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

For those who haven’t seen Mike in action yet, I can tell you that this guy really knows how to motivate people to make better pictures, improve your business and balance it out with a personal life. I highly recommend his workshops for every professional photographer, not only wedding photographers.

Here’s a video they did last year with Mike:

View on YouTube

I’ve been a big fan of Greg Gorman since I first discovered his work. His celebrity portraits are simply stunning. But this workshop is about his second passion: fine art nude photography.

Here’s a link to a video about a similar workshop he gave. NSFW unless you have a very liberal boss I guess.

If you are anyway close to Zingst or have the time to travel, I think you won’t regret following these workshops. More info here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

]]> http://bertstephani.com/2010/02/12/cullera-spain-2010-afpv-congress-part-1/feed/ 3 http://bertstephani.com/2009/11/25/workshops-with-mike-larson-iii/ http://bertstephani.com/2009/11/25/workshops-with-mike-larson-iii/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:00:39 +0000 Bert Stephani http://bertstephani.com/?p=482 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.

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.

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.

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.