About technique and more.

turning pro yes or no

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A while ago I was asked to write a guestblog for a Dutch photographers blog and because I had little time and I always want to post something that is different from the standard “put your light here” blogpost I decided to make a blogpost about something that is always a hot topic during some of my seminars and workshops.

 

Don’t get me wrong, photography is the best job in the world according to me, I love what I do and I don’t feel like I work a day in my life, however I consider myself incredibly lucky and one of the few that can do what I do thanks to the support of my family. Now a lot of people mail me or ask me for my advise on starting their photographic career, now let’s say we are talking about Mr. Smith (a made up name). Mr Smith earns a bit more than minimum wages at the moment, rents a house and has a wife and 1 son who is let’s say 12 years old. At the moment Mr. and Mrs. Smith have a relatively good life, twice a year they can go on a standard holiday, the rent is paid and they can safe a little bit of money for costs that are not foreseen, the only problem is that Mr. Smith loves photography and doesn’t really like his day job, he doesn’t hate it… but if he would become a photographer that would be awesome.

Gwendolyne 28 Juli 2012 - 2342

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Retouched vs untouched

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I get this question a lot and especially after showing images from trade shows…. and to be honest I do understand the question a bit. For me it’s always very important to get the images as perfect as possible without using Photoshop, however I will never make a secret of the fact that I love to use Photoshop for the finishing touches, but I strongly believe that you have to spend as little time as possible in Photoshop as possible.

 

My Photoshop workflow is actually very simple (although I can do some funky/edgy stuff of course :-)), in most shoots I will retouch the skin and tint the image with filters like NIK, Alien Skin Exposure, OnOne or DxO, depending on the look I want. But I will hardly ever change light or the look of an image.

 

After posting the results from SWPP I got several questions from people who were asking how much retouching was involved for these shots because “you can never shoot images like this during a tradeshow without using Photoshop to make them look so good” well I’ve never done this before but for this time I will make an exception, today 4 images from the SWPP straight out of the camera and retouched.

 

Now why don’t I normally don’t show untouched images?
Very simple, we’re on the internet and I don’t want images to be shown who are not 100% the way I want them, it’s nothing secret or “I don’t want to tell you guys” it’s just a simple fact that as long as people respond to BTS images from my iPhone with comments like “Wow amazing shot and feel” I don’t feel comfortable sharing work that is not retouched to my final look, this is also why these images are watermarked. So without further wasting your time…. 😀 here they are.

untouched Demos SWPP Maisy James - January 11, 2013 - 17

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By the way to make it 100% “honest” the images that are labeled “Non retouched” are not even color-corrected so they are literally 100% straight out of the camera. Read more

Working with your lights and more PtII

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Ok today part II in this 2 blog post article about adding something extra to your shots.
Yesterday we saw how Maisy used a ring flash to light herself and got some interesting effects, now today I’m gonna add another element…. the background.
Now I hear you think “Duh, really… a background?”
Well not like you might thing.
Normally we would use a background as… well a background right?
Now what would happen if we start using the background as a prop?
During the SWPP we decided during the last demo that we wanted to do something nice, and of course already help with breaking down the booth….. so after the first part of the demo I asked Maisy to stand behind the background and tried to stab her with a knife…. just kidding of course, she was not behind the background, but we did use a knife. With the knife I made a cut in the background and asked Maisy to start “playing” with this.

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Working with your lights and more PtI

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Now one of the things I always try to teach during seminars and demos is creativity.
Now creativity is actually not something that you can easily “catch” in a few words or a simple description, it’s something that I always call “that inner thought process/vision”. Or in other words it’s that thing that makes you go “wow” if you see something.

 

Now everything is done of course now a days, it’s almost impossible to do something that is really and utterly unique, however I still think that you can give certain themes and elements your own personal twist, so in this 2 part blogpost I combine two things, you will probably already have (although maybe not a ring flash, but any flash will do), to create something special.

 

Let’s first start out with the light itself.
Light is what we use to “paint” with, but often we don’t see the light sources in the images right?
Well what will happen if we do?
During the SWPP in London we decided that it would be nice to play around with the Elinchrom ringflash and let our model (Maisy) act with the light source, in other words let her control her own light. The outcome of these kind of shots is always a bit hard to predict because the model actually is in control and the only thing you (as photographer) can do is coach the model and hope that everything works out fine. Metering the light is also a problem because the distance will change often and seeing the fact that the light source is pretty close to the model it’s often wise to just expose for the closest possible position of the light and change the rest in Photoshop, not something I would normally advocate but in this case it’s the best solution (if not the only one).

 

Now how does it look?
Well here are some examples, and do read on tomorrow in Part II because we’re not done yet.

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