Things have been rather quiet on my blog because it’s been busy around here with getting the Barn ready to rent out, commercial work and shooting communion sessions. I don’t know if it’s done in other parts of the world but here in Belgium, communions are one of the only occasions where many people want to get pictures of their kids taken by a professional photographer. It’s not my core business but I see it as a service to many of the clients who gave me their trust to photograph their small children when I just started out.

I like to pack extremely light and keep my gear very simple for theses sessions because time and budget are usually limited and also because I like to focus on the kid instead of on the gear. I bring lots of lenses and lights, but usually they stay in my car except for the 5D mk2 with the 70-200, a light stand with umbrella, a 580EX2 flash and my TTL pocketwizards (which I still use mostly on manual). I’m always on the lookout for little things that make my life easier, my workflow faster and in the end, get me better pictures. When I heard about the Frio coldshoe, it seemed like it could be one of those things.

The Frio is not a revolutionary device, it’s a coldshoe for mounting a small flash on a light stand (or tripod, gorillapod, clamp, …). I have plenty of little gadgets that do this, so normally I wouldn’t even bother to look at it. But it comes from the same people that came up with the Orbis Flash ring light adapter for speedlights and I know they got their act together. That’s why I decided to take the Frio for a test drive during some fast paced communion shoots.

The biggest difference with the traditional cold shoe designs is that the Frio doesn’t use any sort of screw to lock the flash onto the cold shoe. You basically slide it in and it “clicks” into place. To release it, you simply push on the lever and slide the flash out. The Frio is made from what appears to be very sturdy plastic and there’s no chance that your expensive flash will fall out of the shoe.

We’ve been blessed with amazing weather and light these past few weeks in Belgium so I’ve shot most communion sessions with just available light (hey, I sometimes do that). But sometimes you just want to quickly set up a flash like in the picture below. The sun back lights the boy and I used a speedlight with an umbrella (camera right) to get the light on the face right.

Could I’ve done that shoot without the Frio? Sure! But sometimes it’s those few extra seconds or that little extra convenience that make our job more enjoyable. I keep my 580 EX2′s mounted on Pocketwizard TT5′s in my bag. Until recently I just screwed the TT5 straight onto the swivel adapter when I got to the location. This doesn’t take much time but sliding the TT5/580EX2 combo onto the Frio is just a touch more convenient. My Frio’s are here to stay.

Last year in the spring I bought the Panasonic Lumix GF1 (which is now replaced by the GF2). I’ve been wanting to blog about it ever since I got it, but I’ve been way to busy having fun with it. The other reason why I haven’t blogged about it is that I wanted to keep it all to myself and didn’t want anyone else to shoot with this fantastic little camera.

The pics in this blog post were all taken in 15 minutes behind the scenes of a shoot I did last week with Fotofolio to learn from each other how we use the new Pocketwizards (more to come about that this week).

Why Did I Buy the GF1?
Just like many photographers I got frustrated with the bulk of a DSLR sometimes. Like when I’m with my kids, when traveling, … And I got equally frustrated by the lack of speed, image quality, low light performance and too much DOF of a compact camera. I even seriously considered getting myself a film rangefinder. When I borrowed a friend’s old Leica last year, I loved the size, the manual controls and the image quality. I love shooting film, but to be honest all the developing and scanning is a pain in the ass. Certainly for a camera that I want to use very often since I want to have it with me all the time. Digital rangefinders are simply to expensive to justify for what I would use it.

But the last few years there have been some interesting experiments going on putting a bigger sensor in a compact body. When Olympus and Panasonic announced the Micro 4/3 system, they got my interest. I kept following their progress and when Olympus announced the PEN E-P1, I was ready to buy. But when I read the reviews, I decided to hold off a bit longer. It seemed like an almost-but-not-quite-there-yet thing. But then I read about the Panasonic GF1 and it seemed that this was the camera for me. It took me a while to finally decide to get one, but I haven’t regretted it for a second. I got it with the 20mm 1.7 pancake lens (40mm because of the 2x crop factor).

The Down Sides
It’s rather pricey, no automatic image rotation, limited dedicated micro 4/3 prime lenses available and I’m not too crazy about the colors. But that’s it what I’m concerned

Why I love the GF1
Technically the GF1′s qualities certainly beat the average compact camera. But even without any lab tests, I can tell it’s also considerably below my DSLR’s. But this is RSO, Review-sort-of, my way to write what I personally think about something. A review that should be taken with a grain of salt just like any technical review. And I just happen to like this little camera a lot. It’s also important to be realistic and see it like what it is. This isn’t a sports or wildlife camera, nor is it a camera that I would use for high end commercial jobs. To me it’s mainly a black & white reportage/documentary camera. (The in-camera “Dynamic Black & White” setting is pretty damned good by the way.)

It handles surprisingly well. In fact, it far exceeded my expectations. It feels sturdy and stable used with one or two hands. The LCD screen is great, even in lots of light. It’s almost as responsive as my high end DSLRs. All the automatic stuff like autofocus, auto exposure, … works great. When I put it in auto mode, even my 3yo daughter Noa makes great pictures with it. And with a couple of presses on the well laid out buttons, it’s daddy’s perfect manual machine. The menus and operations are intuitive and sometimes almost revolutionary. I can even fire speedlites remotely by putting a Pocketwizard on the hotshoe.

At the same time it looks like an average (slightly large) compact camera. I feel the size and look of the camera let me get closer to people and make more intimate shots. You might give up some image quality but that’s a price I’m willing to pay to get better stories.

What About the Image Quality?
Like I said, it’s not on par with my DSLRs … technically that is. I’m not a big fan of the colors most of the time. From iso800 on the images become pretty noisy. But in black and white, it shines. The noise actually becomes pleasingly close to the authentic, organic feel of film grain. The GF1 shoots RAW and these files seem to hold surprisingly much detail in the highlights and shadows. I love playing around with the Graduated Filter in Lightroom on the GF1 files to make the sky more dramatic and dodge and burn area’s to lead the eye to the subject.

Do You Have Any Bold Statements?
Yes I do: If I was a Magnum photographer, I’d travel the world with a couple of GF1′s.

And that was not bold, just to bold. I got some ideas for personal documentary projects floating around in my restless brain. I want to do one of these projects this year and I will probably shoot it mainly with the GF1.

One of my favorite ways to instantly spice up a portrait is to use a hair light. The picture on the left is done with just the ambient light. For the picture an the right, we placed a single bare speedlite behind the model, camera right. We also added a bit of reflector fill from camera left (the catch lights give it away).

A hair light creates depth and separation from the background. It also makes your subject looks stronger and cooler. These pictures were shot at GPP Fotoweekend in Dubai, where there’s always a summery feeling (a bit TOO summery to me sometimes). But if you live in a country where you need to cope with grey, depressing weather (like here in Belgium), you can instantly create summer (well, at least a summer look) by adding a hair light.

Singer, musician and friend Udo needed a Christmas card picture. I shot the artwork for his latest album last summer, which reminds me that I’ve never blogged those pictures (I’ll see if I can dig them up). During that shoot we had so much fun that I jumped to the occasion to photograph him again. Here’s the result:

I’m pretty pleased with the results as I wanted to try to mimic this particular kind of natural light that only occurs a couple of times a year. You know, it’s winter, foggy, late in the afternoon and suddenly there’s the fog thins out a bit in one spot and you get some spectacular diffused sunlight from just above eye level. A couple of seconds later that light is gone again. Usually I tend to go for more dramatic lighting but this is about subtlety.

I underexposed the ambient slightly. No drama, maybe one stop or even less under the ambient. Then I added a speedlight with an umbrella to simulate that slightly diffused ray of sunlight coming through the haze.

The speedlight adds a bit of direction and form to the otherwise flat light. Because the ambient is only slightly underexposed the contrast and direction is limited but it’s there.

But it all still looks a bit flat if you look at the picture below:

I felt I was close to the effect I wanted to achieve but just not there yet. In those circumstances I try to analyze the technical parameters of the natural light effect that I had in mind.

- position: slightly above eye level – check!
- hardness: somewhere between hard and soft – check!
- intensity: just above the ambient – check!
- color: hmmm … yep that’s what’s not right yet.

The ray of sunlight coming through the clouds would have a warmer color than the sky on the opposite side of the sun just before sunset. So I warmed up the key light a bit with an orange gel. I then shifted the white balance a bit to make the orange a bit colder. The result is that all the other colors will shift too towards colder tones. Which is exactly what I wanted.

It was pretty chilly outside, so we had to work rather fast. Working (and lighting) fast has become much easier since I started using the new generation of PocketWizard radio triggers with my Canon EX580 mkII’s. I haven’t blogged about it before but I’ve been using the Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 for half a year now and I’ve been really impressed. Since I started learning about light I’ve always been a big fan of setting everything manually but I must admit that the wireless TTL has become damned good with these new devices. The people at PW, took the already pretty good but not very user friendly Canon E-TTL system and lifted it to a higher level … I’d even say SEVERAL higher levels.

I still believe that you need to learn lighting manually and when I have the time I still prefer to do it the old school way. But let’s face it, we don’t always shoot in perfect conditions. And it’s then that the new Pocketwizards allow me to get better results in less time.

The reason why I haven’t blogged about it is that I wanted to wait until the Nikon version became available too. Looks like it’s out, so I’ll blog more about them very soon.

During my one day Motivational Light Seminar in Dubai, one of the things we did was to go out and look for bad light … and then try to turn it into good light.

Both pictures are taken at the exact same spot, only minutes apart. And the only difference is a 10 EUR light modifier. For those who don’t do EURO’s, converted to your local currency, 10 EUR equals DIRT CHEAP.

The picture on the left was made in the unflattering harsh mid day sunlight. The picture on the right was made with that same light, only this time two students held a 2m x 2m translucent shower curtain between the sun and the model.

When I state that I never leave home without my shower curtain, I usually hear some students laugh and see others roll their eyes. But it’s true, I always have my shower curtain in my basic small lights bag. It’s basically a very cheap 2 meter x 2 meter scrim. There’s so many good uses for it. In this case, the shower curtain turns the harsh sunlight into a huge softbox. But you can also use it in combination with speedlites to simulate window light.

Last year I had to shoot some actors on a dark grey background … they were 100% sure about that grey seamless … until I got there and they changed their minds to a white background. I didn’t have a roll of white seamless paper with me, so we took the shower curtain out, put a couple of speedlights behind it and we had our pure white background.

I’ve also used the curtain to shelter from the rain, to lay down in the mud, … So it’s an extremely versatile piece of equipment. You can hang it between 2 lightstands (or people) and on another occasion in Dubai, we just gaffer taped it to a doorway.
There are some great diffusion panels available on the market. My California Sunbounce SunSwatter is great and certainly looks a lot more elegant and professional than the shower screen but on the really fast paced shoots, I don’t always carry it with me. The principle is the same, they are both large diffusion screens.

If you need to work fast or if you are on a budget, get yourself a new shower curtain for Christmas.

With all this Facebooking and Twittering, I seem to forget that I still have a blog too. I tell myself a thousand times to blog more but I also forget about it 999 times. I can’t believe that I still haven’t blogged about my fantastic week in Dubai at Gulf Photo Plus Fotoweekend, more than a month ago.

I had so much fun, learned a lot and met a bunch of amazing people in Dubai. To spare you a 15 page written report, I decided to take a video camera and make a movie about this event:

View on YouTube

There’s another reason too why I invested in a new small but high quality video camera, took it with me everywhere in Dubai and brushed up on my rusty video editing skills. I’ll tell you about it soon.

I’ll also be posting some how-I’ve-done-this-picture-in-Dubai articles over the next days.

I’m so stoked to announce that I’ll be teaching for 4 days in Dubai during FotoWeekend, an event organized by Gulf Photo Plus. It’s an international 4-day photography event with workshops from Bobbi Lane, David Nightingale, Carol Dragon, Martin Prihoda and yours truly.

I’m going to be pretty busy, this is on my schedule:
- 2-day hand-on Motivational Light workshop
- An introduction to my vision on Lighting
- Guerilla shooting workshop
- a talk about my work and my mistakes

I’m sooooo impressed with the professional attitude and hard work that the Gulf Photo Plus team is putting into Fotoweekend. I’m convinced we are going to have a blast. Bookings go really fast apparently so if you want to be part of this adventure, don’t hesitate and book your spot(s) now. Booking and more info about the workshops can be found at the Fotoweekend website.

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

As you know I’m very much in favor of photographers getting together and sharing their knowledge over a few beers. But don’t just stick to the beers and shooting for fun. One of the best ways to learn something is to join other photographers on real assignments. And if you’re there you might as well assist too.

Pieter dropped by for a coffee and a chat because he had to shoot one of his famous L-style Sessions in my neighborhood. We meet pretty often but I’ve only seen him at work a few times. Since I’ve had nothing to do and needed some fresh air anyway, I just invited myself to trail along on his shoot. I operated the Sunbounce a couple of times but I also had some time to fire off a couple of shots of Pieter at work with the Leica M4-2, I borrowed from Wilhelm.

Although I know Pieter’s style pretty well, it was still very interesting to see how he gets those pictures. The other thing that’s always interesting is to see how other photographers interact with their clients. You can’t just copy someone else but there are always a couple of things that are worth trying out to incorporate in your own style.

So what did I learn? No big secrets but the way Pieter directs and poses his subjects is phenomenal. I also really like how he frees his mind and back by working mainly with one camera, one lens and natural light. That might give him less technical options but also lets him work fast and concentrate on the subject.

Assisting fellow photographers benefits both the photographer and the assistant. The assistant learns something and the photographer has an extra pair of hands available. And if he’s lucky he’ll get some very flattering behind-the-scenes pictures when the assistant takes out his Hasselblad and concentrates on the photographer’s best part.

I’m certainly going to assist more in the future. What about you, do you ever assist? What did you learn?

Can I fall in love? Considering my previous post, a title like this could make you think this blog post is about women. Well it’s not but if the newspapers can use misleading headlines, so can I. This is about lenses, the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L USM in particular. I’ve had it for a couple of years (it’s actually my second one as the first got stolen 13 days after I bought it) and it’s always been my least favorite lens.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great lens: well built, the perfect all-round focal length (on full frame), it’s fast and accurate. It’s good at almost anything … but great at nothing. It just isn’t as edgy, extreme or special than any of my other lenses.

Come to think of it, it’s not that different from falling in love with a woman. You just don’t fall in love with a girl because she’s moderately interesting, slightly intelligent, not ugly and reasonable in everything. You fall in love because you get a kick out of Nobel prize winners or because she makes you laugh every minute (or just because she has the perfect boobs).

But in the end you might be probably better of with that first girl who can be trusted every time. I got a similar feeling with the 24-70. That lens has been my must-have/go-to lens when I need to play it safe. But to see if I can fall in love with it, I’m going to use it more often for a while during those times where I don’t have to play it safe and would normally choose another lens. Yesterday I took it with me on a long Geocaching walk with the kids and some friends.

Because the weather forecast was far from great, I used my bulletproof vintage 1Ds mkII. In combination with the 24-70 that’s a heavy beast to lug around for a long walk during which you need to operate a hand held GPS and a bunch of kids. But I don’t regret it as I’m pretty happy with the souvenirs I was able to make of this great day. I’ll keep committing myself to using the 24-70 more often for some time and I’ll report in later.