A huge thunderstorm flooded the studio last Tuesday. 180 square meters of water and mud. Nothing to do with Serge Romanov, but the reason this spost came later than planned.
So, Luxillag organised a workshop on the usage of continious light of Dedolight last Tuesday. The day was organised like every other workshop I followed. First some theory. A bit of marketing and then live examples. We kicked off with some insights to the low voltage small Dedolight systems. These use lamps (12 and 24V) as one finds in cars. The system also has a lens and focussing system. During the demo the light system (not the transformer part) was put under water. Interesting if you use it in extreme conditions. A demo was given to shoot a product. They started with one light, added accent lights, a flood light and so on. Seven in total. The whole thing is to have nicely directed, focussed or unfocussed light, relatively long exposures or high ISO to create a very controlled picture.
After a very nice lunch and meeting up with fellow photographers it was Serge Romanov's turn to give us an insight in his world of (feminine) beauty. He kicked of with his vision on composition, contrast, brightness, light, colour, creativity and inspiration (I remember the renaissance and citizen Kane playing an important role). Also the usage of the golden rule in composition was a fantastic eye opener.
Serge brought with him the beautiful Anna (they only spoke Russian by the way and the translator did his work marvellously) as model. They worked together numerous time, which is something you notice when he build up his picture. Here also he started with one light (3 to be honest) to light the background, one for the face, one 600W for the golden paper reflector to shape the dress (to make the effect softer he added a second normal reflector). One light for the accent on the wall and ono other for the doorway. Lots of light. He made his picture at f3.5, 125sec at ISO 1250 using an Ukrainian T&S lens.
Working with continuous light has a relaxing working atmosphere. You see the impact of the light in another way than with using strobes. Also the absence of flash is in my point of view more conformable. I asked Anna how she experiences it, and she said that the continuos light is less anoying than flash but more fatiguing because of the intensity of the light and the heat.
After the shoot Serge showed us how he finishes his pictorial work. Also here an interesting insight. Not the way I would finish my work but some intersting ways of manipulation. Like making duplicating your picture, make a smaller image size, use liquify, save as a mesh and then apply the mesh to the larger picture. This saves lots of time and frustration.
At the end of the day I was not sure I really learned something new. I like workshops to be advanced. Delivering lots of insights at the limit of my own understanding, changeling me to dig deeper into the matter. So, interesting - yes. Well organised - yes. Worth the 150 Euro - not really.