About technique and more.

Hair and eyes

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During the workshops I get a lot of questions on the topic of hair and eyes.
Now let me make one thing clear, I strongly believe in rules…. but I also strongly believe in bending or breaking the rules when needed. And let’s be totally honest when we all follow the rules photography would be pretty boring. So although I will teach my students during the first workshops that it’s always important to see both eyes and have catchlights in the eyes, in the more advanced workshops I will always try to break those rules for some setups.

Marie Februari 12 2013-56-EditFor me the expression and composition, color etc. is al much more important in a shot that just being able to see the eyes. The following shots were all taken this week during a workshop I taught for Fotoflits (the Dutch Elinchrom agent). Normally Marie (the model) will bring some nice dresses and extreme clothing but by accident she left one of her bags in the train (it’s back now) and then it’s time to start improvising.

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Shooting couples

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When we recently announced online that we were starting up a campaign for shooting couples I got some surprised reactions “Frank do you also shoot families and couples?”
Well Yeah of course we do. The studio we run does a lot of different photography, of course I love the model photography and the artists, but let’s be honest you have to be flexible in todays market so we indeed also do couples and family photography (even an occasional wedding), but we also do businesses etc. almost anything that includes people.

Manon en Vincent Februari 6 2013-27-EditNow let’s look today at my approach when I shoot a couple.
In this case our model Manon brought her boyfriend who is not a model, now one might think it’s easier because one of the persons is a model but that’s not always true.

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Getting ahead of yourself (and others)

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Now a lot of people often ask me “what drives you in your shots” or “how do you keep yourself motivated”.
Well when you see these images I hope that is clear…

 

First of all I love strong colors (like red) but most of all I love things a bit more extreme and with Nadine you’re on the right path of course. Now to keep myself motivated and creative I actually always follow my own advise, “whatever you shoot, always make it interesting, always try to stretch your boundaries” what I mean with this is that one should always try to improve oneself, always push for that little bit more than with the previous shoot. Even although these shots are “just” taken during a workshop I always aim to shoot at least 3-4 portfolio worthy images during the workshops, I think that as soon as I start seeing workshops as work I would loose interest.

Nadine Februari 8 2013-125-Edit
Now when you would translate this to your own work I think it’s very important to NOT be stuck in “known” and “proven” setups, and this is something that I see in a lot of studios, the photographers will place their lights in position A or B, and even pose the models all the same. Recently we did a family shoot and I heard a story that was very striking in this area, they went to a photographer and where shot exactly the same way as all the families that were shown in the show room, exactly the same light, the same pose, the same look etc.

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Some questions

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Today some questions I got in the discussion from the blogpost about turning pro.
I’ll try to be short in the answers 🙂

 

Question 1
The most important is you eye…. OK, without it, nothing goes. But I haven’t seen any kelby Trainer who said : Only buy a Nikon d40x (which I am still in love with) or something of that kind. You all use d800, d4, phase one, etc… So there is a good reason for that, or not ? When the price difference can be about 5000€, it can’t be only a question of feeling comfortable in my opinion. What do you think about it ?
I strongly feel that the best camera is the one that does the job, and in fact a lot of cameras can do the job… now it does sound weird when “we” say it’s not about the gear but “we” still get the high-end products right? and I understand that. However you should look a bit deeper that that. As soon as you start learning your photography you will start to see that you work with a lot less quality gear that some sales persons want to make you believe… however you will also find out that by stepping up to for example to MF a new world of options opens up, but… and I really mean this… a MF camera in the hands of a good photographer will give better results than a 5DMKIII or Nikon D4 or Sony A99, HOWEVER… only because he/she knows the limitations and strengths of the system. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people shooting with MF and not being able to deliver more than 10% of the images that were in focus…. So my advise (and I think from many educators (at least the ones I know)) is to FIRST learn photography, and that can be done with a normal DSLR, and when you hit the limits of your gear upgrade, not earlier. And trust me, hitting the limits of your gear does not mean not being able to shoot the stuff that I do for example, 90% of what you see in my portfolio could have been shot with a normal consumer DSLR.

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