About technique and more.

Mixing light sources in the studio flash vs continuous lighting

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Mixing lights can be awesome

And something we sometimes have to do! Because the location we are shooting in has some very strong lights, or maybe lights that cannot be taken out, or that just look interesting to include. There can be many reasons why to include lights that are in your set/location. So continue reading about mixing light sources.

Video about mixing light sources

In today’s video, I talk about how I included the studio lights in a photo with Claudia during one of the workshops.
I also explain the main lighting setup and show the results from that set.

If you have any questions feel free to drop us an email and who knows you will see your question answered in one of our next posts/videos.

Want to visit a workshop?
visit www.photography-workshops.eu for our Dutch workshops, but also for all our workshops abroad like the UK and Belgium.

 

Check out this blog about Claudia and the white background with just 3 umbrellas

 

Why the blog or website is more important at the moment

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Frank Doorhof blog

Back to square one?

When we started with the internet (ok now I feel old) we used dial-up connections and a small booklet to write down the websites. And of course, as a company, we dreamed about having our own website on this amazing (but incredibly slow) internet. This article is about our Frank Doorhof blog, and why we (and you) need a website.

It wasn’t long before that dream came true and our company was on the World Wide Web.. We have several websites. FrankDoorhof, Studio FD (Dutch) and Photography-workshops.eu 

You can read English blogs on FrankDoorhof.com and Dutch blogs at StudioFD.nl

More reach means more customers

But how do you lead people towards your website? At first via the (believe it or not) newspapers, flyers, and stickers on our products and invoices. But then….. the revolution of social media started to happen.
In the Netherlands for a lot of people, it started with websites and discussion forums. For me, it was a site called Dutchheaven which really made a huge impact on how to reach people and network Plus there was a discussion forum and chat room.

Not a lot later in the Netherlands, we saw a new network called Hyves. In essence, you could compare this to Facebook. It was not yet interesting for a company, but it was a great way to get in contact with people with the same interests as you. And slowly of course also companies started to discover “social media”.

Social Media took over

When Hyves stopped most people (if not all) went to Facebook.
This was the first time for us that we really started to use Facebook for our business including the Photography studio and workshops. And it worked like a charm. Direct contact with your audience, a nice and clean interface, great messaging, and no spam.

Frank Doorhof Blog

Social media? or filtered media?

When I take a few steps back and look at the social media landscape at the moment, I have to be honest it’s not good. Facebook filters a lot of messages and comments, which means I don’t see comments (random), followers don’t see all my posts, and the last year using the message function is a disaster because 90% is spam with messages about my page being deleted (don’t click on those links :D) and deleting them is a one by one deal (please add batch delete).

But it isn’t much better on other platforms.
Instagram is nice, but there is no real community with discussions, for sharing images it’s great just like Threads, but it’s hard to explain techniques or lighting setups in depth when you can’t use links or layouts.

LinkedIn is nice but not for everyone in your target audience.

And X (Twitter), what can I say?
It has changed a lot, some things are better but I have a lot of issues with the hate, no moderation, and an enormous amount of fake news and conspiracy theories. Plus the limit on characters makes it almost impossible to explain lighting setups etc.

 

The solution: Don’t build your brand on rented land

Our website has been online for a long time and has always aimed at sharing photos but most of all also sharing techniques, tips and tricks, videos, and of course, answering your questions. In the last decade or so, the focus might have shifted away a bit from the website due to the immense popularity of social media. But as mentioned before I think it’s time for our website to be the main focus again.

I’ve been adding loads of new articles about lighting, photography in general, results from Digital Classrooms, and a lot more in the last few months, so I’m sure you will find something you like. And I will continue to add articles to the blog, so make sure you add them to your bookmarks,  or……

Frank Doorhof's Blog

on our blog, we share how-to lighting setup, including results

Building a community

As mentioned before one of the strongest points for education is that you can always ask whatever you want and get an answer or opinion from the community or the site owner. And this is exactly what makes social media great for connecting people and education.

So under each article, you can leave a comment on the blog
Feel free to ask questions, share your work, or just share your tips about the subject. Registration is 100% free and you help us to build the community which leads to more articles.

 

Conclusion

I think a lot of people and companies have been focusing a lot on social media in the last decade or so. However, the generation now is leaving school is already a lot less active on social media. I think that’s why it’s now the right time to, besides your social media presence, also to focus on a nice website where your clients can connect instead of just watching static pages.

Feel free to add your opinions, and share the article with your social media followers 😀

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Responding to the Frank Doorhof Blog also helps our ranking on Google!  So other people can find us too.

 

Thanks again for your support

Frank & Annewiek Doorhof

 

 

 

 

How to photograph awesome guitars in the studio, and an alien ukulele

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Awesome products to shoot

In todays blogpost it’s time to combine two of my passions, guitars and photography.
It’s always fun to do the Digital Classroom livestreams, and although most is aimed at model photography I also sometimes like to throw in something else.

In this episode I take some pictures of 2 of my favourite guitars and an alien ukulele
I show the lighting setups, how to use smoke, how things go wrong and a lot more.

But before I link to the episode, let’s show the results.

In these images you see the Ibanez Jem guitars.
The black one is the Jem 777VBK (Rosewood fingerboard)
The white one is the Jem 7V WH (ebony fingerboard)

Having some fun with a theme

The final photo is just for fun.
When I saw this Ukulele I just had to get it, not just to experiment with but also to use in a photoshoot, because let’s be honest… it’s cool 😀

During the broadcast I promised I would make a special version of this one.
It’s a bit cheesy, but somehow I like it 😀

Curious how I shot these?

Now you might wonder how I shot these?
Well you are lucky, because here is the link to the full almost 2 hour episode.
If you have questions feel free to ask.

The competition

During the broadcast we talked about the Tourbox give away, if you missed that part….
Create a cool video of you creating your art and tag it with the tags #photographer #photography #tourbox and we will select two winners who will win a Tourbox and a free Lightroom video from me. Make sure you also tag me of course.

The BenQ discount code

For the BenQ 10% discount code email me at [email protected]

What if you lose all your data…. better prevent it now

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The main thing that hit me

When Annewiek and I ran the computer company one of the things that always hit me were the moments when people came in our store because they lost all their data.
Sometimes they still had hope because only their C: drive crashed, but in most cases they didn’t realise that their D: drive was actually just a partition on that crashed drive. In some cases we could get some data back, but it was never a 100% perfect recovery, and especially with file names, dates etc. it often meant we got stuff back, but it was a lot of work for us and them, meaning a huge bill.

The weird part is that they were always happy to pay, even if we got half back.
Now those invoices were often higher than a solution to prevent it all.

Today I wanted to share a video with you in which I explain how we have our backups setup.
I hope it will trigger you to start taking backups serious, unless you already do, in that case… well done.

Dataloss is something we all will experience in our life, it also happened to us a few times, luckily never a lot, but even with a good backup strategy its always wise to automate things as much as possible and make sure you are checking your backups.

In the video I talk about automatically downloading your photos, but also the more complicated setups, and also which drives are best for usage in a NAS.