In this fully packed hands-on one day workshop, Bert will teach you the crucial lighting techniques to create stunning portraits anytime, anywhere. In a small group of maximum four participants, you can be sure of a very personal learning experience and a fun atmosphere

THE DAY
We’ll start the day with a lesson in choosing the right gear for the job and then we’ll proceed to an in-depth study of the most important lighting setups. Great light is all about subtlety, so during a number of exercises we’ll pay a lot attention to the fine art of flash placement, feathering, choosing the right modifiers and blending flash with the available light.
After a tasty lunch (included), Bert will present you with some lighting challenges and assist you on bringing them to a visually pleasing end. We will get you a great subject to shoot some pictures for your portfolio. We’ll end the day by discussing our images over a couple of beers.

WHAT TO BRING
You basically only need a DSLR and a lens. If you want to bring your own speedlights, triggers, … feel free to do so.
Thanks to the support of Servix & Partners and California Sunbounce, you’ll be able to play around with lots of great toys from Pocketwizard, Manfrotto, Lastolite, Chimera, Elinchrom, Sunbounce, …

PRACTICAL
Location: The Barn, Dijkstraat 42, 1820 Steenokkerzeel
Time: 9h30 to 17h (I’m notorious for going over time)
Number of participants: max 4
Language: English (unless all the students speak Dutch)
Price: 245 EUR excl. VAT (296,45 EUR incl. VAT)
Workshop fee includes teaching and a tasty bread lunch

DATES AND BOOKINGS
- Sunday June 10 : book your spot (4 spots available)

more dates will be announced later

It was a great honor to be asked to speak at the second European congress of the Federation of European Professional Photographers (FEP). Accepting an offer like this might seem to be a no brainer but I had to think long and hard before accepting. I won’t go into detail (maybe I’ll do that later) but let me sketch out the climate briefly.

I attended the first congress in Valencia, Spain and had a bit of mixed feelings about it. The fact that my bag was stolen there, might have something to do with it but mainly it was because the rather formal setting of a congress might not be my natural habitat. I’ve also experienced some behind-the-scenes politics, which is something I just don’t want to spend any energy on. On the other hand, I became friends, got inspired and learned a lot by meeting people that I would have never met in my natural habitat. This and a number of other conversations over the last two years, led me to believe that the younger generation can learn a lot from the more experience generation and vice versa. I’m pretty new in the business and embraced digital and the web, which makes me part of the new generation. But at age 35 I can also relate to the older generation.

Some people really stuck their necks out when asking me to speak at the congress, people who share my belief that our industry needs strong organizations that bring experience and innovation together. I know it took courage to get me on the speakers list, so I decided to accept out of respect to those people, the industry I love and most importantly to my peers.

The setting of this congress was Lyon, France. We got some beautiful spring weather thrown in for free which created a bit of a holiday feeling. The French national organization, did a great job to make everything run smooth.

The congress started off with lots of awards and competitions and labels and … I know some people swear by the value of those, but I’m not that convinced. I saw some great work, but also stuff that wouldn’t win anything in my world. But then again photography is subjective and I’m happy for all those who won something.
I arrived in Lyon at 5am after three days of workshops and a night of driving. So it’s pretty clear that I was exhausted and sitting in a comfortable seat in a dark congress hall isn’t exactly the best way to stay awake. But the general quality of the presentations and speakers was very good and I didn’t have much trouble to get through the first day. A couple of speakers made a really big impression on me. So much that they deserve their own blog post, so stay tuned.

I was the last speaker on the second day. I was a bit nervous, mainly because I decided to do my presentation in French. My French isn’t that bad but it’s rusty and I’m certainly not used to speak in French about photography in front of 400-500 of my peers. It went rather well, partly because Bertrand Edel, a French reporter, did a great job helping me out on stage. He got me talking about my passions and forget the setting. Thanks Bertrand!

My presentations was mainly a positive message about how to embrace new technology and opportunities without forgetting the rich traditions of our craft. I also talked about social media, self publishing, sharing, cooperation, style, learning … and my short career in the porn industry (don’t ask).

If you want to know if it was any good, you’ll have to ask the people in the audience but I received lots of great comments from people who said they really appreciated the fresh view.

Big thanks to my buddy Ioannis for making the pictures of me on stage and the fun we had together in Lyon.

Some say the French are rude and to be honest, judging by the behavior of some waiters, shop employees, … there’s a certain amount of truth in it. But that doesn’t go for the French photographers. For the very first minute there was a very warm and friendly atmosphere at the congress. The unofficial part of such an event is at least equally important as the official program. You get to meet so many different interesting people if you open yourself up to it.

The second evening, the atmosphere was taken into overdrive at the gala dinner at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant. You’d expect a rather stiff, formal but tasty dinner at a restaurant with three Michelin stars. I was right about the food, it was delicious but I was wrong about the atmosphere. Within five minutes people were dancing on the tables.

YMCA in a restaurant ???

Stage diving on a gala dinner ????????????

After a night in which you’ve been dancing with a white wig on your head while your shirt is ripped of your torso, the boundaries between nationalities, shooting styles and generations are forever gone. And it was a miracle that pretty much everyone turned up at the congress on time for the final day. Again a day filled with inspiration and even more personal encounters.

The day and my pleasant stay in France ended with a walk into Lyon and a nice dinner with a group of friends. On the way back to my hotel, I let the photographer in me loose and started some new “fine-art photography projects”.

This is “white signs on dark backgrounds”

And here’s “Scandinavian ice queens in photo booths” and “Irish FEP presidents coming out of the closet” (sorry Neil)

I’ll do an inspiration post about the congress later and in the mean time, I’d like to thank everyone who made this a fantastic experience.

On February the 7th I’ll be speaking at the second congress of the Federation of European Photographers (FEP). I’m very honored to get the chance to speak to so many of my peers and I’m looking forward to meet many old friends and make some new ones too. My seminar is titled “Photography 2.0″ and is about the challenges and opportunities photographers face these days. It’s about improving your craft, sharing, working together and embracing new technological possibilities.

It’s still possible to get in the congress (February 6-8). Hope to see some of you there.

I’ll be teaching 3 portrait workshops at Foto-Konijnenberg in Holland and Belgium on 3, 4 and 5 February.

3 February – Turnhout, BELGIUM
4 February – Den Ham, HOLLAND
5 February – Den Haag HOLLAND

Cost is only 89,95 per participant (max 15 participants). For more info and bookings, go to the Konijnenberg site.

Hope to see some of you there!

The frustrating part about teaching workshops in cool places is that there usually isn’t  much time to shoot yourself. And Karama in Dubai is a spectacular location. It’s not the most posh, fancy spot in Dubai but it’s the kind of place where photographers start drooling from the first second. The place breathes light, textures and character. Luckily the group of students let me have a 15 minute shoot after begging them on my bare knees.

The picture below is what sparked my imagination the minute we arrived at the location:

The exposure I choose for the street proved to be a bit dark for the models:

So I added a single bare speedlite (camera left in the final shot). The picture below is just a quick test shot to see if the flash exposure was right. This is a pretty spacious setup, so if you keep running back and forth between the camera position and the flash to make adjustments, you are going to loose a lot of time (and in the case of Dubai also: sweat). So adjust the power setting on the flash, take a quick test shot from the position of the flash and if necessary repeat the process until it looks right.

Then we added two back lights to create more depth in the picture and to give the whole picture a bit of an artificial look as these classy models with nice clothes look a bit out of place. I like the contrast between their look and the location. It’s an unreal situation so if you would light this naturally it wouldn’t work too well, I believe.

The finishing tough is adding dust. We just had two guys kicking up dust right before I took the shot. It’s all about getting the timing right. You want the models to get in their walking action just after the dustkickers went past. I actually like the setup picture below a lot.

I must admit that I stole the dust idea from my buddy Fotofolio. But hey, I once saved him from being a ridiculously cheap photographer, so I figure I can steal his ideas whenever I want. Here’s Tom’s video.

I wish we had more time to do some more fine tuning, especially on the poses and expressions but we only had a couple of runs before we had to catch our bus back to the conference center. But still, I’m very happy with the results.

The pictures where shot with a 5D2 and a 70-200 2.8L IS at iso 50, 1/160th at f4. I used the follow focus on the center point because the models are walking towards the camera. The follow focus on the 5D2 isn’t the best, so that’s why I went for f4 instead of 2.8 for that little bit of extra depth-of-field. If I recall it correctly all the flashes were set to 1/2 power.

In the video about my Dubai trip, you can see some behind-the-scenes shots:

View on YouTube

One of the students suggested we’d do a group shot in the same setup. Here it is:

Fotoweekend has been a 7-day rollercoaster. Big thanks to all the wonderful students and models, here’s a slideshow with many student images. An even bigger thanks to Faisal, who did a great job taking all the practical stuff out of my hands by assisting me. I had lots of fun and great conversations in the Vista Bar with my co-instructors: Bobbi Lane, Carol Dragon, Martin Prihoda and David Nightingale. Last but not least, the biggest thank you’s are for the Gulf Photo Plus team, especially Mohamed and Hala, who are both great and busy photographers but still find the time to make GPP a success.

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.

The best way to show how I light something is to show the whole process. Whenever I have time during a workshop, I ask the class to give me an assignment. And then walk through the process including the mistakes. You need to understand that it’s a way of thinking combined with lots of screwing up and the ability to fix those screw-ups.

At GPP Fotoweekend one of my classes gave me the assignment to shoot a picture of a girl who’s sad and feels lonely because she just lost her cat. Many people who’ve been to one of my workshops know that I have a thing with dead cats. If you want to know what, you just have to book a spot on my next workshop

I decided that I wanted to show her loneliness by placing her alone and rather small in a pretty empty setting. The auditorium was a great location to do that. First I set my ambient exposure to get some detail but overall it’s underexposed.

The reason why I wanted to underexpose the ambient light, is because I wanted to light her face with a gridded speedlite. This puts all the attention to her and makes it stand out that she’s alone even more.

For the final shot, we added another speedlite behind her for separation and to define the shape of the chairs behind her. All this creates more depth in the picture.

This one works pretty well I think but I don’t always succeed in these kind of challenges. And actually I don’t care, I always learn something.

Those who’ve been following me for a while, now that I’m a big fan of the “covered shade technique” aka the “afdakskestechniek”. Basically this means that you place your subject out of the direct sunlight and prevent light coming from above. When I get on location, the first thing I do is often to look for a spot where I can use this technique.

So that’s exactly what I did when we needed some nice light, during my 1 day Motivational Light workshop at GPP Fotoweekend. With the picture on the left we got the added bonus of some direct sunlight hitting the light colored floor in front of the model. This light is reflected back up and fills in whatever little shadows left, very nicely. It also puts a nice second catchlight in the eyes. Joe McNally seems to be a big fan of this kind of light too and refers to it as “floor skip” if I’m not mistaken.

The picture on the right, is taken one or two hours later. The main light remained pretty much the same but the sun moved around the building and that left us without the fill light from below. I always stress out to my students that in order to light something, you first need to analyze and understand light. So in this case that means that you need to recreate the direct sunlight, reflecting off the floor in front of the model. Just one bare speedlite pointed at the floor, was enough to recreate the light we had in the first picture. Can you see that these two pictures where taken in substantially different light?

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.