Tag Archive for: urk

The Scott Kelby Worldwide PhotoWalk 2024 on Urk

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Scott Kelby's worldwide Photowalk on Urk by Frank Doorhof 2024Scott Kelby’s Photowalk on Urk by Frank Doorhof 2024

It was great again

Once a year it’s time for the worldwide Photowalk, a great idea from Scott Kelby. Every first Saturday in October
When possible I’m also hosting a walk. And after Kampen, Urk, and several times Amsterdam it was time for Urk again.
The reason is simple. It’s a great place for photography with people who have loads of stories and are very friendly to visitors. Plus it’s close to our home. And they sell the best fish of course. See the results of the Scott Kelby’s Photowalk on Urk by Frank Doorhof 2024.

We had a great group for the 2-hour walk, and of course, when you visit Urk you have to finish with a visit to “Jongens van de Fant” for some great fish.

For my photos, I decided to limit myself to the Sigma 12-24 on the Sony A7RV.
I hope you enjoy the selection I made.

 

 

 

Our new intern made a BTS video, you can check it out here 

 

Urk

Urk is a municipality and a town in the Flevoland province in the central Netherlands.

This town is first mentioned in historical records dating to the 10th century when it was still an island in the Almere, an inland sea that would become part of the Zuiderzee in the 13th century after a series of incursions by the North Sea. In 1939, a dike from the mainland to Urk ended the town’s island status, just as the Afsluitdijk project was changing the salt water Zuiderzee surrounding Urk to the less saline IJsselmeer. Later in the 20th century, seabed areas surrounding Urk were reclaimed from the sea to become the Noordoostpolder.

The mainstay of the town’s formal economy has always been fishing, and the products of the sea coming in through Urk harbor continue to be exported widely, although today Urk’s fishing boats must travel greater distances to gather them than was required in most historical periods. Religious life has traditionally been very important to Urk’s inhabitants, with active, conservative congregations of the Dutch Reformed denominations playing key roles in the life of the community.

Urk on Wikipedia 

more about walking on Urk (DUTCH) 

 

Read more about model photography on location (outside) in this blogpost  

 

Sometimes 15 minutes is enough for a commercial photo shoot

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Planning is everything in a photo shoot

Sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. Our planning for this commercial photo shoot was good, but it ended in only 15 minutes shooting.
Recently we did a photoshoot for the new Sparks sunglasses collection.
The idea was to shoot the series in Amsterdam, but due to the weather, we decided at the last minute to change the location to Emmeloord so we would have the studio as a backup. and once again we found out that planning a for commercial photoshoot can go differently than you thought.

Rescheduling was impossible because the tickets were already bought from the UK to the Netherlands and back. So we decided to go for it.

Oops… planning for a shoot can go wrong

When the client arrived we started by planning the whole shoot, and to our horror, we found out they had to be back in Amsterdam in….. 2 hours.
This meant we had to drive to the location (Urk), do the photo shoot, and drive the client back to Lelystad, and from there to Amsterdam. In the car to Urk I, actually for the first time, realized I had exactly 15 minutes to do the whole shoot.

Seeing our client was here all the way from the UK I wanted to give them more than they asked for, but 15 minutes… would be a new record 😀

Flash and natural light, ETTL rocks

I’m not a big fan of ETTL but luckily our Geekoto strobes support both HSS and ETTL. So I decided to shoot almost everything in 3 fold. One time natural light, immediately after that with strobes as a fill-in light, and then the final shot with a more day-to-night look.

When you set this up correctly it’s possible to shoot 3 different looks in one setup. Just move your body a little bit or change positions. And it almost looks like you did a lot, while in essence, it was a short session.

For the location, I chose the harbor of Urk. Because we only had 15 minutes I knew that from a low angle, I could get a nice sky. But with just changing my own position I can shoot Urk in the background or all the boats in the harbor. And when walking back the killer-whale and some other nice locations where you can just stand and shoot.

Annewiek was functioning as my VAL *(Voice Activated Lightstand) and held the GT200 with the S26 softbox under different angles during the shoot, again to maximize the amount of different “looks”.

In this case, I shot the whole series with ETTL and HSS. This meant I could work very fast on location. But the downside is that all photos needed slight adjustments in Lightroom. Not a big deal but personally I’m a lightmeter guy 😀

Anyway, enough talk. Although our planning for this commercial photo shoot was different, we got great results, and the client is satisfied.

Here are some images from the session. It’s not everything I shot, but it is a nice overview.

Planning for a commercial photo shoot Planning for a commercial photo shoot Planning for a commercial photo shoot Planning for a commercial photo shoot Planning for a commercial photo shoot

 

Sparks Sunglasses Website 

See the video of the workshop outside, where we also used the Geekoto.

check this post of the shoot with Nadine with Sparks Sunglasses 

Testflight over Urk with the Yuneec Q5004K

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I’ve been “playing” around a bit with the Yuneec and have to say that it’s very addictive for both Photography and video.
Today a first small video I made while testing the Yuneec at Urk (one of my favorite places to visit with new gear).

Due to the compression online you can’t see the real quality but I think you get a pretty good idea (make sure to play at the highest resolution 4K)

 

 

Faking a sunset

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TIP:
You know I don’t really like to “cheat” right?
Well actually it’s a little bit handy sometimes.

 

 

Let’s say you’re on that stunning location and the sun is already dropping but it will take at least another hour to get that beautiful sunset…. and your family really wants to go, what do you do?
Well you could get into an argument and stay.

 

But sometimes you can get away with some “trickery”.
If you position yourself behind an object and capture the sun just barely in the frame and underexpose the scene you can very easily in Photoshop add some warmth (in this case I used DxO Filmpack but you can also just change the color temp or use Alien Skin Exposure, Capture One, or whatever tinting solution you like).

 

 

It’s not a great or real sunset but at least it gives you a slight bit of that look without loosing the image completely. And the effort in Ps is very minimal.

Urk (93 of 96) January 14 2015_DxO