About technique and more.

if the sun is not there

Today a small tip on mimicking the sun if it was there before but not when you take the shot.
In this case when we started out on this location the sun was awesome coming through the windows, however as soon as it was time to shoot the scene with our model the sun was gone, now one could say “ok that’s a shame let’s go” however that’s of course not the solution because I really liked the location.

 

In this case the windows were not transparant but acted actually as a sort of diffuser, meaning if the sun was shining you would get a very nice even light, as you can see in this shot which was taken just a few moments before the model shots.

Sanne Suikerfabriek October 31 2013 -36However as mentioned before, when it was time for the model part…. well the sun was gone (normal Dutch behavior). So how do you solve this?

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Different light source

Most of the times we work with strobes or natural light and sometimes I throw in a lightbulb or two just for fun. However in this blogpost I show you a technique I sometimes use when I want a bit more “freaky” stuff.

 

But first…..
I want to congratulate our son Brian on his 15th birthday.
Happy birthday 😀

 

Ok so the light source used in these shots is a wireless projector, choose a high ansilumen unit because even with that you will have to bump the ISO (depending on the patterns you’re projecting).

Suzanna Oktober 26 2013-12

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Posing from ok to WOW

A lot of times when you look at images there is a lot of great stuff going on in the images, but most of the times there is also “something” missing, sometimes it’s expression but most often its something in the posing.

 

Most models will pose like they saw the girls do in “put your country here” next top model, or like they see in certain magazines. What often happens is that you will get images that are looking standard or “too” posed. Now don’t get me wrong there can be images that are “too” posed that rock, but I think you know what I mean 😀

 

As you probably know there are even books out there with 1001 poses, my opinion on these is that they are great to read and get ideas from, copying them is a bad idea, every model is different and also the clothing a model wears is very important for the poses that will or will not work. For example when we look at the images in this blog post the clothing in my opinion just screamed for these poses, it just fit.

 

What I always try to do is let the model pose freely, play around with the poses and only “push” towards better poses from a pose that I really like. Today some images from Nadine showing just this technique. These poses are without a doubt not “standard” maybe even according to some over the top, but they all happened by letting Nadine pose freely, without putting her into a pose and say “ok stay there, 1,2,3”, sometimes this will work but most of the times I find the more freely posing method much better.

 

So next time you do a shoot try to let the model just move and choose the poses you like and refine those, but keep shooting… it’s digital you can always delete the bad one.

Nadine Oktober 25 2013-18-Edit

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The power of expression

One of the things that can really spice up a portrait is expression.
Often (especially with beauty) however photographers seem to keep the expression out of the picture (pun intended). Now I agree that sometimes expression indeed can ruin an image…. but most of the time for me it really adds something.

 

The following shots were taken during the Studio76 workshops in Eersel with Manon and were shot with a beauty dish + grid.

Manon October 5 2013 Eersel-83-Edit

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