About technique and more.

Can I ask you a question ?

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At least once a day I will get an email with a question like :
What light setup did you use in blog post xxxxxxxxxx (containing 10 images)
What lens should I use for a model photo
What lens or camera is best for a night time shot
What filter should I use to get the exact same effect as ………..

And although I will always answer these questions I thought it would be a good idea to dedicate a small blog post to the answer I almost always give these questions, but first make one thing very clear, these are NOT dumb questions, these are not things that irritate me, and it certainly is not meant to make fun of people…. these are the kind of questions we all struggled with when we started out.

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Cool hair for free ? or little ?

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In the previous post we talked about styling and the many things you can do to enhance your photoshoot.
I already briefly talked about “pushing” your makeup artist to also try to do something with hair, and I know that a lot of makeup artists claim to not be hairstylists, I also know that a lot of them, when they try, can do some amazing stuff with hair. And again this can really have an impact on the shoot.


There is however a nicer option.
What you can do is visit your local hairdresser and talk them into joining you for some sessions, the promise of some nice poster prints they can hang in their store, use on their internet site etc. will often make them more than willing to join your team. Make sure you have a nice model that is not afraid to have her or his hair done and you’re into photography heaven (well at least for me).

 

In this post some images I shot over the last few year for hairdressers, I have to add that for me these sessions were commercial sessions because there was a lot more work covered than I would do in free work sessions, but you can do the same with a local hairdresser if they are “freaky” 🙂 The only thing you have to do is visit them, show a nice portfolio and talk them into it. Do remember however when going into the conversation that you are offering something they really want, they just don’t know it yet. Because let’s face it, most of the images you see at your local hairdressers are from the manufacturer of the materials they use and not real work that the hairdresser did, so maybe offer them to shoot some normal images and 1 or 2 “freaky” ones giving you both something you can use. I say this because some hairdressers (especially the smaller local ones) will not be willing to work if you only do the more elaborate ones because they will never do something like this in real live, but they are often more than willing to hang some images from their normal everyday work… but also be aware that some really don’t want it, I always call them the hairdressers that are like photographers that only do passport images (and nothing more), they have a job and that is doing this or that but there is no real passion there, if that’s the case, just leave and find the next one.

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Styling

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One of the things that is often overlooked in a photoshoot is styling.
One can argue that styling is often expensive and that a good stylist is hard to find, however I disagree. Yes a good stylist is very hard to find, however why not at least try it yourself. Daily I get images from photographers asking me how I like their images, and some images are indeed nice or even cool, often however they are in my opinion “not as good as they could have been” due to a lack in styling. Or in other words, great lighting on a great location but the model is standing there in just jeans and a top…. in this blog post a few pointers to do the styling yourself or with your model without much budget.

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Apple ?

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I’ve really been in doubt about what to write for todays blog post.
I’m normally not the person to post something that is not a bit photography related but I decided that in fact this was photo related and not in a small sense so I thought why not.

This has been a shitty week for us.
First we found small lumps in the neck of our cat Joey, a few months ago he was given up and had maybe 2-3 weeks to live, however we found a doctor that was willing to do a very risky operation and much to our surprise Joey recovered and it looked like the cancer was gone. Up until a few days ago when we felt small lumps again and we just felt it was wrong…. we went to the same doctor and got the horrible news that it was spread out and this time there really was nothing more he could do. We will give Joey a really nice few last days or hopefully weeks. For some people it’s just a pet, but for people like us he is part of our family and has been for about 14 years so he will be greatly missed when the time is there.

 

Yesterday morning I woke up with the sad news that Steve Jobs of Apple died, and although we all knew he was very ill this still was a shock. For me it’s a bit of a addition to the shitty feeling I already had making my week even worse. Now one could say that Jobs was just someone you don’t know but although for us the passing of Jobs is not something that we will experience as the loss of a family member or even friend it’s still something that made me stop and also gave me a very sad feeling, in this blog post I want to pay my respects to someone that I think changed the world, well at least also mine.

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