Tag Archive for: Sony

WOW that shines like crazy

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And it’s super cheap

Reflective material is a great way to spice up your photoshoot.
You can use it as a set, backdrop or even wrap it around your model. but today we are using it in a set with some colors and hard light hitting it to get a beautiful glow in the material.

And the fun part, it’s really cheap and you can buy it in almost every party shop.
In our case it’s called “holographic” material and they have it in different colors, do make sure you always check materials with your phone (flashlight) to predict the reflection. Not all material looks the same when you throw some light on it.

Here you can read the previous blog post with the images.

And because video is always a beter tool, we also made a “how did I shoot this one” video about it.

 

Cheap can be more fun than you think

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Is gear important?

I hear it all the time: the focus on gear.

“My lens is cheap,” “I have an old camera,” “I only have one strobe,” etc.
In all honesty, of course, gear is important, but you can create awesome art/photos, etc., with your phone nowadays. My motto over the year has been, “If people look at the quality of the pixels, the image is not strong enough.” That doesn’t mean you can just “wing” it and not care about your gear, but it shouldn’t be the main focus.

The same goes for sets. They are important too.
When people look at my portfolio, a lot of people don’t realize that most of the shots were taken during workshops or events. As you will understand, we don’t have a lot of time to create sets, and of course, we love to stay on budget, and that’s what today’s blog post is about: Cheap sets.

Fun and cheap sets

With photography, it helps when we don’t focus on light but on shadows; this is something you probably heard from day 1. The shadows tell you almost everything about the light source used, the angle, distance etc., but one step further is to realize we don’t really work with light but with reflections.
This also explains why we can use black reflectors to take out the shine on someone’s head, for example.

Reflections and shine

And don’t we just love it when something gets a beautiful “glow” in a shot?
Reflections can be a problem but also something really cool you can use in your image.
Today we take a look at some very cheap material you can buy in most party shops. It’s called (well, at least this one) holographic material, and we used it to build a nice background for one of the sets during a workshop. You can even get it in different colors.

A good technique is to use your phone and shine over the material; this will show you how the material reflects and should give you a good idea of how to use it in your shoot.

Fresnel for high contrast

When I used my phone to shine over this material, it immediately started to glow. So, for this setup, I knew we could hit the background with some harsh light for some extra contrast and “oomph” in the shot. If you shoot this with a soft box, it can work fine, too. But it will be a lot less extreme. So on the model, I’m using the Nanlite Fresnel spot (this is one of my favorite modifiers for a great classic high contrast look). The nice thing about a Fresnel is that you focus your light, and even when you use it on the extreme settings, it still has a wonderful effect on the skin of the model.

To make sure the material also shines and to get some nice color effects, I’ve placed two Geekoto GT200’s with the Rogue magnetic system with a red gel on one side and a blue gel on the other.

Together, they created a very nice blend of color and light on the model, plus the material gave a wonderful glow, especially when our model leaned forward.
So let’s take a look at the results from this setup, and in the next blog post, I show the behind the scenes video.

cheap sets

During the workshops, we always try to do 3-4 totally different sets, and this is just one :D. We often try to create cheap sets.
Also want to visit a workshop?
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more information. The workshops are in Dutch, but if you let us know a few weeks in advance, we can switch to English.
Don’t want to travel?
It’s also possible to book a full day 1:1 online workshop; see here for more info.

A new model and this is the first shoot

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We are always looking for new models

And believe it or not… it’s getting harder and harder.
But today I can introduce Ysanne, a new model. She will be helping us out with workshops and live streams.
So you will see much more soon, but today the results from her test shoot.

I take a few images in the test shoot, and mostly just talk with the model about the workshops, how we work, etc.
So mostly the test shoots are some standard setups, but a great way to introduce a new model.

So here are the results from Ysanne’s test shoot.

See fotografie-workshops.nl for the workshops.
In my workshops, we don’t focus on just getting photos from a model, but I try to give an in-depth look at the lighting setups, the styling, the angles (and why), storytelling and so much more. And this often means much better images and a proper understanding of light/posing etc. than in a so-called “shooting zoo”.

Most workshops are in Dutch, but if you let us know a few weeks in advance we can always change the workshops to English.
Or book a 1:1 online workshop of course.

 

new model new model

Always build in a fail-safe even if you think you don’t need it

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Photography catastrophe, when pictures are lost

Over the years we have seen some drama and photography catastrophes. As most of you probably know, Annewiek and I ran an IT company for most of our lives. One of our specialities was building custom machines.  But also being very aware of the risks people experience online and offline. Today, maybe one of the most important pieces of advice I can give to everyone that shoots tethered or just wants his/her images safe.

It’s heartbreaking to see a 70+ year old crying in the store because they lost all their memories. It does give a great feeling when we were able to get it back. But it also happened that there was too much data loss. So having a proper backup system is vital.

The problem is that hardware failure is not something you experience every day. Some people never experienced a hard disk failure (you’re so lucky). So having a proper backup strategy is something that is often neglected till something happens.

Digital has some advantages

One of the great advantages is without doubt that you can make 100% 1:1 copies, as many as you want.
You could also make copies of slides/negatives, but there is only 1 original. Everything else is a copy with some loss.
The weird thing is that with our analogue material we took really good care by placing the negatives in nice holders and sliders so they would stay protected for “ever”. However, somehow with digital we shoot A LOT more, also more memories and…. we don’t treat them with care at all. In most cases, the images are stored on the local drive or on some external drives. But how many of you really have a 100% mirror of your files in a separate location?

But today it’s not about backup strategy,  but something that is just as important. To prevent disaster.

On location or the studio, just as dangerous, or even more

A photography catastrophe does not announce itself. Today I did a photo shoot with a new model, soon more 😀
Of course I’m always shooting tethered in the studio (connected to a large display via an iPad or Laptop/Desktop) but also there a lot of things that can go wrong.

So let’s give some attention today to that workflow.

Photography Catastrophe, when it looks all your photos are lost

Option 1

As you can see, my camera has two slots.
This means you can use 2 cards at the same time. So you could set it up in Video vs Photos. Just as a second card or a mirror solution.
So there we have option 1.

Option 2

When we choose the software to shoot tethered, in my opinion, we must have an option to also store images somewhere else than only the software. For years, we had a problem with certain software solutions that would not store the images on the card but only on the machine you’re connected to. Although this is not ideal, it is pretty safe. But I would always add a small script that makes backups during the shoot to an external drive.

Option 3

Better is software that is designed to be safe with tethering.
I’m mostly using Cascable for tethering.
This is a super handy app that since the last update, runs on both my iPad and MacBook Pro.
The reason I love Cascable so much is “they got it”.
Within Cascable I can shoot into the “sandbox” but also add external folders, for example a folder “tethering” on my iPad which I can use to import the photos into Lightroom or just copy them via my MacBookPro to the NAS.

And, today this actually saved my photoshoot and a photography catastrophe was avoided.
In all the years I’ve been shooting I’ve only had a card fail on me once.
And today was card number 2.
Normally this could mean panic! Since you lost all your images.
But in this case I just grabbed my iPad and copied all the RAW files from there.

And that’s why I want to give some extra attention to RAW.

Why shoot tethered with a cable?

For ever people have been asking me “Why don’t you shoot wireless?”
And over the years I’ve tried many solutions, varying from totally useless to “works like a charm”
The only problem… You cannot shoot RAW. Well ok you can but it’s incredibly slo0000w.
So in the situations where I shot wireless I always shot RAW on the card(s) and sent 2MP JPGS over the air. In all honesty, with a proper system this works great and is super fast. But the biggest problem is….It’s not safe at all! Yes, you can use the double card trick on some cameras but not all cameras support this.

Also, because you’re shooting JPG, using presets for your client or doing quick in-between retouches, are out of the question.
So the cable for me is a vital part (till they solve the speed issue).

Conclusion, avoid a photography catastrophe!

Our digital files are much more in danger of loss than we probably realize.
Always make sure you have a proper backup of your stored files, but also always make sure you build in fail-safes during your photo shoots.
Hope this helps some of you before you find out about this article after losing your images.

For more info about Cascable see www.cascable.se
Want the best tethering solutions? check www.iqwire.nl

Read this blog about adding more storage to your Laptop 

See this blog about my NAS