...in the Rub Al Khali?

First sunset and a breathtaking atmosphere, and all that from the terrasse of our room. Without even setting a single step in front of our room, we gathered quite a lot of material today. We can almost touch a huge dune that is building up right in front of the hotel, it´s just awesome.

Unfortunately we´ll only stay here for 4 days, so we made plans to get up every day at 6 a.m. to shoot the sunrise too. That way we have two of those events - still not enough for all of our ideas, but better than just one. We´re not here for a holiday, so what.

Sandduses have that little special, that we until now only knew from untouched powder snow, it´s something really wonderful, pristine and beautifully natural. Just a dream. I´d even say I´d prefer the dunes to powder.

...to gather new material.

Luckily noone else sent us into the desert so far (it´s an austrian saying to do so if you don´t like somebody), there we´ll do it ourselves. Finally we managed to earn enough miles with our favourite Airline Emirates to get a free flight (perhaps we shouldn´t change airline that often). So we decided to go to Dubai and from there 500km by road via Abu Dhabi into the empty quarter, Rub Al Khali - the largest sand desert in the world. Let´s see if it´s really that empty. We always loved to see some huge sanddunes, so let´s see how we like it.

We paln some really crazy desert shots, along with "standard" images. We´re sooo much looking forward.

So next Stop Dubai, 7days - we´ll keep you posted.

...how do you shoot a mountainbiker on white?

Well, first of all you need some Equipment - a long roll of white photocardboard (min 2,70m wide), 5 Studioflashlights and a lot of light formers such as softboxes or reflectors. If you have all that, you need to set the right ratio between all those lights. Only then you get a good output on the rawfil, just like the one in the middle. The backround is almost white there without glowing too much.

After that you´ve got to retouch the las pieces of fine grey in the image and make it white. If you plan to shoot for stock agencies, you have to retouch all the logos otherwise your image will get rejected for copyright reasons. When retouching the logos you have to keep the structure of the cloth which is a pretty advanced technique and quite time consuming. The sample image took us 2,5 hours to retouch.

The final image should be worth all the efforts, because the white background isn´t just cut in, but it´s quite natural looking because there is some light from the back on the object.

...businessphotos for office and internet portal.

Dr. Grogger-Endlicher ist a lawyer and opened a web portal www.scheidungsportal.at especially for poeple that are being or have been divorced. She especially concentrates on children that very often suffer most from the circumstances. Therefore she also opened the site www.kinderinderscheidungsfalle.at dealing with children during that delicate time - trying to avoid problems even before they start existing.

We had already some images on the site when Mrs. Grogger-Endlicher asked us to take some businessshots for her office (www.grogger.at) and the sites. So we took our lights, cameras and all other things to move into her office and take the according shots of the sympathetic team without taking too much of their valuable time.

Sabrina Unterhuber, Make Up Artist (www.sabe.at) joined us. BTW: perfect Make Up is crucial for great images. Flashlight and camera draw a completely different image than you are used to see in your mirror. Only when using the right amount of Make Up, you´ll end up with the perfect picture you´d love to see and show on your website and to your friends. Therefore we like to work with professionals - they know exactly how much is needed to make it look the way it is intended.

...sure sounds strange for an english ear!

I´d translate it to wineresidence and it´s a great name for this house in Mailberg in Lower Austria. It was built by Weingut Hagn a vineyard. Not only the house itself (which is newly built and very modern) is great, also the high quality vines of the winery. So the name fits pretty well.

Well, I didn´t mention yet what we did there. We had an architecture shooting, capturing the beauty of the modern building.

We planned to shoot during daytime, but the weather was all but nice, so we waited for the evening to get some nice shots with the lights turned on.

So if anybody is looking for a wineholiday, this lovely place is definitely worth a visit.

 

...quite a lot different as you can see.

And what you probably aso see, is how much fun we all had shooting the images. Even thought the young family didn´t even know how the final portrait would look like.

Once again we moved out with our equipment to pitch up our tents in the house of our customers. It´s not particularely small, our mobile studio - so if you like to get good imagees, you rather provide enough space. But the final result is way sorth the effort. Your home is your castle and you feel way more comfortable there than in a photostudio, no matter how nice it is there. And the resulting images just show what you feel - comfort and fun - that´s what family portraits are supposed to look like.

...correct exposure needed!

Just like shooting white objects on white background, shooting these black stones on black background needs the perfect exposure to get a great image. Especially when shooting black on black you need to retouch a little more though than when shooting on white.  The "Burn Tool" in Photoshop is your friend when you want to get it really black, not just very very dark gray with some dust.

This technique shines when you use a black background for your image, such as a black website. The idea for this image wasn´t ours this time, it´s from Bernhard Resl who had to fight against our resistance to get this image. We didn´t think it would look good, but in fact it does - well done, Bernhard. You can view the images in action on his website:  www.xund-heit.at

 

...???

We want to share one more image of the watershooting with you.

Is it art, or is it photography, or both, or neither one? Who cares, we like it and we hope you too - and it has a potential to get addicted, so we´re off for the shootingtable again!