About technique and more.

Shooting into the light

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On the topic of doing stuff differently with light I think shooting into the light source must not be forgotten. A few years ago people would do everything to prevent shadows from blocking up, now a days it’s a “cool” thing to do and you see it in fashions magazines a lot, but also creating lens flares was something that a few years ago would mean (for 90% of the shots) that your shot would be labeled as “unsellable” today it’s a hot thing and everybody loves to do it, including me. Actually I started using it a few years ago to add something different to some of my outdoor shots, seeing I was heavily influenced by the photography from the 70s and 80s it was not really a weird thing for me to do actually because you could also see it in movies and photography in that era.

 

However using lens flare and shooting straight into a light source on full power is actually something different (although it’s a sure thing to create the flare :-)). A lot of photographers will be a bit “afraid” to shoot straight into a strobe on full power (or at least a few stops above the main light) but I will show you that it won’t bite you.

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Shadow play

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In this article some information to hopefully trigger you to look at light in a different way.
We as people are always drawn towards light, and that’s not weird realizing that during the day time we function at our best. So our whole body and mind is set on function in the light. This also means that we know how everything looks during the day time, meaning we know that when someone walks in the sun there will be shadows. It’s no strange thing that we will always try to recreate this in our work as photographers. However this is also where some of the most controversial points of photography lies.

 

There has been countless posts, books etc. that talk about only using one light source, the explanation is simple (according to them), in nature there is one light source and that’s the sun, so using more than one light source will look unnatural and more than one catchlight…. well that’s certainly not done. Well to be honest and please forgive me for my rather “non Frank” expression but this is BS. When we look around us we can see a lot of situations were there are is than one light source “active”, think about your own house, you probably have several light sources all casting their own shadows but also placing more than one catchlights in your eyes. But also in nature there is a lot more than one light source. For example think about a person walking through the street, he/she will be lit by the sun, but what about all the reflections for cars and windows they will all show up in the eyes of a person as catchlights and will probably also interact with the shadow play, lighting up a shadow side, casting double shadows etc.

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ICAF

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You know sometimes things happen and you just feel how blessed you can be.
For example when I met Jeremy Cowart during one of the Photoshop Worlds I got involved in the Help Portrait movement and decided to organize this for the Netherlands, being a spokesperson and organizer for the nationwide Help Portrait day was a huge success, and me and my team will do it again this year, it has been an awesome experience. Giving people that really normally can’t afford it a portrait of hope is one of the best feelings you can get as a photographer I think.

 

People that know me, know that I will never steer away from a good cause, and that also landed me the title as ambassador for the Dutch website www.fotoshootklachten.nl, a website in corporation with the justice department where models can find information and help when they have been badly treated by a photographer (believe it or not, before this website there was no real place to turn to with specialistic help/knowledge). And to be honest I feel honored to be able to be the spokesperson for that cause.

 

Last week I was contacted by  Ashfaq Ishaq who is responsible for the ICAF (International Child Art Foundation), after some googling and visiting their site www.ICAF.org I was more than interested to meet with Ashfaq. And tonight we did during a exhibition of children’s art displayed in a store in Georgetown/Washington DC.

 In the store you could find several art pieces made by different schools and children in different grades, one thing they had in common is that it was all made by jeans material (old jeans).

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Natural light the best there is

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Well ok, we can discuss on this topic till the cows come home (hope I got that expression correct), but although I love to use strobes I still believe that shooting with natural light can be one of the most fun things to do. If you never shoot with the available light make sure you try at least a few times during a shoot. I find that many people are so focussed onto the look they want to create with for example strobes that during the photoshoot itself they sometimes forget to also take advantage of what they already have available. And trust me sometimes you will find that those natural light shots can be the best of the whole shoot (I know I did some in between shots during sets that I actually liked more than the strobed ones).

The shots in this blogpost were all done with natural light, although I have to add that we had that beautiful soft box in the sky as our “modifier”, if you read between the lines, it was a real Dutch bad weather day, but for photographers a great day. But don’t get me wrong I also love to shoot in very harsh sunlight and get a much more contrasty look as in this image.

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