Flashlight « Jurgen Doom

Ranger Quadra – first impressions

18 October 2011 om 11:13 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Commercial,corporate photography,Flashlight,Gear,Ranger Quadra,Uncategorized

For a very long time I’ve been wondering whether I would buy a Ranger Quadra, Elinchrom’s portable flash set.

I’m known for my ability to pull of almost any type of lighting at any type of location. OK, there are limitations to what I can do and often those limitations are often due to the maximum amount of power of my flashes. Since I’ve always got 5 SB900 Nikon flashes in my bag, I’m not that often confronted with aforementioned power limitations. By adding another flash I can often solve the problem instantly. Furthermore, with Nikon’s ability for high-speed sync, which allows one to photograph beyond the flash sync speed and use large apertures, I wasn’t really convinced that an additional flash set that hasn’t got these abilities, such as the Ranger Quadra, would add much extra value to my gear (and ultimately my photography). Lastly, when I knew I would need a lot of power, I would simply take my studio lights (Elinchrom as well) on location.

And that is just what sometimes created problems, as not all locations would have a “mains” to plug in my studio flash set. In adition, lugging around with 3 flash heads and stands is not always possible/desirable. Have you ever tried boarding a plane with a studio flash set? I wouldn’t want to dream of trying to do this.

So, enter the Ranger Quadra. I had a first good look at it at Photokina in Cologne last year (September 2010) and decided against it. Too big to be small, too small to be big was my impression. But somehow the Ranger kept coming back in my mind, especially when I was out there, photographing in bright daylight ….

Eventually I decided to bite the bullet and give in to what I should have done a long time ago and bought a set consisting of two flash heads, two batteries, two stands and two flash adaptors (so I can use my studio soft boxes, snoots and grids on the Ranger as well). I was also adviced by the people at Servix, where I bought the Ranger, to buy two extension chords of 5 meter, in order to be able to put both flashes as far as 10m apart from each other.

I started experimenting with the Ranger at home, in studio, which is a safe environment. I photographed a few friends who where so kind to sit for me for a portrait session.

portrait with Ranger Quadra Elinchrom by Jürgen Doom

I then started using the Ranger Quadra for commercial assignments. When I started out taking these images, I quickly realised how easy it was to use the Quadra on location and how powerful they are. Really loved to work with it. Images were made for a construction company (Suerickx group, consisting of Icopan, Cosenco and Building Services).

Corporate shoot with Ranger Quadra Elinchrom by Jürgen Doom

Thanks to the Ranger I was able to fully control the lighting and keep the contrast in perfect balance.

Lastly, I’d like to share an image taken for a accountancy firm Moore Stephens Verschelden. I had to photograph the CEO in a setting of containers. The brief was to photograph the person in the environment, with the environment prominent in the photograph. The CEO was lit by 1 flash head.

Corporate shoot with Ranger Quadra Elinchrom by Jürgen Doom

Could I have done these shots with my Nikons SB900? Probably yes. Was it easier to photograph them with my Ranger Quadra? Maybe, maybe not. Was it comfortable to photograph this with the power of a Ranger Quadra? Absolutely yes!

So, in brief, the bottom line is that from now on I don’t leave the house without a small case, consisting of two flash heads and a bag of stands, which allows me to work very comfortably on location. And comfort comes at a price, which I’m happy to pay for when it comes to lighting …

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Portrait photos for profile image on social media

8 September 2011 om 10:06 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Camera,Flashlight,fotografie,photographer,Photography,Portrait,strobist,Studio

I have recently written a blog post about the quality of profile photographs for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You can find it here.

Recently I was contacted via the contact page of my website by …. my spouse! She asked me if she could make an appointment for a portrait session in order to get photographs for social media. Since my wife has access to my calender, she proposed a day and time I was available. So there was no possible escape for me … ! Photographing people who are close to you is even more difficult than photographing people who are not in your circle of relatives and friends …

Nonetheless, herewith a selection of images, shot on Nikon D3, 85mm 1.4 at f/4, 1/250. I used 3 flashes (Nikon SB900) using Nikon’s CLS system.

: Portrait and profile photograph for social network sites

: Portrait and profile photo for social media

: Portrait and profile photo for social media

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From workshop model to cover girl – it’s just a small flash away …

6 September 2011 om 10:57 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie cover,fashion,fashion photography,Flashlight,fotografie,photographer,Photography,strobist,workshop,workshop fotografie

From model to cover, it sounds just like the title of a new workshop. Well, it was during a Strobist workshop – a workshop on flash photography with small, portably reportage flashes – that this image was created.

After the participants had asked me a lot about how to get a white background white, or how to get it black, I asked our model Shauni if she could pose for me for a few minutes.

I had placed 2 small flashes – Nikon SB900 – on either side of Shauni, using umbrellas and triggered boths flashes with Nikons CLS-system. The only thing I added to the creative mix was a silver reflector to throw the light back at Shauni, in order to create soft, beautiful light (which she deserves).

The result is as can be seen on the cover of Shoot magazine. In this particular issue, which is on-sale in Belgium from now on, I have written an article – together with Piet Van den Eynde, colleague and partner in crime for the flash workshops – about the Nikon CLS – system.

Anyhow, this is the result as it appears on the cover of the magazine.

: Cover for Shoot magazine, shot during a workshop on flash photography

And that’s how a model for a workshop can end up as a model of the cover of a photography magazine. Thanks Shauni!

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Model photography at Calumet workshop for Strobists.

1 September 2011 om 15:33 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Flashlight,Photography,workshop fotografie

I was asked to host a series of strobist workshop at the recent Calumet “Test the very best” day near Ghent some time in June.

The 3 workshops I hosted were “strobist for beginners”, strobist for users” and “strobist for pro’s”. For each and every workshop I had a model which I could use to photograph in order to show some lighting techniques.

During the last workshop (Strobist for pro’s) I had model Louise. I asked Louise to pose “indoor”, in an industrial setting (some sort of glass house), where I demonstrated a technique whereby one uses 3 off-camera flashes in conjunction with color gels.

In this case I used Nikon’s SB900’s in Nikon’s CLS-system. Louise was lit by a Calumet striplight (key light). In the back one notices the second speedlight – which, in the final image, looks like a lightbulb. Indeed, it was gelled to give it some warmth. A third flash was used to lit the background behind Louise.

This is the final result (both in color and black and white)

strobist workshop for Calumet

workshop for Strobists at Calumet

I also took a photograph of Louise without the flash in the back visible in the frame.

: Calumet workshop for strobists

And lastly I had some time to play around with the white balans settings, which creates a completely different color scheme ….

: Calumet strobist workshop

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Portrait photography – profile photos for social media

2 August 2011 om 15:00 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Flashlight,Photography,Portrait,Uncategorized

It comes to no surprise that choosing the right profile photo for social media – such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook – can be fairly important.

OK, it’s a different story for when you want to post something via a private Facebook account. But that story changes a bit when you look for a profile photo to use for your company Facebook profile, your Twitter stream or – most important of all – your professional LinkedIn profile.

The people at INXCO were well aware of this and asked me to make portraits of their employees and specifically to use with social media.

INXCO is a young and dynamic company, active in the field of communication and innovation for companies.

They wanted tight headshots against a fairle dark background and the images needed to be used in a square format (which is the format of profile photos in social media).

All the images were made in their kitchen, against a grey wall. I used two different lighting setups by using Nikon SB900 Speedlights and Nikon’s CLS system. As for the camera, I used the Nikon D3s with an 85mm Tilt Shift lens (manual focus). All images are cropped in the square format, but I left one image in it’s original format in order to see how it also could be used for other purposes (print media, etc …).

: Portrait photograph for social media

: Portrait photograph for social media

: Portrait photograph for social media

: Portrait photograph for social media

: Portrait photograph for social media

: Portrait photograph for social media

(more…)

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Real estate photographer in Belgium.

15 April 2011 om 12:19 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Architecture,Commercial,Flashlight,fotografie,photographer,Photography,real estate photographer,real estate photography

It’s a tough life for any real estate photographer in Belgium. Have you ever checked the photography on a Belgian real estate website already? Apalling, to say the least. That’s because people in Belgium don’t understand the importance of marketing and the power of images and photography. The general idea in Belgium is that you’d rather do it yourself and not spend any money on it. Consequently, the photography on the websites doesn’t show the full potential of the place you’re trying to sell, so you’re not getting the attention the place deserves and in doing so, you potentially loose a lot of money on the sale afterwards (which would make up for the cost of a photographer). Why people do this really beats me. I’ve written it down in this blogpost, where one sees the “before” and “after” of a house that went up for sale at at much higher price than initially planned – and was consequently sold at that price because it drew a large crowd of people coming to have a look at it.

Nevertheless, there are still people who see the value in real estate photography. Notary/solicitor De Jonghe from Ostend contacted me in order to photograph an Irish Pub with hotel right in the heart of the city. So I went down to the “Celtic Ireland” in the Langestraat in Ostend to photograph the interior of the pub and the hotel.

Amongst the most important parts of a pub the counter for sure is one. In this Irish pub the counter was a beautiful but humongous one that had to be lit in a professional way.

So, by just using available light, this is what showed up on my screen – an underexposed image with a few spots of light.

: vastgoedfotografie

By adapting my shutter speed I tried to draw-in more available light in order to establish my basic exposure.

: vastgoedfotografie

Lastly, I placed a few flashes (type Nikon SB900 speedlights), in order to open up the dark areas in the scene, thereby creating a warm atmosphere.

: vastgoedfotografie

The same technique was used to light a part of the pub with very little available light. The first (mainly backlit) shot shows a rather dull image.

: vastgoedfotografie

But with the use of carefully placed speedlights (there are 4 in this particular image) you can create a much more interesting photograph.

: vastgoedfotografie

All the above images have been made and post-processed without the use of Photoshop. But sometimes it just is too difficult to get the image right in one shot, especially when you’re working within time constraints and with limitations of gear. I usually carry about 4 to 5 flashes around, but for this particular shot it would have been very time consuming and technically not so easy to create the image in-camera. So I opted for the photoshop route. That meant that I had to shoot the overhead stained glass – which was much brighter than the interiour – seperately from the interor and then ultimately combine both images in photoshop to create the final image.

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie – finale foto

Lastly, I’m posting a few extra shots of the interior. If you’re interested, the place is up for sale and will be sold on the first of June 2011 in Ostend.

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie

: vastgoedfotografie

Al images are made with Nikon D3s and a Nikon 24mm PC (Tilt-Shift) lens. The flashes (Nikon SB900) are used through the Nikon CLS system.

In a next blog post I will show the hotel rooms.

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on how to take a group photograph …

9 March 2011 om 18:03 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Flashlight,Group photograph,Photography,Portrait,Studio

Remember my previous post? I talked about portrait photography for MBS but also mentioned we photographed a the whole team as a group inside the house in which we photographed the individual portraits. Well, I didn’t include the making of the group photographt in the previous post as I wanted to keep it for a seperate post.

The group photograph we took of the staff at MBS was done in a living room. They had seen a group photograph of a father and his 4 sons I did a while ago and they wanted something along those lines for their formal group photograph. Therefore, we set up a mobile studio containing a background system with white background paper and 3 Elinchrome strobes (RX600). I used 1 large Chimera softbox on the strobe facing the group and two gridded strobes aimed at the background in order to illuminate the white background (as to render it as white as possible without blowing it out too much). The grids I used in order to reduce the spill on to the people in the group, coming strait out of the strobes. This is something I wouldn’t need to do in studio, but on location, where space comes at a premium, this was necessary.

You can see part of the setup in this image, which I took as part of my test images to judge the lighting and position of the people in the group.

group photograph

Notice also the white curtain I had to use in order to get the group positioned against a white backdrop. As the group photograph was to be cleaned-up afterwards in post production, it didn’t bother me too much.

So this is what it finally looked like. I positioned myself a bit higher up in order to create more depth in the image, which was liked very much by the group (and myself …). Image photographer on a Nikon D3x. Flashes triggered with Elinchrome Skyport.

group photograph

Group photographs are sometimes a nightmare for photographers, as there are so many things that can go wrong …. but on this one, it was almost plain sailing!

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Corporate portrait photography for MBS

7 March 2011 om 14:52 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie advertising,Commercial,Flashlight,Gear,Photography,Portrait

As a corporate photographer, operating in Belgium and in particular in the Brussels area, I’m often confronted with different types of locations and surrounding in which I have to come up with images. For the Manpower Business Solutions shoot, this was also the case. We had agreed to meet up with the “models” – the staff at MBS – in a house near Overijse in order to create corporate portraits of them that were to be used on their brochures, flyers and advertising material. I would bring all the necessary elements such as backdrops, studio lighting and gear to create the photographs and had asked my make-up artist Ans Brugmans to do the make-up on the models.

But what I hadn’t “budgeted” for was my health. The night before the shoot I became ill, even in such a way that in the morning – the photo shoot was planned in the afternoon – I phoned my colleague Evi and asked her if she could assist me and perhaps take on the shoot herself (with me directing a bit).

Luckily, during the course of the day I recovered somewhat so that I eventually managed to do all the photography myself, but I was more than happy to having Evi, my last-minute assistant, to lug around with gear and stuff …. Hey, that’s called “emancipation” ….

So what we did was basically a few corporate portraits, a group photograph and an outdoor group photograph of the whole team. For the image I took inside, I set up a white studio background and used my studio lighting (Elinchrome RX600) with 2 softboxes and a gridded backlight. For the image outside I only used my Nikon SB900 strobes, triggered by Pocket Wizards. The portraits were photographed on a Nikon D3s, the group shot on a Nikon D3x.

Despite me not being 100% – although I gave it all – we came up with some interesting photographs and I have just been sent the pdf’s of the publication in which the photographs are being used.

Portrait photography for MBS

Portrait photography for MBS

Portrait photography for MBS

The outside group shot looked like this. Because of in-house decisions, the images had to be delivered in black and white (as with the above images).

Portrait photography for MBS

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Corporate photography – or how to make photos to meet your clients needs

4 March 2011 om 14:47 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie advertising,Commercial,corporate photography,Flashlight,photographer,Photography

As a corporate photographer, specialising in business to business photography, you need to be able to produce photographs that meet your clients needs.

In this particular case, the people at bakker asked me to come up with a series of photos for their new website. They had photographs on their old website, but those were stock images bought from an image bank. They wanted the same look and feel of what they had on their old site, but instead of “generic” photos of models, they wanted to use their own people (in fact, the staff and partners).

So what the client basically wanted was to have images that were fairly evenly lit, with relatively clean backgrounds that breath professionalism. All the shots were to be made at their offices in Antwerp.

I had Ans Brugmans with me as my make-up artist and Jasmijn assisted me with the photography and lighting.

During the course of the day, we did about 8 completely different setups, having to change the lighting each and every time. Within each setup there was often room to move around and play with different compositions.

I used my studio lighting (Elinchrom RX600) in conjunction with my small portable Nikon SB900 strobes in order to create the look we wanted. All images are photographed on a Nikon D3s. During the day I only used 2 prime lenses. One was a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens and the other was a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens). I prefer to work with prime lenses over zoom lenses because it is sharper, has a higher contrast and is generally much lighter than have zooms. On an assignement like this there is no need to work with zoom lenses as you have both your lighting and setup under control. Framing the image is just a matter of moving forwards or backwards in order to compose your image.

Of course, all images were photographer in the RAW format and post processed through Adobe Lightroom.

The images are now used on their site, which looks like this (at www.bakker.be) and which looks stunning (see screenshots below). Website made by Van Katoen (Damien Dubois).

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

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Model photography – shoot with Sylviane Alliet – last setup

3 February 2011 om 10:54 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Flashlight,fotografie,photographer,Photography,Portrait

To end the shoot with Sylviane Alliet, a TFCD project in which we took a number of types of pictures we wanted to make but that we can not always do so when working for an assignment, we we decided to end the day with some images that had a rougher look.

Therefore we went to the “basement” – yes, I can say that I spent some time in the basement with Sylviane – to find a background that matched the character role that Sylviane was playing.

The “industrial background” is illuminated with a Nikon SB900 flash with a CTB filter (to get a cooler atmosphere), while Sylviane was lit by a Nikon SB900 through an umbrella. If I’m not mistaken, I even made it a little warmer with a quarter CTO. Sylviane is also lit from behind, to create some backlight. The result is shown below.

What have we finally learned from this and previous shoots.

1. that it is possible to use a backpack of equipment (Nikon D3s, 4 SB900 flashes, stands, umbrellas and gels) at a location and still get different setups that are fundamentally different

2. that working with a professional model is just fantastic

3.that you do not need much material to make different kind of images

4. that occasionally doing a TFCD is great fun in order to try a few things with or without great results

At the end of the day both Sylviane and I were ready for the scrap heap, but we were pretty happy with the cooperation and results. There are now plans to do something similar, but in an outdoor location …. and I am already looking forward to it!

: model fotografie – shoot met Sylviane

: model fotografie – shoot met Sylviane

model fotografie – shoot met Sylviane

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