Gerard Maas' Blog

Sigried at Eski, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

Siegrid is a young model with incredible potential and hypnotizing eyes.

hitchhiking snail, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

I found this baby snail on the sole of my shoe after a walk on the colorful carpet placed by the autumn in the nature. While I was taking my shoes out I noticed the small passenger that probably hitchhiked many ours of crawling by sticking up. Of course, not without risking being smashed in the process.

How to light a small thing? Well, given that the size of light source is relative to the subject, a small flash is like a huge beam for this small critter. The light was provided by a single 480EX taken wireless with a PocketWizard TT5(on flash)/TT1(on camera). The flash was handheld behind the subject to achieve the backlight effect. No modifiers were used on the flash to get the well-defined directional light (although I could have used a honeycomb to avoid the flare I got in several other trials in this series)

Under the rain, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

We were shopping for winter clothes and we found this red rain jacket. It was immediate inspiration. The next day was rainy, misserable and perfect for the effect I was after, but the rain was too soft, so we complemented it with the garden hose.
It was just great how Juliana kept smiling while we were pouring water on her.

The light was simple (but effective): A 580EXII in a Ezybox 80 in the front and a LED video continuous light source (video light) as backlight. The flash was triggered by PocketWizard TT5. making use of the 2nd curtain sync feature.

Tine, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

Studio shoot with Tine. MU by Britt OliviersLights: Studio equipment (for once) See

I was recently working on a project involving the use of 2nd curtain sync. The hard way, I figured out that the Canon EOS system only does 2nd curtain sync starting at 1/25s and slower. (You can read more of that on this blog post: At what speed 2nd curtain sync starts?

Then I compared it with the performance of the Pocket Wizard TT5 and its second curtain sync feature. The results with the PW TT5 are just great.
The timing of the PW’s is very precise, rendering results almost at the very end of the exposure. Here, Canon and PW 2nd curtain sync are compared side by side:

Note that above 1/25s the Canon reverts to 1st curtain sync. Clearly noticeable here by the drop going against gravity. On the frame taken at 1/25, the Canon sync captures the drop mid-flight, meaning that the flash was fired not at the end, but in the middle of the exposure. In the PW frame, the flash fired at the end of the exposure, as one would expect in 2nd curtain sync (with a small error margin, noticeable by the little trail under the drop).

Here’s the full set of the PW going up to the configured cutting point of 1/100 (configuration is done through the PW desktop app)

I must say that I’m impressed.

Recently, I was working on this image, with the idea of illustrating the use of second curtain sync to get the movement in the right direction on the falling drops.

2nd curtain sync experiment, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

During the process I found an unexpected behavior from this feature. More after the link…
Read more »

Although I like the effect of looking to my subjects directly through the viewfinder, in some cases the ‘life view’ feature can be of great help. In this case, I was following this mosquito through the rooms after she had a ‘bourgundish’ nights. I saw her settle down near to the corner between the wall and the ceiling. Not the easiest place to reach!. Using a step and live view I managed to get close enough to the mosquito to make a 3x picture.Gear: EOS5D MKII, MP-E65 macro lens flash 220EX and TT5 trigger.Note that I started shooting with a 580EX but it was too big to fit in the corner to provide the backlight. The Speedlite 220EX was the best fit for the job.

Broken PW TT5 hotshoe, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

Ouch. It really snapped off from turning upside down on an umbrella shaft.

Leen, originally uploaded by Gerard Maas.

Experimenting with backlight in an old WW2 bunker (“Fort”).I had this idea since a long time and Leen had the perfect dress to make it real.
The light was provided by 2 flashes. One obviously placed behind the model and the other above her. The flash on top was fitted with a small beauty light to provide this harsh-ish light to complements her sexy look.