Here’s the final part of the Mike Larson/Sunbounce/Calumet trilogy. But before we move on to the bride pictures, I’d like to give a big thanks to two new friends. Waldemar (or something like that) and Stefan from Sunbounce worked sooooo hard to make everything go smooth for Mike and me. While we were enjoying breakfast, these guys were setting up everything each morning. Waldemar (or something like that) is a former police officer from Kazachstan who’s normally in charge of manually bending German steel and putting it in the SunMover reflectors. We decided to call him the real Sun Sniper. Stefan is only 14 years old (or something like that) but seems to manage the traveling Sunbounce circus like he was born in that same circus. As you can tell, they are both big fans of Fotofolio.

In Amsterdam the weather wasn’t great but at least it didn’t rain. I felt I needed some air, so I decided to move outside for my speedlight/sunbounce demo. In this kind of industrial area, there’s lots of nice background to be found but maybe not suited for pictures of a bride. But the blue sky with some fluffy clouds seemed suitable. Backgrounds don’t always have to be vertical things. Don’t forget to look up and down when searching for backgrounds too. I needed to raise the fantastic model Julia a bit to get rid of the buildings in the background so Stefan and Waldemar (or something like that) went asking for some pallets at the nearby Calumet store.

Exposing for the sky gave me a nice background but turned the model into a silhouette. Sunbounce Pro and speedlight to the rescue. The flash was set to full power to get enough light on the model. We choose the gold/silver zebra fabric to warm up the skin tones a bit. The warm light contrasts nicely with the blue tones of the sky.

Thanks to Mike for taking these setup shots.

And here are the results:

I had an amazing four days on the road but I must admit that after the long drive home from Amsterdam I was absolutely exhausted. I’m still looking for my usual energy levels. Big thanks for all who helped organizing these workshops and to all the people who attended.

Here are the pictures from the Calumet / Sunbounce workshop in Antwerp. The day started with cold and rain but after lunch the skies cleared up and we even got some sun. It seems a bit silly to start my demonstration with the words “imagine there’s no good light” when you have this great low standing sun projecting the finest orange glow on our model. But because in our country a wedding photographer more often than not has to deal with less then ideal light. So I wanted to show in my short live shooting demo how to MAKE beautiful natural looking sunlight. So we moved into the shadow.

Off-camera flash speedlights are a good match for photographers who have to work without assistants, under time pressure and on a tight schedule in situations they don’t control. I think that’s pretty much the definition of a wedding photographer. Direct bare flash would be the easiest to use but it’s often way too harsh. Umbrella’s and small softboxes make the light softer and more pleasing but to me they often look just a bit too perfect. That’s why in those circumstances I often bounce the flash into a reflector. This creates the soft light of a bigger lightsource but it still allows the light to influence and be influenced by external factors. The catchlights also look more natural.

For these pictures we used a Sunbounce Mini reflector as this is to me the most versatile size. As you can see you can light a headshot to a 3/4 shot.
I often get the question on which Sunbounce reflector to buy: well, I think the mini (which is not so “mini” by the way) is a good choice for most photographers. I’d buy it with the zebra/white fabric (that’s what we used here). The zebra gently warms the light up without going over the top.

I finished my session with a couple of quick shots without flash. Just the sun as a hair/back light and the Mini reflector to light the face from camera left. Judging by the catchlights we might have used another reflector to fill in the shadow side, but I forgot.

It’s always difficult to get thrown in front of a crowd and perform some tricks but I guess that again is what wedding photography is all about.

For four days I’m being immersed in the magical world of wedding photography workshops. My favorite brand of reflectors California Sunbounce is doing a European workshop tour with the famous wedding photographer Mike Larson. I joined them for a four days and I’m currently writing this blog post from my hotel room in Amsterdam (btw, never every eat at the Golden Tulip hotel in Amsterdam). I’m too tired to write much, so I’m not going to write too much.

On Saturday Calumet hosted a workshop in Antwerp with Mike where Fotofolio and I also gave a little demo of how we use reflectors (pics are coming later). Yesterday Mike and our own Pieter Van Impe, joined forces for an orgasm of wedding photography information during a LIME workshop in “the Barn”. It was nice to welcome lots of new and old friends from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Russia and the USA.

Mike framed by Filip and Sarah during a live engagement shoot:

Mike even took the participants to my back yard for the shoot:

Sunbounce guru Peter Geller is shorter than the models:

Peter documenting the workshop on the left. A reunion of the Blues Brothers on the right:

Mike stresses out the importance of building a friendship with your clients:

Today the circus moved to the Rotterdam in the Netherlands. I gave a little demo of how I use Sunbounce Reflectors in combination with off-camera flash to create natural looking light. The workshop was held in a big studio that’s great for … well … studio photography but doesn’t offer much available light. I only found some small tungsten lights aimed at photographs and used these as an out of focus background. I lit the model with a single speedlight bounced into a Sunbounce Pro Zebra. We also added a silver Mini on the right as fill.

Let’s catch some sleep because tomorrow we have another workshop in Amsterdam.

It took me a while to process the pictures of my 50/50 project, but here’s the fifth episode.

View on YouTube

I admit, I still struggle with having to make pictures every day but I think I’m over the worst part.

Here is day 13-20 from my 50/50 project. It’s been a busy week and I really struggled with the project for most of the days.

View on YouTube

When I started this personal project, I did expect it would be hard on some days but I didn’t anticipate the difficult days to turn up so soon. The previous week I’ve been to London and visited the traffic control tower but at the moment I’m spending most of my days at home postprocessing, writing, doing paperwork, finishing up projects, … All important stuff but not really visually stimulating. I can hardly take screenshots all day. We also entered the last big phase in the construction works on our house (new roof on the house) which requires me to be home most of the time. There’s a lot to photograph in this daily routine but I start to feel that I did it all. Don’t mistake a “desk period” for a quiet one, lots of deadlines to meet. So it’s not like I have the time to schedule photo trips and TFCD shoots.

It is to be expected that a project like this puts some strain on your daily life and I’m fine with that but not to the point where it disturbs my family life. So sometimes I put the camera away on what is probably the best moment of the day to take pictures.

But you know what, I don’t care. In fact, I’m happy with these difficult days. These are the times when I grow the most as a photographer. I have to improvise, look for another angle on something I’ve shot many times before or go out at 11pm because I haven’t made a decent picture yet that day. I’m perfectly fine with some bad picture days as long as they push me forward as a photographer.

Here it is, episode 3 of my 50/50 project. As an experiment I embedded it a lot bigger, if this doesn’t work for you, let me know.

View on YouTube

So how is the project going? Let me tell you that on some days it’s hard to keep it up. It’s pretty easy on days that I’m doing interesting stuff and/or have time to go for a mini photowalk. But at the moment I’m spending most of my time behind the computer and I’m so busy that during the day I usually don’t have time to go out and shoot. Those days may not get me the best pictures in this project but are probably the most interesting ones because I have to get really creative to get some decent shots. That’s when I really have to step out of my comfort zone and do stuff I usually don’t do.

I’m really happy (and surprised) that many of you seem to like the project and some get inspired to do their own project but I’m actually not very concerned about the quality of my images like I would in my usual blogging. Being able to mess up creates the freedom that I need to become a better photographer. I don’t put the images online to show off, it is just a way to force myself to keep shooting every day and I secretly hoped it would inspire a couple of people to do a personal project themselves.

I made the picture above during a tour of our new town (well it was new to us almost a year ago). We got the exceptional chance to visit the traffic control tower of Brussels Airport. This picture alone, makes the 50/50 project worth all the time and effort I’m putting into it. This is not just a picture of a kid in a spot with a nice view. This is a PORTRAIT of my son. I admit it almost physically hurts to decide not to take a wide angle and a fisheye knowing that you’ll have a probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get that amazing view combined with fantastic architectural lines. But if I had done that (even with the 50mm in my camera bag) I would never have made this image.
To me it’s the best capture of my son’s personality I made in a very long time. So even if I don’t make a decent image during the rest of the project, it exceeded my expectations.

If I had to sum up my two day workshop in London in two words I’d say: EXHAUSTING FUN. Too be honest I’m still not completely recovered from my stay there. Getting dropped in a pile of work when you get home doesn’t really help either. I’ll post some more images soon but for now you’ll have to do with these three.

We spent the first couple of hours of the workshop going over the technical aspect of lighting and the basics of light. Most of the guys were already pretty advanced in that subject but it’s always good to freshen up your knowledge and that way we are sure to talk about the same things during the rest of the workshop. We also discussed going pro.

After that we proceed into the art of not knowing what the f#ck you are doing into a picture. The technical part of lighting really isn’t that difficult to master. Just add/substract, move, color the light until you get what you want. ‘Getting what you want’ is hard if you don’t know what you want. My experience is that many photographers forget one very important step in the process of taking a picture: the story or emotion. That’s why I like to go through the whole picture taking process with the participants. I asked them to come up with some assignments for me. The first one was to make a portrait of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor for a fictive interview in the Times wherein she denies she has anything to do with a chocolate smuggling scandal (yeah, I know). Since Angela was busy, Prabha was so kind to step in as our subject.

Next up they wanted me to do an advertising campaign for a manufacturer of glasses with Paris Hilton. After some brainstorming we decided to opt for a tagline like “Get good glasses to avoid embarrassing mistakes”. We waited for Paris for a while but since she didn’t showed up, Prabha was so kind to step in. And no, I don’t usually have a horse’s head in my lighting bag.

On the second day, it was my turn to come up with crazy assignments for the participants and give a few words of advice here and there. Check out the workshop’s Flickr group to see what the guys came up with. By the end of the day (that proved to be not anywhere near the end of the day), I was asked to do a mini-shoot with our model Nick to show how I work with a model. Nick said he could use some ‘darker’ pictures for his book, so we went to a tunnel and came up with this:

I had tons of fun and met lots of great people. Thanks for having me guys and a big thanks to Callum who organized everything perfectly.

On September the 7th and 8th I’ll be giving a 2-day Portrait Lighting on Location workshop in London, UK. I’m very much looking forward to it. Big thanks to LIME-reader Callum Winton for taking care of the organizational part in London. I love doing workshops abroad but it’s really only possible with a lot of local help, so thanks a lot Callum.

THE WORKSHOP
On Monday, we’ll start out by going over the basics of light. We’re going to learn to recognize good light and shape bad light into good light.
In the afternoon we are going to learn how to MAKE the light with small flashes and mix ambient light with flash.
Bert will also discuss equipment choices and will squeeze in lots of tricks of the trade. With lots of real life examples and mini-shoots, we’ll make the theoretical part easy to digest.

On Tuesday, you’ll get the chance to put everything you’ve learned into practice on a location shooting day. You’ll get some fun assignments, that you will work on in small groups under Bert’s guidance.

You don’t need any experience with flash, tons of expensive gear or a degree in photography to benefit from this workshop. A decent knowledge of the basics like shutter speed / aperture and the motivation to improve your photography, is all you need. If those attending are a bit more advanced with lighting then we’ll quickly progress to advanced techniques over the days.

WORKSHOP LOCATION
We’re aiming to host the workshop in or near to Richmond† which is easily accessible by road, rail and tube. The first day will be in a conference room or hall and the second day we’ll be exploring different locations in a walking distance in and around Richmond or Twickenham. On both days the workshop will start at 10:00 and finish around 18:00.

Directions and other information will be emailed to each participant prior to the Workshop

WORKSHOP PRICING
To celebrate first classes with Bert in the UK, this workshop is temporarily offered at the introductory price of 220GBP*. This offer is valid until midnight on August 16th 2009, after which the price will be 250GBP*

We have some models as well as a young and talented make-up artist lined up for our practical day. They’re coming on a TFCD basis, so it’ll be courteous to supply to them some polished images for their portfolio to thank them for their time

* All prices include UK VAT

If you are interested in attending this workshop, please visit the workshop website that Callum has set up as soon as possible to secure your seat. There’s also a Facebook event page where you can find the latest news on this workshop. It will be possible to sign up from Saturday, the 25th of July at 16.00 hours (London time).

Whenever I can, I try to give my clients a choice. It’s great to give your clients what they asked for, but it’s even better if you can give them more. Give them variations on the picture they briefed you about but what about doing something dramatically different.

A while ago I shot the engagement session of Bart and Marleen. Marleen likes the lifestyle feel en Bart, as a creative person himself, likes a bit more drama.

We started out with natural light, a Sunbouce Pro reflector and a Sunswatter. I’m not sure which pictures we shot with just natural light and which pics we took with some light modifiers.

Time for something different and more dramatic by shooting against the sun and keeping the background rather dark. At iso 50-100, f/13 and 1/200 I needed a substantial amount of juice form Elinchrom Ranger.

Bart en Marleen asked for different looks, but it’s something I also try to do when the client requests only one look. Even when I get a very detailed brief, I try to go for something different once the requested picture is on the CF-card.

Sometimes these experiments don’t work but you probably learned something out of it. Your client will still be happy because you did what was required of you and he’s probably going to be impressed by the fact that you at least walked the extra mile to try something different. When it works out, you give your client an added value by providing him with a choice. It wouldn’t be the first time that a client of mind changed a layout because they liked the experiment better that the original idea. And even if they stick with to the first plan, they’ll be much more likely to see you as a creative storyteller rather than a monkey with a camera.

A bit thanks to fellow photographer Filip, who stepped in as a last minute assistant to lug around Sunbounces and flashes.

Since I get so many questions about my gear, I decided to post an article every now and then about what I use and why. Don’t expect lab tests, honest comparisons and too much technical data, there are other sites who do that kind of stuff way better then I could do. Sure, the specs of any piece of equipment are important in making my choices but there’s also the beyond scientific factor of personal taste, look and feel. Remember, my ideal choice may be completely wrong for you. A personal subjective view hardly qualifies as a real review, so I’ve called this new section RSO (Review, Sort Of).

Let’s start this series of articles with the most expensive piece of gear I’ve bought lately: the Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed AS kit. This is basically a very powerful studio flash (generator + head).

What’s in the kit?

- Ranger RX Speed AS generator with battery
- extra battery
- battery charger
- “A” flash head
- standard reflector
- softlite reflector + softlite umbrella
- case

info: 1/200 – iso100 – f/16 – 24mm – bare Ranger Head to camera left

The need for a battery powered studio flash

I guess I’m a bit known for my use of small flashes (speedlights), the Strobist way. I still think small flashes are often the best choice, so the Ranger is not a replacement for my speedlights, rather an addition to have more options in lighting. Small flashes are remarkably powerful but sometimes that still isn’t enough. Placed close to the subject a speedlight is usually powerful enough to do whatever you want, but I evolved into making more wider shots which means that I have to put the flash further away from the subject to avoid having it in the frame, so more power was needed. And even if a speedlight throws out enough photons, recycle times become really slow at full power, 5-6 seconds between two pictures can be too much to keep a nice “flow” in the shoot.
Even more important than sheer power is the quality of light. With light modifiers like umbrella’s en softboxes, I find speedlight to throw out pretty beautiful light, but the hard light they throw out is not always as pretty. A speedlight is a bit of a compromise between power and light quality, with studio lights that’s less of an issue.
The last reason why I invested in portable studio equipment is to have more lighting options: beautydish, large softbox, … Sure, you can put a couple of speedlights in a large softbox or make a beautydish out of a salad bowl but sometimes the real deal makes work that little bit more enjoyable.

info: 1/200 – iso100 – f/14 – 17mm – bare Ranger Head to camera left

Why the Ranger RX Speed AS?

Let’s have a look to my list of requirements:
- Lots of power
- Consistency and accuracy of power settings
- Being able to dial the power way down
- Fast recycle
- Short flash duration capable to stop action even at full power (many flashes have to long flash durations, certainly on full power)
- Long battery life / pops per charge
- Availability/Price of modifiers and accessories
- Price

The Ranger meets all those criteria even though I wouldn’t mind if the price was a bit lower. Elinchrom is also a brand that has been regarded as very reliable and sturdy, which is important for a location photographer. When you’re buying your first studio flash, it’s wise to see it as buying into a complete system. If you end up with two or three different brands, accessories are often not interchangeable and assistants must be trained to use different systems. So I wanted a brand that can grow with me. Elinchrom wasn’t the only brand that qualified. Other brands like Profoto, Hensel and Broncolor have maybe even better reputations and products so they where on my shortlist too. Comparable products to the Ranger tend to be a bit more expensive but that wasn’t the major showstopper. “Availability” was my last but not least requirement. The possibility to rent or borrow equipment within the same system is important to me too. I don’t want to buy stuff that I only use once a year. Those things are better rented or borrowed from a friend. You can rent some other brands but usually just a basic kit and isn’t that just what a photographer would likely invest in. When it comes to huge modifiers, super powerful packs and exotic accessories, there’s a vast wasteland in Belgium. Only for Elinchrom there’s something to rent (although still not enough IMHO). It also helps that most of my friends who own studio gear, use Elinchrom.

I am not saying that Elinchrom is the best nor am I saying that I will stick to this brand forever. The recycle time of the Profoto’s, the inovativeness of Hensel and Broncolor’s sublime light quality are still very appealing. And there are probably more good brands around. I believe in using the right gear for the job and if that means switching over to another brand, so be it.
info: 1/200 – iso100 – f/10 – 70mm – bare Ranger Head to camera right

Why assimetrical?

You can plug in two heads into a Ranger pack and the Ranger Speed comes in a symmetrical and assymetrical flavor. With symmetrical, the power is distributed evenly (50-50) over the two outlets. The assymetrical distributes two thirds of the power to outlet A and one third to outlet B. I didn’t buy a second head and I’m pretty sure I never will buy one without buying another power pack. The idea of attaching two heads seems interesting at first but I see very limited use for my work. You don’t have control over the power of the heads seperately, with the symmetrical one, both heads put out the same power and with the assymetrical one, head A puts out twice the power of head B. I know you can start fiddling around with ND filters but that seems a bit too cumbersome. With two heads you’ll probably going to have cables all over the place and that’s not my idea of a smooth way of working either.

So if I’m just going to use one head, it doesn’t matter if you buy the symmetrical or the assymetrical, right? No, wrong otherwise I wouldn’t write this. For me the minimum power of a flash is at least equally important as the maximum output. I still like to use wide aperture when using flash so I need to be able to dial them way down. With the assymetrical Ranger, you can go down to 7 Watt/seconds if you plug the head into socket B. While if I’m not mistaken the symmetrical Ranger’s minimum power is double of that.

info: 1/160 – iso100 – f/10 – 200mm – bare Ranger Head to camera left

In the field

Enough about numbers, specifications and theory, how does the Ranger performs in the field?
Remarkably well, it’s a bit more of a hassle to set up a Ranger than a speedlight but it’s still pretty fast and easy. Very important to me is that it looks like it can take a serious beating. What’s the point in location lighting equipment if you’re afraid to use it on location? It packs more than enough power for most of my needs and recycles very fast. The battery seems to contain and endless suply of power even while using the modelling light a lot. I never had to use the spare battery yet.
And then there’s the quality of light. Especially hard light looks a lot better when it comes from the Ranger. With speedlights I’m always worried that hard light will not be very flattering, with the Ranger I’ll be using more hard light.

To me the Ranger is very much worth the investment because it opens up many new possibilities in my photography and can make some of the things I’m already doing look even better.