Tag Archive for: location

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part III : let’s talk storytelling

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This is it

I think we can all agree that gear, lighting, styling, location etc. are all important for a successful shoot. Although during this workshop series we already saw that the location can be transformed quite easily from ok to wow by choosing the right angles and lighting/styling etc.

If you missed the previous ones you can read them here (highly recommended)
Let’s talk about the flash
Let’s talk about gear

Ok so now it’s about story telling, and what do I mean with story telling.

When we look back into history, even as far as the cavemen, the main reason to create “art” was to tell stories. Ranging from one man killing a Bison in the caves to whole paintings containing scenes from the Bible, and everything in between. Now of course there are also still lives and landscapes but I hope you know what I mean 🙂

When we look at what we see online today it’s a boatload of selfies, photos of food or things I can’t mention here. We are bombarded with a huge amount of images every single day. But when is the last time you really stopped to look at something? or when was the last time you were really impressed with an image?

Most of them probably have have the same element

And that’s story telling.
Now story telling can be done in just one image, but also in a series.

During the workshop on location in Emmeloord we find locations that are not immediately awesome, but I show the attendees how, together with an awesome model and styling in this case, you can transform those locations to something great with choosing the right lighting and shooting angles.

This is the second set of that workshop.
For this setup we went to the local beach, we chose a location with some trees behind Nadine and a slight rise.
Nadine brought a lot of Delfts blue we used as props spread around her.
Now the styling on it’s own already did a lot but when I saw that the umbrella was breaking down I decided to also use something else.

Manipulate the sun/ambient light

We talked about this technique a few times in the blog and during digital classroom episodes.
Dragging the shutter.
What I do outside to get the look I like :

  1. First I make sure my cameras EVF is in emulation mode
  2. I will set my camera to “manual” mode and the shutterspeed to 1/125 (when shooting without HSS) and the lowest ISO.
  3. Now I will look through the display and adjust the aperture till I think the scene looks like I want.
  4. Now I will set it ONE stop darker.
  5. Take the Aperture you see in camera for the look you like
  6. Use a lightmeter to meter the strobe at the aperture you liked
  7. start shooting with a shutter speed of 1/60 but with the set aperture

You might wonder why I shoot at 1/60
It’s very easy to explain luckily.
When shooting without HSS I can not shoot faster than 1/125 (sometimes 1/200) this means when I shoot with strobes and I think the background should be darker I have to adjust my strobes, or when I want to experiment I end up with different apertures, meaning different looks due to depth of field. This breaks the total look of a series and can sometimes work and sometimes not.

By adjusting the strobes one stop higher than I thought was perfect and lowering the shutter speed by 1 stop I’m getting the exact result I liked at the start with an added bonus. When I want the background darker I can raise my shutter speed to 1/125 or sometimes 1/200 and get a much darker background, but because I’m shooting with strobes I can also go as a low as 1/30 and sometimes even 1/15th this gives me a nice dynamic range to work with without breaking the look of the shot.

 

The weather

I’m nog just using this technique to adjust the look of the shot, but also to be able to react to changing lighting on location.
And in this case for story telling.
The following series was shot within 5 minutes, so the lighting didn’t really change, however because the umbrella was breaking down I decided to raise the shutter speed and make the whole scene look darker the more the umbrella broke down.

As you can see in the next series, changing the look of a scene by the shutter speed is fast and easy and has a huge impact on the photo. I love to use it.

Let’s first take a look at the gear used :

Annewiek is holding the lightstand on which the Geekoto GT200 is mounted with a large reflector aimed at the model.

And that’s all actually.
So let’s take a look at the results.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part I

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Transform something not so cool to awesome

One of the more challenging workshops is without a doubt “on location in Emmeloord”
During this workshop I take the attendees with me to locations that at first sight might look incredibly boring. However by using the styling of the model and of course the choice of lighting and shooting angle it becomes clear pretty quickly that even locations that are not that interesting can transform into a great location for shoots.

The reason this workshop is very important is because during most workshops you are shooting in already great locations, or nice studio setups.
The thing is that in reality it hardly ever happens you shoot a client or wedding/event in a castle/urbex/etc location and also the light is not always perfect. Most of the time we are shooting in office buildings, outside in a forest/dune/city environment etc. Not really super inspiring locations.

And that’s the whole deal

In this workshop I show how easy it is to create interesting photos in not so interesting locations. Or let me rephrase that locations that look uninteresting at first sight.

During the workshop I also try to keep the gear as minimalistic as possible, I’m using one of our Geekoto GT200s and a large reflector plus the Rogue Flashbender (Frank Doorhof edition). In the past we had to carry around rather large battery packs and “large” heads and I had to shoot on 1/125 because HSS was not supported. Now we are using so called hybrid strobes which is the perfect marriage between a studio strobe and speedlight. This combination means I can shoot ETTL and HSS on location (or manual of course) with a nice shallow depth of field if I want it, or a deeper depth of field if that fits the photo, and shoot a full day with just one battery.  In fact thanks to the large reflector we had still 10% left in the battery after the whole workshop (5 locations 4 shooters).

By lowering the ambient light you can really make your model pop out, now lower your shooting angle and you can already get much more interesting shots.

In the next blog post I’ll explain a bit more about the large reflector.
For today let’s take a look at the first setup we did with Nadine. This is just a treeline next to our studio functioning as a border between our studio and the neighbours.

 

In this setup we also used the Rogue flashbender for a different look.

And the setup with the flashbender.
In the next blogpost I’ll show you the large reflector and explain why it’s awesome for location work.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Have fun with the wide-angle option on your iPhone or other smartphone

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The Wide Angle lens on your iPhone

The wide angle is probably one of the most fun lenses. Period. yes i mean the Wide Angle Lens on your iPhone

That might be a very strong expression, but the wide angle is undoubtedly one of those lenses you can have a lot of fun with.
So for today’s blog post I decided to take some wide-angle shots while walking in the forest with Chewie.

The way it was intended… right?

Most of the time we use it just to get a wider view, and let’s be honest, it does really make a difference.

the wide angle camera on my iphone

However, for me one of the cool things about the wide angle is not that it just gives you more of the scene. But the way the wide angle distorts.
Now normally distortion is of course a bad word (unless you play guitar :D) but you can also use it creatively.

For example, what about just holding your phone really close to a tree and just aiming it up? The trees will look huge and if you bump the contrast you get some really cool results.

using the wide angle on my iphone at a tree

Now it’s also sometimes cool to use the wide angle to include your own feet.
Think about the start of a big hike, or maybe you like a sign that you find on your route and you want to spice the shot up a bit. Why not switch to the wide angle and include your feet?

Now talking about signs and angles

Those are actually awesome for the wide angle.
But don’t just shoot them straight on. Try different “funky” angles! Shoot them top down, or just sit on the floor and shoot up.
Signs are great for this, especially with street photography I love to shoot street signs this way. (although they mostly from the bottom up of course).

using a wide angle on my iphone for a sign

Shooting my pet with a wide-angle

Of course, when walking with Chewie we also had to take some shots of him with the wide angle.
Now you can take a little bit of a distance and it will just appear Chewie has a really big head.

using the wide angle on a pet makes his head really big

But it becomes so much fun when you get REALLY close up and personal.
Just beware that your phone doesn’t end up as a snack.

Cool selfies

Now I’m not going to lie, because I want to use the wide angle I can’t see the screen. So the following shots are 99% luck. But when you try enough times you will get some really unique selfies.
Let’s start with the phone on the floor with some leaves in front of it. You can also do this from a higher standpoint of course.

wide angle from the ground

We loved this shot, but it was too easy to get right…. so we decided to throw in Chewie and be a bit more creative with the composition….. It’s not hard to guess, but most images were totally wrong (you can’t see the screen) but when it works… well it’s loads of fun as you can see here.

The wide-angle on your phone is fun

So the next time you use your phone. Use the Wide Angle lens on your iPhone, get close, and take some pictures for more creative shots.
As soon as you start using it you will find that even the most boring things can become really interesting,  just due to the distortion and the different angles.

These shots were done with the iPhone 15 pro-Max on the wide-angle setting.
Editing is done in Adobe Lightroom Classic

A few years ago, the Digital Classroom was about Small Spaces and Wide Angles 

Rock that Low and Wide Angle Blog about street and travel photography in the UK

Fashion shoot with Nadine, a blog about angles and more 

More about Angles in this short video

I show you how I started and where we are now (Digital Classroom Love for Photography)

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Digital Classroom Love for Photography

It’s been interesting….

It’s been interesting to go through my old work for this episode of Digital Classroom. It was broadcasted on February 14, Valentine’s Day. And we didn’t want to do another model in red.
I thought it would be fun to dedicate a whole episode to Love for Photography.  About the way my photography changed, but also my vision of my work and the way I work with models, sets, lighting, and styling.

I hope you enjoy this very special and personal episode in our digital classroom series.

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Above the recording of the Digital Classroom Love for Photography

 

Check out our Next Digital Classroom on YouTube 

 

or the whole playlist on our website