Shooting Days

The second International Shooting days of 2019 took place in Comblain la Tour at 30km from Liège. It's a place with a lot of possibilities, inside and outside the house.

The second Shooting days are always organised during a week end in september. We arrived friday afternoon and it took some time to do the shopping and arrange the house. It was arond 8PM when we were ready and there was no outside light anymore, but the house has some nice parts. We used them also saturday morning because it was raining.

One of the rooms that was not ready for the guests was ideal for the shootings. A mirror and a small public bench was placed in the room and that was all that was needed for a shooting. A small room leading to the garden was also used. We removed the furniture so we could use the white wall.

We had different sorts of models: one was a dutch model who had difficulties striking good poses. He looked at the instagram pictures from other models and tried the same poses, always with his hands at his shirt. That's OK for some pictures, but it gets really annoying when he used the same pose again and again. It was really difficult to get him to wear a pet and a bomber jacket.

We have quite a lot of refugiees from Afghanistan in Belgium, and all of them want to become models. It's nearly impossible for agencies to work with them: they don't have a valid working permit and are not allowed to leave the country. That's a problem for the belgian agencies who are used to work internationally.

They have a muscular body, but not a good face that can be used in advertisement. The culture shock between their state of mind and the free culture in Europe is too much for some of them. One of the models leaved the next day without saying a word.

And then we had some sun. We went to the location that was planned. Before the shooting days, i did a tour of the region and find some interesting places (we didn't go to all of them). We lost two photographers on the road, but at last everybody got there. We went to Chanxhe in the river and after the water shoot it was possible to do a fotoshoot in a nearby working place (stone quarry). This place was not so interesting as the stone quarry La Préalle, but it was only a short fotoshoot after the water shoot.

Some pictures were taken with a Huawei P30 PRO. It's an ideal smartphone for taking backstage photos. The camera has a 10× optical zoom. You don't need a big camera for this sort of backstage pictures. It's possible to see the difference between a smartphone picture and a picture taken with a Canon 5D Mark IV. Could you tell me which pictures were taken with the smartphone?

The first picture was taken with a reflex, the picture has high sharpness and maximal contrast. The second picture is softer with more agreable colours. The Huawei software did a fotoshop job on the image before storing it.

This is the place in Chanxhe where we went for the shooting. There is a small waterfall in the Ourthe that can be used.

On sunday, we stayed around the house, we went to the public park near the house. There is enough stuff to work with for a whole day. In between, we went to the nearby river, teh main bridge, the railroad station,...

First picture with the Canon 5D and second one with the smartphone. The first picture is a real backstage picture and is over exposed. Can you see which pictures were taken with the smartphone?