About technique and more.

Composition, creativity etc. Part I

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One of the questions that are asked a lot, and hardly ever answered is about composition and creativity.
The reason why there is little to no attention to it can be explained rather simple, it’s something that’s not easy to explain. In my workshops I always have a lot of information about composition and creativity because I strongly believe that it lies in those areas where a standard snapshot is transformed into a story, and in reality we are of course story tellers. However I also feel that I can explain technical stuff to everyone, but “seeing” is something completely different. In other words, everyone will understand that if you press the shutter an image is captures, however not everyone will see the image the way it will be interesting. So today some attention to this part of photography.
The coming days/weeks (depending on your responses) I will be posting several blog posts with sample images all discussing this topic. Feel free to ask questions or add images to the threads, this way I can find examples and explain the techniques behind them.

 

Do remember that this is my personal vision, with creative, humor etc. it’s always very person related, so don’t take everything as being the 100% truth, opinions will vary (and good that they do) however I hope that there will be a lot of elements that will help you improve your own work.

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About the light meter in a quick overview

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On August 12th I joined Scott Kelby during his great “Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it” tour.
If you didn’t already see it, and it’s close to you, make sure you check it out… You’ll love it.
Anyway, during my piece of the seminar I choose to do the high contrast light setup using a deep octa and strip light, during the setup I of course also talked about the use of a light meter and explained some of the theory behind it, however after the seminar I got so many questions from people who never used a meter to people who had problems using one that I decided to dedicate a blog post to it, because really honest… using a meter is like the simplest thing you can do within photography.

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Calibrating the Light meter, some quick notes

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Somehow this topic always raises a lot of questions so I’ve decided to dedicate another blog post on it.
In this blog post I will give you some pointers and tips how to calibrate the light meter.

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Tethertools, video

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Some companies have products that before you did not know about them you probably did some “freaky” DIY solutions. For me this was the case with Tethertools. I love to shoot tethered in the studio and on location, but one of the most frustrating problems is that if someone (or yourself) stands on your cable it will be disconnected from your camera, in the best case scenario you loose your images, reconnect and continue shooting. But in most other cases you destroy your USB/HDMI/Firewire port which means “end of the shoot” and a very costly repair. I made some DIY solutions for this which worked ok, but never 100%. Enter the Jerkstoppers from Tethertools, to make a long story short “THEY ROCK” and are so cheap that you actually can’t afford not to have them, trust me it’s a very expensive repair when your port is defective.

 

I was so enthusiastic about Tethertools that my wife’s company decided to take up the distribution of the Tethertools products for the Netherlands (and far beyond :D), and I was not alone, it’s been a huge success, and not only the jerkstoppers. All the Tethertools products are well thought out, and….. well I don’t want to spend much words…. they just work, if you know what I mean.

Because a lot of people ask me about it and a moving image is always nicer than a still image in this kind of cases we shot a very quick video about the Tethertools products I use myself, we shot this in between photoshoots yesterday, the audio is not the way I want it, normally I use a voice over *my own voice* but I decided to go “live” this time because it simply is nicer I think while explaining things, we already ordered some better mics so the next videos will be much better, however I still think it’s a fun piece to watch, so here we go.