Tag Archive for: workshop

Platja d’aro outside workshops Part II

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During the workshops I do on location I always stress the strength of natural light.
Sometimes people get so obsessed by using their “expensive” strobes that they sometimes forget how incredibly beautiful natural light can be. The workshop was in Spain, Platja d’aro to be exact, and if you know Spain you know that the light can be pretty harsh, for some people a reason to not use it…. in my opinion a huge mistake.

 

In the studio we often use harder light to enhance shadows and “image pop” however as soon as the sun gets a bit “harsher” we are somehow afraid to use it, maybe because it’s drilled into our mind that the best light is in the early morning and late afternoon, well that is true for most landscape shots but I love my street photography and especially model photography to be shot with the really harsh sunlight. So the next time you’re outside in the bright sun…… shut down the strobes and just shoot a few images with the beautiful sun.

 

Camera : Mamiya DF+ with Leaf Credo 60.

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The one you often don’t shoot…but should

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Today a special image.
This is the kind of shot you often see but don’t shoot.
In this case it was literally a last minute shot, during the workshops in Platja d’aro the last part of the workshop it was all the students that shot the models, I was in fact preparing the last part of the workshop and doing some quick retouching of the images to show the before and after. When I went out to check if the students were almost done I saw them coming down the stairs leading up to the location, normally you would turn around and walk in….. but in this case I saw this beautiful wall and without thinking I ran inside to get my camera and wait for the models to come down.

 

Quickly I dragged them in front of the wall and took maybe 3-4 shots.
This is the image I choose from the series and I have to be honest… I LOVE it.
Again this is the kind of images I always call “the ones you often don’t shoot, but should”
And we all have those situations where you see something and think “WOW, but…… well I’m tired, I already got so many shots… so just let it go”

 

I don’t say you have to ALWAYS give in to the urge to shoot, which would actually make traveling with me almost impossible for Annewiek (:D), but I do say that if you are working with models and you do have the chance to shoot that one extra shot… GO FOR IT…. I’m incredibly glad I did because this could very well be one of my best/favorite portraits in a long time.

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Platja d’aro outside workshops Part I

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The second day in Platja d’aro it was time for the outside part of the workshops.
We used a beautiful location very close to the “home base” where I taught the seminar the day before.

 

What you see today is the series I shot with strobes, in another blog post I will share the natural light shots.
I have to be honest, I would have loved to shoot some more but because in this workshop the idea was to give the group a large amount of time to shoot themselves my time was very limited, I think however we ended up with some pretty cool results 😀

 

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Workshop New York results

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I love New York and it’s always fun to be back.
Originally this trip was planned as a 100% relax time trip, but things chance when you’re doing what I’m doing 😀
So we ended up teaching 2 different workshops in New York, the first one was for Mamiya/Leaf which you can find here and the second one was a workshop I organized in the studio of a buddy of ours Hector Martinez from 5thFloorstudios in long island.

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I’ve known Hector for many years and when he told me about his new project I really could not wait to test out the studio so because we were in New York anyway Annewiek and I decided to organize a workshop there, and man am I glad I did, the studio is awesome. There is plenty of room inside but the rooftops really got my creative juices flowing, actually I was planning on shooting the whole workshop with my Sony A7r but I decided that there was so much detail in the background I asked our friends from mamiya/Leaf (digital transitions) to lend me a Credo80 (80MP) which they did (thanks guys), because in all honestly…. the A7r is an awesome camera, and it actually is the camera I do almost all my workshops on location with, but shooting this kind of setups with a medium format camera… well it just brings a whole new dimension to the shots.

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