Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part III : let’s talk storytelling

April 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Visions and technique, blog/by Frank Doorhof

This is it

I think we can all agree that gear, lighting, styling, location etc. are all important for a successful shoot. Although during this workshop series we already saw that the location can be transformed quite easily from ok to wow by choosing the right angles and lighting/styling etc.

If you missed the previous ones you can read them here (highly recommended)
Let’s talk about the flash
Let’s talk about gear

Ok so now it’s about story telling, and what do I mean with story telling.

When we look back into history, even as far as the cavemen, the main reason to create “art” was to tell stories. Ranging from one man killing a Bison in the caves to whole paintings containing scenes from the Bible, and everything in between. Now of course there are also still lives and landscapes but I hope you know what I mean 🙂

When we look at what we see online today it’s a boatload of selfies, photos of food or things I can’t mention here. We are bombarded with a huge amount of images every single day. But when is the last time you really stopped to look at something? or when was the last time you were really impressed with an image?

Most of them probably have have the same element

And that’s story telling.
Now story telling can be done in just one image, but also in a series.

During the workshop on location in Emmeloord we find locations that are not immediately awesome, but I show the attendees how, together with an awesome model and styling in this case, you can transform those locations to something great with choosing the right lighting and shooting angles.

This is the second set of that workshop.
For this setup we went to the local beach, we chose a location with some trees behind Nadine and a slight rise.
Nadine brought a lot of Delfts blue we used as props spread around her.
Now the styling on it’s own already did a lot but when I saw that the umbrella was breaking down I decided to also use something else.

Manipulate the sun/ambient light

We talked about this technique a few times in the blog and during digital classroom episodes.
Dragging the shutter.
What I do outside to get the look I like :

First I make sure my cameras EVF is in emulation mode
I will set my camera to “manual” mode and the shutterspeed to 1/125 (when shooting without HSS) and the lowest ISO.
Now I will look through the display and adjust the aperture till I think the scene looks like I want.
Now I will set it ONE stop darker.
Take the Aperture you see in camera for the look you like
Use a lightmeter to meter the strobe at the aperture you liked
start shooting with a shutter speed of 1/60 but with the set aperture

You might wonder why I shoot at 1/60
It’s very easy to explain luckily.
When shooting without HSS I can not shoot faster than 1/125 (sometimes 1/200) this means when I shoot with strobes and I think the background should be darker I have to adjust my strobes, or when I want to experiment I end up with different apertures, meaning different looks due to depth of field. This breaks the total look of a series and can sometimes work and sometimes not.

By adjusting the strobes one stop higher than I thought was perfect and lowering the shutter speed by 1 stop I’m getting the exact result I liked at the start with an added bonus. When I want the background darker I can raise my shutter speed to 1/125 or sometimes 1/200 and get a much darker background, but because I’m shooting with strobes I can also go as a low as 1/30 and sometimes even 1/15th this gives me a nice dynamic range to work with without breaking the look of the shot.

The weather

I’m nog just using this technique to adjust the look of the shot, but also to be able to react to changing lighting on location.
And in this case for story telling.
The following series was shot within 5 minutes, so the lighting didn’t really change, however because the umbrella was breaking down I decided to raise the shutter speed and make the whole scene look darker the more the umbrella broke down.

As you can see in the next series, changing the look of a scene by the shutter speed is fast and easy and has a huge impact on the photo. I love to use it.

Let’s first take a look at the gear used :

Annewiek is holding the lightstand on which the Geekoto GT200 is mounted with a large reflector aimed at the model.

And that’s all actually.
So let’s take a look at the results.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part I

April 12, 2024/0 Comments/in blog, Visions and technique/by Frank Doorhof

Transform something not so cool to awesome

One of the more challenging workshops is without a doubt “on location in Emmeloord”
During this workshop I take the attendees with me to locations that at first sight might look incredibly boring. However by using the styling of the model and of course the choice of lighting and shooting angle it becomes clear pretty quickly that even locations that are not that interesting can transform into a great location for shoots.

The reason this workshop is very important is because during most workshops you are shooting in already great locations, or nice studio setups.
The thing is that in reality it hardly ever happens you shoot a client or wedding/event in a castle/urbex/etc location and also the light is not always perfect. Most of the time we are shooting in office buildings, outside in a forest/dune/city environment etc. Not really super inspiring locations.

And that’s the whole deal

In this workshop I show how easy it is to create interesting photos in not so interesting locations. Or let me rephrase that locations that look uninteresting at first sight.

During the workshop I also try to keep the gear as minimalistic as possible, I’m using one of our Geekoto GT200s and a large reflector plus the Rogue Flashbender (Frank Doorhof edition). In the past we had to carry around rather large battery packs and “large” heads and I had to shoot on 1/125 because HSS was not supported. Now we are using so called hybrid strobes which is the perfect marriage between a studio strobe and speedlight. This combination means I can shoot ETTL and HSS on location (or manual of course) with a nice shallow depth of field if I want it, or a deeper depth of field if that fits the photo, and shoot a full day with just one battery. In fact thanks to the large reflector we had still 10% left in the battery after the whole workshop (5 locations 4 shooters).

By lowering the ambient light you can really make your model pop out, now lower your shooting angle and you can already get much more interesting shots.

In the next blog post I’ll explain a bit more about the large reflector.
For today let’s take a look at the first setup we did with Nadine. This is just a treeline next to our studio functioning as a border between our studio and the neighbours.

In this setup we also used the Rogue flashbender for a different look.

And the setup with the flashbender.
In the next blogpost I’ll show you the large reflector and explain why it’s awesome for location work.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Same background, totally different results

April 3, 2024/0 Comments/in blog, Visions and technique/by Frank Doorhof

Maximize your results with this simple technique

When you shoot for a client, delivering different options is always interesting and smart.
But different options take time, right? In this blog the same background and totally different results

Well not exactly.

Be smart with your setups.

For this example, I’m using a white background.
In the front, I’m using the Rogue black umbrella with a sleeve aimed straight at our model.
The backdrop is white seamless.

You probably already know about the inverse square law, meaning light falls off over the distance.
A great way to use this is to control your background.

I’m using the white background for my first shot in this setup.
This one was shot with one Rogue umbrella in the background and one Rogue umbrella on the front.

You can already see a very slight light fall-off in the background, which can be solved by using a second umbrella on the other side of course as explained in the previous blog posts.

But what if you just take away the umbrella(s)

As you can see the background now turns grey and you can add some extreme vignetting in Lightroom or Photoshop (or your favorite editor) for a completely different look.

Change the distance for total control (different results)

Using the inverse square law you can change the luminance of the background very easily.
You actually have 2 options.

you can change the distance from the main light to your model.
Move it closer to the model and the background will become darker.
Move it further away from your model and the background will become lighter.
Move your model forward to get the background darker
Move your model towards the background and the background will become lighter.

Of course, you have to re-meter the light when you change the distance between your model and your background.

Explained wrong

I just wanted to add an extra note to this blog post.
I’ve seen several videos and articles that claim that the light halves when doubling the distance, this is however wrong.
The name already gives you the answer in fact.

“The intensity of the light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance”
meaning in simple turns that for every doubling you lose about 75% of your light.

In usable terms.
Place your light really close to your model and the light will fall off incredibly fast. Place it further away from your model and more of the set and model will be lit and the light fall-off will be smoother.

Conclusion using the same background and getting different results

When you have to shoot with certain setups always check if you can also get usable results by turning off/on certain strobes.
You might surprise yourself when you start testing this, it can be done in much more situations than you might think.

Read the post about poses and the white background

see more pictures Frank made with the Umbrella on the RogueFlash website

check out the Digital Classroom about Umbrellas

Have fun with the wide-angle option on your iPhone or other smartphone

March 31, 2024/0 Comments/in blog, Visions and technique/by Frank Doorhof

The Wide Angle lens on your iPhone

The wide angle is probably one of the most fun lenses. Period. yes i mean the Wide Angle Lens on your iPhone

That might be a very strong expression, but the wide angle is undoubtedly one of those lenses you can have a lot of fun with.
So for today’s blog post I decided to take some wide-angle shots while walking in the forest with Chewie.

The way it was intended… right?

Most of the time we use it just to get a wider view, and let’s be honest, it does really make a difference.

However, for me one of the cool things about the wide angle is not that it just gives you more of the scene. But the way the wide angle distorts.
Now normally distortion is of course a bad word (unless you play guitar :D) but you can also use it creatively.

For example, what about just holding your phone really close to a tree and just aiming it up? The trees will look huge and if you bump the contrast you get some really cool results.

Now it’s also sometimes cool to use the wide angle to include your own feet.
Think about the start of a big hike, or maybe you like a sign that you find on your route and you want to spice the shot up a bit. Why not switch to the wide angle and include your feet?

Now talking about signs and angles

Those are actually awesome for the wide angle.
But don’t just shoot them straight on. Try different “funky” angles! Shoot them top down, or just sit on the floor and shoot up.
Signs are great for this, especially with street photography I love to shoot street signs this way. (although they mostly from the bottom up of course).

Shooting my pet with a wide-angle

Of course, when walking with Chewie we also had to take some shots of him with the wide angle.
Now you can take a little bit of a distance and it will just appear Chewie has a really big head.

But it becomes so much fun when you get REALLY close up and personal.
Just beware that your phone doesn’t end up as a snack.

Cool selfies

Now I’m not going to lie, because I want to use the wide angle I can’t see the screen. So the following shots are 99% luck. But when you try enough times you will get some really unique selfies.
Let’s start with the phone on the floor with some leaves in front of it. You can also do this from a higher standpoint of course.

We loved this shot, but it was too easy to get right…. so we decided to throw in Chewie and be a bit more creative with the composition….. It’s not hard to guess, but most images were totally wrong (you can’t see the screen) but when it works… well it’s loads of fun as you can see here.

The wide-angle on your phone is fun

So the next time you use your phone. Use the Wide Angle lens on your iPhone, get close, and take some pictures for more creative shots.
As soon as you start using it you will find that even the most boring things can become really interesting, just due to the distortion and the different angles.

These shots were done with the iPhone 15 pro-Max on the wide-angle setting.
Editing is done in Adobe Lightroom Classic

A few years ago, the Digital Classroom was about Small Spaces and Wide Angles

Rock that Low and Wide Angle Blog about street and travel photography in the UK

Fashion shoot with Nadine, a blog about angles and more

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