Some of you may have noticed that this blog’s design was a bit bumpy during Christmas. I used the extra time these holidays to work on the layout. Even though the new design is not yet finished, I decided to launch it and start collecting your feedback. Some links are still broken and the sidebar is not yet finished. By Sunday the new design should be complete.

The goal of the redesign is to prepare the blog for 2010 and the new projects which will arise. I want to focus on the blog’s growth and I need a design which is robust and offers readers an organized and simple overview of all the content.

As soon as the design is finished I’ll write a post describing the new items and their advantages. Please give me your thoughts on the redesign to help me make this a better place for next year.

Until then I hope you continue enjoying the seasonal celebrations and I wish you a very happy new year!

PS: You still have two more days to download the free Photoshop PSD file with the post-processing tricks of one of my glamour photos, so hurry up!

Dear readers, I hope you are having a fantastic Christmas Holidays and you got a lot of presents. To thank you for following this blog and sharing your insights with me, via email and comments, I prepared my special present for you.

If you click on the image at the right you can download a PSD File with the original file and all my Photoshop post processing steps This includes quite a few of my special tricks, so this gift will only be available on my blog until the 31st of December, 2009, after which I will pull it down from the server.

The file size is about 300MB,  be patient while downloading. So hurry up, download it and enjoy it! And do not forget to let me know how this file helps you. I am looking forward to your comments.

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a beautiful Christmas Eve with your loved ones. If you do not celebrate Christmas, then I wish you a great day too.

Stay tuned, tomorrow Christmas you will be getting a small present from me! I am sure you will enjoy it

Merry Christmas!

Olivia is a model which fits really well in colorful and lively images. As a pretty blonde girl its easy to make her look like a barbie doll. You have to get the lighting right or else you won’t bring out all the energy on the image.

For my shooting I used the ring flash as the main lighting source. If used properly you can really get a three dimensional image. You can see the lighting setup on the diagram below as well as a raw picture of the studio while we were working.

The Ring Flash is the key light but I had a big octobox behind me to fill up. I don’t like having the Ring Flash on it’s own because it creates strong shadows around the model. With the octobox behind me I can reduce these considerably while keeping the “Ring Flash look”.  The hair light and the two strip boxes left and right are there to seperate the model from the backdrop creating highlights around her.

With some smart post-processing, more color and contrast, here is the final result!

Have you ever used 5 light sources? Any links to share? Are you a Ring Flash fan? Or do you avoid it?

PS: By the way, I already got my Christmas present ready for you. Wait until the 25th!

The Getty Images sales report always comes out three weeks after the month is over, so finally here are the numbers, fresh out of Excel!

I always compare iStockphoto and Getty Images earnings reports and these are the numbers for November. The chart shows that both in 2008 and in 2009 November brought a slight dip in earnings. December will probably have another dip before it picks up in January.

The trend on Getty continues, without any major increase or decrease.

How about your numbers? How was your November? Did you experience a dip too?

Here is a small video on last week’s photo session, it shows some behind the scenes atmosphere. Enjoy!

In both the November and the December issues of German Playboy pictures of mine were published in full page adverts. Here are the published ads and the originals.

The supposed-to-be a christmas shooting turned out to be nothing Christmas at all. I changed the subject matter on short notice. Christmas is around the corner; Christmas articles have been published and there is almost no potential to sell any Christmas pictures in 2009. So instead I focused on black and pink lingerie. I’ll do Christmas next year in September, which is the usual time to start.

Here are the first behind the scene pictures. In the coming days I’ll post a video of the photoshooting as well as the lighting schemes. So stay tuned!

Make Up Artist: Monique

Model: Olivia

Wardrobe: Me

I was in New York last week when I entered a Victoria’s Secrets shop. In one of the corners I quickly spotted some sexy Christmas themed lingerie and I just had to buy it! Although I was on holidays, my new purchase screamed for a sexy Christmas photo session.

So I got in touch with model Olivia and make up artist Monique and within no time got all set up for this Sunday. So tune in on the 6th of December for some live photos from my studio. I’ll be filming too for a video shortly after.

After three weeks of great holidays it was time to crunch some numbers. I updated my Excel sheets with data from September and October and came up with the following charts. In a previous post I had started providing this data. From now on you will get a monthly update of my iStockphoto and Getty royaltee, portfolio size and RPI evolution.

September and October have really been good examples of how the Christmas season provides a healthy push to sales. Since July I have increased my income by approximately 75%!

The Getty RPI (revenue per image) continues its downward trend and I have reached a point where my images sell on average for the same price on iStockphoto as they do on Getty Images. The introduction of the more pricey iStockphoto Vetta collection probably has something to do with it.