I enjoy traveling to Oulu. People of Studio Kuutio are filled with enthusiasm. I visited Oulu last time just before Christmas when I was a photography trainer in a workshop: “Shooting people in locations”. I’m on my way again – today we’ll begin a workshop called: “Rhythm to the Groups”.

 

Storytelling

In previous workshop our model was local rock-manager Jarkko Soronen. Before demonstration he shared with us he would appreciate if storytelling in the picture is a “mixture of rock glamour in Nightwish style and northern spirit”.

I think our demonstration showed everyone how important is to find out before shooting all the details and needs of the model or client. When we have crystallized storytelling before shooting we can make all the expressional choices based on that. Storytelling is a foundation to composition, cropping, lighting, props, location etc are

In demonstration we positioned Jarkko foreground and chose to shoot from below the eye level. Jarkko was wearing those clothes and accessories he’s known in promo events. As props he wanted to add one of his band’s T-shirt and some CD’s of others.

There were two windows both sides of Jarkko. That’s why we used two studio strobes as kicker lights. They were positioned behind model. As light modifiers we used standard reflectors and glossy silver umbrellas. Because of umbrellas we got rim light which was long enough and hard enough. We lit Jarkko’s face using one studio strobe with standard reflector, honeycomb (8°) and barn doors. Last studio strobe we used as fill light. It was located behind the camera.

Then we run out of studio strobes. Luckily we still had few continuous light sources, Dedolights. We used two of them: another one lit T-shirt and another one belt buckle. Without Dedolights those spots would have stayed too dark.

Positioning hands and CDs. We did’t have extra barn doors, so Asko Veteläinen used piece of wood to narrow main light’s light beam. Taina Myllylä held another piece of wood as additional lens hood. Picture: Riikka Holappa

In last demonstration our model was Tapani Launonen. Unfortunately we ran out of time, so we concentrated more on some technical matters instead of storytelling. We demonstrate things like color of light –when you want accurate color and when wrong color of light is the right answer for the picture. I’m hoping Tapani will be our model in some other workshop in the future! And we have more time then.

So this morning we’ll begin workshop “Rhythm to Groups”. One of participants has organized few different kind of groups to our demonstrations. I’m all thrilled with enthusiasm 🙂