5DayDeal 2018: my free Luminar 2018 mini-course

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

“The inclusion of Luminar 2018 makes this year’s 5DayDeal an absolute no-brainer!”

— Yours truly :-)

So, the 5DayDeal is a bundle of high-quality resources for photographers: tutorial videos, Lightroom presets, textures, actions, you name it. It’s a whopping 50 gigabyte of goodies at a super steep discount. In yesterday’s blog post, I dug a little deeper into the training content that’s in this year’s 5DayDeal. But the 5DayDeal folks really outdid themselves this year, because there’s also two entire software packages included, the most important of which undoubtedly is Luminar 2018. My original plan was to make a quick three minute overview of what Luminar is but you know me: I don’t do quick very well. So it turned out to be a 25 minute mini-tutorial full of cool processing tips in general and Luminar tips in particular.

Unlike with some other bundles, this version of Luminar 2018 is exactly the same as the $69 retail version that you can buy directly on Skylum’s (makers of Luminar) website, but you’d be crazy not to pay the extra $20 and get it as part of the 5DayDeal bundle!

This year’s bundle includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Until October 16, a copy of Luminar 2018 is included in this year’s 5DayDeal bundle. Click here for more info.

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

** You will receive your bonus textures in the week after November 15, 2018

The 5DayDeal: What's in it for you?

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. Once a year, for 5 days only, you can purchase the 5DayDeal Photography bundle. This year’s edition runs from October 11 to Tuesday, October 16, noon PDT (that’s 9 PM Brussels time). For those of you who don’t know, the 5DayDeal is a unique bundle of training content and creative tools for photographers. If you were to buy everything separately, you’d be out of more than $2,500. Now, and until October 16 only, you pay $89*. The bundle contains dozens of hours of top notch video training, multiple eBooks and hundreds of Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions. In total nearly 50 gigabyte worth of content! Specifically for this year, there’s a lot of attention to drone photography and videography, including a drone course by no one less than Trey Ratcliff.

Look at who’s standing next to Lightroom guru Serge Ramelli? Yes, that’s me and there’s also a brand new Lightroom course by me in this year’s 5DayDeal! That alone should be a reason to buy it :-)

Of course, you’re wondering if the bundle is really worth it. Is it worth $2,500? Maybe not: there’s always something that’s not quite your cup of tea but then again, there’s also a couple of hidden gems each year that you would never think of buying but that turn out to be really interesting. So, the real question is: ‘Is it worth more than $89'?’ And the answer to that question is a solid ‘Yes, absolutely!’ This bundle will do more for your photography than a new camera bag or a couple of UV filters!

Obviously, I’m slightly biased as in those 60+ hours of video training, there’s over three of my own: In 'Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics’ I guide you through some of the more advanced concepts of Lightroom Catalogs, including working with multiple catalogs, leveraging collections and smart collections, using publish services and more. This brand new course is currently only available as a part of this year’s 5DayDeal Photography bundle and is in itself valued at $99, which is more than the price of the entire bundle. As a matter of fact, there are quite a lot of tutorials in the 5DayDeal bundle that have a list price that is higher than the entire bundle.

So what’s the catch, I hear you ask? There isn’t one… by offering so much value, the 5DayDeal folks aim to sell lots of units as to make it worthwhile for all the contributors, even at that crazy discount. The only catch so to speak is that you have to buy before October 16 because the offer is valid for only 5 days. Once you’ve bought, you’ve got until November 30 to download your 50 gigabyte worth of goodies, though!

If you think that you need insane budgets to produce fashion-style images, you’ll be in for a treat in Lindsay Adler’s ‘Creativity on a budget’: Lindsay first shows you how she makes six different fashion accessories on a shoestring and then continues to photograph all six.

An expensive hat? No, it’s an expertly folded placemat. Or how craftsmanship, light, lighting and pose can turn a cheap kitchen accessory into high fashion. An eye-opening course, and another one that normally retails for more than the entire 5DayDeal bundle.

To make it easier for you to determine if the 5DayDeal bundle is something for you, I’ve highlighted the content by three broad areas of interest: image editing, portrait and landscape photography. You’ll notice that even if you’re only interested in one of these topics, the bundle is already worth purchasing. If you’re interested in multiple topics, it’s really a no-brainer.

1. You’re mainly interested in image editing

The total value of the highlighted items alone is $1495. The full bundle is yours for less than a tenth of that.

In ‘The Art of Black & White in Lightroom & Beyond’, Andrew Gibson explores the beautiful world of monochrome.

Traditionally, image editing is one of the strongholds of the 5DayDeal. This year is no different. In addition to my own advanced ‘Lightroom Library beyond the Basics’ tutorial, on which I’ll expand a little more in a future blogpost, there’s also an entire Lightroom course by Serge Ramelli. Other highlights are:

• Travel Pro Kit:
  A vast collection of Lightroom presets that use a similar structure as I use in my own Black & White preset pack (which is currently being reworked for Lightroom Classic). By working with ‘effect-presets’ on the one hand and ‘finishing touches’ presets on the other, Travel Pro Kit creates a complete click-based editing workflow that yields impressive results in no time. The accompanying PDF shows examples of how specific looks were made in just a couple of clicks.

• The Art of Black & White in Lightroom and Beyond
  A great course on Black & White conversion in Lightroom by Andrew Gibson, who I know from back in our Craft & Vision days. His material is always spot on, well-researched and expertly taught. This is another course that retails for more than the 5DayDeal’s bundle price.

• Adobe Photoshop Foundations
  In this tutorial, Photoshop Guru (and founder of the well-known f64 site) Blake Rudis delves deeper into a number of Photoshop topics, ranging from selections and masks to retouching images.

Great news: this year’s 5DayDeal includes a full Luminar 2018 license!

There are several other editing-related goodies in the bundle, but probably the biggest highlight is the fact that this year’s bundle comes with a complete licence for Luminar 2018 by Skylum (formerly known as Macphun). This license alone is worth $69. Luminar used to be Mac-only, but now it’s also available for Windows. Some people use it as a Lightroom alternative, but I think it’s at its best when used as a Lightroom plug-in. In one of the following blog posts, I’ll show you a couple of the more interesting features of Luminar.

This year’s bundle also includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Until October 16, a copy of Luminar 2018 is included in this year’s 5DayDeal bundle. Click here for more info.

2. You’re mainly interested in photographing people, with or without flash

The total value of the highlighted items is $732. The full bundle is yours for less than 15 percent of that. If you’re into photographing people, I found the following tutorials to be interesting:

Zack Arias takes nobody seriously and certainly not himself in his new Photo 101 tutorial. I like that attitude (or lack of it) :-)

• Photo 101.
  A new tutorial by Zack Arias, the man who, along with David Hobby, taught an entire generation how to use flash. This time, he leaves the flashes unplugged, though and focuses on the basics of photography. Photo 101 is Zacks own introductory course. I’m listing it with the portrait courses because after the introduction, Zack takes you along on three portrait shoots where he uses minimal means to produce cool shots.

• Creativity on a Budget.
  Lindsay Adler is another big name in the photo tutorial business and rightly so. Her course to me was the surprise of this year’s bundle. In ‘Creativity on a Budget’ she shows you how you can turn cheap and often everyday items into fashion accessories but she does not stop there: in part 2, she actually photographs the fruit of her handicraft and produces some amazing results!

• Photographing the Bride.
  This tutorial focuses on what is probably the most important type of portrait photography: bridal portraits!

• Finding Rembrandt: Shoot Like the Old Masters.
  One of my favourite tutorials in this 5DayDeal is by one of my favourite teachers. Just like me, Chris Knight has a thing for dramatic, Rembrandt-style lighting patterns. In this video course, he dives deeply into Rembrandt portraits and he also takes you through his postproduction. Another highly recommended tutorial that by itself costs more than the entire bundle.

“A new camera makes you no more of a great photographer than a box of cake-mix makes you a great pastry chef.”

— Zack Arias in Photo 101

My favourite light setup: short light (in this case: short loupe light). In this tutorial, Chris Knight explores the tools and techniques to create dramatic looking portraits. Until October 16, this tutorial and many others is yours for only $89 as part of the 5DayDeal.

3. You’re mainly interested in product, landscape and architecture photography.

Admittedly, this list is shorter but that’s mainly because I only highlighted the courses that deal with the photography side of things, not the postprocessing. In practice, the other courses (such as Serge Ramelli’s Adobe Lightroom Masterclass and the Mastering Luminosity Masks course by Nick Page) contain a lot of content that is geared towards landscape and architectural photographers.

Still not convinced? I’ve got 5 more arguments for you:

1. This way of learning is by far the cheapest way to improve your photographic skills at your own pace, when and where you want. Most of the tutorials are downloadable video files, so you’re not tied to subscriptions or internet access to watch them. The 5DayDeal bundle gives you 60+ hours of video tutorials for less than $1.5 per hour. Yours to keep forever! The eBooks and presets come on top of that. And that’s without counting Luminar 2018!

2. A large part of the 5DayDeal bundle is new and if it is not new, it’s never been offered as part of another bundle.

3. The bundle is gone on October 16, noon PDT.

4. 10 percent of the turnover goes to charity. In total, previous 5DayDeals have collected over $300.000 for various charities.

5. There are two optional bundles that you can purchase upon checkout:

   • The Charity Bundle and the Pro Bundle ($19 and $29, respectively). Here’s the complete list of what these bundles contain. The latter one focuses on pro photographers and includes a full wedding photography course!

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

Exporting Facebook cover photos with Lightroom

Your Facebook Cover photo is the digital equivalent of your house’s front door. So, a new paint job every once in a while does not hurt. In this video, I show you how you can easily and quickly change your Facebook Cover Photos using a crop preset and an export preset in Lightroom.

Location portraiture with the SMDV Mega 180 Speedbox and the Fujifilm GFX - part 2

In the previous blog post, I introduced you to the SMDV Speedbox Mega 180. I took it for a spin - and if it had been any windier, it would have taken me for a spin - in the city of Ghent, Belgium, where I live. We made about 5 different set-ups in a little over two hours time because our talented dancer Lana had to be back home in time for rehearsals! When you’re a bit in a rush, you don’t want to spend half of whatever time you have setting up your lights. In part 1, I showed you that I managed to set up the Mega 180 in under a minute - quite a feat for a softbox this size and that has everything to do with its design and not with my two left hands :-) In the video below, you see us creating the first shot. I call this my ‘warming up shots’. It’s a safe shot that technically isn’t too challenging and we made it in a quiet area. This allows for the model, the team and myself to get to know each other and get in the flow of things, without too many tourists looking along. It’s also reassuring to have at least one useable shot right from the get-go.

The essential guide to working with small and big flashes on location. This ebook will show you all you need to know to create killer flash images.

One of the things I love about this SMDV Mega 180 is that it creates super soft light, even for full-length portraits. I even helped it a bit, by putting it in the frame and then masking it out afterwards, a technique I’m using more and more.

Below, you can see a high-speed behind-the-scenes video of the actual shoot and the retouching. I was shooting on the GF23 on my trusted Fujifilm GFX 50S because I wanted to take in the entire castle. But working with such a wide angle caused a bit of distortion on her left arm and hand, which is why you’ll see me use the Liquify tool in Photoshop. The colour grading is done through one of my Creative Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC 2018 and Camera Raw.

The Fujifilm GFX 50S is my favourite camera ever. You can do just about anything with the files that come out of it. The potential for shadow recovery without noise is amazing. If you don’t believe me, check out this blog post, where I recuperate a four-stop underexposed image… But be warned. I’ve know at least one photographer personally who bought a GFX after reading that blog post :-)

The GFX has made me slow down and work on a tripod more. This is my Sirui Traveller T2204-XL. You can also see me use the right-angle finder on my camera. I love that accessory. I’m wearing a Spider Holster and the GFX has a Spider plate with an Arca Swiss compatible base plate. It makes me look like a bit like Robocop but I’m past the desire of looking fashionable when I’m shooting. I’ll leave that to my models :-) Image © Frank Verheye.

Location portraiture with the SMDV Mega 180 Speedbox - part 1

Introduction

If you're a regular reader of this blog or you've read my Light It Up ebook (available in Dutch as Flash!), you know I'm an avid user of the softboxes of the South-Korean brand SMDV. One of the main reasons I like them so much is because they are super fast to set up and even faster to break down. As most of the stuff I do is location portraiture, often with non-professional models who have better things to do than sit around and wait while I set up a softbox, this is an important advantage.

My favorite softboxes so far in the SMDV range have been the Speedbox 70 and Speedbox Alpha 110. I manage to set up the Alpha 110 in less than 15 seconds. Breaking it down is even faster: 2 seconds. These softboxes are dodecagonal, which is a fancy word for being 12-sided. As such, they create an even more circular catchlight than regular octas.

The 110 is probably my absolute favorite: it's still light enough to carry around and I've used it everywhere from India to Mongolia. It just fits in my North Face Rolling Thunder 36 bag, without having to disassemble it. With smaller speedlights, I sometimes use the 70 as well. Apart from the quick setup and breakdown, what I also love is the build quality and the fact that I can add grids to the softboxes. As my style of portraiture is pretty dark and moody, I like the extra control that a grid can bring. Below you can see a setup shot where I use the 110 and the 70 together in this impromptu street portrait of a lawyer-turned-sadhu in India. This portrait was made during the first Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. Details of the 2019 edition can be found here.

The grid helps to control the rim light and to avoid flare in my lens.

Fujifilm X-Pro2 | XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR @ 129.2 mm | 1-250 sec. @ f/8 | ISO 400 | This one was done with my Jinbei HD600 flash - I'm using Godox AD600 and 200 flashes now. | Camera left: SMDV Alpha 110 - Camera right: Gridded SMDV 70.

This is Matt Brandon's SMDV Alpha 90 being used to make a portrait of these Mongolian Eagle Hunters... It took two people just to hold the 90 so the 180 would not have been an option here...

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 56.5 mm | 1-125 sec. @ f/13 | ISO 100 | SMDV Alpha 90 with Godox AD600B

The SMDV Mega Speedbox series

However, sometimes, I want an even bigger light source, so when SMDV announced the Mega Series of softboxes and more specifically the Mega 180, I was all ears and eyes. They were kind enough to send me a review copy and so I took it out for a spin in the city of Ghent, Belgium where I live.

The Mega series consists of five softboxes, ranging in size from 90 cm to 180 cm. The three smallest (90, 110 and 130 are deep octa style softboxes, except for the fact that they're not eight-sided but 24-sided! The two biggest ones, the 160 and the 180 have a more regular width-to-depth ratio. Weights range from 2.1 to 3.24 kg.

Now mind you, this is one big softbox. In fact, it's taller than most of the people I shoot. So, although it's probably a softbox that most photographers would use indoors, I wanted to see how I fared with it outdoors, as this is my natural habitat.

Construction and setup

It's actually 181 cm, but who's counting :-) Image © Frank Verheyen.

When you take it out of its bag, this softbox just oozes quality and sturdiness. SMDV managed to maintain a quick setup system but they improved and reinforced it, which was necessary because of the additional strain a softbox this size puts on the entire folding mechanism. Furthermore, as this softbox has no less than 24 sides, setup takes a little longer than the SMDV Alpha 110 but it's still doable in less than a minute, as you can see from the video. The first couple of times you set it up, it can feel a bit tight but that improves a lot: after the tenth time I set it up, I could do it in under a minute. One thing that helps is to not secure every rod in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, but to secure every other one and then give it a second pass with the ones you left out on the first go. That same trick also works on the Alpha 110, by the way.

24 sides means there's also 24 rods to click into place. Still, after some practice, I manage to do it in under a minute! Breaking down is even faster. Image © Frank Verheyen.

In one way, I like the new setup even system better than the old one on the small and Alpha SMDV speedboxes. On those units, one thing you have to watch out for is dust or sand getting inside the speedring. The new setup system of the Mega series is all external, so there's no risk of sand or other dirt getting inside and blocking the setup system. I've once had to open the speedring of my Speedbox 70 and the inside is almost as complex as a Swiss watch :-). It's a great system - I just wouldn't do any beach shots with it...

Another difference between the Mega series and the regular SMDV softboxes lies in how you break them down. The latter are broken down by depressing a couple of switch-like buttons, which is as fast as it gets. With the Mega series, however, you have to flip each of the 24 switches individually. Again, it's something that can be done in 30 seconds or so. So it's still very fast for a softbox this size (and with this many sides), just not as fast as its smaller siblings.

On my regular SMDV softboxes, I generally leave the middle diffuser and the front diffuser (and sometimes even the grid) attached when I break them up. While you could do so on the Mega series, especially on the 180 I think it's probably just as fast to take at least the front diffuser off when taking it down because leaving it on adds some extra tension when you tighten the rods to put it back together. This is one huge softbox, after all! 

In the video below, I show you how easy it is to set up the softbox. In fact, putting on the front diffuser takes longer than setting up the actual softbox.

That's it for the first part of blog post. In the next part, we'll actually put the SMDV, our model and our assistants to work and make some images!

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 33.8 mm | 1-125 sec at f - 8,0 | ISO 100 | 2 x Godox AD600B with H1200B head in SMDV Mega 180 Speedbox.

Creating Book Cover Pages with Lightroom Classic CC

The Lightroom Classic CC 7.5 update brought a number of new features to the Book module, which I covered in this video. With some out-of-the-box thinking you can use one of these new features to enhance your Lightroom Blurb book covers with text, without having to perform a Photoshop roundtrip. This video shows you how.

When the Shadows slider does not cut it: The Radial Filter Shadows Turbo Boost

Does it ever happen to you that you want to lift the shadows in an image and even +100 on the Shadows slider in Lightroom's Basic Panel just does not cut it? In those case, you have to resort to the much coarser Exposure slider, but that sometimes brightens things you don't want to.

In this video, I show you a simple yet very effective technique that works wonders in situations like this. The only condition is that you use Lightroom Classic CC (or the new Lightroom CC). If you are still on Lightroom 6, you might want to have a look, if only to see what great stuff you're missing out on. Maybe you'll decide it's worth to switch to the subscription anyway.

This tip also works to recover highlights beyond what the Highlights slider allows you to. Obviously, only in so far that there is highlight or shadow detail left to recuperate.

What's new in Lightroom Classic CC 7.5?

Today, Adobe just released the Lightroom Classic CC 7.5 update. If you're a frequent user of the Book Module, you're going to love this update, because not only are there new styles (including Magazine) to choose from, but you also finally get to edit existing templates or create new ones from scratch and save them as custom pages.

If you have never used the Book Module before, I suggest you try it out because it really is one of the quickest and user-friendliest ways to save your images from oblivion and turning them into a touchable memory. There might be better options out there and there might be cheaper options out there, but overall, I really like the price-performance-speed ratio of the Book Module - Blurb combo, especially after these new updates.

And speaking about price, in the video I give you a tip on how you can save up to 40 percent on your Blurb books!

P.S. In the video, I use sample images from last year's Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass in Varanasi, India. If you're interested in being a part of next year's trip, the details have just been announced! Check them out here.

Join Matt Brandon and me for the 2019 Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass

Hello everybody, just a quick blog post to tell you that the details of the 2019 Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass have just been added on the site. If you want to improve your location portraiture and off-camera flash skills in one of the most photogenic cities in the world, check out the details now.

Varanasi Before and After

Is it the memories of the narrow alleyways, the photogenic people, the company of like-minded photographers or simply that fantastic hole-in-the-wall place with the heavenly chocolate coconut banana dosas? I don't know, but editing this picture sure made me want to go back to Varanasi for a new edition of the Varanasi Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. The last one Matt Brandon and I did, dates back to 2017 and that's a long time to be without those delicious pancakes!

But first things first: I actually only wanted to do a before-and-after type of blog post on editing an image in Lightroom. While scrolling through my Library, I stumbled across this image that I made in 2016 with my Fujifilm X-T1. I still remember Matt and me seeing this photogenic sadhu and escorting him away from the busy main street into a calmer alleyway to have our participants photograph him using off-camera flash. While Matt was setting up the shot, I made this photo almost by accident. It was more meant as a behind-the-scenes type of shot, but as I liked the three characters (did you actually already notice the kid in the lower left part?) in the picture, I decided I would try to resuscitate it in Lightroom. 

A composition that's way too wide, a balance between flash and available light that's completely off and a light blue towel that matches none of the other colours in the image. There's work to be done! 

Step 1: Adjusting Exposure and Shadows

Time after time, I'm amazed at what you can do with the handful of sliders in Lightroom's Standard Panel in the Develop Module. I increased the Exposure and maxed out the Shadows slider all the way to +100. This made me see a new problem: Matt's also in the picture. That's what those ultrawide angle zooms will do for you!

Step 2: Cropping and Straightening the Image

I don't know if I should see a therapist, but I have a thing with straight lines. In an image, I want my verticals and horizontals either completely wonky or dead straight. Not something in the middle as in this shot. So I opened up the Transform Panel and activated the Guided Upright tool (1). I drew a line parallel over a wall in the left of the image (2) that I wished were vertical and did the same with a wall on the right (3). Doing so, I told Lightroom it had to straighten those lines and make them parallel. Sometimes, this correction will cause the image to become too compressed or too elongated, but the Aspect Ratio (4) slider can easily fix that for you.

I subsequently activated the Crop tool (R) (5) and made a square crop. This also almost solved the problem of Matt being in the picture. All that was left was a part of his camera, which I took out in one fell swoop of the Healing Brush. In retrospect, I actually shouldn't have done that at this stage, as my subsequent vignetting took care of the problem automatically.

Step 3: Adding a Graduated Filter

Because I still did not like the light-dark balance between the left and the right part of the image, I added a Graduated Filter to brighten the darkest part of the alleyway a bit more. By choosing a relatively soft transition zone (1), this adjustment blends in unnoticed.

Step 4: Color Grading via the new Creative Profiles

The previous steps were mainly meant to improve the image's exposure and balance, but they weren't necessarily creative, rather corrective. In this step I decided on my Colour Grading: choosing the subjective 'Look and Feel' for the image. I used to use Lightroom presets for that, but ever since they've been introduced in  Lightroom Classic CC 7.3, I now prefer to use the Creative Profiles. Not in the least because of their handy Amount slider that lets you adjust their effect all the way between 0 and 200 percent! In this case, I chose the Dark Color Pop profile from my brand new Piet's Creative Profiles Starter Pack (available here for only $14.95) and I diminished its strength to 70 percent. 

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Buy now for only $14.95

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Step 5: Brightening (Dodging) the face of the man in the background

I sometimes jump around a bit while I'm editing my images. One of the things the profile caused was for the face of the man in the background to turn too dark. So I drew a Radial Filter over his face (1) and brought up the Shadows slider to +100 (2). That didn't do much, though. In those cases where the targeted Shadows or Highlights sliders don't seem to do anything, it's time to move to the broader range of the Exposure slider. However, its sledgehammer approach also caused the surrounding wall to brighten, creating a telltale halo around the man's head. So I turned to one of my favourite new tools in Lightroom Classic CC: the Range Mask. By activating the Luminosity Range Mask (3), I could direct the Exposure slider's effect to specific brightness zones within the overall limits of the Radial Filter's perimeter (in this case the levels between 0 and 26). This way, I could use a fairly blunt tool (the Radial Filter) and still create an utterly precise mask without having to paint it manually with the Adjustment Brush. Further in this Before & After, you'll see another example of the power of this tool, when I use it to simply change the towel's colour!

Step 6: Darkening the Foreground with a Graduated Filter

As I thought the lower right corner was still too bright, I added an extra Graduated Filter to darken it, thereby focusing even more on the subjects.

Step 7: Changing the Towel's Color

Ok. This step is the most spectacular one in this entire Before & After, I think! The towel that our sadhu used to protect his spotless white attire from the dirt of the Varanasi streets, is quite the attention-grabber. That's not only because of its size, but mainly because of its color. Baby-blue might look good on newborns, but it definitely is out of place in the otherwise warm color palette of this image. My first idea was to Photoshop the towel out but it's quite a lot of work to do in a believable way and... this is supposed to be a Lightroom tutorial! So I tried the following: I used the Adjustment Brush to paint a fairly rough mask over the towel. I increased the Temp slider (1) to make it warmer and subsequently lowered the Saturation slider (2) to reduce the saturation of the existing colour. Then I went on to choose a new color in the Color rectangle (3) that better integrated with the surroundings. In order to make the mask coincide completely with the actual towel, I activated the Color Range Mask tool  (4) and used its Color Picker (5) to drag and select the blue hues in the towel. This told Lightroom to only adjust those blue pixels within the original, slightly broader and rougher Adjustment Brush mask. You can see the result in the next picture: I changed the towel's colour from blue to beige without resorting to Photoshop!

Step 8: Adjusting the Color of the Sadhu's Clothes

With the color of the towel blending in more into the environment, a new problem surfaced: the sadhu's clothing looks a bit too neutrally white in comparison to the rest of the scene. I solved this problem in a way that was comparable to the previous step but I used a Radial Filter instead. I drew one over the sadhu and adjusted the color with a combination of the Temperature (1), Saturation (2) and a custom color (3). In this case, I did not choose the Color Range Mask but the Luminance Range Mask to further narrow down the selection. By setting the slider to only affect tones in the 89 to 100 values, I could direct the color change only to the sadhu's white clothes. So, a combination of a Radial Filter and a Range Mask once again let me perform a difficult task with relative ease. For me personally, these new range masks alone are worth the price of the monthly Lightroom subscription. Definitely something to consider if you're still using Lightroom 6.

Step 9: Adding Radial Filters to the three People in the Image

Because I was after a dark, moody image, I wanted to darken the area around our three subjects a bit more. I could obviously do that with the Adjustment Brush, but that involves painting and I try to avoid that. So I used a little roundabout technique: I added three Radial Filters, each brightening one of the subjects (you can see all three of them together in this screenshot - normally you can only see one at a time). So they were now brighter than their surroundings and in fact a bit too bright. Then I turned to the Basic Panel and lowered the overall Exposure. The net result was that the people kept more or less their original brightness value and the background got darkened. Sometimes, the fastest way to do something in Lightroom is to take a detour! 

Step 10: Burning with the Adjustment Brush 

It's a more or less a constant technique in my postprocessing that I will achieve the general look and feel of an image through one click on a preset or a profile. The time I save in doing so, I will reinvest in local adjustments that can really take the image to the next level. In this case, I used the Adjustment Brush to further burn (darken) the area around the sadhu.

Step 11: More Graduated Filters

Ok, we're definitely in the area of diminishing returns here, but in order to guide the eye of the viewer even more through the image, I added two more Graduated Filters (shown together here). These darken the edges of the image so your eye is drawn more tho the center. A little like a vignette would do, but only to the left and right, as I wanted to keep the alleyway as it was. As you can see in the Graduated Filter to the right, I used another Luminance Range Mask to protect my subject from being darkened as well.

Step 12: Radial Filter to simulate the Sun

Another technique for which I like to use the Radial Filter, is to simulate the effect of sun rays. The back of this picture is lit by sunlight and I wanted to slighly warm up the neutral (and by comparison cold) flash light we used on the sadhu. So I added a Radial Filter (1) with an increased Temperature (2). Another Range Mask allowed me to focus mainly on the brightest parts of the image.

Step 13: Adding a Split Tone and Grain

Brightening the left side caused some noise to appear in that part of the image. By itself, that doesn't bother me, on the contrary: some noise can add to a photo's atmosphere but... as the right part of the image was correctly exposed by flash, there was no noise over there. And that difference in noise level is a telltale sign that the photo has been worked on. So, in order to cover my tracks, I added some global Grain via the Effects Panel. Finally, I turned the Highlights in the image a little more yellow by adding a Split Tone. By dragging the Balance slider to the left, I told Lightroom to only tone the brightest highlights, like the ones in the sadhu's clothes.

Step 14: Burning the Lower Right Corner with the Adjustment Brush

As a finishing touch, I also darkened the lower right corner a little more, using an Adjustment Brush.

Finally...

In this Before-And-After tutorial, I wanted to introduce you to a number of techniques that I often use to improve my images. This was a rather extreme example, and I am already bracing myself for comments that will tell me that 'this is no longer photography' and that I 'should get it right in camera'. Believe me or not, but occasionally I do get it right (or at least better) in camera, but there wouldn't be a lot to teach with those images!  But most of all, I wanted to show you that sometimes, there's more in an image than you might think at first sight and that it can be worthwhile to invest some time into improving a seemingly hopeless image. Then, you can learn from your mistakes and next time, hopefully, you will get it right in camera!

Wanna join us in Varanasi?

Maybe, after reading this blog post, you're thinking that it might be cool to visit Varanasi, too. It's a fantastic place to hone your portrait skills and there is no better way to do it than through a photo workshop where you'll get all the logistical help you need to create great images yourself. That's why Matt Brandon and yours truly are nose-deep in our agendas trying to set up a new edition of our popular seven day Varanasi Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. If you want to be amongst the first to know about dates and pricing, fill out this form. Below you can see some more images that were made during previous editions of this workshop and some of those came straight out of camera looking pretty close to their final version :-)  

Buy now for only $14.95

Choosing a cover for my Lightroom Profiles Starter Pack

Hello folks, it's been quiet on the blog but know that I am super busy with a couple of really interesting photography related projects that I hope to talk a little bit more about after the summer holidays... 

Say what? Haven't downloaded my Freesets yet? All you have to do is subscribe to the MoreThanWords newsletter at www.lightroomfreesets.com

In the mean time, I need your advice: now that my free Lightroom Presets (pictured above) have been downloaded over 4,000 times (get them at www.lightroomfreesets.com if you haven't already), I'm playing with the idea of offering them also - at an affordable price - as a set of Lightroom Creative Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC users. Profiles have a number of advantages over presets:

• Profiles are applied as one of the first steps in the Develop pipeline.
• Profiles leave the Develop sliders untouched. So you can apply them on top of any other Develop Adjustments you already have applied without them overriding those settings. They are cumulative.
• And... this is my favourite feature: you know how often a preset will be just a tad too strong to your taste? It's not so easy to dial the effect of a preset back, especially with presets you haven't made yourself, since they can be quite complex. With a Creative Profile, you have a handy Amount slider that easily lets you scale the effect from 0 to 200 percent, simply by dragging a slider.

You can lower or strenghten the effect of a Creative Profile simply by dragging the Amount slider around...

Now... here's my questions:

1. Do you like this idea of offering the presets as Creative Profiles?
2. Which of the following three box shots do you prefer? (Click on a thumbnail to see it bigger)

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You don't have to enter your email address to vote, but if you do, you will receive a 50 percent off discount code when the profiles become available and you might be one of three people to receive the profiles for free. Those three people will be randomly selected amongst the people who fill out this form (and fill out their email address so I can send them the prize).

What's new in Lightroom Classic CC 7.4

Adobe have just released Lightroom Classic CC 7.4, and it contains a couple of interesting organisational features: from now on, you can temporarily disable preset and profiles folders to reduce the amount of clutter without having to physically delete them. You can also add color labels to folders. In the following video, I walk you through these features, and I also give a recap of the new features that were introduced in 7.3 for those of you who missed those.

As a reminder, if you haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter. You'll be rewarded with 10 free Lightroom presets!

Save 20 percent on 'Portraits' by Damien Lovegrove

I know very few professional photographers who manage to photograph at Damien Lovegrove's pace all while still sharing so much of their knowledge through live workshops, lectures and videos. Take a look at Damien's excellent lighting videos, I can recommend all of them, especially his latest Lumen release or his Portraits ebook, the subject of this blog post. In fact, I think if you'd go look up the word 'prolific' in a dictionary, chances are that after the description, you'll read 'see also: Damien Lovegrove'. I once jokingly asked Damien which pills he was on because I wanted to see the same pharmacist. 

Shot during an urbex shoot with Damien and fellow X-Ambassador Ioannis Tsouloulis in Belgium. FUJIFILM X-Pro2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 17 mm | 1-160 sec at f - 8,0 | ISO 200

The master himself in action in this set-up shot: we used two Cactus RF60 speedlights and a Cactus V6 trigger. Modifier was an SMDV 70 Speedbox with a grid. 

“I don’t know what vitamins Damien Lovegrove is on, but I want the same!”

— Me

The eBook is available in two different covers. This is one from Damien's 'Figure in the landscape' series which he shot in the USA.

Damien was in Gent (Belgium) recently for a highly acclaimed (and sold out) evening talk. He had a special discount code for his Portraits eBook. Originally, it was only for the participants but I asked if I could also share it publicly, and he agreed. As Damien says himself, everything he knows about portrait photography is in this book.

In Portraits, Damien takes you through his complete portrait making process. He starts at the planning stages and obviously covers capture in great detail, both using natural light and flash, but he also talks about how he delivers files to clients and how he archives them.

Portraits has 356 pages with 384 high-resolution photographs that have all the exposure and lighting details that were used to create them. Because it's so high-res, you actually get two download sizes to choose from: a high-res one (e.g. for on your computer or tablet) and a lower res one (e.g. for on your phone).

“Everything I know about portrait photography is in this book. I hope it helps you to achieve a lifetime of enjoyment from your photography.”

— Damien Lovegrove

Imagine Damien sitting next to you in a bar, giving you 50,000 words worth of lighting and career advice. Believe me, that would cost you a lot more in beers than the 36 € / $40 (+ tax) Portraits is currently selling for. And better still, if you use code GENT€ (if you pay in €) or GENT$ (if you pay in $) upon checkout, you can get 20% extra off. On the eBook, not on beers! But hurry, because that code is only valid through the end of June 2018.

(Sneaky extra tip by yours truly... the ebook costs about 10 percent less in $ than in € due to exchange rate fluctuations - I think we can thank 'The Donald' for that... just make sure to use the right discount code!)

A Postcard from Mongolia, Part 2

Previously on the blog: in April this year, travel photographer Matt Brandon, yours truly and a select group of adventurous photographers, accompanied by an expert team of guides and photographic fixers, embarked on a photographic journey to Mongolia. Our aim was to do people and location scouting and set an itinerary for a new Mongolia photo workshop that will take place in the first half of 2019. In the first postcard in this series, you could already get a glimpse of one of the highlights of this and next year's trip: an extensive visit to the world famous Eagle Hunters. In this second postcard, I've got some more Eagle Hunter shots for you, including some behind-the-scenes pictures and explanations on how some of these images were made.

The Bayan-Öglii Airport. It had been a while since I had flown in a propeller plane. Fujifilm X-H1 | XF16mmF1.4 R WR | 1/220 @ f/11 | ISO 200

Quite cosy, those orange curtains in our Russian 4 x 4 Forgon minivans! I wouldn't mind having a mobile office like this - bar maybe the fuel consumption!

The Eagle Hunters live in a hard to reach region in Western Mongolia. The choice between a three and a half hour flight or two and a half days of being tossed around in a car was quickly made. Not that we entirely escaped being the tossing part: from the airport to our final destination - a custom built gher (tent) camp - it was another three hours in those photogenic (and frankly more comfortable than expected) Russian 4 x 4 Forgon vehicles. We had access to a family of Eagle Hunters for four full days. This gave us ample time not only to get to know them, but also to photograph them both indoors and outdoors, at various times of the day and in various locations, as you'll see below. We've already told them we'll be back next year! 

Eagle Hunter Silou and his four year old eagle Tirnek. As long as the eagle has his protective leather cap on, which is beautifully adorned, by the way, he is generally quiet... 

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 54.6 mm | 1/30 @ f/5.6 | ISO 200

... but when the cap is taken off, he wants to spread his wings from time to time. Luckily, Silou doesn't budge. He's used to more than that...

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 47.3 mm | 1/60 @ f/5 | ISO 400

Below is a close up of one of the family's eagles. Here you can see how exquisitely decorated the caps are. I used the 110 mm f/2.0 GF lens for the GFX, which I had purchased specifically for this trip. I know, excuses, excuses :-) At f/2, the depth of field is razor-thin, comparable to f/1.4 on an 85 mm fullframe lens. That's why on this shot, I opted to work at f/4, to buy me some margin.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR | 1/1000 @ f/4 | ISO 100

The camera gear used on this trip: a Fujifilm GFX with three lenses (not to scale): the GF23mmF4 R LM WR, GF110mmF2 R LM WR and GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR.

I consider myself a wide-angle shooter and up to now, the 32-64 was by far my most used lens on the GFX. Yet, the 110 mm lens definitely changed the statistics on this trip, much to my own surprise...

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR @ 110 mm | 1/4000 @ f/2 | ISO 100

The first day, we photographed Silou and his son Ayu in the neighbourhood of our camp site. When you've got an important subject to photograph, you don't want to waste time prepping everything when they're already on set. That's why we often use a stand-in to try out poses and lighting. In the image below, you see Matt taking on this role. And no, he doesn't have a broken arm... he's just pretending he's carrying an eagle!

Although it was only spring, there was an enormous amount of light - almost more than in India, it felt. Because of that, our trusted Godox AD600 pretty much had to work on full power all of the time. Although it held up well, next year we're probably going to bring the AD600 Pro because of its much faster recycle time at full power: 1 second versus almost three! The image of Matt also shows you another trick I often use when I need to squeeze more light out of my flash, and that I also cover in my Light It Up! ebook on off-camera location flash. I just let the flash enter the frame. As long as it doesn't cover anything important or anything that has much fine detail, the softbox can generally easily be removed with Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill. Especially when you're working in High-Speed Sync (this particular image was made at 1/4000 of a second) and therefore you're losing a lot of flash power, this technique can make the difference between a well-exposed and an underexposed image.

Matt as a stand-in for the real talent: the Eagle Hunter!

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 36.2 mm | 1/4000 @ f/4,0 | ISO 400

As there was also considerable wind, our drivers came up with the brilliant idea to park two of the Forgons in a V-shape, creating a windbreaker. This made it easier to aim the SMDV Alpha 110 softbox at our model and get consistent light on them.

I already introduced you to Silou's son Ayu and his eagle Ana in the first part of this series. Below you see some more images of them. In order to waste less flash power, I worked at the sync speed of the GFX (1/125th of a second) and I used a six stop ND filter by Formatt-Hitech to keep my aperture wide open. The result is that at 1/125th, the action isn't completely frozen but in this case I don't mind. On the contrary, I think it actually shows the interaction between the Eagle and the Hunter better and I like the contrast between the sharp beak and the motion-blurred wings.

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Normally, I'm a wide-angle fan, but the 110 mm is such a fantastic lens that I used it a lot more than I expected to. Above are two more 110 mm shots. Below is a comparable image, shot with the 32-64 (comparable to a 25-50 zoom lens on a fullframe camera). The feeling is different. Not better or worse, I think, just different.

After this introductory shoot, the next days we wanted to include the ruggedly beautiful Mongolian landscape in our shots as well. For someone like me who lives in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the vastness of Mongolia is simply impressive. For the image below, we climbed up a rocky hill about half an hour's drive from the camp. This website and the compressed JPG images don't do the GFX's fine detail justice, but on my monitor, they're so sharp I could shave myself!

Below you see a couple of full-size 1:1 crops at 2,500 x 2,500 pixels. Click on a miniature to see the crop at full-size. The eagle looks slightly unsharp, but that's because of the motion blur caused by the 1/125th shutter speed.

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One of the unique aspects of this workshop, compared to others, is that we use a lot of flash (and we obviously share not only our expertise but also our gear with our workshop attendees). Especially with high-texture subjects like Eagle Hunters with fur coats sitting on rocks, the flash light, when used from the right angle, helps to bring out so much more detail and punch, regardless of the camera brand and type you're using.  

The Sirui XL Traveler extends all the way up to 160 cm if necessary.

In this image, I deliberately let the softbox enter the frame to get more light and to also make my light as soft as possible. I had put my camera on my trusted Sirui Traveller tripod and made a second image without the softbox in the frame, so that I could combine both in Photoshop into the final image you see above. In order to get a similar image in-camera, I would have had to put my light twice as far, which would have required four times the power (that's the Inverse Square Law working against you). On top of that, putting the light further away would have caused it to be relatively smaller and therefore would have created harder shadows. Getting similarly soft shadows would have required an even bigger softbox, which in turn would demand a more powerful flash. Since the wind was blowing so vehemently at the top of this ridge, it was already quite an achievement that we managed to keep the 110 cm SMDV Alpha in place without going kite-surfing!

The SMDV Alpha 110 softbox and the Godox AD600 portable battery-powered studio flash are my favourite heavy-duty lighting items when traveling.

On shoots like these, I also try to photograph people when they're less camera-aware. The pictures below have the otherwise strong looking Silou actually smiling! These images were also made with the 110 mm.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR | 1/250 @ f/9 | ISO 100

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR | 1/250 @ f/9 | ISO 100

From one extreme to the other: for the photo below, I used the 23 mm GF lens (comparable to an 18 mm fullframe) and I went flat on my belly to make the eagle look even more impressive than he already is. The downside is that the mountains look less impressive this way, too.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR | 1/125 @ f/13 | ISO 100

Normally, Eagle Hunters travel by horse, which is how we photographed them the next day. Below is one of my favourite images from the trip: Silou and his son on their horses, dominating the impressive landscape behind them. This location will also be on next year's agenda, unless... our fixers come up with something even more spectacular!

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 56.5 mm | 1/125 @ f/ 13 | ISO 100

One of the default crop options you find in the GFX, is 65 x 24. This is a tribute to the X-Pan aspect ratio. Obviously, you could crop any image from any camera to this aspect ratio in Lightroom or Photoshop, but the nice thing about the in-camera-crop of the GFX is that you can actually see it in the viewfinder and... you still retain approximately 24 megapixel images. Furthermore, if you shoot RAW, you can always change your mind (and your crop) later on.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR | 1/4000 @ f/4 | ISO 200

This may sound strange, coming from someone who's a true flash-aficionado, but one of the more important lessons of working with flash is probably knowing... when not to use it. Originally, I had the plan of photographing this sunset shoot with flash, but it looked really artificial. So I decided to let the ambient light do its magic and shoot into the available light.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 42.5 mm | 1/125 @ f/22 | ISO 400

On our last day, we were invited to have dinner at Silou's place, together with his family. This experience also involved quite a number of vodka shots that kind of got in the way of shooting...  Luckily, just moments before, we had the occasion to photograph what might possibly become the next generation of Eagle Hunters...

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 44.9 mm | 1/500 @ f/8 | ISO 200

This picture also officially wraps up these two blog posts dedicated to the Eagle Hunters. However, we also photographed our fair share of monks, herders, nomads and other photogenic people on the second part of the trip and I tried a couple of Brenizer panorama's with the GFX. More about that in the soon to be published part three of this series. 

Want to join us next year in Mongolia? Subscribe to the newsletter via this link (or update your preferences) to be amongst the first to hear when we've finalised the details.

All images on this website © Piet Van den Eynde, unless otherwise noted.

A Postcard from Mongolia, Part 1

Matt Brandon and I have just returned home from teaching our first ever photo workshop in Mongolia and boy what an unforgettable experience it has been! We're already scheming a second edition in the first half of 2019 (sign up for my newsletter if you want to be notified) but while we're finalising those details, here's a couple of my favourites from this first edition.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR | 1/125 @ f/11 | ISO 100

Our tour kicked off in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, and home to half of the country's population of 3 million. One of the must-sees is the Soviet Zaisan monument, situated on top of a hill overlooking the city. As luck (or rather our highly talented team of fixers) would have it, a couple of retired army colonels happened to drop by.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR | 1/500 @ f/8 | ISO 100

From the capital of Ulaanbaatar (UB for friends), we took an early morning flight to the town of Ölgii, near the border with China and Russia. From there, it was another 3 hours in those highly photogenic ex-Russian military 4x4 Forgon minivans to our gher (tent) camp. We were now in the region of the impressive Altai mountains, home to one of the tour's highlights: the famous eagle hunters.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 54.6 mm | 1/30 sec @ f/5.6 | ISO 200

The image above portrays eagle hunter Silou and his four year old eagle Tirnek, photographed inside a gher. 

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR @ 110 mm | 1-125 at f/4 | ISO 400

To give our workshop participants as much shooting time and variation as possible, we will often try to arrange two subjects. Luckily for us, eagle hunting is a tradition that is passed on from father to son. In the image above, you can see Silou's son Ayu holding up his two year old eagle Ana. These birds can easily weigh up to 8 kilograms, something he only told us after patiently holding his arm up for minutes! I used my Fujifilm 110 mm GF f/2 portrait lens for this image. This lens roughly corresponds to an 85 mm f/1.4 on a full-frame camera system. By choosing a low shooting position, I made the eagle hunter and his eagle look even more impressive than they already are. Including some out-of-focus foreground helped to add extra depth to the photo. A Godox AD600 with an SMDV 110 softbox was used to reign in the harsh Mongolian midday sun. Postprocessing was done with one of the presets from my free Lightroom Freesets package (sign up for the newsletter to claim your copy).

In the image below, you see Silou's other son Berikjan with his eagle Tastulek putting up quite a show for us!

Eagle hunting may be a beautiful and photogenic tradition, it does not feed a large family. In his everyday life, Silou and his family are farmers. Below you see the same Berikjan with one of the family's camels. In the background, the other camels are taking advantage of the situation to quietly wander off. Luckily, our herder has a motorcycle to quickly bring order into chaos. Watching Mongolian herders herding their cattle while navigating their motorcycles through the rough terrain is an impressive sight!

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF23mmF4 R LM WR @ 23 mm | 1/125 @ f /18 | ISO 100

Photographically speaking, this image was lit with my 'two lights for the price of one' technique. This consists of using the strong sunlight as a rim light and filling in the shadows with flash. This gives a dramatic, 3D feel to the image which can further be enhanced by putting the flash slightly behind the subject, pointing back at him or her. Combined with the right position of the subject's face, this lighting scheme will predominantly light the far away side of the face, leaving the larger part that is closest to camera in the shade, except for a small triangle under the closest eye. This lighting style is called short lighting and its one of my preferred lighting styles. If you want to learn all about off-camera flash, check out the just released second edition of my ebook Light It Up. You can save 10% with code light10.

That's it for now. I'm still working through dozens of more Mongolia images in Lightroom and I'll be back when I have some more to show you. Talk soon!

What do these two images have in common?

Well, you might argue that one is a divine statue and the other has a fairly divine looking mustache, but that's not the answer I was looking for...

The image on the left is by my good friend, travel photographer and co-workshop leader Matt Brandon. He made it recently while on assignment for National Geographic in China. The one on the right is by me. I made it almost ten years ago, on a bicycle journey through Iran. Yes, I used to do some weird stuff back in the day. But I digress...

If you think both images share the same lighting pattern, you're already getting warmer... Both are indeed an example of short lighting, where the main light falls on the side of the face that is turned away from the camera. It's a lighting style that throws a relatively large part of the face in shadows, which adds depth and drama. It's one of my favourite lighting styles for character faces. But there's more. I won't keep you in suspense any longer...

An excerpt from the just released, 185 page second edition of my PDF ebook 'Light It Up! Techniques for Dramatic Off-Camera Flash'. This particular page talks about the difference between short and broad lighting.

Both images were lit using flash. Not because we particularly wanted to use flash, but because the available light at the time we made the images just wasn't good, in fact, it was awful. It's thanks to the fact that we had a flash with us, and that we knew how to use it off-camera, that the resulting images were deemed good enough to be used as a cover - in Matt's case for one of National Geographic's magazines, in my case for Shoot, Belgium's biggest photo magazine. These images would never have been published inside the magazines, let alone on the cover if we hadn't known how to change the crappy available light to our advantage. In fact, they probably wouldn't even have been made in the first place... Matt's written a really interesting blog post on how his attitude towards flash has changed from fear to excitement and how getting familiar with flash has opened up a lot of possibilities. Check it out, it's a great and motivating read!

There's ten years between these images, but they share on thing...

... they wouldn't have been used as a cover if we hadn't used a flash to make them look more interesting than they did just with the available light.

“Piet’s approach to lighting is simple and effective. He took me from frozen in fear to receiving compliments from the editors of the National Geographic.”

— Matt Brandon

I guess this is what I want to get at with this email. All too often I hear photographers say they 'don't need flash, because their camera does ISO 1.2 zillion' or 'because they use fast primes'... Very often though, remarks like these seem to hide a deep-rooted fear for flash more than anything else. 

I know, I've been there, too. But the beauty is that now is probably the best time to overcome those fears: your camera LCD will provide instant feedback on your progress, lowering the learning curve and the price of flash gear itself has come down considerably, too. In fact, I'm convinced that learning how to use flash will do a lot more for your photography and cost a lot less than buying another shiny new lens or another new camera that you don't really need.

If you want to take the plunge and get started with flash, I've got a great companion for you: the just released second edition of my ebook Light It Up! will teach you all you need to know. It starts off simple, with an overview of essential concepts, but over the course of its 185 pages, it builds up to more powerful and complex setups. It's an ebook that grows with you while you discover the opportunities of flash in general and off-camera flash in particular.

Light It Up! will probably even save you money, as it offers a lot of good-quality third-party alternatives to the expensive brand-name flashes that the camera manufacturers sell.

The book also contains loads of gear advice, so if you haven't bought any flash gear yet, I recommend you check out Light It Up! first: you'll probably save the book's price many times over because I recommend not to buy the flash gear from your camera manufacturer, but third-party gear. Generally it costs about half and is as good if not better. Almost all the examples in my book were made with third-party gear. I'd rather spend the money I save on lighting modifiers or traveling.

The difference between left and right lies in a flash, a $25 umbrella and a Lightroom preset.

Save 10% on both the Standard Edition (185 page PDF ebook) or the Deluxe Edition (ebook + 3 tutorial videos + 5 Lightroom Presets) with code light2018.

What's new in Lightroom Classic CC 7.3

Great news folks, Adobe have just released a new update for Lightroom Classic and it's got a couple of tremendous features in it. Or how would you qualify full size preset previews and scalable creative profiles?

Watch the video below to learn all about it!

So, while applying presets has definitely become more fun, managing them has actually gotten worse: you can no longer rename presets in Lightroom and the default presets that ship with Lightroom currently show up first in the Presets Panel list, even if you have no intention of using them. Let's hope that this is only a temporary issue.

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Oh, and while I have your attention: my ebook Light It Up! Techniques for Dramatic Off-Camera Flash has just been released. Find more about it here or get your copy here. Be sure to use code light10 for a 10 percent discount.

How to Light without Looking Lit

Making your light look natural

There are two ways you can use flash: in an inconspicuous way or in a way that clearly says “this was lit”. To me, as with just about anything else in photography, there is no right or wrong. It’s a matter of personal taste, preference and also a matter of what you want your photo to say. While I’ve done my fair share of images that clearly looked “lit” (and I still love doing this kind of work), I sometimes also try to use my flashes in a more subtle way. The great Gregory Heisler, whose fantastic book 50 Portraits shows you some great examples of flash photography, calls this “motivating the practical”: you have to motivate your light, make it look authentic, believable. The use of colour gels will also help a lot to make your (fake) flash light look real.

An interesting scene… lit by boring light.

I was traveling through Swedish Lapland when this nice scene caught my eye. I liked the patina on the wall and the old bike with the reindeer skin on it. The only problem was again that the available light was too nice, too soft. It did not bring out the patina the way I wanted it to. So I added an orange filter to my flash and put it parallel to the wall, outside of the frame on a tripod (I use my tripods (I use my tripods - like the Sirui Traveller T2204XL I'm currently using - more as light stands than I do as camera stands)more as light stands than I do as camera stands), aiming slightly down. The result is a picture that looks like it was made with the setting sun. The orange filter helps to motivate that.

The same photo with an orange-gelled flash lined up parallel to the wall, simulating golden evening light. The light brings out the texture in the wall and adds some interesting shadows.

The image of the taxi driver below was shot at noon. So the only available light was coming from above him. The roof above him completely blocked the light, so he was completely in the shade. Had I only used available light, the background would have been completely overexposed if I wanted to light him correctly. I chose to add a flash, coming in from the left, to simulate the effect of late afternoon light coming in through the windshield. I then asked him to slightly turn his face towards me to create a nice 'Rembrandt' look.

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 44 mm | 1-125 sec @ f - 4,0 | ISO 100

Combining both approaches

In this picture below I took of model Cato, I combine both approaches. To the left of the boiler room we were photographing in was a window. I placed a bare strobe outside, and aimed it through the window as to simulate sunlight falling in.

FUJIFILM X-Pro2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 20 mm | 1/30 sec @ f/9 | ISO 1000

The opening in the wall motivates the light. However, I also put a flash way back in the room to add some rim light to the boiler tanks to prevent that part of the picture from going totally black. There’s nothing really there to motivate that there would be a light over there, other than my artistic choice to put one there.

The lighting setup to the image above. Taken from my latest eBook 'Light it Up! Techniques for Dramatic Off-Camera Lighting

Want to improve your flash skills?

The image I discussed above is also in just-released eBook: Light it Up! Techniques for Dramatic Lighting. This eBook teaches you everything you need to know. Everything explained in plain English with lots of behind the scene shots or lighting diagrams. For those who already have some flash experience under their belt, there are also more advanced chapters on gear and light setups. The book also contains plenty of buyer's advice (did you know that some brand flashes cost up to three times as much as third party alternatives, while not offering more power or features - sometimes even less).

Light It Up! (including bonuses) is available in two versions: the Standard Edition (185 page PDF ebook) retails for $24.95 + applicable taxes. The Deluxe Edition is $10 extra and also includes three tutorial videos (totalling 45 minutes) and five Lightroom presets. On both editions, you can save 10% with code light10.

P.S. If you speak Dutch, this book is also available in Dutch (both as a print book and an eBook). I also have a Dutch video course on off camera flash over at my Dutch online photo training website www.photofactsacademy.nl.

Time-limited: watch one of the Light It Up! bonus videos for free

With the cover choice out of the way (boy, what a cliffhanger that was), the launch of my new eBook Light It Up! is getting closer. The 30 second video above gives you a sneak peek at the book's contents. If you buy the ebook during the launch week (April 1st - April 8th), you'll not only get a 20 percent discount, but you'll also receive a bonus set of Lightroom presets and 3 bonus videos, totalling over 45 minutes of playing time!

But there's more, from now until April 3rd, 8 AM GMT, you can watch the first of those bonus videos for free. It shows you how I made and post-processed this shot:

Light It Up! contains all the information you need to create photographs like this yourself.

And the winner is...

With almost 1,000 votes cast, what are the odds of the cover choice for my new eBook ending up in a tie between covers 4 and 5? Luckily, I also asked you which cover you'd prefer as a second choice and as there were significantly more people who opted for cover 5, I can now safely conclude that this is what the cover of Light It Up will look like when it becomes available on April 1st. Congratulations to Lana: you're now officially a cover model :-)