Let me start this first blog post of the year by wishing you all an amazing 2011 in which you can turn dreams into reality!

You all know that 2010 hasn’t been my the best year of my life. I suffered, struggled and cried. But I also learned, achieved and laughed thanks to my friends, my family and my kids. This new year is in no way going to be a walk in the park but I feel strong enough to tackle the challenges because I know you will pick me up when I stumble.

If I have one New Year’s resolution, it’s to be more radical. I’m going to say NO to things that only clutter my life in order to create even more time quality time with my kids. I’m going to be a better business person to free up time and energy for more creativity.

Last week the kids and I spent a short vacation at the coast with “Ponette”, one of my best friends. It really recharges my batteries to be surrounded by nature, laughter, trust and intelligent conversations.

Rearranging my priorities in life will have an impact on my photography too. After all, ever since I started shooting professionally I’ve seen it as a part of my life and as a way to create a better life for my family.
Lot’s of new things have been set in motion over the last months and many other ideas are in various beta stages. Some will work, some won’t. I’m sure I’ll have enough to blog about this year.

Here are some snapshots taken at the workshop Tom, Pieter and I gave together at Belgium Digital Live. We all took some pics with my Panasonic GF1, so I don’t know who took which picture.

Below you can see the only moment (5 minutes before the start) that Pieter and Tom were acting serious while I got caught without my pants.

Pieter started of with a section on how to pose couples.

Pieter made some great slides to illustrate his points … unfortunately he forgot the slides at home and improvised with post-it notes and alternative presentation screens.

I got myself a new girlfriend out of the audience during a practical posing exercise. Our on stage romance didn’t last long because Tom stole her from me and got to dance with her.

Next up was Tom who gave the 80-people audience 10 tips to bounce better (bouncing light that is).

Last but not least, it was my turn. To end in style, we decided to do a live “Epic Dirt” shoot with Tom as the subject and Pieter as the make-up artist. This is the end result:

But I also like this black and white version:

The people who already knew us, probably expected that this wouldn’t have been your ordinary workshop. But I’m afraid that those who didn’t, ended up on the sofa of a shrink trying to shake off this traumatic experience.

Let’s start this post with a bit of (recent) history. (Or you could just skip the first part):

Back in the days when Strobist started the small flash revolution, getting the right gear together wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Basically we mainly adapted pieces of gear that weren’t made for small off-camera flash lighting. No shop could give you a good answer and you had to research what was available, get some parts from your local store, buy the other stuff on eBay and then try to make it fit together. These days every serious store can provide you with all the bits and pieces (even in a kit) and many manufacturers make equipment specially designed for off-camera flash use. One of the first manufacturers that stepped up was MPEX. They started supporting Strobist and stocked up not only the right equipment but also the knowledge about it.

For many the reason to start using small off-camera flashes is that it’s an affordable way of lighting with artificial light. The most expensive part is usually the flash itself. A Canon 580 EXII or a Nikon SB900 doesn’t come cheap so people started looking for cheaper alternatives. You don’t need all the high tech mambo jambo in these state-of-the-art but expensive flashes anyway if you are going to shoot all manual. I’m not saying these flashes aren’t word their money (I even started to become a fan of all the automatic stuff for certain uses) but lighting manually is often still the best way to get the best results. People started to pay ridiculous prices for old Nikon SB flashes and brands like Vivitar revived their old models.
My 3 Vivitar 285HV’s have been my workshorses for a couple of years and I also used some old Nikons but you still sometimes got faced with the fact that these were never really designed as off-camera flashes. No build-in optical slaves on most of them, stupid pc or even more exotic connectors, …

Enter a couple of years later when MPEX decided to start Lumopro, a new brand that makes lots of toys for us small flash lovers. I was pretty impressed with the first flash they made, the LP120. So when they came out with a new and improved version, the LP160, I really needed to take it for a short test drive and took it with me on holiday.

Finally the review:

We all know the dynamic range that digital sensors can capture is much less than what we see with our eyes. On a little geocaching trip with Noa and Maya I encountered such a situation. High noon, kids in the shade and some beautiful clouds. Trouble is, you can’t capture it all in a photograph. If you expose for the kids, the background blows out.

And if you expose for the background, the kids become silhouettes.

But hey what does daddy have in his backpack? Diapers, cookies and a first aid kit. But also a couple of pocketwizards and a Lumopro LP160. Noa became the model, Maya acted as a VAL (voice activated light stand) and I shot with the Lumix GF1. It became clear very fast that the LP160 is one helluva powerful flash. It packs about the same power as a 580EX or an SB900. So that’s a step/stop up from the previous model.

Noa is not too much of a poser, so you have to be fast if you want to shoot her, so that was an excellent recycle speed test. Despite the fact that we fired the flash at full power, it recycled really fast. I didn’t measure it but the recycling time seems close or equal to a 580EXII and certainly waaaaay faster than my Vivitars. It also seems pretty friendly to the batteries, I seem to get more flashes out of a set of AA’s than with the Vivitars.

Time for Maya, who DOES like to pose. We went for a slightly larger frame and to get all attention to Maya, I zoomed in the Lumopro. It now has an electronic zoom motor build in which feels a bit more professional than the manual zooming in the previous model.

The only criticism I can think of is the battery door. You have to push the batteries with one hand and slide the door with the other to get it closed. The door also comes off completely so make sure you don’t forget it somewhere. The feel, the controls and the power have certainly improved compared to the LP120. Lumopro clearly listened to their user base and made syncing the flash a breeze. It has a pc sync connector so you can still use your pc cables until they break (which happens usually 2 weeks after you bought them). But it also has a mini-jack connector which is way better suited to the task. It also has a pretty sensitive build-in optical slave that can even set to ignore a pre-flash. Optical slaves can be a very handy and cheap way to sync a flash in controlled environments. In fact I shot a commercial assignment this morning with a Hensel Porty as my main light and the LP160 as a fill light, synced with the optical slave. Worked every time.

So yes, I really like this flash. I can’t predict if it will stand the test of hard use for many years, but it feels like it’s up to the task. I think Lumopro set the new benchmark for affordable off-camera flashes with the LP 160.

By the way, I know that last picture isn’t very impressive but believe me it’s not easy to trigger the 10 second self-timer and race up those rocks in time to have yourself in the picture too. I just couldn’t not include this picture after all the exhausting speed climbing

I just got back from almost two fantastic holiday weeks with the kids. I enjoyed myself a lot and I’m sure the kids did so too. They are really the perfect travel companions. For our first week of holidays we went camping in the Ardennes. This area is only about 90 minutes by car away and I spent a lot of holidays camping there as a child and later as a mountainbiking teenager. The more surprising it is that it took me so long to come back here. I’ve always loved this area with it’s landscapes, textures, light and people. Traveling is not about how many kilometers from home you are, it’s about going somewhere with an open mind.

On our way to the camping we saw some people having a paintball tournament on a soccer field and we stopped to watch for a while. The kids got the VIP seats.

Marshmallows taste only good when cooked over a fire or BBQ.

The first few days it was pretty hot, here’s Kobe seeking some refreshment by the lawn sprinkler.

Pushing the kids to do photography is not something I do, but I admit that I enjoy it very much that they start shooting pictures more and more. Very funny to see them directing people like I sometimes do. Maya took a portrait of me in which she asked me to look angry.

Our 60 year old English camping neighbor gave me one of the best compliments possible. He said: “your kids play like we did when we where kids”. I still think about that single phrase a lot. As a parent these days it’s not always easy to give your kids the space to play, explore and make mistakes. So each time I’m capable of doing that, it makes me very proud. It’s often about finding the right surroundings to let kids be kids and this camping was certainly one of those places.

Big thanks by the way to one of my Facebook friends who referred me to camping Try des Baudets. It’s just the right size and has the right atmosphere for a trip with small kids.

My holiday budget is very limited these days but I absolutely wanted the kids to have a couple of great weeks away from home. During this week, I spent just a bit more (mostly on ice cream) than I would spend during a week at home and still it was a true holiday.

One of the best ways to get to some nice spots without spending a lot of money is Geocaching. We found a couple really nice ones in the area around the camping. Kobe and Maya really love hiking in the forest, just like I do. Noa is slowly getting the hang of it too.

Here’s a family shot with the self timer.

On our last day, after packing all our stuff, we took a steam engine to the train museum.

After this week, Kobe went on his first boyscout camp and the girls and I joined some friends in a holiday cottage in another part of the Ardennes. I’ll post some pics of that trip later.

I so enjoyed this quality time with my kids and my batteries are recharged. There’s lots of obstacles ahead of me, but at least I have the energy now to have a good shot at getting where I want.

I must admit, in the aftermath of the incredibly time and energy consuming adventure of creating my own instructional DVD, I got a bit burned out. I loved making it and I’m very proud of the result but it was a huuuuuuge job, certainly combined with my personal situation. It’s not that I had enough of teaching but I felt I needed to focus on my photography again. It’s a great feeling to teach other photographers but I started feeling like I was the only one that didn’t progress as a photographer.

It wasn’t deliberate but for a while, I just had to put my blog, workshops and LIME in the fridge and focus on my own work again. I spent a lot of time studying the work of people that I admire, re-evaluate my own work, meet creative people outside my own little network and did a lot of thinking about the direction I want to go.

You know how important it is to me to master as much techniques as possible but these are just tools to allow you to tell a story or convey an emotion. And I just found that even though my technique is better than ever, I wasn’t very happy with my pictures anymore. So I went back to the roots, keeping it simple, shooting for fun, focusing on feeling rather than detail in the shadows and perfectly level horizons. And I found it back … the amateur photographer in me.

With the changes in my personal life, things have changed pretty dramatically for my financial and business situation too. I’m not ashamed to admit that a visit to my accountant earlier this week wasn’t very motivating. And I would like to thank everyone who bought Motivational Light, because you gave me that little bit of breathing space to dedicate some time to rediscovering my own creativity.
To make things work out, I really need to grow my business faster than what would normally be possible but I believe I can do it thanks to finding myself as a creative photographer again.

I know I need to be more business minded. And I know that I need to make some decisions that I don’t really want to. But I’m still very positive that I can work things out. Last week, with the help of many great friends, I spent the whole time testing out ideas and concepts for a new big project that I will launch in September. I strongly believe that it is going to be a way to be creative and economically viable at the same time. All the images in this post were taken during that creative test week.

The test week was really the the result of all my self rediscovery activities. I’m charged with creative energy and feel like shooting every day again. I feel I’m ready to teach and blog again and all of that is thanks to my friends, family and my kids who have supported me through these difficult times.

I’ll be taking some time off to enjoy the kids but after that I’ll be back at full force! Promise