Nikon D3x « Jurgen Doom

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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Using Nikon SB900 speedlights for creative photographic lighting

12 November 2010 om 13:16 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie advertising,Camera,Commercial,Flashlight,Gear,Photography,Sports,Uncategorized,workshop fotografie

As an advertising photographer, creating images for clients that will make their products look good, I try to be creative with my photography and my gear. Let’s look at an example.

Image of a gymnast.

Imagine a huge indoor sports hall. Imagine the yellow/green illumination these sports halls typically have and that cast an “ugly” type of light on the subjects (which you don’t want, you want your subject to look good). Imagine the cluttered background one usually gets in such sport halls, which will destroy the impact of the image ……

Situation - available light.

As a photographer I try to overcome problems – let’ call them challenges – instead of creating them.

When I had to photograph a young sportster, doing all sorts of neck-braking, leg-twisting, arm-bending exercices on a gym device, I had to be creative to get a shot of it that could be used as a double spread in the brochure.

Firstly, I figured I wanted to eliminate the natural lighting of the sports hall. Using a shutter speed of 1/250th at ISO 100 on a Nikon D3x (24Mpix) was good enough at f 4 to eliminate the ambiant light. That means, if you would not use flash, you would end up with a dark (black) image at these settings.

Next step was to bring in the Nikon SB900 speedlights. I used 3 of them. The main flash comes from directly above me (on-axis with the lens) but shot through a softbox in order to soften the light. It provides the main light for the subject, but because we are working very close to the subject and far away from the background, that light doesn’t reach the background, so it remains black (or under exposed).

The last step was to position two SB900 speedlights behind the subject, at either side of the girl, and aimed towards her. Those light provide the rim lighting, which make her stand out from the background even more.

The image was ultimately used as a double spread in the SPORTA brochure as shown above.

All shots were taken on the Nikon D3x, using a 85mm f1.4 lens and using the Nikon CLS lighting system.

Alternative image of the gymnast.

Nikon CLS system is a fantastic system to work on-location. It’s versatile, works well, easy to handle and learn and enables a photographer to be very flexible in his work and quickly adapt to different situations and lighting conditions. I use it all the time in my photography.

If you want to learn it as well, I run workshops on photography and flash photograph (also for users of other brands).

More to come,

Jürgen

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Architectural photography – assignment for CES

29 October 2010 om 14:01 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Architecture,Camera,Commercial,Photography

One of my passions in photography is architectural photography. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise with my background in engineering yet it is not an easy discipline in photography. Architectural photography is a part of photography that is often looked upon as an easy thing to do. There is just the building and the photographer, so take the image and you’re done.

Architectural photography

Not so.

When you want to photograph building, you encounter difficult kind of problems.

The first problem is, or can be, the weather. It is a fact of life that images often just sparkle so much more when you photograph in excellent weather. A sun-lit building is always much more interesting than that same building lit by an overcast sky.

However, the best time to photograph a building – generally spoken – is at dusk or dawn. Just after or before sunrise, a skilled photographer is able to blend artificial light (in and/or outside the building) in such a way that those two light sources match each other well.

architectural photography - matching ambiant light with artificial light

The second problem one can encounter is the problem of having to photograph from a point of view that is too close to the building. That results in a camera that will be tilted in an angle towards the building, but with a detrimental effect to the verticals of the building. By tilting a camera, the verticals of a building will not remain parallell, which results into an image that doesn’t hold.

To remedy this problem, an architectural photographer will always use a perspective control lens (PC lens), enabling the photographer to “tilt-shift” the lens in such a way that the verticals of a building remain vertical.

I haven’t spoken yet about obstacles, such as trees, other buildings, roadworks, even blocked access (fences, guards at gates, etc …..), which are all possible problems an architectural photographer must take into account when preparing for a shoot.

For CES, an engineering firm, I had to photograph a series of buildings of which they had redone most of the HVAC and engineering works. CES wanted images of the building, preferably during daylight. Nonetheless, as a photographer you try to give your client more than they expect, which is what I always try to do.

Herewith two screen shots of their brand new website (created by Jolux Webdesign). All images are shot on a Nikon D3x (24.5Mpix) with a Nikon 24 PC lens or a Nikon 14-24mm wide angle lens.

Architectural photography - website of CES

I would also like to salute CES, who entrusted me with this project. Meanwhile we have established a lasting relationship, which is much more rewarding than any kind of financial reward.

Looking forward to producing more images ….

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Nikon D3x « Jurgen Doom

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Corporate portrait photography for MBS

Using Nikon SB900 speedlights for creative photographic lighting

Architectural photography – assignment for CES