Tag Archive for: tips

See the location

Often people ask me for great locations, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love to shoot in a great location, right?
For us it’s important to keep finding new locations for my workshops because I want them to be fresh and new and we have to fit in a group so those “needs” are different from what I would do if I would shoot for myself.

 

In my opinion the best locations are often right in front of you, you just have to learn to see them.
A prime example are the walls in our studio, you don’t want to know how often people have asked me “When are you gonna paint the walls?” I always answer with the same reply “these are intentional… they are used as backdrops” and in 99% of the cases the response is “Cool… I need that too”. In fact, at that point I already gave the student his/hers moneys worth for the workshop because I opened their eyes for the possibilities right in front of them.

 

Photographers travel the world for locations and often forget the beauty that is in their own area, for the simple reason they see it all the time, so todays blogpost is there to motivate you to look around, find locations close by and incorporate them into your shoots. As an example these two shots with Nadine.

 

A few years ago I had my office done, they removed the wallpaper to put in the new and when they did I saw something I wanted to shoot. Now imagine me first asking/urging them to do the work in one day, and than half way through ask them to go and come back 2 days later….. yeah they didn’t get it too :D, the result might have been the trigger to create the custom walls in our studio, long story short I loved the roughness and wanted to shoot it with a theme, I send a few snaps to Nadine and she came up with what you are going to see now.

Nadine 15 Februari 2011  - 12

 

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Finding angles… maximizing the scene

During workshops I always teach the attendees to maximize the scene by using different angles.
In this example, which was shot during the workshop in Castle Dussen, I walked around the model to get different angles from the set, different lighting effects, and even used the lens flare from the sun coming through the window to create totally different looks from the same set within seconds.

 

It’s a very simple technique that can really benefit you in situations where you are pressed for time and need to deliver a lot of different looks to your clients. But of course you should not only do it in those situations but always try to maximize your scene, and seeing the fact that’s it’s very easy to do…… don’t forget to do it 😀

 

By moving around you are not only creating different lighting effects (I always call this contrast control) but you are also showing different angles from your set/location, so do be careful that what you include in the shot should be there, if you see some cables it’s better to remove them before you take the shot than later in Photoshop.

 

Here are my samples.
Model : Nadine
MUA : Christa

 

 

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Tethering

Shooting tethered is without a doubt something I always try to do, when in the studio or on location. So here some tips for making that experience easier.

Yvonne PTO workshops  (504) February 05, 2015-Edit

1. the right laptop
make sure you choose a laptop that is durable and make sure you use a protective case. My laptop is often used in locations where it’s easy to scratch and I always use cases on the top and bottom, these cases retail for 25-50 euros and really make sure the laptop stays brand new. A good brand is for example Specks.

As my laptop I’m now back at the MacBookPro 15″, the 13″ was great but for me a bit too slow when working with loads of larger files, also the extra screen size is very nice.

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Mastering the model shoot in Chinese

During our trip in Finland I got some great news I also want to share via the blog of course.
My book “Mastering the model shoot” has now also been translated into Chinese….
So if you’re native tongue is Chinese (and for a lot of people that is the case) make sure to check it out.

Mastering the modelshoot in Chinees 3 - February 27 2015

Mastering the modelshoot in Chinees 4 - February 27 2015