Tag Archive for: tip

Styling in a photoshoot

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Styling is one of the key elements in a successful photoshoot. A lot of people overlook this subject and end up with “perfect” lighting, great locations and still unattractive photos, or at least photos that don’t make you go “WOW”

 

In my opinion styling will make or break the shot, however as soon as you start using styling you also dive into the snakepit called personal taste…… so prepare 😀

 

Now most people think “I can’t do this” or “This is SOOOO expensive” in reality however it isn’t.

 

In our studio I work together with (I think) one of the most creative stylists in the Netherlands at the moment Nadine, she can do wonders with almost nothing, and she is a pretty good model too (so what more to wish for), the idea is to combine materials and colors that work together, for example strong red with a blue wig would seem ridiculous on paper but when you execute it the right way you will see that it really works.

nadine dec 27 201317711-Edit Read more

TIP : Not everything is Photoshop

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TIP :
Not everything is Photoshop.



A lot of the shots I post online are 99% in camera shots. For some people this is very hard to believe, I sometimes think that if someone sees something that “looks hard” they always think it’s Photoshop.



In my opinion this is limiting yourself, always believe in the power of timing and of course planning ahead. Although it sometimes seems like I just throw together some lights, place a model and shout some funny remarks to my models and press the shutter the truth is very far from that.

Every shot I take I plan ahead, I carefully place the lights under the exact right angle and move my model in the angle so that he/she is hitting the light just perfectly (or as good as you can get it).

This however doesn’t mean I plan a shot ahead in the studio, during my workshops it has become a personal challenge to NOT plan anything, in fact I often let Annewiek or organizers pick the spots for the locations and I don’t want to see anything from it (except a general idea), this way I can be 100% creative on the day itself, and I strongly believe that by showing it this way to the students also gives them the confidence that they can actually pull this off if they understand their light.

Light is our language as photographers, this is where we create our poems/photographs and this is how we tell our stories.

Photoshop for me is an awesome tool but I always get way more satisfaction when I “nail” something in the camera instead of add stuff in Photoshop.

let’s take this example.

Enka workshops Augustus 15 2014 222

This was shot during the Enka factory workshops last friday.
This shot was 100% unplanned, we saw the pool of water and 45 minutes before the end of the workshop I thought it would be cool if we would do something with this water, so I asked our model Lenaa if she would mind to get wet (and I checked with Nadine if the clothing was allowed to get wet, another tip.. always keep your models and stylist on your good side).

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Using smoke and colors

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Using smoke in a photoshoot is cool, it really adds some extra “oempf” to a shot, and it helps to mask uninteresting backgrounds of course.
When you start adding color to the smoke shot I always feel the shots are extra special.

 

In these shots I used a standard (cheap) smoke machine and one strobe with a red gel, as you can see I shoot under an almost straight angle into the light source. Because of the way smoke behaves you get a beautiful effect, adding a bit of Intensify pro from MacPhun (you can also use Topaz clarity of course or NIK tonal contrast) really finishes the shot.

Lenaa Juli 25 20142098

Lenaa Juli 25 20142111

Tip : using strobes and natural light

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The difference between strobes and natural light.

 

I always tell my students during workshops that when they are shooting with strobes they should always also shoot some images with natural light, this way you can deliver many different looks from the same location to your client.

 

During the workshops in New York I shot this example which I like to share with you guys.

 

The first image is without strobes.
To meter this correctly I metered (incident) in front of the models face to get a proper exposure on the face, this meant that the windows would blow out to pure white, in the final tinting I toned down the highlights slightly for a more vintage look.

Workshops 5thfloor NY 29-30 August 2014 (6 of 277)

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