Shoot with Cecile

Cecile participated in the Miss Belgium 2023 contest and was a finalist and last Sunday she came to my studio.

She poses really well, is not scared to try things out and this results in beautiful photos.

Good posing is not standing still but to move and twist your body and arms to get these shots. I only asked for minor improvements like the position of hands and feet.

Thank you Cecile & Nancy Vrancken for the Make-up. It was a great day!

Wonderful pose by Cecile! I choose green to get the contrast I wanted.

I love grey as a background. You need to be careful when shooting grey, black and nearly white in one photo.
Too many times a part of these kind of photos are underexposed or overexposed like a white dress that just looks like a white huge spot in the photo.

Making the background as white as possible.

Workshop at Cameranu, Antwerp with Kedist Deltour

On April 29th I gave a workshop at Cameranu in Antwerp. Former Miss Belgium 2021, the lovely and beautiful Kedist Deltour was so kind to be the model of the day. There was an overbooking so in consultation with cameranu we decided the keep the amount of attendees at a maximum of 10 to make sure that the quality of the workshop would not suffer.

It was an intense workshop and I am very happy with the feedback afterwards: “It was a lovely and very instructive day.”

To be honest I was very tired back home but that also had to do with the fact that I had a bad cold that week.

At 10:00 I started with a shortened version of my general lecture about beauty & fashion photography but first I gave my fellow photographers a note book to write things down.

The main subject throughout the workshop was the added value of ‘off-camera’ flash both in the studio as outdoors. Because the workshop was indoors I could not demonstrate the power of using flash outdoors live, but showed some examples of off-camera flash outdoors.

If anyone is interested in a workshop using off-camera flash outdoors please let me know.

In the slide below you can clearly see the difference between the second photo and the third. Exposure for the ambient light and add the right amount of flash power to make a well balanced lit photo.

As a Godox ambassador I explained the different Godox strobes and provided info about the different Godox triggers.

The gear you need depends on your assignements. You can already do a lot with just one or two AD200’s (or a AD300) but when +1500 photos a day are required you need more power to get the job done.

Here are a few slides from the presentation.

Here is my personal recommendation when starting out with off-camera flash. Better to have two flashes instead of one. One can act as the main light and the other as fill light. If you need more power just combine the flashes in a AD-B2 dual head for 400 Ws.

A very informative topic was flash duration. Godox is very good at it to freeze motion in dark environments.

Here is an example of making use of flash duration outdoors in the early morning when the sun is rising.

The photo on the right on the slide below was shot at 1/50, ISO800 at f/2.8, 129mm on a tripod. Because the ambient light was very dark I used a slow shutterspeed to maintain quality. You can only do this when your flash is capable of delivering short flash durations! Thank you Godox.

I can assure you there was a lot of wind but there was no motion blur visible at all in none of the photos.

If I would have used a shutterspeed of 1/400 the ISO would have been 6400 decreasing quality a lot. High ISO is less quality. It is as simple as that.
During sunrise you only have 10-15 minutes and then it is over and out. Increase the shutterspeed and lower the ISO when more sunlight is hitting your subject.

I also showed some examples about composition and female and male posing.

A lot more topics were covered. Join me on other lectures and workshops to find out!

After the lecture we took a break and started the wokshop.

During the lecture I already talked about adapting to the environment. The cameranu store is painted in violet so I decided to use as much grids as I could to make sure the reflected (purple) light would not hit the model. You can fix this in post by adding green but better to prevent than to cure.

I wish the ceiling would have been white and the walls in natural grey. Then you can bounce some light to fill the shadows and reflection of the walls would be minimal.

The goal of the workshop was beauty & fashion with off-camera flash so I decided to start with my signature light setup for beauty. I demonstrated the added value of using a Sekonic Lightmeter with integrated wireless Godox module.

I used a total of 6 flashes for this setup. We started with one flash and expanded our lighting setup further. Because I photographed tethered I showed the result of each individual light. I mainly used AD200’s to demonstrate you do not need AD600’s or AD1200’s for this kind of work.

Don’t get me wrong! You can do a lot with only 1 or 2 flashes but I wanted to demonstrate the different light modifiers and what they do. It is a workshop and you have to make sure people learn and not go home with a feeling the workshop was not useful at all.

Using a godox ad200 with a mini reflector creates this beautiful vignet light and two small stripboxes with grid create rim light on the arms for an extra 3D feeling.

For this beautyshot I decided to go for monochromatic colors. In this case we used variations of beige/brown.

I only took a few photos myself to make sure everyone had the time to capture the beautiful Kedist.

Here is my version. (slightly edited in post processing)

Some behind the scenes photos by Nancy Vrancken who did the make-up too.

Because of the low ceiling I asked Kedist to sit down to make this light setup possible.

Here I showed the added value of using a light meter.

When using one flash you can use TTL and then by using the GODOX TCM method you get consistant light but once you start using more flashes, manual is the way to go.

For the next light setup I decided to go for analogus colors. This means we use a part of the colorwheel as shown below.

I choose the background colors according to the colors of the clothing and accessories.

Shooting with a (short) telelens (85 mm - 135mm ) from low to the ground makes the model more elegant. One of the tips I gave during the demo.

The light setup used here was a sport reflector with a 30° grid, a 165cm Godox umbrella without diffuser to brighten the shadows and a SMDV 512 stripbox to make sure her right side was also lit but it also softened the shadows on the paper. If you want harder shadows you can put a grid on it.

Below is a finished photo.

Last but not least I demonstrated a quick workflow in post processing. Because we shoot in RAW it is necessary to post process the image. I showed the power of FS2.0 to blend hard transitions but also how it is very effective to iron clothing in satin fabric.

Conclusion:

I had a lovely day and everything went smooth.

Thank you cameranu for the excellent support, Kedist for being our model (you did fantastic).

Other feedback I received was it made a difference working with a professional model that was also very friendly and open.

Thank you Nancy for the make-up and helping out.

Thank you Bart Boodts for some of the behind the scenes footage and all participants for not only being there but for the excellent cooporation and feedback.

Smallrig RA-D55 & RA-D85 parabolic lightformers

A few weeks ago my friend Fabrizio Tzinaridis (from Temptation Island, The bachelor,...) contacted me if I was interested to do a photo shoot with his girlfriend Sanne.

We started with some close ups with my favorite background “charchoal grey” and then we switched to polaroid pictures for model agencies.

A few weeks earlier I bought both the Smallrig Parabolic softboxes RA-D55 & RA-D85 twice.

These lightformers are really well build, easy to open and close again and very affordable for your wallet.

For the portrait shots I used 4 of them.

The main light was a double diffused RA-D85 powered by a Godox AD1200 Pro and to brighten the neck shadows I used the smaller RA-D55 with inner diffuse and grid powered by a Godox AD-B2 and 2 Godox AD200’s.

Above the model I used another RA-D85 with only inner diffuse and grid so no light could fall in the background.

Behind the model I used another RA-D55 with inner diffuse and grid to brighten the hair from the back powered by a Godox AD600 Pro attached on the light stand.

To create a vignet I used another AD200 with small reflector.

So, that is 5 different flashes in total.

In my opinion the Smallrig RA-D range are a no brainer. The build quality is perfect, de reflective material is top notch and the light these lightformers produce is excellent.

Another thing to notice is the innerdiffuse is in the middle double diffused to eliminate hot spots.

All lights were measured using a Sekonic L-858D with build in wireless godox module.

For the headshots I used my Sony A1 and my favorite studio portrait lens: The Sony 90mm macro f/2.8.

All photos were done using these settings:

1/400

Aperture f/9 - f/11

ISO 100

Here are some examples using this setup. Only some minor dodge & burn was done in post processing.

Positive:

Build quality
Reflective material
Comes in a nice bag
Double diffuse cloth and grid are included!
Opens quick

Negative:

Does not close as quick as the SMDV softboxes

Conclusion:

Both the RA-D55 & RA-D85 (you also have a bigger model) are excellent lightformers. Smallrig calls them parabolics (and they are) but will never be a true parabolic. You need a movable rod so you can adjust the angle of light by moving the flashbulb closer to the center until it reaches the focus point.

Nevertheless these are fantastic lightformers at very affordable prices.

10/10

Update: Smallrig also now has the LA-D range. These do not come in a quality bag, there is no double cloth on the inner diffuse (for hotspots)n the bowens mount is made of plastic and the metal bars to open the softbox do not have a plastic/rubber material around them. The advantage of these ‘lower quality’ softboxes is the weight.