Using it to the side from a model creates a desired shadow and also a round reflection in the eyes, which I really like. Because the reflection is round, it looks much like the sun, therefore it looks more natural than using other light modifiers (i.e. big softboxes, etc.) – hooray!

*Ok, let me explain why I wrote relatively here: I meant to use it for a double purpose. Firstly, the light quality from the Orbis Ring Flash won’t be as good as the light coming out of professional and much more expensive ring flash. Secondly, when comparing the price and the light quality of the Orbish Ring Flash, it’s indeed very good.

This compact and portable setup is quite small, light-weight and allows me to set it up almost everywhere because it doesn’t require much space – a perfect situation for every photographer and that’s why I love it. Ohh and one more advantage of using such simple setup is that I can concentrate on the subject and interact better with a person and a client instead of spending too much time on setting up the equipment and worrying too much whether or not everything is set up as it should be – this is something I’ve learned long time ago from Bert Stephani.

But of course, there are some shoots where I need more light, more light modificators, more equipment, and much more muscles to carry everything around

If you would like to learn more about light, how to use it to your benefit to get amazing shots, I highly recommend Bert Stephani’s Motivational Light DVD.

My make-up artistic did a great job with preparing the actor in less than an hour while I was busy fixing my strobe set-up which just broke minutes before (but I managed, hooray!). It took us a couple of hours to get all the different shots we wanted and it was really worth it. Everyone liked the more gruesome, bloody and horror-like shots more than other photographs. It made me really happy because I was afraid at first that these gruesome photographs were in fact too much over the top.

What helped us a lot is that we had a very specific goal and we planned the shoot from the very beginning till the very end – good planning helps a lot during a photo shoot, believe me. Although I still like to improvise during shoots (I do it quite often and mostly during TFP-like shoot for models), I also appreciate a good pre-defined and detailed plan for a photo shoot. The main lesson learned for me from this photo shoot was to be patient to my photo gear and to myself. I often stress out when a client has to wait for me so I can reposition the light, change this or that. However, I have never experienced having an impatient client and everyone appreciates the results at the end.

At every location and photo shoot, I like to firstly look around to see how I can make use of the available light and if there are any natural light-modifiers on the set already (I learned this from Bert Stephani). There can be various ‘natural’ light modifiers on location, like reflectors (light bouncing from the walls) or light diffusers. The pictures present the effect of the latter type and how a big window as a light diffuser was my best friend in my recent photo shoot.

I noticed a really big window just next to the entrance when shooting at the Malte Restaurant in Brussels (Belgium) recently. Without much thinking I decided to (gently) drop all my light equipment I had with me and to use only the soft natural light from the big window which acted as a huge light diffuser. Unfortunately, you don’t see the window on the pictures, but you can clearly see the diffused light and the overall effect.

Believe it or not but I didn’t use any additional light sources, reflectors or similar for the shots. I’m particularly happy with the effect that the big window gave me as a light diffuser and it would take quite some time to achieve the same effect and results with artificial light and extra diffusers. That’s why I research the environment for natural light and ‘natural’ light modifiers before shooting on location.

Last but not least, I would like to thank very much the owner of the Malte Restaurant in Brussels for letting us to use their premises for the photo shoot. You should definitely visit the place for the great food and ambient atmosphere, or at least to check out their big window to see how nicely it diffuses the light

I particularly like to use natural light as a hair light for several reasons. Firstly, if I use a speedlight as the main light, then I have much more control over the light, its strength, position and I can apply light modifiers onto the speedlight. Secondly, if I have to shoot at noon when the natural light is not too flattering (yes, sometimes I just had to shoot at noon when it’s the only option for a model, a make-up artist and a stylist), using the natural light as the hair-light is the best option. Thirdly, having the sun behind the model and sometimes having it in the frame and then compensating the exposure with the speedlight can give some nice and creative results.

I love 2 things about blue jeans as a photographer: their color and their texture. Most jeans are in a really nice blue color spectrum and temperature, which is nice to look at and doesn’t overpower a subject in an image. Add a nice texture to this pleasant blue color and a good-looking model and you’ll have a perfect combination for  a photo shoot (not to mention you’ll also need good light but it’s a different story).

I had few photo shoots during my recent stay in (Gdansk) Poland in March and I asked Diana to be my model for a spontaneous photo shoot in the Oliwski Parc in Gdansk. We had a really nice weather, a bit cold but sunny. Although we met at around 2pm when the sunlight was still harsh, there was a lot of shadow from the trees and bushes which I used in order to get nice soft light on her face. I also used the sunlight as a hair-light. To my surprise, Diana had with her a couple of outfits and after about an hour shooting she told me she had a jeans outfit (jeans trousers  and jeans shirt).

We both like it so much that we decided to do the rest of the photo shoot in the jeans and I think it was a perfect decision. I particularly like how the colors of the jeans (both of the trousers and the shirt) and their texture fit into the bright light and spring feeling of the pictures. What do you think? I think these jeans are made for wearing … especially in spring

I didn’t expect to have so much trouble with lighting at first and I was hoping that I could manage most of the shots with a speedlight and a light reflector. Unfortunately, it turned out that bouncing the light off from the ceiling and walls with the speedlight wasn’t possible in all rooms because the walls and ceilings were painted with different colors. If I bounced the light off them, I would get weird white balance in camera. In addition, even my trusty 50mm f/1.8 lens (which is a very bright lens), couldn’t handle apartment’s low-light in most cases.

My next step was to use lamps and lights that were available in the apartment but another problem appeared: each light or lamp produced a completely different light color and color temperatures. This meant that setting up a proper white balance was a real nightmare as the smallest change in a set or the smallest movement of a model required adjusting the white balance. Unfortunately, our time for this shoot was limited so I had to come up with an alternative.

At the end, 2 things and ideas saved me. Firstly, I decided to use my speedlight and bounce the light off the walls and the ceiling but with overexposing the photographs with stronger light coming out of the speedlight. The differences in color temperature were less visible when pictures were a bit overexposed. I also used the lamps and lights available in the apartment with various power variations between the speedlight and the lamps to see which one gave me the best result. Secondly, a mirror in another room became my main prop for framing the model in the shots (I wrote about it in my previous post Using a Mirror to Frame a Subject). I can’t express enough how cool it was to use a mirror to do that and how much I learned thanks to these unexpected things that happened at the photo shoot. Now I know what fight I need to put up with artificial lights, lamps and white balance… but I’ll try to avoid it in the future

Using a mirror to frame a subject can be a bit tricky and difficult when you use strobes and/or speedlights because these additional light sources can create reflections in a mirror and light spots. Therefore, you should be careful when using lights for these kind of shots – a quick tip: first get your model or subject in a right position and take a test pictures to see what is visible in a mirror, then position your lights so that they are not visible in a mirror and are out of the mirror’s frame.

Another thing is that any lines (within mirror’s frame or any other lines) can be used to define a picture or a subject. Lines or even patterns can be very helpful in drawing the attention of a viewer to the subject in the picture or separate the subject from the rest of what is in a frame. Next time you’ll be taking pictures, take a close look at any patterns or lines either in the foreground or in the background, try to change your position or reposition your subject to use these lines.

You can’t be prepared for these unexpected circumstances (quite obviously they’re unexpected) and you have to be ready to improvise – being able and ready to improvise during a photo shoot is a must and actually it’s the only thing you can be sure of and control before a photo shoot. Just to make it clear: you can’t go for a photo shoot completely unprepared thinking that you can improvise everything but you need to be ready to improvise when needed, let your creativity unleash and just ‘expect unexpected‘ as I say.

I had a photo shoot, during which I had to improvise, a couple of weeks ago in February 2011. I met with Knight Wise and Niejana of KnightWise.com – I refer to both of them as THE Belgian Geeks . Knight Wise and Niejana are a really awesome couple from Belgium who are not only into technology but also into Starwars, podcasting, videocasting and all the geeky stuff (honestly, I’m not sure what I’m talking here about because I’m not a typical geek… I’m just a photography geek). Anyway, going back to the topic, I met with them in Tongeren (Belgium) (which was also my first time in Tongeren) and I had no idea what to expect – we didn’t have a fixed photo shoot location and their house turned out a bit too small for a photo shoot.

The only option was to improvise, especially when I decided to start off with a photo shoot outside at a countryside. Knight Wise and Niejana took me to a nearby popular park, just outside of a city and I immediately started to look around for interesting places, foregrounds, backgrounds and patterns… anything that would be interesting and supplementary for portrait photography. I don’t think I have to mention that I tried to take the pictures of Knight Wise and Niejana around the theme of the ‘Belgian Geeks’. They mentioned to me during the photo shoot that they even didn’t have their engagement photo shoot before they had the wedding few years ago. So I decided to use this opportunity to shoot few engagement / couple / love pictures. At some point, I just asked them to sit on the ground and I let them interact with each other – it turned out great and I learned one important thing: Geek love is tough love (look at the picture where Niejana hits Knight Wise with a very robust and expensive laptop)

Strobist info for some of the pictures: I used a combination of Nikon’s SB-900 Speedlight on a shoot-through umbrella and sometimes I also used a light-reflector for pictures taken outside (but I also tried to use as much natural light as possible, something just modifying it slightly with a light-reflector. For indoor pictures, I used 2 Lastolite Lumen F400 lamps with shoo-through umbrellas as well.