Michael's blog

Lovely Fredau Hoekstra featured on SmokingStrobes

Submitted by Michael on Mon, 2012-05-14 03:00

Shooting photos with model Fredau is sure fun

I can't tell you how glad I am that cousin Fredau Hoekstra came to visit us here in good ol' Germany. Of course we took some stunning photos (how could we not do it?) and filmed it for our beauty photography blog SmokingStrobes. Read more »

Happy Mother's Day!

Submitted by Michael on Sun, 2012-05-13 02:44

Thanks a ton to modelina for this funny baby belly shoot. Mommy, you rock!

What a wonderful day! Let's celebrate all moms, grandmothers and simply everybody else who give us love, support and cheer us on in our lives! You are awesome. Read more »

Now that’s how you adjust photos in Lightroom 4

Submitted by Michael on Fri, 2012-05-11 23:12

Kubota demonstrates and compares mage adjustments in Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 4.

Thanks to the awesome ISO 1200 mag I just discovered a video about the new image adjustment tools, which I really like. In this video Kevin Kubota explains in a wonderful style how the new tools are different from the old ones and he shows how to use them. Read more »

Self-made woman 2.0: Bar Refaeli nude for under.me

Submitted by Michael on Mon, 2012-05-07 15:28

Bar Refaeli poses nude in video for her underwear collection

Bar Refaeli awesomely demonstrates how to promote her underwear collection. But wait a second, where is the underwear in this scene?

It’s 2012 and major media platforms like YouTube provide the chance for everybody to promote themselves successfully. An extremely sexy example:
Supermodel and actress Bar Refaeli promoting her own fashion label. Read more »

A technique I use to pitch clients and models

Submitted by Michael on Thu, 2012-04-26 22:41

Oren Klaff is looking kinda funny on video. But make no mistake, his technique for getting the deal is working like charm.

I find myself constantly pitching other people. Often it's about getting a budget from a client. Or it's just about pitching a model to do a TfP shoot with me. How about you? Pitching as well? To get the deals you want, you have to be very convincing.

Read more »

marketing

Real artists are selling editions, right?

Submitted by Michael on Tue, 2012-04-24 23:32

In terms of shopping cart services, ShopLocket is the new kid on the block. I tried it 10 minutes ago and it spontaneously got a place in my heart.

Read more »

ISO 1200 Magazine Behind the Scenes Videos

Submitted by Michael on Sat, 2012-04-14 01:39

Our little no-budget SmokingStrobes video in the ISO 1200 magazine.

I am more than happy to see that ISO 1200 Magazine today featured our SmokingStrobes tutorial on how to light portraits with a laptop.

Read more »

First Spreecast for me - free ebooks for you

Submitted by Michael on Sat, 2012-04-07 16:52

There is a pile of eBooks that I have to give away for free. The way I am going to do it is raffling them in a live video show this Sunday, 21:45 UK at http://zelbel.com/chat. Should I let you in on a dirty little secret?

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Happiness =12 pages + cover in Magazine

Submitted by Michael on Thu, 2012-04-05 18:57

Our photo of my dear wife Emily on the cover of Adore Noir Magazine. I'm so proud of her.

Today I’d like to talk about one well curated source of inspiration for us photographers: Adore Noir Magazine. In my opinion this is the world's finest all black & white, fine art photography, downloadable eZine. Read more »

Photography Question: What is AE Shift?

Submitted by Michael on Mon, 2012-04-02 21:41

White wedding dress correctly exposed thanks to AE shift by 1 f-stop (AE +1)

Auto Exposure shift allows you to influence the exposure which your camera will choose when you set it to autoexposure (AE).

Let's say you set your camera to iTTL or ETTL and the photos you get are little hot/too bright, then you might set AE Shift to "-1", which will make the camera going 1 stop down with it's exposure from now on.

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