29 Sep 09 Guide to posing the female model
I have now worked with, and reviewed, several posing guides and they all do there job but now I want to direct your attention to the “Guide to posing the female model”
This guide has, like all the other guides, a lot of poses (1104 to be precise) BUT unlike all those other guides it is so easy to use on location.
Most of the guides you find are on DVD, CD, PDF and as a web page, and although they do the job it is not easy to take them with you on location and yes you can print most of them but you are hampered with a A4 ring binder which is not the handiest format.
This guide however fits in your photo bag or back pocket as it has a very handy format and is ring bound which makes it easy to use. You don’t have to remember the poses you want to use in the shoot and in communication with your model you can show what you want. For me this is the main attraction of this guide.
Being Dutch, and with that have a language barrier if it come to precise description of what I want I can discuss and show the model exactly the pose I want. As an extra benefit when the model sees the poses she comes up with others by herself.
The poses in the book are very useful and of great diversity,nicely grouped, and easy to convert to posing sequences the model can perform.
I use this now on every model or portrait shoot I do and it works!
The price of the guide is around $60 and is money well spent. The guide can be bought online at: http://www.photographytips.com/page.cfm/5858
With this guid on the market it would be good if the author creates simular guides for male, child and group modeling as I think that there is a market for that.
Happy shooting
Tags: female model, Freelance photography, modeling, photo model, pocket book, portfolio, portrait, posing, posing guide, wedding
28 Aug 09 9 ways to improve your portraits
1 Shoot in natural light when possible.
Natural light is beautiful to shoot in for more then 1 reason. We have from nature only one light source, the sun, and feel that portraits taken with one light source, natural or studio, more pleasing then when we use multiple light sources light flashes and so on. The beauty, and difficulty, with natural light is that is changes, it is never the same and as a photography you must take advantage of this. Look at how the light models the face, how it creates shadows, and start thinking how you can use it.
2 Natural light over reflector, reflector over flash
This is the best advice I ever got and stand by it. Your first light source is natural light, use it! If the shadows are to deep or the light is harsh and the contrast high then use a reflector to lighten the darker shadows and only if you can solve it with a reflector use and , of camera, flash for the best results.
3 Use diffusion
Harsh midday sunlight is the worse light to photograph in. It shows every line and general makes you subject look older. Clouds on the other hand acts as a giant soft box and fold the light nicely around the face and hide those lines with soft shadows. If you are forced to shoot in full sunlight try to find some shadow to put your subject in. The first tree in a forest is perfect. The crown of the tree with its leave will filter the sunlight but you have enough light to shot with some speed. If you go deeper in the forest the reflecting light falls away. If this isn’t possible and you have no shadow available shot against the sun and use a reflector or flash to lighten the face which is now in the shadow.
4 Shoot with a low aperture
To let your subject stand-out against the background use a low aperture (F2.8 – F4). This created a shallow dept-of-field and you subject become a natural focal point of the image.
5 Use longer lenses
To enhance the shallow dept-of-field effect start using longer lenses in your photo shoots. I am using two lenses for my portrait work: My 90mm Macro F2.8 which is beautiful sharp even at F2.8 and creates a very nice dept-of-field and my Nikon zoom 80-200mm F2.8. The last one I use mostly at the 200mm setting in combination with F2.8 which creates beautiful portraits. You need some space to step back from your model and the directing of the poses is a bit more difficult but worth the effort.
6 Angles
Instead of shooting from eye-level start taking images from different angles, use a stepladder, lie on the ground, do whatever it takes to get something different. Not only will it set your portrait aside from the “point-and-shoot” approach it will make you discover that you can do more.
7 Direct your subject
Most beginning photographers find this the hardest bit of portrait photography, I know I thought it was a hard thing to do but if you leave it to the sitter you will get mostly the same boring picture. So you need to direct them for several reasons. You want the light to fall on their face so it brings the best out of it BUT not only their face, their body. Is the subject very slim, more filled and so. The way you pose them is the way it goes on the photo and the flattering you can do this the more sales you will get in the end.
8 Posing sheets
Create your own posing sheet with your favourite poses. If you struggle with ideas then there are many posing guides on the market as you can find in my blog. They are reasonable priced and very handy to create your own preferable sheet. I have 5 of them: female, male, child, couple and group and this works for me every time. The biggest advantage is that if you have a problem in telling your subject how to sit, stand or lie you can show them (I will write another article on how to use them next month).
9 Practise, Practise, Practise
Nothing is this world will improve your portrait photography as must as take pictures. If portrait photography is what you want to do then start taking a picture a day and if possible take it every day a bit different.
Happy shooting
Tags: model, natural light, photography, portrait, posing, posing guides, Theo van Stratum
13 Aug 09 The Posing Guide (2)
In my search for posing guides I came across the posing guide of the Film Photo Academy. Although their guide is based on nude photography it is the most useful guide for all sort of model photography I have came across (and I have seen many). Simon Walden is taken you through many series of posing which are organised as follows:
- Lying – Working on the floor
- Sofa – using a settee
- Top Down 1 – Using drapes
- Top Down 2 – Looking down
- Standing 1 – Long shot standing poses
- Standing 2 – Mid shot standing poses
- Headshots 1 – Waist upwards
- Headshots 2 – Close up headshots
- Sitting 1 – Sitting poses on the floor
- Sitting 2 – Close to sitting poses on the floor
- Sitting 3 – On a posing block
- Sitting 4 – Other posing block positions
- Chair – Poses using a chair as a prop
As you can see a lot of variation BUT what is so unique about this posing guide is, is that it allows the photographer and model to go in sequence from one pose to another and make the session painless, something I haven’t seen in all the other posing books in the market.
For a price of £9.50 you get all the poses in PDF format (so you can print them) in automatic sequence slideshows and manual slideshows. Those last slideshows are specially handy for models who want to learn those sequences and become models who can pose.
This is what Simon himself says about the guide:
For photographers
This guide has a collection of shows you can run through in several ways. The automaticguides page through the poses in sequence – from this you can see how your posing session can move from step to step – building on each pose as you go – giving you lots of styles of posing,
quickly but effectively. Watch these sequences and note how the model moves from one to another – often small moves make big differences.The manual guides let you page through each style of posing, one image at a time, you can take your time to examine how the pose works, what works well, what areas you need to be careful with and how you can translate it to your own working method.
By the end of this book you will have learnt new, time saving techniques for creating professional poses. You will know how to sequence a photographic set to make your model look their best – and give you control and professionalism in your posing.
For Models
Watch the automatic sequences – in particular note how the model is quickly moving from one pose to another, in this way you show your photographer client your many different looks. You will be more professional and more rewarding for the photographer.
As well as looking at the overall pose shape, look at how the details work, what shape are the hands, how are the feet posed, how is the tummy held and where are the hips supported. Use the manual guides to look more closely at the poses.
By the end of this guide you will have learnt new poses, and be able to offer a better and more professional service to your clients.
Tags: artistic nude, glamour, guide, model, model guide, nude, photography, portfolio, portrait, posing, Simon Walden, Studio
02 Aug 09 Photo shoot
Hi,
Yesterday I had my first shoot with a wanabe model, Emma Evans. The goal for both was to build on our portfolios. Emma had done some shoot but mostly indoors. We both wanted to do some outdoor shots.
Sarah, a friend who is a make-up artist, provided the make-up. Working in the UK means that we are alway depending on the weather and guess what: it was raining. Due to that we started with some inhouse shots in natural light.
Sitting on the stair and opening the frontdoor to let the light in resulted in the portrait. I used a Nikon D200, 50mm F1.8, handheld light meter and a reflector to bounce some light back on the face.
Face the light through the frontdoor.
After an half hour the rain stopped and we walked to the park around the corner to do some outdoor shots.
Due to the clouds a very soft light resulted in the very natural portrait.
For the outdoor shot I used me Nikon 70-200 f.28 lens at F4.
Below some other photos of the shoot.
Happy shooting
Tags: model, narural light, outdoor, portrait
09 Apr 09 marking of assignment 6
As usual the marking is very, very quick and here is the reaction of my tutor:
Hi again Theo Perhaps I won’t be as ruthless as George suggests, but I’ll offer as useful feedback as I can. A 1 Technically this is a great shot: good use of shallow depth of field, lovely lighting, and a pleasant crop. Only his slightly uncomfortable mouth position could perhaps have been improved, either by you waiting to fire in another moment or by directing him to close it. 2 Great use of a reflector to throw some light back up into her face; light from below always looks flattering but here it does not overpower the image, just fills the shadows as you intended. 3 Yes this is a lovely shot and I can see why they liked it. The improvement (I expect you identified this already) would be to have been able to shoot from slightly higher to hide her nappy! But you were grabbing a moment here, as they say. 4 Very well lit (good thinking about distraction!); sofa is not ideal but when shooting in someone’s home we have to do what we can with what is available. B In short we usually see that the more diffused the light then the more flattering. Direct light means harsh modelling, which is unforgiving. We also see how moving the lights around and changing their distances gives us more direct light or more diffused light, ie how to create the effects that we talked about. You’ve seen these ideas fully though Theo and will do further when you get your lights; nice shots here.
Tags: freee-lance, Marking os assignment 6, model, portrait, The photography Institute
08 Apr 09 Assignment 6
Finally after a few months I had time to finish assignment 6
the assignment is :
Submit a photo of a man, and a photo of a woman using natural light and artificial light and explain why you lit them the way you did and reveal the Vanity Index you were using. Be creative and use your imagination. If you don’t have lighting gear improvise with table lamps or whatever you have at hand for the artificial light. Do your best…I will critique them and I will be ruthless.
and came up with the following images:
Ian asked me for some photos to put on the web which resulted in this image. It is natural light with a reflector from the right side. 100 iso, F2.8 125s. This will give a vanity index of 1 (I believe) but was is more a compelling image. I darkened the edges of the photo in photoshop to get the face the focus point of light.
Image 2 – Maureen.
My wife is not pleased being my study subject all the time but was willing to pose for this image. Natural light with an reflector from below to create a kind of vanity index 5 in this (lighten up the shadows in the face). I took this image against the tree for the contrast between the face and the tree.
Image 3 and 4 are from two different sessions, which where paid for (my first sell 
) I know the assignment states man and woman but I really like these images and they are with artificial light.
In both situations I used the same lighting, two flashes bounced against the ceiling.
Image 3 – Annabel is one of a set I made for the family in which they wanted to be photographed as a family. After the sessions I was starting to put my stuff away and saw Annabell sitting there looking at at her father and quickly took this image and sold it 4 times know to their family.
Image 4 – Mark is a similar setting only this time through the family part he didn’t wanted to sit still or be a part of it. After 15 minute I stopped and asked the parent if there was something that he liked so we could distract him. His mother cam-up with the film Mama Mia and he started to dance, I was forgotten. This resulted in 10 photos of him like this, dancing.
I am getting a professional lighting equipment but didn’t wanted to wait any longer as this assignment has taken too long already.
Happy shooting
Tags: Annabell, Assignment 6, Ian, Mark, Maureen, model, portrait, portrait photography, The Photo Student, The photography Institute
06 Apr 09 How to create your portfolio (6)
I have done my first two photo sessions for my portfolio. As I wrote earlier I would approach some people at work and have a good response on that. So booked a few session by the people at home. This of course gives you an extra handicap as you are in their environment which makes it a little harder from your point of view. You need to take your lighting with you, as you don’t know what you are up against, is there room? is there a nice place, background and so on. This means that you need to be prepared to improvise quickly. On the other hand the people (sitters) you take photos of are more relaxed then as they would be in a studio and this assures you, mostly, of natural photos.
In my case I had my ProlIne studio kit with me and was lucky with the possibilities on location. The first family had some space and very light rooms. As this are groups and not an individual portrait I wanted to have as much even light as possible and needed to work with an high aperture! This because there was a child involved and they don’t sit still on demand. So I took two lights with big dishes and bounced then to the ceiling from behind my, on full power. This ensured me of a working aperture of F8 which was in combination with a 35mm lens enough to have everything sharp. We had a shooting session of an hour and came out with 110 images. After shifting I ended up with 57 images that where worth working on and showing to the family.
As you can see we see the background sharp but wasn’t really a problem BUT for the next image I worked in photo shop to get the best out of that as I though that was a winner.
This image is not sold 3 times and part of my branding.
The second family didn’t had a very light room so I had a problem with colour casts from the walls. I was lucky however that the ceilings where cream and was able to use that. Again it was a group with children so a lot of light and I used the same setup as before. We shot 98 images and got this as one of the images
The little boy was giving us a hard time as he didn’t wanted to be there. So after 20 minutes we took a rest and I was talking to the mother if she knew something that would settle him down. She mentioned that he loved the film “Mama Mia” and that he start dancing on it. So we place a television behind me and played the movie, which gave us 20 shots like this.
By improvising we created a few images which are selling good.
Till the next time
Tags: aperture, artificial light, color balance, colour balance, correct lighting, create a portfolio, environmental portrait, F/Stop, freelance, Freelance photography, How to create a portfolio, model, models, Photo portfolios, photo student, Photography course, Photography Institute, photography study, Photoshop CS4, portfolio, portrait, portrait photographer, portrait photography, Proline, ProLine 300 Studio kit, studio flash, studio lighting, The Photo Student, The photography Institute, Theo van Stratum
26 Mar 09 Studio lighting
There is abook on the market of which I would like to tell you.
If you want to improve your lighting skills and to be able to light everything you want then this is the book for you. It doesn’t teach you how to set your light every time the same but teaches you to think about what light does and what you want to get out of the image you want to create. I got the book two days ago and read it in one setting and it changed the way I think about light and my images in the studio.
Most of the images in the book are taken with film and not digital BUT as this is a book about light and lighing techniques that is not a problem at all.
This is one of the best books I have ever read about this subject and believe me I have read many.
You can buy it from amazon, just click on the image and it will bring you to the page.
Happy shooting and till the next time
Tags: artificial light, back lighting, book, correct lighting, create a portfolio, exposure, female model, flash light, flood lights, Freelance photography, incident metering, light metering, male model, model, models, moods, Photo course, Photo flash, Photo portfolios, photo projects, photo student, photographic techniques, Photography course, Photography Institute, photography study, portfolio, portrait, portrait photographer, portrait photography, product photography, professional lighting, ProLine 300 Studio kit, reflective metering, stock photo, stock photograph, student images, Studio, studio flash, studio lighting, studion lights, The Photo Student, The photography Institute
19 Mar 09 How to create your portfolio (5)
The first shoot is done and we have some photos to show for. I have used Paramount lighting which I show here.
Paramount 1
Paramount 2
It was difficult to begin with and we shot around 40 images. I ended up with 17 that were good and the two above I liked myself the most. The model will have a look to see what he likes and we will add that to the portfolio. As lighting equipment I used the ProLine 300 Kit which was very easy to work with and I feel gives a good result. I made 1 mistake and that was that I had the white-balance on auto and I should had this on 5600 Kelvin. This resulted in a lot of work to get the colour balance right but is a lesson for the next time. Look at your camera settings before the shoot!
Tags: artificial light, color balance, color balance correction, colour balance, Colour management, create a portfolio, environmental portrait, flash light, freelance, Freelance photography, light metering, male model, model, models, Photo course, photo editing, Photo flash, Photo portfolios, photo student, Photography course, Photography Institute, photography study, photoshop colour balance correction, portfolio, portrait, portrait photographer, portrait photography, professional lighting, Proline, ProLine 300 Studio kit, Studio, studio flash, studio lighting, The Photo Student, The photography Institute, Theo van Stratum
18 Mar 09 How to Create a portfolio(4)
The first problems arrive. I would have a session yesterday evening but the model backed-out and it was a miss. This will happen a lot if the models you use are doing it for a favour. Don’t take this personal and just see it as a learning curve, you need to have more appointments then one. Tonight I have another male-model and we see how that goes.
In the weekend of the 27th of this month I have three appointments to take photos of families at there place which gives a completely other challenge as we are not in my environment. The rest of the week I am going to ask more female models to sit as I am that missing now.
Happy shooting
Tags: artificial light, correct lighting, create a portfolio, customers, environmental portrait, female model, freelance, Freelance photography, How to create a portfolio, male model, model, models, natural light, Photo portfolios, photo projects, Photography Institute, portfolio, portrait, portrait photographer, portrait photography, professional lighting, studio flash, studio lighting, The Photo Student, The photography Institute, Theo van Stratum
