Tag Archive for: review

The differences in posing and how to coach

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Posing should be natural (I think)

When I started out one of the first things I bought was a so called “posing guide”
Well that was a waste of money.
Every person is different and in all honesty most of the poses in those books are… well very posed.

I like the more natural poses and over the years found some ways to always get fresh poses out of my models.
Today we do something slightly different on the blog.
Normally during a shoot you select the best images from a setup, maybe 1, maybe 2 and sometimes a bit more.
You don’t want to overload your model with images, and always remember you are often as strong as your weakest image.
So selecting the right images is vital I think. Only select the real winners.

So how do I do it?

I will always start out with a standard pose, just to get the lighting right and the overall look of the shot.
But right after that I will start coaching the model not how to pose but more giving compliments, pushing his/her energy up.
If you don’t tell your model what to do but only adjust slightly you will always get awesome and unique poses.
How many models/photographers do you know/recognise due to the poses?

To keep the energy high I want to shoot fast.
I would rather do 4 sets of 10 minutes than one set of 60 minutes to push for perfection.
In all honesty if you can’t shoot the correct image in 10-15 minutes after the lighting setup it’s better to continue. Exceptions are possible of course, we have also worked for a hour on one shot but those are exceptions (for me at least).

But when do you stop?

For me it’s a matter of first getting a really good shot.
As soon as I see I’ve got it I will tell the model “One more” and shoot 4-5.
If in these 4-5 there is one that’s better I shoot another 4-5 etc.
The models energy stays high, and because I always say “one more” and keep shooting (speek enthusiastic) the model really thrives and gives me great shot after great shot, sometimes it’s hard to stop.

So let’s take a look at a series we shot with Lois recently during a workshop.

Lighting

This setup was done with 2 softboxes
The first one was a Geekoto 36″ softbox
The second one was the new Geekoto Lantern
Both on the Geekoto GT400

The lantern gives a nice soft quality of light and reaches a lot more of the set.
The 36″ is slightly more focused.
In this setup the difference is mostly seen in the light fall off in the back but as you can see both softboxes can be perfectly used for fashion shots 😀

As you can see Lois is a great model, but as you can also see there are many different poses and lines in the shots.
I always look for a nice flowing line, and sometimes this means tilting the head slightly to the left, or the right depending on the rest of the body.
When the lines “flow” you automatically get a much easier to look image.
As you can see in these results some poses just look better and more easy, find the curves/lines and remember the “flow” and try to incorporate them in your next shoot, probably ti find out that it will differ per model, but the base is always the same. Just like with landscapes, find the “leading” lines and shapes and coach the model with slight adjustments to get the pose you like.

This is something that will take some practice but at one point you will find out it becomes much easier.

Want to visit a workshop?

Most of the workshops are taught in Dutch, but if you mail us a few weeks in advance we can switch to English.
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more info and bookings.

Getting outrageous skies without Photoshop but with gels

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Color manipulation is fun, get outrageous skies without Photoshop

Today another part in our series on color and color manipulation.
part I
Part II

We all love easy to do tricks of course, so I thought today would be the perfect time for just such a tip.

When we look at the color triangle we can see that all colors are connected through the white point.
We talked about this in the first blogpost in this series.

This also means that we can manipulate our white point by choosing a whitepoint that is way off the black body curve and choosing this as a new white point.
So let’s take a look at how this works in real life.

Look at those skies

Let’s take our model Lois on location.

Yeah, well….
There is nothing wrong with this shot but it isn’t really popping right?

So first let’s add some strobe power.

Ok that’s a LOT better, love the sky and the model really pops out.
But what if….we want to push the creative factor up.
Let’s add a green gel to our strobe.
You can use the Rogue magnetic system for this.

Of course it’s vital to shoot a color checker for this.

Now click on the whitebalance part and look at what happens.

Don’t you just love the effect.
In essence it’s very easy what happens.

Normally the white point is on the black body curve.
By using a green gel on the strobe we are now placing the white point above the black body curve, by correcting this to the correct white point everything else drops down, meaning white becomes more magenta. Enhance the colors a bit in your favourite editor and you can have loads of fun with it.

 

An extra tip

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me this contains a lightmeter and colorchecker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the colorchecker I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

On the side of the monitor I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great line up of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colourspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality most BenQ’s also support hardware calibration. Which means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European vistors, please contact me for more info.

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

 

 

 

 

I show you how I started and where we are now (Digital Classroom Love for Photography)

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Digital Classroom Love for Photography

It’s been interesting….

It’s been interesting to go through my old work for this episode of Digital Classroom. It was broadcasted on February 14, Valentine’s Day. And we didn’t want to do another model in red.
I thought it would be fun to dedicate a whole episode to Love for Photography.  About the way my photography changed, but also my vision of my work and the way I work with models, sets, lighting, and styling.

I hope you enjoy this very special and personal episode in our digital classroom series.

Don’t miss our live broadcasts and new videos by subscribing to our channel and hitting the bell icon.

Above the recording of the Digital Classroom Love for Photography

 

Check out our Next Digital Classroom on YouTube 

 

or the whole playlist on our website