Every one of us gains knowledge and inspiration from various sources. As photographers we tend to identify and appreciate the work of other photographers, we are visual people, it is in our nature to be attracted and inspired by certain images. I have a love of travel and a keen interest in portraiture and the telling of tales through faces and settings. This does not really reflect in my stock photography, at Microstockhelper we shoot what we perceive to be in demand in the stock photography market and what we feel will be best for the business. On a personal level I am drawn to and inspired by the work of a few photographers, among them are Steve McCurray, Annie Leibowitz and Joey L.
I first came across Joey’s work when I watched a video about his trip to Indonesia and photographing the Mentawi Tribe. At the time I was living in Indonesia (now in Cape Town) and just starting to develop an interest in
We recently did a cool shoot of breakdancing in or cape town studio. one of the most important things to factor into a dance shoot is flash duration. We shot this with Elinchrom RX600 lights which have a short flash duration at full power as you will see in the BTS video. In the video we take you through a few lighting setups as well as some post production through lightroom, adobe photoshop and capture one. Below you will see some lighting diagrams and finished images to show you
A family friend who is a wedding photographer recently contacted me and asked if I would help teach him some lighting techniques and post production workflow in order to help him get into the world of Stock photography. Please note that it is not essential that you have a studio, fancy lighting or the best equipment in order to submit to stock agencies, you can start with as little as a Nikon D90 and a 50mm lens. Donavan Whyte has always wanted to shoot more fashion style images and hence his desire to master studio lighting. So he decided to fly me up from my Cape Town Studio and spend a day and a half helping him out.
I was happy to see that he was somewhat prepared for the shoot, arranging 4 models, makeup, props and
I had an idea for a shoot of a surfer girl with long board at sunrise on the beach. In my head i saw some great summer style shots with a warm orange sunrise and silhouetted surfer on a rock in the foreground watching the waves roll in. The picture looked great in my minds eye. The next step was to find the perfect location where we would have the perfect beach, view and sunrise vantage point. After some driving up and down the local coast we finally settled on a nice rocky outcrop above a quiet beach down the coast from the main Durban beaches. here is a screen grab from google maps of the area.
Now that we had our location we organised our model, props and checked local weather reports to choose a good morning for sunrise. At the time of this shoot sunrise was at 5:00am this meant that we had to be on set, all ready to shoot at about 4:30. So waking up at 3:45 we bundled ourselves with a couple cups of coffee into the car and set off with hopes of the perfect sunrise. When arriving on set we quickly realized that we were not going to be seeing a sunrise of any kind. A storm was blowing in and the sky was dark, cloudy and ominous. The picture in my head was not going to be possibly on this day. Luckily we had packed a battery operated flash unit as a
