Plagues of Pandora has an endorsement deal with Archetype Apparel so pictures which could also double as the band promo were needed. They really wanted an urban setting and some wide angles so we met up for a quick shoot among some of Vienna's newest buildings. The sun had just disappeared behind one of the apartment blocks but it still was quite bright so I had to go full power on my Speedlites. I added orange gels to the backlights and initially wanted to hide them behind the band members but the look of having them visible came out quite nice so we were happy to use it.

With this first picture I used HDR which I normally don't for this kind of stuff, but hey - worth a try!

My favourite from the session is from a different angle and processed by adding structure only to the sky and putting a light fog filter on it. All in all a fun and fast shoot and everyone is quite happy with the results!

I had met Markus at a wheelchair rugby training session and he expressed interest in having me take some pictures of him on the tennis court - a little while later we sorted out this session in the early evening of a very sunny day - not the easiest conditions to shoot in but luckily one of the courts had a bit of shade. I had wanted to shoot a dramatic sports portrait as well as some more friendly ones, so I needed to overpower the ambient light with flash.

The thing I was most worried about at the beginning was dealing with the shadows the wheelchair would probably throw when I shot flash at it. In the end that actually turned out to be easy compared to ensuring the tennis racket would be in the right place so as not to throw strange patterns!

A completely different look came about by just changing the angle and tweaking the settings a little:

Of course we also wanted some more friendly shots and a couple of action shots, so I moved around a little and also changed the editing in order not to have them look so harsh and sharp:

Definitely fun for me and something I would love to repeat! Not sure I am interested in action sports photography but sports portraits look like they could be something to expand into as they are similar to music promo pictures!

atwork (www.atwork.at) is a small IT company that does consultancy and implementation of cloud strategies, web portals, social media campaigns, other web-oriented stuff and also software development and business solution development. They needed pictures of their employees for their website and got into touch with me due to the shoot I had done of Microsoft people a few weeks ago.

The shoot took place at their office which is inside a shopping center - we used two sliding doors for some basic portraits and then moved to a walkway above the shopping area as well as a hallway in the back. Before the shoot, Carina (www.feengleich-makeup.com) did some light touch-up work on everyone who was willing - this was the first time I had worked with her and I am really happy it worked out so well. Efficiency is the name of the game and she was quick and thorough which meant we could get on with shooting almost immediately after my setup, which was one light as a hairlight and two as key/fill (f/3.2, 1/125s, 50mm, ISO 200).

After the initial portraits, we used the well-lit walkway to do some full body shots - one light set to 1/4 as backlight and one in a softbox at 1/8 as key (f/2.2, 1/200s, 50mm, ISO 100):

Then we went into the corridor and used a single light in a reflective umbrella to produce some more portraits in landscape orientation, you can see the setup as well (f/3.5, 1/200s, 100mm, ISO 400):

Biohazard was playing as part of the Rebellion Tour and I sorted out a short promo shoot with them - unfortunately, due to it being the first gig of the tour, everything was a little crazy and so the actual shoot happened literally 2 minutes before they needed to go on stage. I had been waiting for 45 minutes for it to happen but did not have the chance to really shoot any tests, so in the end I just had to hope I got it right... here it is:

It was shot at f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO 400, 25mm with a blue gelled Speedlite at 1/2 as backlight and two Speedlites at 1/4 as key and fill - here's a setup shot:

And then there was the gig itself of course! Great show as always, absolutely explosive and full of energy!

Archetype Apparel (www.dresslikeasir.com) is back with new stuff for summer! And all of it looks pretty damn fine if you ask me. So we set up an outdoor shoot at Arena and advertised for a bunch of models with the plan of having really summery pictures although it is just mid-April. Anyway, as often happens in April, the weather took a turn for the worse and we had to move the shoot – luckily a location was found… unfortunately it was a cellar. With no light. And no space. But hey, this is where the fun happens, right? “Oh, by the way,” my good friends Tom and Dani say, “we still want the summery look, OK?”

Sure. Let’s do it. We’ll just ignore the fact that the motion-activated cellar light turns off every 10 minutes (not that it was much of a light anyway, just a single bulb). We’ll also ignore the fact that the actual space to work in is about 67 square centimetres. However, on the bright side (pun intended), there were 4 fixed lights there which we were able to use to at least provide a bit of ambient. Here is the setup taken on the phone as I was trying to work my (limited) magic:

So I set up a Speedlite shooting through the umbrella as my main light and then bounced an orange-gelled Speedlite off the ceiling and back wall trying to emulate evening sunlight. Finally I threw in a hairlight at the back, also gelled orange, just to give it a bit more flood.

The pics are actually edited minimally in Lightroom and then I threw a very light fog and glamour glow filter over them in Color Efex. I’m quite happy with the look - and more importantly so are Dani and Tom!

I was specifically told that we were going for more fun than the standard fashion pictures. I am also not really one to do fashion photography so that suited me just fine – especially since I got such positive feedback from the last couple of Archetype Apparel shoots. So here are a couple of the friendlier ones:

Frostbite Bookings is putting on a free festival in September and urgently needed someone to shoot a promo picture for their poster / flyer. An appeal for help on facebook yielded a quick arrangement to meet on Sunday morning at the Donauinsel - their idea being that we could get a shot done that would have a summer feel to it, even though it was only 10 degrees out.

The sun was producing extreme glare and it was quite hazy so I really had to overpower it severely using flash. Three Speedlites, one of them gelled orange, as well as a gold reflector provided enough counterbalance to the sun. I placed my models facing at an angle to it and shot a bunch of different pics - the below shot being the one they chose and have edited for their simple initial online promo.

Yammer is a Private Social Network for enterprises and was acquired in 2012 by Microsoft. As such, with integration running and a strong sales motion to get customers using Yammer, the marketing team in Austria set up "Yammertime" (see what they did there?) and as part of it asked me to take some fun profile pics of anyone who showed up.

I wanted to mess about with the lighting in order to get a blue effect going as the Yammer logo is on a blue background, so I set up my camera to white balance for a red gel I held in front of the lens as a test shot. I then gelled two flashes (key and fill) red and gelled a third (back / hair light) blue.

I used the Sigma 15mm 2.8 fisheye for most pictures and had the Canon 50mm 1.4 on for some more standard angles. All shots were pretty much taken at f/3.5, 1/200s and ISO 400. They were taken in RAW and looked great on the camera screen when rendered, however Lightroom was not able to process them the way I had shot them - I didn't realize that Lightroom's interpretation of Canon RAW is not perfect and thus I had to mess about a lot with the settings until I got something that I wanted to keep.

Anyway, had some fun taking them and luckily it seems everyone is happy with their new profile pics! Here are a couple of them:

My friend runs a chain of gyms (check it out at www.fitfabrik.at and sign up if you live close - really great value for money!) and needed new pictures for their site - the idea being that we get a few shots of the gyms but mainly show people working out there. He thankfully organized a bunch of models and I spent a day at the three gyms shooting with a small mobile setup of two speedlights, one of them in a softbox, the other naked as backlighting.

Processing the images turned out to be interesting - he wanted something that wasn't "standard", something more exciting, a bit like my live music photography. I was skeptical because I worried that not everyone going to the website to check out the gym would be excited by heavily processed pictures - a certain amount of realism is called for in my view.

In order to demonstrate it I created 4 different processing forms and sent a page of 10 images in each version, giving each form a different title:

As much as some of them look really cool, my advice went towards the Realistic "pop" style. (I called it that because it is very close to nature but I have upped the contrasts and highlights in order to get the subjects to stand out a little). That's also what the customer chose in the end. Here's a selection of some of the pics:

With the family having succumbed to jet lag I find myself with a bit of time to reflect on the 3 week family visit trip we just had and what it meant for me in terms of photography. As I mentioned in my last post I took only my travel kit (EOS M) with me and it certainly turned out to be a revelation in terms of ease of transport! I had a small crumpler bag with me at all times during the trip and the camera itself is completely unobtrusive.

The trip: 2 weeks in and around Melbourne (including a small Christmas party and a couple of outings), after which we travelled the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide over the period of 3 days.

Many, many babycinos were consumed on our trip. Having the small camera around makes it easy to have it ready during meals and snacks which make for great pics of the kids.

Urban photography is easy with the small camera but I found myself wishing for a wider lens at times. Remember I have only a fixed 22mm (translates to about 35mm on the crop sensor) lens on it.

I did get a few landscape shots in during the trip, but overall it was more in snapshot situations. This is definitely a weak point for the EOS M for me. Of course, I am comparing it to a 5DIII which is not fair. I found myself giving up a bunch of what looked like good landscape shots because I felt a tripod, ND filter or just higher dynamic range of the sensor was needed.

Where the setup was brilliant though was in having off camera flash with me at all times and being able to get fun pictures of the people around me in all settings. Most of all it shines in simplicity and lack of aggravation potential for my spouse! She would even willingly hold a flash or something because it was set up so quickly and the results were so nice. See the previous blog post for some of the quick portraits I took - there was a grand total of 20 minutes of time taken for those pictures. Here are a couple more: