Tag Archive for: photoshoot

Adding loads of mood with light in light

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Claudia against the “graffiti door” from #clickpropsbackdrops

I shot this with the new magnetic #rogue system on Nissin speedlights.
The system is designed for the popular round strobes, but it can also be used on most speedlights via a special adapter, which is available in both standard and small to fit 99% of the speedlights out there.

See www.rogueflash.nl for more information.

I quite like the harder shadows that a spot gives on the model, but this also means that the shadows can be quite dark/intense. By using a fill-in with, for example, a blue gel, you can give the scene just that little bit of extra spice and mood. The Rogue Dome is ideal for this because it spreads the light very nicely, vary the output of the fill in strobes to get the desired effect is the only thing you have to do.

And it doesn’t stop there, you can even place the dome behind the model and then point it at the camera for a cool lens flare effect.

If you work with round strobes or speedlights, the magnetic system from Rogue is definitely highly recommended.
In combination with the flashbender, I wouldn’t know what else you would be needing on location or in the studio, and it all fits easily in your camera bag, even if it is almost full.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask
Or check out our YouTube channel with loads of lighting examples.

What we did during the workshop with Lois

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Today a few results of the workshop with Lois.
During the workshops there is always a theme, but within the workshops the rest is free on the base of what the group wants to learn, this way you always experience a workshop that is exactly tailored to your needs.

The theme of this workshop was “essential lighting techniques” based on the Tutorial with the same name (I highly recommend getting that one), I sometimes call this the “starters” workshop but actually that is not entirely true, this is the workshop where we work with more standard setups such as the butterfly and Rembrandt but this is often quickly supplemented with adjustments to make the image a bit more spectacular.

During the first set we use a Brown Punch background from Clickpropsbackdrops.
This is a very nice background which can be used in almost any situation.

In this set I only use a softbox from Hensel with grid focused on the model but in such a way that there is also some light in the background.

In the next set we use the Earth stacked master background.
This is a background with a fantastic 3D effect, this is of course fantastic to process in a light control workshop, or always pay attention to how the shadows fall and you can get fantastic results.
As an extra flash I end up using a blue gel here for some extra atmosphere and accent on our model.

With this set it was not only important to make it look like we were really shooting on location, but I also used a technique here where I color the set via a fill in flash with gel. And as you can see from the focus effect, I have used the Lensbaby here. The graffity door 1 background is awesome for this kind of sets. You can really use if for story telling, and I absolutely love that in backgrounds.

This remains one of my favorite setups for beauty portraits.
Of course, there is a bright background, and in this case I have chosen the Sweethearts.
I use a triflection system here to open the shadows, and the sides of the clothes. On both sides are strips with grids that provide a considerable output. By feathering this I get a lot of lens flare, this lens flare is turned on even more by the K&F Concept Black Mist filter. You can see an ascending effect here from no filter to 1/4 and 1/2.

Lets start with no filter.

Now we move up to the 1/4 strength

Ok now lets start to add a bit more lens flare by switching to 1/2 and playing a bit more with angles so we can also get the left strobe in better, due to the added strength both will now be easier to capture.

And the final result with an added vignette.

And finally it was time for the set.
This is a really fantastic part of the studio to get creative. I use the Antique wall navy as “main background” and on the top to create a corner a ProFabric Chintz reclaimed, I chose this because it is quite dark and I can easily use it as a very dark background in the photo but still show some detail due to the print so that the photo / set looks a bit more “organic”. But the material also responds very well to color gels and can even be illuminated from behind, so it gives me a huge amount of possibilities. On the ground I use a floor part from ClickPropsbackdrops. A big advantage of loose floorboards is that you can change freely and thus build up a much larger variety than just the floor that is present in the studio.

Besides the main light I’m using a red gel here, because the light is pretty far from the model the 1/2 strength KF concept filter really helps with the lens flare. When the lights are close to the model the 1/4 is a great allrounder but when you want a bit more room in the set the 1/2 is absolutely awesome.

The first image is without the red gel, I already love the way the effect of a real location is created. The vinyl prints are really awesome on photos and add to the illusion of being somewhere else.

But let’s start by adding the red gel and see how the background material responds to the light. This is something that is often overlooked, but every material will respond differently on lighting. And I just love the way the Vinyl mixes the colors.

In the coming week we will release a video per set with an explanation of the lighting on our YouTube channel

You can get everything I use in our webshop via www.frankdoorhof.com/shop

A distant modelshoot in a time of social/physical distancing

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One might say we woke up in a “bad” sci-fi or horror movie.
No more going outside for a lot of people, no more photoshoots, no more….. well in the Netherlands we are “happy” that at least we are not in a full 100% lockdown but still have some things we are allowed to do. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those protesters that believe the government is keeping us inside for other reasons. Trust me if they want the damage to the economy to be limited they will open up as soon as possible, if your country does not yet open up, don’t do it yourself, this is a virus we are fighting with each other not an enemy you can see.

So of course one of the things I miss most is doing photoshoots. I know some people still do it, but I think that’s irresponsible, you have to move to the location, there is a huge chance of infection during that travel or on location, if you do it in your studio you have to clean literally everything and they still don’t know for sure how long the virus will be active in a room where there is little to no ventilation, in fact they already know it can be spread via the HVAC system, so you might not infect yourself but maybe someone in that building. So just don’t take the risk.

To show you guys that you can do photoshoots even without leaving your home my friend Andy set up this special photoshoot (and all credits go to him for this).

Andy is a dear friend of us, but he lives app. 6000 miles away. So talk about keeping your distance.
Andy is also a photographer, but also a good looking dude, so he came up with the idea to do a long distance photoshoot. And with todays technology this is of course very possible.

 

Our setup.
During the lightsetup I switched between the small camera and the desktop. So for the shoot the desktop was large and for setting up the lights I switched the two cameras so I could clearly see what was going on.

So what did we do?
Andy put his camera on a tripod and connected it to his laptop via a Tethertools cable of course.
Thanks to Capture One I was able to switch between shooting modes, settings and very importantly live view (without live view forget about this).

One camera (from his laptop) we set up so I could see most of the room, this made it easy to see where the lights were placed and give directions to how to angle the lights. Of course Andy was able to do the metering and place the lights.

As soon as everything was setup I switched over to the live view mode inside of Capture One and posed Andy. Now to be honest when we started this shoot I didn’t expect it to go as smooth as it actually did. For the “meeting” software we used ZOOM, but you can also use Skype or any other software that supports both taking over someones desktop and using a camera at the same time. Zoom actually worked like a charm (this was my first time using Zoom).

When everything was set up correctly I could see Andy posing via the live view and getting the shadows right was easy. When I started this my initial idea was to just use flat lighting, this is easier to get a good shot, but when we saw how smooth the connection was we just immediately went for the more contrasty lighting. Now I have to add Andy was a real champ and stayed exactly the way that I told him, there is always a slight delay between shots and directions but in all honesty it felt almost instant, so this is without a doubt usable.

Now in real life I can make better shots, will experiment a bit more with different positions, fine tune the light, freak a bit more with flares etc. but I have to be honest for a remote shoot this was not only a boat load of fun (thanks buddy) but the results aren’t that bad either, in fact if you take more time for it (we did a session of 30 minutes) I think you could do some really cool stuff.

So what do you need?
Make sure you connect your camera via USB to your laptop/tablet.
Make sure you use software that can show you the live view of your camera, for example Capture One.
Place one camera that can see the whole room and use this as the standard “webcam”
Use software that is pretty solid in the connection and has the option to take over someone’s desktop, you have to have mouse control.
The software you use to make the connection has to support also the option that both the desktop AND camera stay active
Make sure the software makes it possible to see both the desktop and the extra camera

Now if you want to go fancy (and who doesn’t)
You can use a dedicated videocamera and connect that to your desktop. We use a blackmagic HDMI to USB device for this and in our home studio a Magewell HDMI to USB device. Both do the same thing, they get a HDMI signal from your camera and convert it to something your desktop sees as an extra camera in “all” software. It replaces the often bad webcams and gives you more room to move it around and show the room.

And… well that’s about it.
After the shoot Andy send the files to me and I retouched them to show you guys the results today.

There is one thing that was a bit more difficult than expected. In real life you see everything in 3D, in other words you see depth. On a screen this is highly reduced, this made setting up the accent light for example much more tricky than normal, but in the end we got one shot out of it, I wanted to play more with that but Andy’s room was pretty bright and small so the light scatter was very hard to control, so we opted for the more darker looks 🙂

 

Tip: Get that sun

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One of the things I always love to do is shoot the sun in the frame.

Sometimes just somewhere in the frame. But often I get more satisfaction by placing it for example just behind the model and letting it just shine through creating some cool effects.

Of course you can do the same with strobes.

Feel free to share your favorite sun in the frame images.