Gerard Maas Images

I really appreciate the patience of Janna while I took more than 15 minutes to find the right position for the lights to achieve the right color coverage on the wall behind her. She did great by keeping her concentration and giving me a great pose to work with. It made the effort worthwhile!

(Lights: used a green and a blue gel on 2 speedlites placed on the ground. The model was lighted with a single speedlite in a Exybox 80 high above her)

With almost one week entered in the New Year, it’s still a good time to extend my best wishes for 2009.

-Gerard

Experimenting with something different is a two sided coin: A risk of failing and the ONLY way to break usual patterns and grow your artistic vision. “Failure” is on itself a success when you learn from it and contributes to your growth, so in turn it’s a win-win situation each time you cross the barrier of the comfort zone. Of course, that’s personal growth, but when working with other people there’s an additional element to take into consideration: expectations. People you work with like to see good, nice results. Then failure is not an option, would you say? How do you grow, then? That win-win situation from the beginning is turned back to the flat line of the comfort zone just because of the expectations from others.
How to manage both? One method I’ve found practical, is to move in and out of your comfort zone in a way that you can manage and fulfil the expectations of your work and at the same time grow your artistic value. For a photo shoot this translates in getting a couple of good images in the pocket and then moving to the exploratory areas. Just make sure you have a good idea of what to explore, not to make the other party nervous.
Communication is a key enabler in this process.
So, get the creative juices going, just know how to control the flow.
-gerard.

Exploring a bit beyond the initial ‘ focus on the eye’ images that we produced at the beginning of the shoot. By pulling the focus to the make-up in between the eye and the eyebrow I find that you can better appreciate the detailed make-up work of Daisy and the rest of the image takes on a dreamy, peaceful look.
Make-up: Daisy van Winkel.
Model: Annelies
Copyright: Daisy Van Winkel and Gerard Maas.
Light info:
One 580EX in an Ezybox Hotshoe 11 o’ clock with the camera at about 6 o’clock .