TIP :
Not everything is Photoshop.

A lot of the shots I post online are 99% in camera shots. For some people this is very hard to believe, I sometimes think that if someone sees something that “looks hard” they always think it’s Photoshop.

In my opinion this is limiting yourself, always believe in the power of timing and of course planning ahead. Although it sometimes seems like I just throw together some lights, place a model and shout some funny remarks to my models and press the shutter the truth is very far from that.

Every shot I take I plan ahead, I carefully place the lights under the exact right angle and move my model in the angle so that he/she is hitting the light just perfectly (or as good as you can get it).

This however doesn’t mean I plan a shot ahead in the studio, during my workshops it has become a personal challenge to NOT plan anything, in fact I often let Annewiek or organizers pick the spots for the locations and I don’t want to see anything from it (except a general idea), this way I can be 100% creative on the day itself, and I strongly believe that by showing it this way to the students also gives them the confidence that they can actually pull this off if they understand their light.

Light is our language as photographers, this is where we create our poems/photographs and this is how we tell our stories.

Photoshop for me is an awesome tool but I always get way more satisfaction when I “nail” something in the camera instead of add stuff in Photoshop.

let’s take this example.

This was shot during the Enka factory workshops last friday.
This shot was 100% unplanned, we saw the pool of water and 45 minutes before the end of the workshop I thought it would be cool if we would do something with this water, so I asked our model Lenaa if she would mind to get wet (and I checked with Nadine if the clothing was allowed to get wet, another tip.. always keep your models and stylist on your good side).

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