It’s been quiet on my blog. It happened before and it will happen again. Usually this happens just because of a very busy time. But the last months it was not just the heavy workload that kept me from blogging, I went through a very dark time in my personal life. After 10 years of marriage my wife decided to move out. I never saw it coming and it was a very hard kick in the face for someone for whom family is the most important thing in life. I won’t pretend that I understand it all and I don’t feel the need to blog the parts that I do understand.

I just know that I have no choice but to move on and start a new chapter of my life. I’m in the clear with myself and I just try to make the best of it. I have the kids every other week and I miss them like crazy when they are not with me. But I can still be the father that I always wanted to be. After my wife moved out, I decided to take the kids on a trip to the coast to get our minds of the big changes and show them that I’ll always be there for them.

We had such an amazing time and all enjoyed every second of it. Even though it was pretty cold, it was dry and the sun was out most of the time. We also had a lot of good conversations on how we have to go from here both emotionally and practically. I’m so proud of the way the kids handle this. Off-course they feel lost sometimes but they don’t hesitate to talk to me. They also understand my situation really well and help me out so well.

Lately I found myself again. And that’s thanks to the incredible amount of help and support I received from my family and friends. I feel very lucky that I can count on so many great people.

My main concern is being a good dad but to do that I need to figure out how to sort out the many practical and financial challenges I’m facing. I really want to keep the house and the studio but that won’t be easy. I’m going to have to refocus on some parts of my business to increase my income substantially. Some things are still a bit vague but every day my plans take more form. You’ll discover them over the next months and I hope I can count on your patience and support.

I’m so excited, after six months of blood, sweat and tears my Motivational Light DVD is finally available.
Check out the official trailer that Pieter made.

View on YouTube

For more info and purchasing, please visit www.motivationallight.com

We drove ourselves to exhaustion to get it finished but that’s easily forgotten when I look at the end result. The goal was to make a 90 minute instructional DVD, but we ended up with two and a half hours of video about learning how to light. We also tried to squeeze in as much small practical hints and tips as possible. On top of that, there’s an hour of video about how I post processed a number of pictures I shot for the DVD. And then we still have a long section about gear that we just couldn’t fit into the DVD. We’ll release those videos and some more unused footage soon as free online bonus material.

I’m very curious about your reviews, comments and reactions, so please let me know what you think in the comments.
We also would be very thankful if you would help us to spread the news about Motivational Light.

The wait is almost over … we are almost there. If we don’t encounter any unexpected setbacks my lighting DVD should be available by the end of this month. I’ve been thinking, writing, studying, testing and investigating the content of this DVD ever since I got the idea to do a DVD a few years ago. I’ve been analyzing what information photographers really need to bring their lighting to a whole new level. And I’ve been working very hard to find the best form of getting that information and vision across.

And even then, it took Pieter and me many months of hard work to plan, shoot and edit all this together. Right now we are editing like crazy to get the final details right. I’m extremely happy and proud about the way it all comes together in the editing booth. So I’m very excited that it will be available really soon now.

Here’s another sneak peek that will give you an idea of what we got out of our first days of recording.

View on YouTube

We are flooded with questions about the DVD, so let me give you some answers:

- The DVD is in English (or at least my interpretation of English).

- We are still editing but the final result will run somewhere between two and three hours. The biggest part is about lighting but there will be also some sections on gear and postprocessing. We also tried to squeeze in as much small practical tips as possible.

- We’ll offer the DVD as a download. That way you can access your purchase immediately and we avoid having to ask a higher price to cover costs like handling, disks, packaging, shipping, taxes, … We also shot everything in High Definiton and with the download you can enjoy the full quality. For those who want to have a physical disc, we’ll offer a slightly more expensive download + double DVD version. So as long as you have an internet account and a credit card, you can buy it anywhere in the world.

- We still need to finalize some last calculations but the final price for the download version of the DVD will be around 125 EUR / 175 USD

- We are honored that so many of you want to preorder but since you can have immediate access to the download, there’s no need to preorder.

If you have any more questions about the DVD, I’ll be happy to answer them in the comments.

Walking around at a congress for professional photographers with a 25 Euro plastic toy camera, provokes some strange looks sometimes. I only had time to shoot one roll of Kodak Portra 160NC film (medium format). Looking at the very particular look the Holga gives these pictures, I should have shot a lot more frames. It’s not that these are great pictures, but I still like them.

The first picture was shot from my hotel room balcony and all the others were shot during a 15-minute walk.

For the last couple of months I’ve been working countless hours on an instructional DVD about lighting. This week we entered the final post processing stage and I’m very thrilled to see all the hard work come together in the editing suite. The DVD should be available worldwide in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, let’s entertain you with some outtakes/bloopers:

View on YouTube

The idea of doing a DVD has been ripening for about two years now. I didn’t want to start it head over heels. Instead I’ve been writing and rewriting the script many times just to make sure that it’s a useful addition to the lighting videos that are already out there.

Here are already a couple of shots we made for the DVD.

More info will follow soon!

During my lecture at the congress I showed some of my pictures and briefly touched on my lighting style on location but there was no time to really explain. Because I got a lot of questions from people who wanted more info on how I combine flash with ambient light, we setup up a short improvised lighting demo on the last day of the congress.

I only had my 50mm lens with me, time was limited and I had to borrow a flash so I guess I have an excuse for not being entirely happy with how the pictures came out.

During one of his workshops, Pieter learned me to always start with an anchor point when posing couples. When he explained that, I realized that looking for an anchor point is exactly what I do when lighting a picture. So I explained how you just have to pick a starting point. This can be a background, main light, accent light, texture, … whatever. As long as it gets you going. Don’t worry too much about how it will work out. It’s OK to make mistakes as long as they lead you to a final picture. I consider most of the pictures in this post to be in that beta-stage. Normally I would work further to get a final result but this demo was not about the final picture, it was about my workflow when shooting on location.

For the first setup, I picked a background scene with a palm tree, blue sky and some ugly buildings as my anchor point. I manually set my camera to expose that background like I wanted it too look. It didn’t bother me that these settings left Carol, a very talented young Spanish photographer, in the darkness because I know I can add light on her. We only had a battery powered studio flash with a standard reflector at our disposal. We placed it to camera right and adjusted the power until the flash and the ambient were nicely balanced.

Being a model when some 60 people are watching you is never easy but it’s even harder when you are unexpectedly picked out of an audience to be the subject of a weird photographer. But Carol did this with grace and her smile more than makes up for my crappy lighting. Italian wedding photographer Antonio Fascicolo did everything he could to keep the smile going. He even did a very good Tarzan imitation when we moved to the second setup. This was basically a corner of the hotel’s garden where guests are not supposed to come. I explained how it’s often the imperfection of natural light that makes it look natural. This area was completely covered in shade, so we directed the light of the flash through the leaves of the tree. The point I was trying to make is that you don’t have to depend on where the sun is to create a sunny look. In the picture on the left you see Carol’s reaction on Antonio’s Tarzan imitation. On the right (blurry) is Antonio after he almost fell out of the tree.

The next setup is one of my all time favorite tricks: Look for nice soft ambient light and then add a little hair light to create a more open, happy atmosphere. It’s not that the pictures would be bad without that hair light but it’s a small detail that creates depth and atmosphere to the picture. This is a technique that I use very often. Most of the time I have someone hold the flash behind and to the side of the subject. This allows the subject to move as long as the person holding the flash keeps aiming it at her.

Another way to create more depth and separation in a portrait that is mainly lit with natural light, is to use flash to create some light in the background. During our last setup, we moved indoors and used the big windows as our main light. The background was pretty dark, so we added just a touch of flash to it.

I often try to generate some kind of light pattern in the background. Here, the flash is to camera left, aimed at the floor behind Carol. I put a chair in front of the flash. The back of the chair acts as a gobo and creates the streaks of light on the floor. It’s often those small details that give something extra to a picture.

A big thanks to all those who attended the demo and made it such a funny experience, thanks to Carol for being a patient model, thanks to Luc for live translation and to Antonio for being his silly self.

I just got back from five fantastic days at the AFPV congress in Cullera, Spain, where I did a presentation about what I call “Photography 2.0″. It was basically a condensed version of all the business related articles on this blog. I really didn’t know what to expect from this congress but I decided to stay for the whole event instead of just coming over for my lecture. I needed a couple of days away from the daily struggles. After all the cold and snow in Belgium, I was greeted with this view when looking out of the window in my hotel room on the first day.

The official part of the congress started on Sunday morning with some speeches. One of the people who spoke there was Neil Warner. I talked to Neil for hours and discovered a fun person, passionate photographer and a smart businessman. He gave me lots of interesting tips and I talked to him about my vision on the future of the industry and the power of social media. It made me realize that we often stay too much within our own generations when it comes to sharing.

It was Luc Peeters (the guy on the left in the pic above) that suggested me as a speaker to the Spanish. He also did the live English to Spanish translation for my lecture at 5 pm on that same Sunday. It was the first time that I spoke to a big audience that didn’t understand much English but they were incredibly patient with me. The minutes of applause, hugs and kisses after my lecture were incredibly heart warming. You can see some pics from my lecture here.

I was too busy talking to interesting people, attending lectures and having fun to take any pictures until the next night. On that Monday night there was a dressed dinner and party. We all got a long black dress and being all creative people it was fun to see how everyone tried to create something original with the same ingredients.

This blog post would be endless if I talked about each and everyone who inspired me so I’ll just pick some out.

The tall guy with his hand in the air in the left picture below is Italian wedding photographer Antonio Fascicolo. If I had to describe him and his work in one word, I would definitely say: “elegance”. Many of his pictures have simply blown me away. Based upon his work and appearance I guess I kind of expected him to be a bit of a big headed artist. But I couldn’t have been more wrong, Antonio is just want of the sweetest and wackiest people I know.

In the picture below you see Luc Peeters with Swiss photographer Oli Rust. Despite he’s only 30 years old, Oli leads a successful photo studio and combines that with fashion, advertising and personal photography. For me it was great to see that Oli in his presentation pretty much confirmed everything I said in mine about social media. Oli couldn’t stay long but that didn’t stop us from having a couple of very interesting conversations.

I’m really sorry that I missed the first part of Rebeca Saray’s lecture/demo. It’s not that I’m a Gothic expert (or a fan) but I recognize good original work. But what did strike me most about Rebeca is that she does her kind of photography just because that’s what she likes to do. She didn’t take the easiest path but being true to her passion paid off. I really respect her as a photographer and a warm person.

The congress ended with a gala night where they also presented the awards for outstanding photography in different fields. Two winners that really amazed me are Josu Izarra and Clemente Jimenez Santander (his site should be ready soon, add him on Facebook if you can’t wait to see his work).

A big thanks to the organizers, volunteers, speakers and all the participants of Cullera 2010. Luc told me in advance that there’s always a good atmosphere on the AFPV congresses but I was still blown away. It’s one of those things you can’t explain, you just have to experience the spirit of Cullera. I really hope I can go back for the next edition.

On the last day I did a short “Flambient Light” demo, I’ll blog about it one of these days.

Small things can make a big difference to a photographer, sometimes they are not even directly photo related. It’s winter here in Belgium and even though we got rid of the snow, it’s still pretty chilly if you have to shoot outside for longer than 10 minutes. I swear by outdoor gear when it comes to picking the right trousers, shoes, socks, jacket and a hat for working outdoors but that always left me with cold hands. I tried photographing with thick gloves, thin gloves and everything in between but I always ended up putting taking them off when working (and lost countless pairs of gloves on location). I even tried some gloves with a removable flap for the fingers but it just didn’t feel right. A couple of weeks ago I got my hands on/in a pair of Etre Touchy Gloves and I’ve been very happy about them.

These gloves look and feel they were made by your grandmother and that’s not a bad thing at all. The lambs’ wool feels incredibly comfortable and the gloves fit my medium sized hands perfect. The idea behind these gloves is one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-it-myself ones. Just leave the fingers you need exposed: thumb and index finger. The material gives me enough grip to comfortably hold my camera and other equipment.

If you are embarking on a polar expeditions, these gloves are not for you. Your thumb and index finger will get cold. But I was pleasantly surprised how comfortable they are when photographing for a couple of hours in temperatures around freezing. The exposed fingers got cold but never went numb. So I’d say (exposed) thumbs up.

Shared fun is doubled fun, so I’m really happy that my friend Pieter also got himself a medium format film camera. I’m sure that if an experienced film shooter would overhear our conversations, he would shake his head but it’s a lot of fun sharing the little knowledge and the bags of bullshit we think we know about film. Pieter got himself a Mamiya C3 which makes my Hassy look like a very modern camera. The Mamiya is even more counter intuitive than the Hassy but at the same time it’s such a nice piece of machinery. Pieter’s first two test rolls didn’t came out so well (ok they weren’t exposed at all) but then he discovered a small dial that solved the problem. So when I visited him for recording the LIME podcast, we went outside and shot another test roll in five minutes.

This is one I made of Pieter:

And this is one he made of me:

Next time we got together, Pieter showed up with a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 (iso) film. Underexposed shots showed a lot of grain after pulling the exposure up during scanning.

But when metered correctly (yes, this is the way to do it), the grain is really fine and actually pleasing:

Here are some more Hassy scans from the kids:

And here’s a pic of my fantastic grandmother who’s still going strong:

I’m really happy (actually I’m jealous) to see what Pieter is squeezing out of his Mamiya. He just started a personal website where he’s posting his non-wedding work like snowboard photography and amazing pictures of puddles.

It’s almost Kobe’s seventh birthday and like each year I try to come up with some kind of corny idea for the invitation cards for his birthday party. This time, we went for a quick 5 minute studioshoot (Hensel Expert Pro Plus 500 with an Octaform Lightbox 150 to camera right, Sunbounce Pro to camera left as fill) and some crappy Photoshop work.

Can you find the seven differences?