But first of all I would like to thank some people.
First of all the guys from the Flash Centre who made everything possible and were absolutely AWESOME during the workshops (and after/before), over a short period of time they have become almost my “other” family from the UK, they ROCK.

But also of course our crazily creative model/stylist/MUA Nadine who travelled with us during this trip.

And of course Annewiek for filming the setups and being my assistant/manager/shoulder to cry on etc.

But most of ALL…. and I mean most of all the attendees of the workshops, you guys make it 100% enjoyable and create a great mood to work in, you guys are the reason I come over and you ROCK, thank you all so very much.
And now….. the images.
Again with many thanks to Chris Rowe.

For me these workshops are always a special occasion to go completely into overdrive mode because let’s be honest with amazing locations like castle and the ability to to 100% what you want with a small group of students is always a guarantee for portfolio material not only for the students but also for me I will be discussing and showing the following items (and much more).

Q&A, Metering for ambiant and strobes, Metering reflective and incident, Working with smoke, Going from ok to WOW, finding the right angles and views, Coaching the models, Adding motion to the shots, Posing that works, High contrast vs REALLY high contrast, Working with vintage lenses on modern DSLRs for that amazing look, Photoshop tips and tricks, Lightroom workflow, working tethered, One light setups that rock and much much more…. these days will get you so motivated and inspired you only want to go out and shoot yourself.

And the intro video:

Some of the images from last year (and this year will be a lot better )

The last 2 images are actually in need of a small explanation.
During the workshops I sometimes also show the difference between classic and modern lenses.
The first image you see was shot with the Petri 50mm 1.7 lens and the second one with a Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f4 lens. Both M42 classic lenses but as you can see both with a totally different character, something I love about these lenses. In the next week you will see a series on my passion for the vintage side of photography in a series of articles.

First of all make sure to check out our friends from Tethertools, they make some of the most useful products for shooting tethered, they ROCK. I always say “even if you shoot tethered sometimes, always use a jerkstopper” and I really mean this, it’s the best protection for your camera you can imagine, nowadays these little ports damage very quickly and the jerkstopper is the best insurance money can buy.

Safety first
One of the things that a lot of people seem to forget is that when you shoot tethered it does not automatically means that your images are save. I always tell people that when working with storage devices there are always a few things that are certain, first one day it will break down, and two it always happens at the moment that you really don’t want it. So in my book you always have to be prepared. So how do we do this ?

Let’s first look at some the options we have for shooting tethered.
A lot of people think you need expensive software, gear etc. for it, while in reality 99.9% of you guys out there can start tethering right this moment with what you already own. With most modern cameras there is tethering support build in to for example Lightroom. You just go to the following menu and you can start tethering as soon as you hook up your camera with the supplied USB cable.

 Now after selecting this option you will be presented with the following dialog screen:

Here you just set the location of where you want to store the images.
Now we can do several different things from here on.

1. Local storage
This is how most people work.
You select the desktop (or another drive) and store the images there.
In 99.9% of the cases this will work like a charm.
Only problem is that if you’re done you have to copy all the files to an external drive and load them into your home/studio computer which means extra work.

2. External storage
This is more easy and I started using this method when we moved to our new studio where our whole tethering station is mobile so I’m shooting to my laptop there all the time but I have to move the sessions to my MacPro for storage. I now shoot to an external drive connected to my laptop via USB3 or Thunderbolt, both these connections have more than enough speed to keep up with your shooting frenzy. When you’re done you can very easily just remove the harddrive and connect it to your workstation and download the images to that station without loosing time

3. For the very careful people (I don’t want to say paranoid)
This is how I work when it’s a real important job.
With a real important job I will shoot tethered to my laptop but also connect an external drive, on  set times I can quickly make a backup to the external drive and keep them in sync. You can use software like Carbon Copy for this which I have to activate manually, but it’s a really fast procedure, or if you want to do it automatically you can use software like Sync Folder (free) which does everything 100% automatically and will keep your desktop and external drive in sync in the background, this way you have a constant backup.

Now some people will think “I will shoot also on the card, so that’s my backup “, often this is combined by not wanting to be “forced” to use a cable and shooting for example RAW on the card and JPEG via wifi to the tethered station. And although this can be a cool workflow without wires, it’s also not a very efficient way to shoot. Imagine having your client in the studio and asking you to change certain features in certain shots, within Lightroom or Capture one (or most other software) you can of course very easily use your EXIF information to add notes, or do it on the fly during the shoot (for a certain look for example), now when you have done all this it’s not a good idea to start offloading your card and than do everything manually again.

If have any questions feel free to ask, or add your opinions and tips.

In the Sony you can actually set the panoramas for :
Left to right
Right to left
Top to bottom
Bottom to top
Wide or standard

These were all done on the standard setting.
The resolution of a panorama is app : 8200 x 1856 pixels

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to take action, walking around with pain all the time was just not “fun” anymore.
The first thing we did was an MRI scan and very soon it was clear that I had not one but two tears in my meniscus, yeah…. pfff that would mean surgery. Now to be honest I never expected it to be this fast because today, while you’re reading this, I’m in the hospital undergoing the surgery.

I can’t yet comment on the surgery itself, but I hope I can tomorrow
What they told me it’s a 35 minute procedure and you can watch, it’s like a hospital TV show starring…. yourself…. I will probably just bring my iPhone and listen to some music if I think I’m gonna faint, but I guess I will be watching the whole show

Recovery time will be app. 1 week with 2 crutches and doing NOTHING (well that will be a first), and 1-2 weeks with one crutch and doing only some computer work…. pffff talk about being frustrating times, on the other hand the last few years has been VERY hectic and the longest I was ever free in a row was 2 days so I think it’s time to catch up with some movies, play some Call of Duty and sleep in every day… sounds boring….. although….. well every cloud has a silver lining I guess.

For the blog it also means some chances, but not in a bad way.
Over the coming two weeks you will be treated to some cool shots from our trip to the UK, a whole series on “the love for vintage cameras and lenses” and of course some new images from shoots we did before the surgery which I have been retouching the last few days, so you still will have a blog update every day, some things are just spread out a bit more.

If someone feels to write a guestblog in between just let me know, from the second week I will be working a lot from my laptop so I will be more online, I expect the first week to be the worst and I will probably only be online from my phone or iPad, but who knows it all will go easier than expected. So for now…… enjoy the day (I hope I do) and enjoy the blog the coming days