On May the 23rd and 24th I’ll be giving a 2-day Portrait Lighting on Location workshop in Oslo, Norway. Since I’ve never visited Oslo and it’s high on my list of cities to visit, I’m extremely thrilled to do this. I really want to thank LIME-reader Martha Lewicka for taking care of the organizational part in Oslo. I love doing workshops abroad but it’s really only possible with a lot of local help, so thanks a lot Martha.

The Workshop:
On Saturday, we’ll start out by going over the basics of light. We are going to learn to recognize good light and shape bad light into good light. In the afternoon we are going to learn how to MAKE the light with small flashes and mix ambient light with flash.
Bert will also discuss equipment choices and will squeeze in lots of tricks of the trade. With lots of real life examples and mini-shoots, we’ll make the theoretical part easy to digest.

On Sunday, you’ll get the chance to put everything you’ve learned into practice on a location shooting day. You will get some fun assignments, that you will work on in small groups under Bert’s guidance.

You don’t need experience with flash, tons of expensive gear or a degree in photography to benefit for this workshop. A decent knowledge of the basics like shutter speed / aperture and the motivation to improve your photography, is all you need.

Pricing and location info
The first day of workshop will take place at P-Hotels in the centre of Oslo, at Grensen 19. On the second day we will be exploring different locations in a walking distance from the city centre. On both days the workshop will start at 10:00 and finish around 18:00.

To celebrate first classes with Bert in Norway this workshop is temporarily offered at the introductory price of 1800NOK*. This offer is valid till May, 9th, 2009. After this date the price will be 2200NOK*.

*All prices including VAT.

If you are interested in attending this workshop, please contact Martha at martha@lewicka.eu or +47 94249112 as soon as possible to secure your seat.

BERT STEPHANI is an internationally known professional photographer, mostly known for his creative portraiture, commercial work and his lighting style. Bert is also a passionate teacher who’s frequently asked to conduct workshops, seminars and lectures in Belgium and the rest of Europe. Bert doesn’t believe in ’secrets’ and is always willing to share everything he knows.

Here is Episode 14 of LIME’s Happy Hour. As always we hope you enjoy it and we are hoping to get lot’s of feedback from all of you using the comments or by sending us an e-mail.

In this Episode :

• What’s up with LIME ? What have we been doing the past week & what have got in store for you in the near future ? This is where you’ll find out !
• Dear LIME In this section we will be answering your questions. Got a question ? Please send it to us @ dearlime@squeezethelime.com
  We’ll be talking about depth of field, hair light and the 70-200 L IS f/2.8
• The feature segment Every week we will be talking about one specific subject. This time we’ll be talking about multimedia. These days the soft- and hardware is available for every photographer. Mixing photography with video, audio, tekst, … may not be interesting for every photographer out there but like it or not, it’s here to stay.

You can listen to this podcast by using the player below or download it as an mp3 (right click/Save As).

We all know mr Murphy, more importantly his law : “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong”. Whether it’s a fashion shoot, a family session or a wedding, sooner or later Murphy will get the drop on you, right ?

We’ve all been there : the shoot is in full force, you are in the zone. Everything is going to plan and one amazing image after the other is being written to your camera’s memory card. Than BAM !!! The card is full, the batteries of your camera fail, a flash unit isn’t firing anymore, the model falls on her face and breaks her nose, etc.

Can this be avoided ? No, not really. One day something will go wrong. Hopefully it will be on a personal project, but if mr Murphy does his job right, it will happen on your most important project of the year…

It happened to me last Saturday : I was shooting my first wedding of 2009. The Christian ceremony is halfway through and the big moment is getting closer : the exchange of vows & rings. I check my CF card in both camera’s : enough shots remaining. Church was darker than Dracula’s tomb so I was using flash on one camera : flash is ready for duty, filled with freshly charged batteries. The priest invites the couple to stand up, hold hands and promise each other eternal loyalty. I slowly sneak closer. The groom looks deep into his brides’ lovely eyes, he takes a deep breath and starts to talk. The bride exchanges a beautiful loving look with her husband to be. My finger instantly presses the shutter button, the mirror claps open, light falls on the sensor and the beautiful moment is eternalised in a digital version on my CF card. NOT … Apparently the freshly charged batteries decided not to provide sufficient power to the flash and the result was an underexposed image. I quickly turn the flash off and on again. The flash powers on but the ready light stays out. Thank you mr Murphy !

So that’s it, the most important moment of the day and the couple only gets underexposed shots … Well, not really. In anticipation of what might go wrong I quickly grab the backup set of AA batteries I put in the pocket of my camera belt the night before, switch out the batteries and keep on going like nothing happened. Take that Murphy’s law !!!!

Yes things can go horribly wrong, but being prepared for the worst allows you to counter most situations. Your client is paying you good money to make sure you are able to handle the assignment, why else would he hire a pro ?

Key to holding Murphy at bay is experience and preparation. Experience comes over time, but preparation is something you have full control over, even when just starting out. Make sure you have backup gear ( a backup camera, a spare flash, fresh sets of batteries, a spare lens in case one get’s damaged, the number of a photographer friend in case you can’t make it or need someone/something to help you out, a backup location in case the first one isn’t accesible, a second model in case one bails on you, etc). Specific situations demand specific precautions/preparations and yes that takes quite a lot of time to work out, but keep in mind that once you have your backup plan for a specific situation, most of it can be recycled into the new backup plan for a new assignment.

Having thought beforehand about what can go wrong and how you would solve it will help you keep your cool in case something really does go wrong one day. You will feel more self confident, less affraid and in control.

Take the time to go over things, prepare for the worst, and mr Murphy will get his ass kicked if he shows up on your shoot !

Pieter

LIME is quite a commitment for both Pieter and me. The time and energy we put into our bastard child, becomes a bit too much at times to be honest. But when we hear that we played a small part in the progress of a LIME-reader, we forget about all the late hours and feel extremely proud and happy.

Guillermo Calderon is a young photographer from Mexico. We chatted a few times on Facebook and he told me about his new project “Soaked”. I encouraged him to go on with the project and when I saw the results I was stunned. In short you could say that his project is about photographing formally dressed people in a bath tub. But it’s about much more. The project gave Guillermo the chance to expand his network, he got lots of attention online and squeezed a magazine article out of it too. He’s also going to publish the project as a book (we’ll keep you posted on that).

Check out the behind-the-scenes video:

Here’s what Guillermo has to say about “Soaked”:

My name is Guillermo Calderón and I’m a Photographer from Mexico City. I’m 25 years old and  since 1999 photography has been my motto.  Since then my main influence  has been the Internet, I usually don’t remember photographers names, that’s a pitty, I’m sure I have lost great work references. I love the work of Annie Leibovitz as well as the work of many blog and flickr photographers, I love to photograph people.
I worked at a school for 4 years teaching photography to kids. It was a great experience having  kids from 12 years old to 18 learning from me,  and even greater, me learning from them. In total I had 6 groups each year, and I met each group 3 times a week. I also work on the school’s yearbook, so each year more than 700 students, teachers  and personnel were in front of my lens. This changed my view from landscape photography towards people and event-journalism type photography (which includes landscapes)
I never had formal photography education, I was almost a Mechanic Engineer, but I went through with Communication Science at the visual media area. This gave me lots of theory that I enjoyed a lot. I do apply that to my photo business but not that much to my images. I think my work, is more documentary-like.
On November 2008, I was unemployed, I wanted to do something on my abundantly spare time, and also I wanted to do something with my photography. I thought about documenting a persons or a couple’s life, but nobody offered the way I wanted to. Then I turn my head into portraits, I looked into Richard Avedon and other authors, I thought about phographing a large number of friends and known persons. Thought about white background, or going to theirs houses, the second was to invasive and I would have little control over it. So I returned to the white background and instead of doing it vertical, it ocurred to me that changing to horizontal would give me a great deal of new expressions. Searching for references I found a cat on a tub and that was it. My white background would be my bathtub or a bathtub. Then I thought about inducing some situations and thats was almost clear for me, dressed people inside a bathtub should be interesting, but dressed soaked people inside a bathtub would give me more variety on the images.
At first  inviting poeple was difficult. I had to convince them about the project. Also I didnt know if each person should be in a different bathtub or not. Maybe I could use showers also.  With the 4 first session it was clear that only one tub would do a great job and it would be easier for me to make two or three appointments daily some days.  I only had some very clear scenarios 1.- My girlfriend on the tub. 2.- A couple 3.-A pregnant friend or her with the baby 4.- 5 BIG friends wearing suit, and one image of  all of them inside, they would be the only ones with full suit inside that tub. There where no other ideas than just the idea of inviting people. There was the idea of exhibition and book printing.
Today I’ve photographed 34 persons inside that tub and theres a big list of people wanting to get inside, but for this project I will only let 50 go inside. The project has been already a great  campaign thats making people know me and my work. I have been required 4 times more for model books, some weddings and other things, and this has given me 3 job interviews with 3 highly know magazines (haven’t take them yet).
I think the lesson on this is to take advantage to the equipment you have and do something,  make yourself be known, let your ideas be known. Show peope of what you’re cappable of, not just talk about it. I think  of photography more like a service, you will please people with a nice service, with nice images and sure they can be art also.
For this project I use:
1 Laptop, 1 Camera Body, 1 Wide angle to normal lens ( although at first I had a 50mm 1.2 and a telephoto zoom nearby) 1 CF card ,1 strobe, 1 model release for each person, and some liters of water for each person also….. and of course the bathtub. The key was the idea, knowing my limitations and keeping it simple.

I didnt give details up there  about my equipment beacuase I think is not decisive, although it helps to have the right equipment for the right assingment. I could have use  a  point and shoot like the Canon G9 ( which I own) but the shutter response would keep me away form decisive moments and faces. Instead I left the G9 for the backstage time lapses and promoting my work.

Guillermo Calderon

I think this project is very inspiring and wish Guillermo all the best with it. You can find more at his Flickr page, his blog, his site and his youtube channel. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is episode 13 of LIME’s Happy Hour. As always we hope you enjoy it and we are hoping to get lot’s of feedback from all of you using the comments or by sending us an e-mail.

In this Episode :

• What’s up with LIME ? What have we been doing the past week & what have got in store for you in the near future ? This is where you’ll find out !
• Dear LIME In this section we will be answering your questions. Got a question ? Please send it to us @ dearlime@squeezethelime.com
  We’ll be talking about shots vs keepers, barbie dolls, the advantages of long lenses and the “look” of our images.
• The feature segment Every week we will be talking about one specific subject. This week we talk about Fear and how to fight it.

You can listen to this podcast by using the player below or download it as an mp3 (right click/Save As).

I decided to post last weeks’ movie (to be seen here) without audio commentary because I liked the atmosphere it projected. Since a lot of you guys posted questions in the comments I decided to write an article to clarify all the technical stuff in the video & maybe shed some light on the “wedding photographer approach to snowboard photography” :p

I’ve been snowboarding for 3 years now I think and I can honestly say I fell in love with the sport. The culture that surrounds it, the very relaxed atmosphere, the snow, the outdoors, it just calms me down.
After a very, very busy 2008 I really needed to rekindle my passion for photography by shooting for myself. I decided that snowboard photography was a nice challenge & above all a perfect combination of the 2 things I love : snowboarding & photography.

As I discovered this was no easy sport to shoot : hardly any light control, it’s very very very fast paced, you need perfect timing to nail that one shot, you need good riders (snowboarders) that are willing to work with you and you need good knowledge of the tricks they are executing in order to be able to take a good photo of it. A truck load of challenges, just the way I like it .

I still have a long way to go, that’s for sure, but it’s a nice change from wedding photography and it keeps my creative juices flowing !

I’ll gather the questions I got in the comments and try and answer them here :

Bram : Did you continuously burst when they jumped or just one-click shot?
When I’m using strobes it’s a one-click shot, but this gives you a lot of misses. The shot might look cool to us, but the trick might not be captured at the exact right time so this generates a lot of misses, but I found out it get’s better fast with practice . When I’m not using strobes I’m shooting continuously and JPEG. Using AI servo you just need to practice following your moving subject at the exact pace it’s going and afterwards you select the shot(s) that best show the trick & style of the rider.

Jason : How did you go with the Camera gear in the snow, Did you take any special measures to protect it.
I take care of my camera gear but I’m not afraid to really put it to the test. My gear was in my Lowepro Pro Trekker AWII backpack which offers perfect protection against the cold & snow. When I put my camera down in the snow (as you can see in the video) to remotely trigger it, I place a plastic bag underneath it to protect it from the snow underneath it, but you can be sure of it that it will get snowed in after a while, not much you can do about it … I’m using the 1D Mark IIn and 1D Mark III which are weather sealed so I’m not really scared of some snow. I would even place my 5D there if I had to (which isn’t weather sealed). Most camera gear can endure a lot more than you would give it credit for.
Last weekend I had an indoor snowboard shoot of a contest and I put a flash with pocket wizard down in the snow. At the end of the day both where completely covered in snow and they are still functioning

Stijn : -How did you handle the light (sunlight and flashes)
-How did you set up the sunbounce correctly (a few test jumps?)
-Some examples of the exif information (fast shutter speed, mid level aperture, low iso?)
-How did you handle white balance (auto, standard camera presets, manual or did you play around with the RAW file afterwards?)
-(as was asked before) did you take a single shot per jump or burst?
-Did you need to do alot of post processing?
I didn’t use any flashed because it was impossible to overpower the sun on that particular day using a 580EX. The snow provides a nice fill since it reflects the sunlight really hard. I decided to shoot against the sun because I liked the effect (I love some flare now and then) and the snow provided the fill light on the riders.
Positioning the sunbounce was pretty straight forward : you aim for the top of the kicker (so far you can still see it’s effect) and then you just aim a bit higher so that you reflect just over it. There’s a chance you miss your target, but using the Sunbounce Pro we didn’t have any problems with it. I wouldn’t use a smaller sunbounce though, because that would be to difficult since the light source is a lot smaller and you can’t ask a rider to hang still in the air over the kicker in order to aim
All photos where shot in JPEG and auto white balance, no correction afterwards. I do check the back of my camera from time to time to make sure it’s more or less correct, but most of the time (if not always) the camera chooses the right white balance.
I didn’t do a lot of post-processing on most pics, just the usual : some contrast, some vibrance to get the colors to really pop and in some cases a little dodging/burning.

FD-pictures : I would love to see more photos taken with 70-200mm. (i prefer telelenses when taking images of a kicker)
It’s no secret that I have a passionate love affair with my 70-200mm but in this case I wanted a bit more wide angle so I used my fish eye most of the time. I also used my 70-200mm but I didn’t really like those shots as much. We’ll have to meet up someday Fabian so you can show me your skills with the 70-200 (and go for some fresh pow afterwards ! )

Stijn : Got another question: Polariser, yes or no? I think I saw a filter on the camera but i guess it’s a UV/protection filter.
It was indeed a UV/protection filter. I don’t have a polariser filter, so I can’t really tell if it’s worth using, but I didn’t encounter problems so it’s perfectly doable without one.

Pepin : Were you using your 5D? Didn’t the low fps limit you? At what focusing mode were you using? (AI Servo?)
No, I didn’t use my 5D because of it’s lower frame rate. I like the focusing on the Canon 1D series, especially with fast moving objects. The shots I shot using the camera in my hand where all with AI Servo, otherwise you would have to many misses when shooting such fast paced action. Just turn the AI Servo on, track the object as best as you can & keep pressing that shutter button
The shots I made with the fish eye at the bottom of the kicker where on manual focus. I had a guy stick up his snowboard in order for me to get something high enough up in the air to focus on. I auto-focused on it, turned of the auto focus and then just like that. Of course using F10 gives you a lot more room to keep things in focus, at F2.8 I’m sure I would have had a lot more misses.

some other problems I encountered :
Looking for new & different angles
I wanted 2 angles on every shot (one shot from the camera, hand held, and one from the camera down in the snow or on a tripod) so I needed to find a way to trigger 2 cameras at once.
My friend Bert was kind enough to borrow me his cable to connect a camera to a Pocket Wizard (you see, you don’t need to own every piece of equipment, just use your network Thanks btw Bert ! )
Using a Pocket Wizard to remote trigger a camera also allowed me to shoot from certain angles that would otherwise be impossible or to dangerous to shoot from. I can assure you that you don’t want to get hit by a snowboard . You just put the camera down, pre-focus and move a safe distance away. If your camera is on burst mode it just keeps firing until you release the button on your Pocket Wizard.
When setting up the shot with the 3 riders jumping all at the same time with the other 4 of us lying down underneath the kicker almost got me killed … One guy ignored us and jumped the kicker with me lying down on the landing focusing the camera … Imagine you lying there and a guy landing on top of you : it can get you both killed … We had some pretty close calls with guys just barely jumping over the camera but I prefer my camera getting smashed instead of me !

Finding people to pose for you
I made some friends that are very good snowboarders so this part was pretty easy, but I found out that a lot of people want a nice photo of themselves. In other words, if you want to give it a try just get out there on the slopes, get into the fun park & talk to some good riders. They’ll be stoked to get some nice shots and they will be more than willing to jump a couple of times for you if you promise to send them the photos afterwards ! I’ve gotten to know a lot of new people while we where up there shooting so don’t let that hold you back !

I hope this article answered most of your questions, if you should have some more drop them in the comments and I’ll make sure I’ll answer them !

Pieter

Last weekend you could find me in Austria. It wasn’t really a holiday since we had some big plans : a back country snowboard shoot. No rules, no boundaries, just some personal work to recharge my creative batteries & practise a new type of photography.
Unfortunately the back country part was nearly impossible because there wasn’t any fresh show so we had to bring a pick axe if we wanted to dig something out … Backup plan time : get up the mountain, into the fun park & shoot there. The results can be found at the bottom of this post. The video is more of a road trip report, if all you care about is seeing me shoot then skip to the second half

No voice over commentary in this movie, so feel free to post any questions you might have after seeing it, in the comments.

Enjoy !

LIME013 - Behind the scenes of a snowboard shoot from Squeezethelime.com on Vimeo.

The past two weeks have given me lots of stress and grey hair. Our architect screwed up and it required lots of phone calls, hard work and the help of a number of great people (special thanks to my dad) to get the construction works back on schedule. But we did it and the studio will be ready as planned for my Five Day Portrait Masterclass (April 13-17).

We still have a few spots available for the masterclass, so if you are interested don’t hesitate and shoot us a mail.

What will this week long class look like?

- monday: introduction - the basics of light - natural light shooting session - review
- tuesday: studio lighting - studio shooting session - posing - postprocessing in Lightroom - review
- wednesday: balancing ambient light with flash - easy B&W conversion - environmental portrait session - review
- thursday: postprocessing in Photoshop - shooting session group shots - review
- friday: two assignments that will force you to use everything you’ve learned - review

Every night after dinner, we’ll have a short session about things like: marketing, online presence, dealing with clients, …

To sweeten the deal, we decided to throw in a free post masterclass consultancy session for each participant. This means we’ll schedule a long phone/skype call with you a few weeks after the workshop to talk about any questions that came up afterwards and review your images.

I’m really looking forward to work with all these fantastic photographers.

It took us a while but here is episode 12 of LIME’s Happy Hour. As always we hope you enjoy it and we are hoping to get lot’s of feedback from all of you using the comments or by sending us an e-mail.

In this Episode :

• What’s up with LIME ? What have we been doing the past week & what have got in store for you in the near future ? This is where you’ll find out !
• Dear LIME In this section we will be answering your questions. Got a question ? Please send it to us @ dearlime@squeezethelime.com
  We’ll be talking about unreasonable expectations, the financial crisis and image stabilization when shooting moving subjects.
• The feature segment Every week we will be talking about one specific subject. This week we talk about Corporate Photography.

You can listen to this podcast by using the player below or download it as an mp3 (right click/Save As).

Last week I had to make a corporate group shot for one of my favorite clients. Nothing special except for the fact that I had 800 people in the picture and the room was full of technical challenges.

This is not the most creative picture, but I thought it would be interesting to some of you to see how such an assignment goes.

Video quality isn’t great but this is filmed during a real assignment in very low light.

LIME012 - Bert makes an 800 People Group Shot - by Bert Stephani from squeezethelime.com on Vimeo.

In case you can’t play the video, you can also see it on YouTube.

It may be much more fun to watch a shoot with a sexy model, but I hope you’ll find the corporate stuff interesting too.

EDIT: Since I received so many questions about using a fisheye lens for this shot, I added some answers to those questions:

Here is the image after it received some micro adjustments in Lightroom:

The distortion of a fisheye lens can be very distracting but here it’s not that bad. The curve in the stage and in the ceiling allows to use other similar lines. By keeping the audience close to the middle of the frame (horizontally), the distortion is further minimized. After all, the closer you come to a fisheye, the more distortion you are going to get.

Removing some of the distortion in Photoshop isn’t that hard, but I had very little time to post process this image. They needed 800 20×30cm prints by 6am, the next day. That’s why I did some research on “defishing” photoshop plugins the week before the shoot. I tried a few and found a rather unknown (at least to me) plugin that gave me great results with this kind of pictures. It’s called the Fisheye Hemi plugin by Image Trends. It’s specifically made to remove distortion in fisheye shots of people, and it works remarkably well and easy.

Then it was just a matter of cropping, cleaning up the ceiling, remove the reflection in the back (reflection of one of the flashes), and some other small retouches, before we had the final image:

A bigger version, can be found here.