Tag Archive for: location

Using the foreground to add dimension to your images

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Sometimes we need something extra

We all know that when we want to show scale it’s handy to include something to show the scale.
In the case of a mountain we can of course place some people in front but today we are doing something else.

During the workshop “on location in Emmeloord” the challenge is to find locations that look not so interesting but still create some cool images.
If you ever visited our studio you know there always was an old building just in front of our studio, it didn’t look nice but it had some great walls to shoot against 😀 one of them actually made it into my signature ClickBackDrop backgrounds.

Recently they demolished the building and we ended up with a large empty building area.
Of course a great option for this workshop.

The lighting setup was pretty simple, one Geekoto with a large reflector shooting on manual mode.
During the workshops we have to shoot with so called universal triggers due to the different camera brands that are used during a workshop, this means we can’t use extra options like HSS and ETTL.  

The setup itself was ok.

But I wanted something more. Something to give the image more dimension and framing.
Because I’m shooting from a very low angel I decided to include a few of the flowers in the frame.

This already made a huge impact.
But because Nadine is pregnant we also needed a slightly different pose, and I slightly tilted the camera for a nice effect and include the sun.

I also shot on extra image from a slightly higher angle to experiment with.
I ended up with a darker look which to my surprise became the favourite image for Nadine 😀
So always shoot something different, you never know what hits the spot.

Now that we talked about the setups and the framing of the shot, let’s take a look at the video from this setup.

Also want to visit a workshop?

Today I showed you one of the  different sets we did during the workshop outside with Geekoto strobes “on location in Emmeloord” with Nadine.
During the workshops I always try to use 3-4 different setups explaining different techniques and of course it’s a great way to get a good addition to your portfolio.

If you think “that’s for me”
Than visit photography-workshops.eu for the Dutch workshops.
But if you are not living in the Netherlands or don’t speak Dutch we also have other options.
If you let is know 2 weeks in advance I can teach the workshop you want to visit in English.
Or if you can’t travel to our studio we also now offer the option to get a full 1:1 experience with 5 different camera angles, lightroom/Photoshop view and a talkback channel, you also get all the raw files and retouched results from the workshop. Visit our online workshops page for more info.

Working on location with strobes and making something boring interesting

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From the workshop on location in Emmeloord

During the workshop “on location in Emmeloord” we scout for locations that look not so interesting but the challenge is to create some cool images anyway. This is a great training exercise because let’s be honest in most cases working on location is not as superb as often hoped for, but we are still expected to deliver awesome images.

For me there are a few different things I use to make a location look more interesting.

The first is of course the location itself, I try to find angles or other details (small or large) that I can use, or that I don’t want in the shot.
In this location we loved the onion crates, they blocked off the sunlight for a large part, which is always handy when working in the bright sun. The less direct sunlight on the model the better in this case.

After I have something in my mind for the general location I’m going to use in the set it’s of course time for the lighting.
In this case I’m using the Geekoto strobes aimed at our model Nadine from the side to create a nice light patten on the crates. Although this was nice we wanted something more, so I added a blue gel to the set. But as you can see in the video and images we started with a more flat lighting setup.

Of course we can talk about, but often a video is much better, so here we go 😀

And also lets take a look at the images separately

Also want to visit a workshop?

Today I showed you the results from one of the sets we did during the workshop outside with Geekoto strobes “on location in Emmeloord” with Nadine.
During the workshops I always try to use 3-4 different setups explaining different techniques and of course it’s a great way to get a good addition to your portfolio.

If you think “that’s for me”
Than visit photography-workshops.eu for the Dutch workshops.
But if you are not living in the Netherlands or don’t speak Dutch we also have other options.
If you let is know 2 weeks in advance I can teach the workshop you want to visit in English.
Or if you can’t travel to our studio we also now offer the option to get a full 1:1 experience with 5 different camera angles, lightroom/Photoshop view and a talkback channel, you also get all the raw files and retouched results from the workshop. Visit our online workshops page for more info.

Working with strobes on location and how to kill the ambient light part II

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Day2Night photography can give you great results

One of the techniques I love to use on location is Day2Night.
With Day2Night we mimic a night or evening scene during day time.
As you can imagine you need some powerful lights to achieve this, or some cool tricks.

In the previous blogpost you saw me using HSS, and I got some questions about HSS and other techniques that I will try to answer in this blogpost.

X-Sync

When we look at a how a camera works the X-sync is easy to understand.
Let’s take a look at the older cameras and for the newer cameras just forget the mirror part.

When we take the photo, the mirror locks up and the first shuttercurtain opens, at one point followed by the second curtain closing the film/sensor again for light.
The faster you set the shutter the faster the second shuttercurtain will follow the first.
Now you have to understand that when you use a strobe/flash all its power is emitted at once, so it’s just a pulse. And that pulse is REALLY fast, they can for example easily be between 1/2000-1/50.000. As a rule of thumb, the more advanced the strobes the faster the flashduration.

Now that we know that the strobe is just a pulse it’s also easy to understand that the X-sync is the maximum shutterspeed in which the whole sensor is open for the light hitting it. Anything faster and the second shuttercurtain will follow. And we probably all saw that problem at least a few times, the black bar on top of your image where you probably wondered where it came from, but it disappeared when you lowered your shutterspeed. That’s the X-sync.

The X-sync will vary a bit per camera, but as a rule of thumb we can say that with normal strobes you can shoot up to 1/125 on 99% of the systems, sometimes with speed lights you can get up to 1/250 but that’s about it. This means that we often end up with smaller apertures and a less shallow depth of field than you might want, so what to use when you want that nice shallow depth of field?

Geekoto GT200 Portable Off-Camera Flash

HSS

With High Speed Sync we can overcome the X-sync problem by using the strobe not as one pulse but by using the stroboscopic effect and this way the strobe acts almost like a super powerful continuous lightsource. The disadvantages are of course that you will burn through your batteries faster and the strobes are more prone to overheating, so my advise when using HSS is to take it a little bit easier and let the strobes cool down between series and shoot slightly slower.

Also when shooting HSS remember that the power-output is a lot lower than on manual.
But thanks to HSS it is possible to shoot on a very high shutterspeed and wide open aperture to create great images with a shallow depth of field, something that was not possible without HSS.

For outside sessions I’m mostly using the Geekoto GT200 and GT250. Both support HSS and have more than enough power to use even during bright sunlight.

There are also some other options at the moment like the Sony Global shutter sensors which makes it possible to shoot up to insane shutterspeeds with strobes. There are some limitations you need to know, but this is one of the biggest steps forward for flash photography in decades.

Manual mode

Todays images are part of the workshop “on location in Emmeloord” we did with our Model Nadine.
In this workshop we look for uninteresting locations and the challenge is to make it interesting with the use of strobes.
This wall is next to our studio and we loved the combination of Nadine’s outfit and the color of the Fence.

In the video I explain the lighting setups and how to incorporate a gel and the sun in the final shots.

And of course here are the images from the video.
As explained in the video these were shot on manual mode.
The reason we use manual mode during the workshops is because HSS is camera dependent, if you use your strobes yourself that’s no problem but during workshops we have attendees with different camera brands, so we have opted for a so called universal system that will just trigger the strobes on manual mode. Because I use my strobes on Manual mode in 99% of the cases this is not a real problem, the only limitation is of course the X-Sync. But as you can see we have plenty of power in the Geekoto’s 😀

Also want to visit a workshop?

Today I showed you the results and of the  sets we did during the workshop outside with Geekoto strobes “on location in Emmeloord” with Nadine.
During the workshops I always try to use 3-4 different setups explaining different techniques and of course it’s a great way to get a good addition to your portfolio.

If you think “that’s for me”
Than visit photography-workshops.eu for the Dutch workshops.
But if you are not living in the Netherlands or don’t speak Dutch we also have other options.
If you let is know 2 weeks in advance I can teach the workshop you want to visit in English.
Or if you can’t travel to our studio we also now offer the option to get a full 1:1 experience with 5 different camera angles, lightroom/Photoshop view and a talkback channel, you also get all the raw files and retouched results from the workshop. Visit our online workshops page for more info.

How I approach a business shoot

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Dentists “kruispunt”

Most of the work I post is from our workshops model photography or street/travel photography.
But we do a lot more of course, including business shoots.

Today I want to share some tips on how I approach our clients and why we score the shoots.

The first thing I always do is know my client.
When a client approaches us I always try to find out what kind of company they are, how do they work together, what is the team like and of course what do they want to have as an imago. One of the questions I try to avoid is “what do you look for?”

In most cases this is why you/we are hired, to create something where the client will recognise themselves in.

In our first conversation I often already have some ideas I bounce off to the client, and during that conversation you will find out that the client will open up a lot more and share much more information when you pay attention than you would ever get by just asking “what do you want?”. In this case it was immediately clear this is a very modern practice with people that love to work together and is a real team.

Before the “real shoot” I always try to visit the location to look around and see if we need extra lighting or other gear, and if somethings need to be moved or removed. This is a vital part of a successful business shoot because although your client might be comfortable in front of your camera, often the people working there have other opinions when a stranger just points a camera in their faces. So that first visit before the shoot is vital to get to know the people, joke around a bit and make yourself known, this will not only speed up the real shoot but also give you a huge headstart because now everyone knows what’s going to happen, and if you make it fun they will mirror this.

Standard, or not

This client was the kind  I love the most, they didn’t want to use any stock photography. Every shot had to be unique for their practice and the people that work there. But they also wanted unique images for their service/pages fitting the subject. So I started with shooting some close ups of the tools and rooms, and most shoots will probably stop there because that would be exactly what they needed. But if you really want your clients to come back you have to deliver much more. And in this case I knew they were very involved with patients that were afraid of the dentist.

“When we have a patient that is afraid, we always ask our receptionist to hold her/his hand, this really calms them down”

So I knew that one of the images for the page about fear, would have to show this.

But we also wanted some images that were a bit more tongue in cheek and different.
So for one image I decided to put away my fear and sit in the chair with a 12mm wide angle.

But we didn’t stop there.
They also work a lot with kids so we decided we needed some images that showed the dentist as a fun person and is nothing to be afraid off.
The actually used a puppet to show how to brush your teeth and of course this was the perfect prop. The only problem was that it’s a slightly older puppet and the teeth were all yellow, but although I’m not a dentist this was something I could easily fix in Photoshop.

By using the wide angle I got the effect I wanted.

And for the page prosthetics I could not resist to also make a funny looking shot.

Do remember that the images in this blog are the more funny, extreme ones.
For me during a business shoot I always try to shoot as much “stock like” images as possible from different angles and depth of field settings. You never know what works best in the design of a website, so also experiment with the angle and flow of your images. By giving your client different angles and directions in your images you never have to say to your client “sorry we did not shoot that”.

But besides these “stock” photos I always feel it’s important to capture the essence of the brand/company/client. And this is were you start to use the information you gathered about the company.

In this case I knew they were dynamic and modern and in for some fun. So this is why at the end of the session we did one more shot.
This one will probably not end up on the website but it can function as an awesome sociale media headshot 😀

During a business shoot I shoot a lot of images that are usable for websites and show tools and rooms, but to get the ones that really capture the essence of a business/client you have to know them. So always take your time and don’t do the shoot as a photographer but as a friend, it will hugely impact your business.

For business shoots and much more visit www.studiofd.nl