategy its always wise to automate things as much as possible and make sure you are checking your backups.

In the video I talk about automatically downloading your photos, but also the more complicated setups, and also which drives are best for usage in a NAS.

Using two or three umbrellas for a perfect white background a video tutorial

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The white background

Is often one of those backgrounds we all use once in a while, and some have even build a complete career around it.
When I started out with my learning process I was lucky enough to find out about Dean Collins so I started using a lightmeter almost immediately which makes setting up a white background (and everything else) a lot easier and faster. But still I ran into a lot of problems.

Over the years I’ve tried different ways to shoot this setup.
At one point I was using two strobes on the background, two strip lights as accents and one main light.
The problem always was the floor. The accent lights would give double shadows, this by the way was solved by angling the strip lights slightly up and using grids, but that didn’t solve my other problem, the floor itself.

The miracle of plexiglas

When using the standard setup the main issue was always the floor.
The background would be nice and white, the model was perfectly lit, the accents were nice, but the floor….
You can do it in Photoshop but then you have to edit every single shot, plus it looks the model is floating, so I added some shadows.. and realised it must be possible to do it faster and easier.

Enter, Plexiglas.
By placing transparant plexiglas on the floor you can redirect the light and create a perfect white background which seamlessly blends in with the background, it’s a simple trick of reflections. And the cool thing… you can also use transparant plexiglas on other colors, it’s always giving an awesome reflection.

I’ve talked about this extensively in this blogpost, but today I also show you in the video how I use three and even two umbrellas to create the perfect white background for a full body model including accents… yeah it’s really possible and super easy (and cheap).

Gear used :
3x Geekoto GT400
1x Rogue travel kit with the black umbrella and sleeve (main light) and the white umbrella.
1x Rogue white umbrella.

The nice thing about the Rogue umbrellas is that they are made of Fibreglass which makes them very durable and super easy/light to setup.

In this video I show you how the setup works.

 

 

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part V : let’s talk about something grungy

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The final setup

Today in the blog the final setup from the workshop “on location in Emmeloord”
In this workshop we use locations close to our studio, that at first sight might look uninteresting, but by using light/poses/angles and of course styling are still suitable to create awesome images.

If you didn’t already I highly recommend reading the previous blogposts.
Let’s talk about the flash
Let’s talk about gear
Let’s talk about storytelling 
Let’s talk about backgrounds and angles

For the final setup we are still using the same lighting setup with the same Geekoto GT200 with a large reflector.
This is what we sometimes call our “outside studio” or in other words a part of our studio (away from the public eye) where we just leave everything (within reason), so it looks very “grungy”/”urbex” this part is based around an old trailer with some bushes and is great as a location, especially when shooting from a low angle the fence in the background and the angle it creates can be very nice.

In this setup I’m also using HSS for the last images.
During the workshop I did not use HSS because when working during a workshop it’s better to shoot with a so called “dumb” trigger, this means I can setup the strobe with my Geekoto Commander  and just let the attendees shoot via their own trigger. HSS and ETTL only work correctly with a commander that fits your system. With Canon, Nikon and Sony we have special commanders, but this workshop we also shot with a Leica so the choice was made to let HSS rest till the end.

The main advantage of shooting HSS is that you can break the 1/125th second limitation of normal cameras/strobes.
By the way, Sony just released the first camera with a global shutter that will make it possible to shoot on much faster shutter speeds with strobes not using HSS. This is a HUGE deal for flash photography on location and will change the way you can work forever. I hope to be able to test one of them in the near future.

With HSS you can break this rule which means you can shoot day2night but still have a very shallow depth of field.
Now don’t just set your camera to 1/8000 and F16 ISO100 because you will be disappointed.
HSS is awesome but it takes a HUGE hit on your output. Where with a large reflector shooting F22 on ISO50 is no problem at all with HSS you will end up with a pitch black image not even seeing the strobe.

 

HSS Technique

Also with HSS I’m using the same technique.
I set the camera to manual and use the EVF (or lightmeter) to determine the look I like. But I do take into account that I leave the aperture below F4 and I try to keep the shutterspeed sensible, and only at the speed I need. When you are used to setting up for HSS you will find that it really adds a lot more different looks to your arsenal, and… that’s always a good thing 🙂

So let’s take a look at the final results… can you spot the images I was shooting with HSS?

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear