Tag Archive for: portrait photography

Why the blog or website is more important at the moment

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Frank Doorhof blog

Back to square one?

When we started with the internet (ok now I feel old) we used dial-up connections and a small booklet to write down the websites. And of course, as a company, we dreamed about having our own website on this amazing (but incredibly slow) internet. This article is about our Frank Doorhof blog, and why we (and you) need a website.

It wasn’t long before that dream came true and our company was on the World Wide Web.. We have several websites. FrankDoorhof, Studio FD (Dutch) and Photography-workshops.eu 

You can read English blogs on FrankDoorhof.com and Dutch blogs at StudioFD.nl

More reach means more customers

But how do you lead people towards your website? At first via the (believe it or not) newspapers, flyers, and stickers on our products and invoices. But then….. the revolution of social media started to happen.
In the Netherlands for a lot of people, it started with websites and discussion forums. For me, it was a site called Dutchheaven which really made a huge impact on how to reach people and network Plus there was a discussion forum and chat room.

Not a lot later in the Netherlands, we saw a new network called Hyves. In essence, you could compare this to Facebook. It was not yet interesting for a company, but it was a great way to get in contact with people with the same interests as you. And slowly of course also companies started to discover “social media”.

Social Media took over

When Hyves stopped most people (if not all) went to Facebook.
This was the first time for us that we really started to use Facebook for our business including the Photography studio and workshops. And it worked like a charm. Direct contact with your audience, a nice and clean interface, great messaging, and no spam.

Frank Doorhof Blog

Social media? or filtered media?

When I take a few steps back and look at the social media landscape at the moment, I have to be honest it’s not good. Facebook filters a lot of messages and comments, which means I don’t see comments (random), followers don’t see all my posts, and the last year using the message function is a disaster because 90% is spam with messages about my page being deleted (don’t click on those links :D) and deleting them is a one by one deal (please add batch delete).

But it isn’t much better on other platforms.
Instagram is nice, but there is no real community with discussions, for sharing images it’s great just like Threads, but it’s hard to explain techniques or lighting setups in depth when you can’t use links or layouts.

LinkedIn is nice but not for everyone in your target audience.

And X (Twitter), what can I say?
It has changed a lot, some things are better but I have a lot of issues with the hate, no moderation, and an enormous amount of fake news and conspiracy theories. Plus the limit on characters makes it almost impossible to explain lighting setups etc.

 

The solution: Don’t build your brand on rented land

Our website has been online for a long time and has always aimed at sharing photos but most of all also sharing techniques, tips and tricks, videos, and of course, answering your questions. In the last decade or so, the focus might have shifted away a bit from the website due to the immense popularity of social media. But as mentioned before I think it’s time for our website to be the main focus again.

I’ve been adding loads of new articles about lighting, photography in general, results from Digital Classrooms, and a lot more in the last few months, so I’m sure you will find something you like. And I will continue to add articles to the blog, so make sure you add them to your bookmarks,  or……

Frank Doorhof's Blog

on our blog, we share how-to lighting setup, including results

Building a community

As mentioned before one of the strongest points for education is that you can always ask whatever you want and get an answer or opinion from the community or the site owner. And this is exactly what makes social media great for connecting people and education.

So under each article, you can leave a comment on the blog
Feel free to ask questions, share your work, or just share your tips about the subject. Registration is 100% free and you help us to build the community which leads to more articles.

 

Conclusion

I think a lot of people and companies have been focusing a lot on social media in the last decade or so. However, the generation now is leaving school is already a lot less active on social media. I think that’s why it’s now the right time to, besides your social media presence, also to focus on a nice website where your clients can connect instead of just watching static pages.

Feel free to add your opinions, and share the article with your social media followers 😀

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Thanks again for your support

Frank & Annewiek Doorhof

 

 

 

 

Using two or three umbrellas for a perfect white background a video tutorial

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The white background

Is often one of those backgrounds we all use once in a while, and some have even build a complete career around it.
When I started out with my learning process I was lucky enough to find out about Dean Collins so I started using a lightmeter almost immediately which makes setting up a white background (and everything else) a lot easier and faster. But still I ran into a lot of problems.

Over the years I’ve tried different ways to shoot this setup.
At one point I was using two strobes on the background, two strip lights as accents and one main light.
The problem always was the floor. The accent lights would give double shadows, this by the way was solved by angling the strip lights slightly up and using grids, but that didn’t solve my other problem, the floor itself.

The miracle of plexiglas

When using the standard setup the main issue was always the floor.
The background would be nice and white, the model was perfectly lit, the accents were nice, but the floor….
You can do it in Photoshop but then you have to edit every single shot, plus it looks the model is floating, so I added some shadows.. and realised it must be possible to do it faster and easier.

Enter, Plexiglas.
By placing transparant plexiglas on the floor you can redirect the light and create a perfect white background which seamlessly blends in with the background, it’s a simple trick of reflections. And the cool thing… you can also use transparant plexiglas on other colors, it’s always giving an awesome reflection.

I’ve talked about this extensively in this blogpost, but today I also show you in the video how I use three and even two umbrellas to create the perfect white background for a full body model including accents… yeah it’s really possible and super easy (and cheap).

Gear used :
3x Geekoto GT400
1x Rogue travel kit with the black umbrella and sleeve (main light) and the white umbrella.
1x Rogue white umbrella.

The nice thing about the Rogue umbrellas is that they are made of Fibreglass which makes them very durable and super easy/light to setup.

In this video I show you how the setup works.