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

We did this just outside the room where Mike Larson was giving one of his great seminars organized by Calumet and Sunbounce. We even borrowed his beautiful model for an hour or so.

So what about the H4D then? First of all, this wasn’t any kind of scientific test. I basically just snapped away some pictures like it was a compact camera and that’s probably not what it was intended for. (Although a friend of mine said he saw a tourist with an H4D in Venice.)

Let’s start with the bad news: ergonomics, build quality and handling sucks big time. And I mean really big time, my 450D feels a lot more professional. The H4D looks and feels like it’s made of the same plastic as my first DSLR, the 300D (aka the digital rebel). It’s very slow in writing pics to the card (not even 1 pic/second). I do understand that these are very large files but then the camera should have a larger buffer / more processing power. The autofocus is slow and simply doesn’t work at all if the subject is backlit. The menus seem to be designed in the 90’s. The LCD-screen is plain rubbish. If Canon would fit such a bad screen on an entry level DSLR, the forums would be filled with complaints. I could not tell anything about the pictures when watching them on the lcd.

Is there anything good to say about the H4D? Well, it has something that my 5D mkII nor my 1D-bodies have … a pop-up flash. Yes, that’s right, a pop-up flash.

But wait, there’s more: Once you download the huge files to your computer, you finally discover what Hasselblad has been famous for during decades: SUPER QUALITY. The resolution is just mind blowing. If I zoom a picture to 100% in Lightroom on my rather recent Macbook Pro, I can go and make myself a coffee while it’s rendering. To some this resolution is essential for their work but most of us can easily get by with a Canon or Nikon. To me, the biggest advantage of the Hasselblad files is the depth. The gradients are way smoother than any digital camera I’ve ever seen.

Since I met him for the first time, I’ve been wanting to take a portrait of Waldemar. You may not know him, but he’s the one that drives the van on the European Sunbounce workshop tours. He’s also the one that bends the ultra strong German steel in the Sun-Movers. He looks like a very tough guy (and I’m sure he is when needed) but he’s also a very generous man. And he’s the owner of a face that just screams to be taken a portrait of.

These were shot outside in the middle of the day. I underexposed the ambient so it didn’t play any role in the picture. We lit this with just one beautydish overhead.

I know the H4D is not supposed to be a replacement for a 5D mkII. It’s probably expected to be used tethered to a computer, in a controlled environment. But still, for that price I would have expected a decent construction, good lcd and excellent ergonomics. I wouldn’t even mind if they would have to drop the pop-up flash for that. If you need the resolution and/or the depth it’s probably still worth the hefty price tag and I’m not sure if the other digital medium format solutions are any better.

Conclusion: The H4D is certainly “haute cuisine” when it comes to image quality, too bad you have to consume it with a plastic fork on a cardboard plate. But still, I wouldn’t hesitate to rent one, if I need the image quality.

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?

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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Getting outside is the only thing that helps, so when fellow photographer Kristof asked me to join him and his friends for a short photowalk, I dragged myself out of my office chair, left all the work at home and enjoyed just being outdoors.

All the pictures where taken with just my 5D mkII and the 50mm except for the last four images, who were shot on my Hasselblad with the 80mm.