Clicking with Cyrielle- The Importance of Perseverance

Hi gang,

Had a lovely shoot with the amazing Cyrielle a while ago. We had a shoot a little less than a year ago and the resulting images where great, so Cyrielle contacted me again and we started exchanging some ideas, mood boards and such as to what we wanted to obtain.

Cyrielle is a stylist and a model, and as the concept of the shoot was fairly basic there was no need for an external stylist. The concept of the shoot was a very cute, sexy, lingerie-ish shoot. As I said, we already had worked together so we both knew each others style, tempo and abilities. We tried working around our schedules, which wasn’t easy and due to a couple of reschedulings we found ourselves the day before without a make up artist. I usually work with the usual make up artists but none of them were available at that moment. When the time came to do it or cancel the shoot, we decided to just go ahead with it and gun it.

Great images can result from a shoot where it’s only you and the model. It doesn’t always have to be a big team with a lot of pressure. Most of this shoot was spent talking and devising poses, outfits, image styles and what not. The great thing about having no expectations is that you can’t be dissapointed right?

So we gunned it, she did her own basic make up. We wanted to keep it light, since that was the theme of the shoot so the make up wasn’t that extensive. Some foundation, basic concealer and a little bit of mascara.

We started shooting and quickly realized that this would be turning out great. A good team of make up artists, stylists, assistants is a big plus to your shoot, but that doesn’t mean you can only do these shoots if you’ve got everyone on board. Sometimes you can just go with the flow, and it can result in great pictures.

This one was shot with a single trusty beautydish overhead to the left.

Here we combined day and artificial light. Cyrielle was standing in front of a huge window with a white curtain. Spot measuring allowed to flood her with soft midday light, as a beautydish in front provided the fill.

Here, the only lightsource was an octabank low to the left.

Most of the images where shot on either the Nikon 85mm or the Nikon 80-200 f/2.8. I shot this shoot the day I got the Fuji X100 on which I just did a blogpost. Absolutely wanted to try it out and here’s what I found. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a studio portrait camera. The X100 has a fixed focal length of 35mm which is too wide for portraits. If you are too close to your subject, the face will be all distorted. However, Fuji’s color rendition of skin and colors is legend. So is the rendition of those things on the X100 so the images are of great quality. It does have a future for environmental portraiture, where you need to take some distance from your subject to incorporate the scenery or the environment. The 35mm allows you to do just that, and the image quality of X100 is perfect for that.

All in all, when in doubt, always shoot. Doesn’t matter if one of team didn’t show up. Sure it can be a pain in the ass, but work around it. If you’re a pro, it’ll happen more than once and you can’t just drop everything and tell everyone to go home. You persevere. You push on. And if you’re lucky, something good will come out.

More to come,

Cheers,

MM

The Power of Profoto

Hi gang,

Here I am with a quick tip, not all of you might know about. There is an incredible wealth of knowledge to be learnt from
promotional videos. It might seem stupid, but it’s quite true.

Modern day companies that produce equipment for people who are very tech-savy know they have to jump on the social media/online video bandwagon. In our category of photographeres there are a lot of companies that have made that jump, and some even in a brilliant fashion.

I’m quite the YouTube addict, and I’m subscribed to at least 30 channels. The vast majority of those channels are channels created by aforementioned companies. They upload behind-the-scenes of shoots done using their equipment, hints and tips, complete user manuals for new software (ahum, PhaseOne!) and so on.

Dissecting those videos can be hugely informative. I’ll giva an example.

Profoto’s latest commercial for their new line of Rfi softboxes contains 3 frames that illustrate perfectly the effect of putting 3 softboxes very close to the model’s face in order to create a wrap-around effect. It’s only a second in the commercial, but there is a huge wealth of knowledge and data to be gained after analyzing said second.

These are all screenshots from the 1080p video. (Yes, they even upload it in HD)

One softbox, left eye

With this frame, ProFoto illustrates the effect of a single softbox on the left side of the model. Look for the catchlights in the eyes, they’ll (usually) tell you 95% of what you need to know lighting-wise.

Second softbox added to the right

Here’s how it looks when you add a second softbox to the right at the same power output.

And finally, here’s what happens when you add a third softbox down and below the model.

I don’t know how you guys feel about this, but this is incredible informative to me. You get to see the direct results of adding a modifier, and remember all of this is free information. You can immediately see the huge difference the use of modifiers does.

The Profoto RFI commercial contains a few other light setups and is definitely worth checking out.

My hat goes off for the fine folks at Profoto and the other companies who spend money and time making these instructional videos.

Another champion of the social media/YouTube scene is PhaseOne. They have continued their effort to provide free, instructional videos about their products. These video’s, and there are really a ton of them go far beyond the simple sales pitch. I mean, If you’re looking at a 10 minute video on how to adjust your panel alignment, you’ve already bought their product. Most companies would stop caring about you as a consumer right at that moment. Not PhaseOne. They regularly upload new videos showcasing new features their updated software provides.

To me, a company who provides that amount of ‘after-purchase’ support is a company dedicated to it’s purpose. They are a passionate team, and they are worth my money. I much prefer investing in a product that has a strong user base behind it, and a strong team of professionals who make the software but is a little bit more expensive, than to go for the software that’s a little bit cheaper, but hasn’t any type of support.

Adobe falls in the same category as PhaseOne regarding this, Julieanne Kost and her team upload videos on a regular basis filled with instructional goodness. The times we live in are truely amazing. It might sound cheesy, especially coming from someone my age, but it’s quite true. You would’ve needed to go to a couple of classes to learn all this stuff about e.g. CaptureOne Pro 7 or Lightroom. Now, you can learn all of this, in the comfort of your own home, and at your own pace. Amazing times indeed.

Below is a list of YouTube channels I highly recommend. They’re a mixture of behind-the-scenes videos, instructional videos and all kinds of other stuff as well. I’m also going to start a new rubrique on the blog where i occassionally disect a whole BTS video and point out the stuff you can learn from it!

http://www.youtube.com/user/AdobeLightroom

http://www.youtube.com/user/PhaseOneDK

http://www.youtube.com/user/broncolorworld

http://www.youtube.com/user/HasselbladAS

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfotoGlobal

http://www.youtube.com/user/sekonicvids

http://www.youtube.com/user/profotovids

To me, personally, PhaseOne, Adobe and Profoto’s channels take the cake. They are definitely worth checking out.

Another channel I’m religiously subscribed to is DigitalRev. If you haven’t heard of them, or Kai Wong, you’ve been living under a photographic rock. This quirkly team uploads almost every other day a review of some kind of gear. Do note, I take the word ‘review’ in a very liberal sense. It’s not really an in-depth review, it’s more of a ‘other side’ review. Absurd comparisons, long and endless words are often used to describe an object in a sarcastic manner. It’s hilarious. These guys are being called the TopGear (British TG evidently, American TG is just shameful) of Photography.

And of course, don’t forget to follow my YouTube channel. We’re going to start uploading some serious BTS content after the holiday season.

http://www.youtube.com/user/morganmoller

Cheers!

M

The most important 50$ you’ll spend as a photographer.

Hi gang,

This a post inspired by real life events. I’m amazed as to how this is still happening regularly in 2012. It’s the friggin’ cloud storage age for chrissake!

Yesterday a post popped up in my facebook news feed about a friend of mine whose drives failed due to an electrical peak. His whole workstation was fried within seconds.  His photographic career of the last 2 years vanished, within seconds.

The digital age brought us a lot of good stuff. High ISO, The ability to take 1000 pictures with 1 memory card instead of  a mountain of filmrolls, but it also brought a vulnerability in the game. As digital tog’s your whole body of work is stored on these little flimsy drives. Things that are known to fail. They do. It’s not a matter of ‘if’, it’s a matter of when.

Backup is crucial. Before you go spend another dime on a kick-ass lens, or flash, think about the most important piece of kit in your world. Your drives. Redundancy is key. There are a shitload of different backup software suites available out there. It can be quite overwhelming, it really can. I took quite some time analyzing every software, compare it with my needs, and see what stuck to the wall.

Finally came out at Genie9 Timeline Pro 2012. These guys know what they’re doing. If the like of Columbia University, Philips and Old Mutual rely on you for the whole of their international backup solutions, you know you’re doing something right.

Again, this might not be THE best software solution in the world, but it certainly works for me. It’s brilliant because it doesn’t require me to do anything. I’m human, I sometimes forget if I backup up this and that file, and when the shit hits the fan, I want no doubt possible.

Genie Timeline Pro 2012 is a piece of cake to set up. You can choose between two ways of operating. You can either let Genie backup your files by ‘category’ which means you can let it backup all audio, video, flash, whatever files. It’ll scan your computer, and every file that responds to the call will be backed up.

You can tell Genie to backup all audio, video or whatever files by category

You can also specify certain directories to monitor, and backup. This is where I live. The file structure on my workstation is so that There are 3 main folders (Photo, Video & Software). Each file folder contains all the jobs I did in substructure directories. Genie will then backup all those files for the first time. This will take a while at first, but all backups do.

But here the brilliance comes in for photographers. The main problem I was facing was that if I worked on a job afterwards again, the .xmp’s would’ve changed, I had to go and select the files I worked on, back up those .xmp’s and so on. It’s endless, and it leaves a great margin for error.

Once the inital backup is done, EVERY time a single file (as in e.g. an .xmp) is changed even slightly, Genie records that is has been changed, and once that filed is saved (after you are done working on it) Genie will automatically back it up. It monitors the folders you’ve chosed constantly to see if anything changed.

If disaster strikes, and a drive crashes, you just ‘restore’ it from timeline. Now, even though it’s a fantastic piece of software, it’s not capable of magic. Here is where redundancy comes in. If you have 1 backup drive and that drive fails, Genie is not going to be able to restore the files out of thin air. For the sake of example, I’ll give my backup strategy.

My workstation has 5 drives in it. I’ve got 1 boot drive SSD that only stores my operating system. Then I’ve got one 1TB drive that contains my working files, this is everything unrelated to photography, spotify cache etc… Nothing important. Then I’ve got one 3TB drive that contains all my photos. I Have two 3 TB drives that serve as a RAID 1 backup of the main drive containing the photos. Externally, there  is a LaCie 3x2TB Quadra NAS that has mirrors of the 2 backup drives in the workstation. This is unplugged each night (to avoid having an electrical surge blowing the whole thing up). Genie mirrors the content of the first 3TB HD onto the 2 internal backup drives, and onto the Lacie external drive.

This means that at any given time I’ve got 4 copies of a file. The chance of 1 drive failing is high. The chance of all drives failing at once is next to nihil,so I can sleep on both my ears.

What’s even cooler is that Genie9 have developped an iOs app that lets you monitor your backup situation from a distance, from you iPhone or iPad. Again, they didn’t NEED to do this, but they went the extra mile and it sure feels better.

The iPad app let’s you see how you are backed up

The final thing I’d like to touch on is price. Photography is expensive. Lenses can cost up to 1000’s of dollars, so we don’t wanna splurge on backup software. Well the good news is that this isn’t expensive. The Pro version will set you back a whopping 50$. Seriously, it must be one of the cheapest software suites capable of doing what it does for that price.

Note : I am in no way sponsored by Genie9. I just think it’s a fantastic piece of software, and it should be known!

EDIT : At the request of a couple of tweets, here’s an update to this post. I got a few questions on what my folder structure was like with my whole body of work. I’ve included a screenshot that should help :

As you can see my main folder with my body of work is called ‘MORGAN’. Here’s where I keep everything pro in. The main folder is subdivided into 3 project categories : Photography, Videography & Retouching. In the photography folder everything is classified by GENRE e.g. portraiture, fashion, … Then the GENRE – folder is subdivided in categories according to project name/publication. That folder is subdivided into a temporal folder e.g. November 2012. After that there’s the final subdivision with the name of the specific project.

Each project folder also contains a number of subfolders. In each folder you’ll always find 3 folders : RAW+XML, PSD, JPG. These are pretty self-explanatory. The RAW’s contain the raw footage, that has not been altered (all my RAW alterations are stored in separate XML files that are kept alongside the RAW. That way my negatives are always clean.) There’s a folder with PSD’s. That’s a folder containing all the PSD from retouching photos that needed Photoshop. These are usually large files (500mb – 2gb) that are best kept separately. The JPG folder is the folder where the exported files are kept.

According to the job, I might shoot some video files and / or film. By film I mean analog film. If I’m shooting multiple types of film I’ll keep them grouped in folders by film type. e.g. Kodak Tri-X 400, Kodak Portra 800, and so on.

This is basically my organisational method. Some might find it overkill, but it works for me.

Genie TimeLine Pro will duplicate my main storage folder WITH this structure onto at least 3 drives at all times so I’m always safe from harm!

Cheers,

(don’t be the dumbass caught with his pants down his ankles and has no backup)

Black & White

I love black & white. It might sound like a stupid thing to say, but it’s very true. I’d probably shoot everything in B&W if I could. It’s timeless. It’s sensual. It’s captivating. It’s forgiving. It’s classy & classic.

I’ve recently started to collaborate with talented stylist Coralie. She models as well and she’s a real crack at it. I moved into my studio a few weeks back and had the first shoots there about a weer or so ago. Loving it. Having a space for yourself where you can be creative, leave your gear, drop in at any time is amazing.

For the first shoot we wanted to do something indian-themed. Having all that detail in feathers and accessories is amazing and we figured it would make for something nice. We weren’t dissapointed. The main light on the shot above is a gridded beautydish (gotta love the contrast it creates) and a softbox for fill light.

So I switched to BlackBerry…

Hi guys,
Here comes a totally unrelated post, but had to get it of my chest.

I’ve always secretely been drawn towards BlackBerry. I don’t know what it is, maybe the keyboard, maybe the overall looks, it’s just been there. However, for the last couple of years, I was an iPhone-hipster. Until recently.

On New Year’s Eve, my iPhone was stolen from my jacket. Nothing too bad, did a remote wipe and that was that. However I needed a new phone. I like gadgets, so I browsed a bit around, see what was on the market. Obviously there was the iPhone. Then there was Android. I looked at a couple of models, but I decided not to go that path. The way I see it, Google’s got enough on me. (I know, totally senseless) but I don’t like the fact that there are 1000 devices with it and that every operator installs his modification of the OS on it. That’s a strongsuit for Apple.

So the obvious third choice was BlackBerry. I bought a Torch II because I couldn’t deal with the small, horizontal screens of all the other models after coming from an iPhone and I was desperate for a keyboard. The Storm never was in the race, because really, if you want to get a touch-phone, get an iPhone.

What are my impressions now? They’re fantastic. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t the best phone I’ve had, but it’s certainly not the worse.

What are the things I like :
-The keyboard. Somewhere deep down, I always hated the fact my iphone had that virtual keyboard. I like buttons, sue me. Now that I have, I think that if I ever switch back to Apple, that’ll be the most-missed feature.

-Battery life. We’re in 2012, and we sent people to the moon, yet Apple can’t grip the fact that a phone needs to have longer battery life then 2 days. That was the most I got from my iPhone, and a lot of people aswel, after using it ‘intensively’. I think the word ‘intensive use’ is bullshit. If you’re gonna make a phone that integrates twitter, facebook, checks you email every hour and so on, then it’s not extensive use anymore, it’s just use, so STOP hiding behind the fact that you’re overusing it. My BlackBerry now holds up for at least 4 days, sometimes even more. That’s FAN-TASTIC.

-Integrated Apps. The integrated apps, like calendar are far superior to Apple’s. One of the things I hate most on smartphone is the need to install apps, for apps you allready have. Like Apple’s Calendar. That app is a piece of crap, it’s too basic, non-adjustable. Bah. The PIM-apps on BlackBerry are very superior to this. This might come from their business-background. I don’t know, I’m just happy with it.

What I miss about my iPhone :
-Applications : The App World is nothing like the App Store. I miss a lot of apps that are iPhone exclusive. Things are getting better, but we’re far from home.

-Chargeability. I could charge my iPhone EVERYWHERE (partly, because it was needed). Everyone I know had some form of apple-charger somewhere at home. You could charge your iPhone wherever you are. This introduces the third most missed feature

-iPod : I have an iPod 160 Classic. I love the form, the device and I need the space. However I do miss the ability to play my music (on the iPhone) again, almost everywhere. iPhone docks started to appear almost everywhere, which meant you could play your music everywhere. I miss that.

All in all, the BlackBerry is great. It’s not better than the iPhone, but that never was it’s point. I think that in the end, Apple & BlackBerry will be the only 2 remaining players left because they target two completely different markets. As long as they keep doing their thing, they’ll be allright.

Uhum, didn’t you forget Android?

I don’t see a great future for Android. The fact they have an open-source platform, and that every operator has the right to modify that platform (mostly to add country-specific gadgets that slow down and bloat your device that nobody uses) and the fact they’ve got dozens of devices with specifically different technical specifications will consume itself. I have to deal with drivers, devices, incompabilities and such on my desktop, I don’t want them on my smartphone. Nor do I want an antivirus and what not. Unless Google is going to get a grip on their product, and restrict modifications or transform it to a closed-source platform (which also had it’s disadvantages) they’re going to go deeper and deeper down the rabbithole. It’s going to become the Linux of smartphones, and the only reason it’ll sell is because it’s cheap and customizeable. They have to put user-experience first (like Apple & Bb) even if that diminishes their popularity (you’ll always have haters, and my younger sister didn’t buy one because it was customizable…)

Anyway, this is just a small breakdown on the two devices, a small comparison. In no way is this comprehensive or anything, it’s just a personal thought about it.

Cheers!

PS : Some exciting shoots coming up second half of this year, and there’ll be a lot more BTS-video!
PS2 : My sister now has a BlackBerry. Enough said.

Alice in Wonderland

Hi folks!

No no, I’m not dead. Just burried. Burried under work that is. It’s been quite hectic these past few weeks, but i’ve summoned up the courage, and the time to write a new blogpost. I’ve done a ton of postprocessing lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s like riding a bike. The more you do it, the better you get at it, but if you don’t do it for a while, you’ll still know how to do it later on.

I’m a big fan of training your skills. Eversince the digital awakening, in which dSLR’s became cheaper and cheaper, more and more pictures started to appear. People are getting better and better at making pictures, and that’s where you have to stand out. I’ll never forget this quote from Charles Darwin, that I read in one of my textbooks once :

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

This is very true as well for photographers. We have to learn new skills. Some people loath the existence of photoshop,and moarn the death of analog photography but just like evolution, it’s a rite of passage, and one that is inevitable. For photographers,today, it’s just as important to know how to fix your exposure in photoshop as know how to develop film in a darkroom, 50 years ago.

Anyway, that’s it for phylosophical part of the day, onto shooting!

My latest shoot was a film-noir theme inspired shoot, with 2 models. I really wanted to catch that grungy, 60’s film noir feeling in the shoot. It turned out to be a mixture of Alice in Wonderland, if she had been a femme fatale. I’m a fan of these images, and the mood they portray.

The colors weren’t adjusted in photoshop. I placed Blue & Red colour gels on my studio strobes.

The light, coming from the lamp, is a Nikon SB-800 speedlight placed inside!

I’ve created a lighting diagram for you to study with the help Kevin Kertz’s amazing freeware.

Next, we moved onto some more fashion work.

Here we really put the focus on the model’s bracelet, which was the key thing I was going for during this shoot.

And we finished it off with a fun shot. The key idea was, ‘Hmm, my train just left but I don’t really care.’

Everything was shot with Nikon dSlr’s, Nikon & Sigma lenses, Lastolite Professional strobes, and Nikon Speedlights.

I hope you all enjoyed this, and be sure to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and to keep checking for updates!

Cheers,

Morgan