Tag Archive for: shadows

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part I

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Transform something not so cool to awesome

One of the more challenging workshops is without a doubt “on location in Emmeloord”
During this workshop I take the attendees with me to locations that at first sight might look incredibly boring. However by using the styling of the model and of course the choice of lighting and shooting angle it becomes clear pretty quickly that even locations that are not that interesting can transform into a great location for shoots.

The reason this workshop is very important is because during most workshops you are shooting in already great locations, or nice studio setups.
The thing is that in reality it hardly ever happens you shoot a client or wedding/event in a castle/urbex/etc location and also the light is not always perfect. Most of the time we are shooting in office buildings, outside in a forest/dune/city environment etc. Not really super inspiring locations.

And that’s the whole deal

In this workshop I show how easy it is to create interesting photos in not so interesting locations. Or let me rephrase that locations that look uninteresting at first sight.

During the workshop I also try to keep the gear as minimalistic as possible, I’m using one of our Geekoto GT200s and a large reflector plus the Rogue Flashbender (Frank Doorhof edition). In the past we had to carry around rather large battery packs and “large” heads and I had to shoot on 1/125 because HSS was not supported. Now we are using so called hybrid strobes which is the perfect marriage between a studio strobe and speedlight. This combination means I can shoot ETTL and HSS on location (or manual of course) with a nice shallow depth of field if I want it, or a deeper depth of field if that fits the photo, and shoot a full day with just one battery.  In fact thanks to the large reflector we had still 10% left in the battery after the whole workshop (5 locations 4 shooters).

By lowering the ambient light you can really make your model pop out, now lower your shooting angle and you can already get much more interesting shots.

In the next blog post I’ll explain a bit more about the large reflector.
For today let’s take a look at the first setup we did with Nadine. This is just a treeline next to our studio functioning as a border between our studio and the neighbours.

 

In this setup we also used the Rogue flashbender for a different look.

And the setup with the flashbender.
In the next blogpost I’ll show you the large reflector and explain why it’s awesome for location work.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Tip : about shadows

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Ok. A quick tip for you guys.

When shooting a model I love to place them right against the wall, the reason for this is pretty simple. In the first place it’s because my subject now makes contact with something in the real world, instead of just being in front of a plain color. PLUS you can now play with shadows.

Make sure you check your angle of lighting and the pose of the model and you can create some really interesting shadow play on the wall.

And walls …. well we all have them (unless you’re homeless), but than you’re probably not reading this… so the next time you’re shooting a model… don’t think in layers like model, space, seamless but FLATTEN THOSE LAYERS and MERGE them together into one interactive shot…

you’ll see it all blends in much nicer.
And now enough of those Photoshop jokes 😀
Enjoy

Shoot silhouettes sometimes

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Often people ask me what to look for when shooting models with shadows.
The answer is very simple “make sure that the shadow is part of the story”
In other words I don’t want a big blob of a shadow behind my model but a nicely featured shadow that actually also plays a role in the shot, or in again other words, the shadow is a vital part of the shot.

 

So how can you “train” this.
Very simple.
Start to experiment with some silhouettes and learn what a model can do, by moving her arms away from her body she creates a certain look, when everything is connected to the body she creates just a big black “blob”.

 

In this shot I used a white background with a small strobe with grid and nothing in the front.
I asked Nadine to create several dramatic poses and especially play with the position of her arms and keep her head/face in profile so you can see that she is a real person.

Nadine October 12 2014 0057-Edit

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The “soul” of a shot

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Without a doubt something I love to do is to create a mood in a shot.
Much to my surprise I get a lot of questions were people show me totally “flat flashed” images and ask me “how do I go from this to your work, which filter do you use ?” well…… the magic Frank Doorhof filter is still in beta and ….. well ok I will tell you in this blog post.

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