Tag Archive for: photography

Many different looks from one setup

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Often I’m asked what kind of setups I use and what kind of modifiers.
What people often don’t realize is that with only one modifier you can chance a lot just by playing with the angles and controlling the contrast/lightfall off. In fact placing a light closer or further away also makes a huge impact on the image look, add to this the option to feather a light source (using the sides of the light) and you know that there is a lot possible with one modifier and light.

 

It gets even more interesting when you are combining two strobes and for example add a gel to one of them.
During the workshop this weekend I made a setup like this with our model Lennaa and decided it would be a cool thing to share on the blog.

 

I started out with one strobe with a red gel.

Lenaa Juli 25 20142025

To get a bit more “punch” in the image I added another strobe without gel under the same angle to mix the two.

Lenaa Juli 25 20142035 Read more

Peter Hurley at StudioFD

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I met up with Peter Hurley in Atlanta during Photoshop World, now for everyone who doesn’t know who Peter Hurley is…
Peter Hurley is specialized in shooting headshots, you can call them portraits but that’s not correct, a headshot is an image that you will use for a casting agency and that really has to represent that person, in short a good headshot can get on you the red carpet, a bad headshot can make you work at McDonalds. And Peter does his work very well and is considered by many as one of the best in the world. His videos on the jawline, illuminating the face etc are very popular online and help a lot of people better understanding how to shoot the “perfect” headshot.

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After Photoshop World Peter and I met up in his studio in New York (where he invited me to shoot my new headshot) and during a nice diner he told me he was doing a workshop tour in Europe in July, now originally the Netherlands was not on the list, so I told him he could use our studio to host the workshop and voila the Netherlands was added to the list 🙂

 

So last weekend it was time for the Peter Hurley workshop.
I did hang around during the workshop of course and it’s fun to see how Peter really made a science out of the art of the headshot, it’s actually quite amazing to see what his though process is. The first day was mostly spend inside and talking about the theory, although after diner the group did get out for some nice natural light + strobe shots. The second day was completely different with loads of shoots in different setups and (thanks to some of our models) also with some extra faces.

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Light can be very simple

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As photographers we have to realize that light is our language, it’s the paint we work with to tell the story.
Now for most photographers light is something they can control as long as it’s something familiar and something that…. well has a label which states what it does.

 

Light however can be so many things, in my opinion (and I really mean this) there is no light source that can’t be used to create a nice image. So during a workshop I got some questions about different light sources and we did a part of the workshop with just one (well actually 3) light source, an old chandelier. The only thing we modified from this chandelier is that we use 100W light bulbs instead of the much lower in power bulbs you would normally use. This helps to keep the ISO a bit lower.
Oh and don’t worry if your camera shoots on ISO1600 or ISO2000, when you zoom in you indeed see some noise, but trust me… when you print or publish for the net you won’t see the noise anymore, or at least it won’t bother you.

 

Now the fun thing about shooting with these kind of light sources is that you really learn to control your light and see what light does, for example placing it closer to the model will give you totally different look than when you place it further away. Today I show you two sets we did with the chandelier. On the first one we had the lights really close to the model while on the last set my assistent actually swung the lights above the model (Manon). As you can see… the same light source but two totally different looks.

Manon Juli 5 2014 (82 of 153)_DxO

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Working with portrait or landscape mode

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Composition is one of the things that is always very important in a shoot, but what is the perfect composition?
Well to be honest… there is no perfect composition.
Of course there are those “rules” like the rule of thirds but let’s be honest they just give you a “this will work” general rule of tumb, but it’s often not the most interesting shot possible. In my opinion it’s incredibly important to play with the way you shoot.

 

Take for example these two shots.
One is shot in the so called portrait mode.
It draws all the attention to the model and to be honest it looks pretty nice.

Lenaa Juni 20 2014 64 1

However as soon as you change to landscape mode for me the whole image gets way more interesting.

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