On Sunday we will be shooting Lingerie in an incredible Berlin hotel: Pension Funk. The hotel offers the perfect style and setting for high quality and tasteful lingerie pictures. I’m certain you will produce very special pictures in such a great location!

We have 3 big rooms rented. In each room a small group of photographers will work with the models to produce stylish lingerie pictures. Here some pictures of the hotel. All their rooms are in this style.

Mandy

Mandy is one of our highlights at this workshop! She was Pet of the Month in the February 2010 issue of German Penthouse! She will be working with us on Saturday in our studio setting! Here you have a selection of her pictures (remember, there will be no nude or partial nude at our workshop)

Katya

Sandy

Aljona

Now that I have the complete team and the studio I can start planning dates. I am targeting the weekend on the 10th and 11th of April, 2010 in Berlin.

I now only have to get all models confirmed and the location for the Sunday.

I’ll keep you updated

We got a studio! The first day of the Glamour Workshop will be in one of Berlin’s best equipped photo studios. I teamed up with Studio 67 providing you access to their large collection of strobes and light formers, and they will be sharing it all with us!!

I want you to use the opportunity so that you can learn to use all type of light formers and produce high quality glamour photos. So start thinking about ring flashes, strip lights, honeycombs and more, more, more!

Here are some pics of the big studio:

I was recently contacted by www.fotos-verkaufen.de for an interview. Enjoy it here

Oh, and don’t take my comment about the PC too seriously, hehe  I just love how controversial the PC vs Mac topic is.

Let me show you how one same light source can produce two very different pictures just by tweaking things a little. When photographing Laura in late October we produced two series, each with only one beauty dish and a similar setup.

The first lighting produced clean bright pictures. You can see the pictures and setup here. The second setup was similar but produced darker and more intense pictures.

The difference was to simply move the  key light to the left and reduce the power of the light. I also added a black panel in front of my key light to create some shadow. The lens I used in both cases was a rented 100mm 2.8 Canon Macro (an excellent lens for close up portraits!)

Here you have a quick picture of my studio just after we produced the photo.

And here you have the exact lighting setup

One of my main goals in 2010 was to organize two workshops. Well, here we go, I started planning the first one and I have quite some stuff ready!

I want to offer you two days to learn how to produce glamorous photos which you can sell successfully, good taste and politically correct photos which can be used by anybody who needs sexy imagery.

12 Photographers will be welcomed to Berlin over a weekend, 8 hours per day, to work together with

• - 3 make up artists
• - 1 wardrobe stylist
• – and a total of 8 beautiful female and 4 male models (including model releases )

Photographers will be divided into 3 groups and will spend the first day working in a studio and the second in a glamorous location in Berlin. That’s 4 photographers per group, each with their own small group of models.

We will have access to different types of light formers to experiment with so use the opportunity to try new stuff!

Dates and prices will be defined as soon as the organization is complete.

For this workshop I have some nice surprises I will keep you updated on organization and on the goodies directly on this blog.

Stay up-to-date by clicking the workshop picture on the top right of the blog!

Hope to meet you soon

As a photographer you meet a lot of people. During photo sessions you meet models, wardrobe stylists, make up artists and assistants.

If you are good, you get a nice amount of emails from models and other people who’d like to meet you… and you can meet them for a coffee. When you go out, you might bump into someone, and even get introduced to someone new. And since everybody knows everyone it can be quite a lot of fun.

But you can imagine that such an environment is also ideal for spreading of rumors. And if you are not careful your reputation can be at risk. A situation you do not want to get stuck in.

Your best bet is to tread carefully. Let me share with you my golden rules which I respect at all my photo sessions:

• – Never, ever touch a model. In any way. Do not even think about it! I have heard some models speak very bad about photographers who had touched them. If you want their hair to be moved or their clothes to be fitted in a special way, do not touch them. Ask them to move it themselves or ask the make up artist or wardrobe stylist to do it for you. This is really important

• – Stick to all your agreements with everybody involved in a photo session. Even if you end up regretting the agreement stick to it anyways and learn from your mistake

• – Manage expectations as best you can by ensuring all aspects of a photo session are discussed properly before a photo session

• – Only the required people should be present at a photo session. You do not want a model to think you are bringing your buddies to the photo session.

• – Never speak bad about anybody. At photo sessions people tend to speak a lot, providing a perfect place for spreading rumors. Keep your mouth shut and share your secrets or information only with your best friends. It’s better to be a quiet photographer and you will be respected

• - A photo session is a working environment and therefore you must treat everybody as work colleagues. Do not get too personal nor too flirtatious and you will avoid uncomfortable situations.

What rules do you follow? How do you manage your photo sessions? Anything I have overseen?

Further reading

- Managing Model Contracts

2010 started off quite well. The increase in prices at iStockphoto has not yet detered buyers from shopping. My downloads remain fairly constant and inline with 2008 and 2009.

Royaltees, however, have benefited from the increase in prices. January,2010, was very strong. Stronger than December, 2009, but slightly under October and November, 2009.

Here the charts for iStockphoto

My Getty Images royaltees for December arrived a week ago, so I couldn’t post the information earlier. With my December report I can now compare my Getty royaltees for 2009 and 2008 (please note that I got my first Getty report in March 2008).

You will notice that 2009 and 2008 were pretty much identical, even though I had double as many images in 2009.

How have iStockphoto’s price changes worked for you?

Do you have charts with your Getty royaltees? I haven’t found any Getty photographers who share their charts. Does anybody have some links?

I was recently interviewed by the German newspaper Tagesspiegel regarding the post-processing of images. The article was motivated by the french lawmaker Valerie Boyer‘s recent law proposal to clearly mark all photoshopped images, arguing viewers should be well informed and not tricked into a non-existent perfect world.

After the article appeared I had some fun conversations with friends about this. I realize it’s a pretty hot topic and people get quite passionate debating it.

You can probably imagine that I am no big fan of such a law and spoke against it in the interview. What’s with food photoshopping? Clothes photoshopping? Oh, and what’s with Britney Spears, Madonna and the likes? Photoshop didn’t seem to be enough… should people who go under the knife also be marked?

What’s your take? How much Photoshop do you use on your images? How much photoshop can you tolerate in the media?

Here is some further reading:

– Nude Model Goes Un-Airbrushed On Marie Claire Cover

– Photoshop Disasters