Continuous light.

At Dare-2B-Different we always try to find ways to make our photography stand out. Light, and the use of it, is one of the ways to do this. Creating 1940 Hollywood style portraiture is way we were looking for. Being a bit green minded we didn't want to go for the high power, high consumption HMI's or halogen lights. Nope, we opted to go for LED lights. 150W input for an 800W equivalent output. Because this was all new to us Luxillag was so kind to allow us to test Dedolight, De Sisti and Philips lights. All except the new Dedolights had a Fresnel. This lens bundles the light is such an intense way it gives great contrasts. It has something you won't have with flash lights. Our model Laurine was marvelous. She endured all our testing, multiple setups and was there when we needed here.

A day well spend and to be continued.

Some shoots take way to long to get a satisfying result.

A lot of months ago I had a second opportunity to work with the fantastic ballerina Nini De Vet and MUA Bonny Goyvaerts. The idea behind the shoot was to do something clowneque, work with more extreme make-up and explore classical dance poses.

As you might imagine it was more difficult than expected. The shoot itself was easy. What do you want, great MUA with an I for detail, even during the shoot, and a model that has perfect control over her body.

Developing these pictures was something else. My initial approach didn't turn out the be a success. Then I tried several approaches, before stumbling on a mix of what I learned from Scott Kelby and Frank Doorhof.

In the end it was easy. Getting these whites is simply done by duplicating the background layer in screen mode and using the paint brush and opacity to control it. Where needed I added a layer in soft light with neutral grey fill. Here also painting with white to illuminate and black to darken. For the eyes I again added a layer in screen mode and painted in the whole eye. Opacity around 30-40%.

Simple, …. But it took me a while to get there.

We kept the make-up on for the performance pictures.  It was a super opportunity to have Nini for this. Ballerina's are used to work hard, do a sequence over and over which helped me a lot to discover the potential and try a few setups.

I hope to do some more shoots like this in the future.

2012 Is a fact!

Again a new year to look forward to.Dance and movement will take a big part in what I want to realize this year. So, if your interested to model.. just let me know ;-)

2011 can be summarized by the book 'Body Of Art' I compiled. It should have been ready just after the expo we did on February 6th. And is was more or less. Only, I had some specific pictures in mind that I needed to add. Thanks to the cooperation with Jessica (she worked for Cirque du Soleil and now for Cavalia and who know what great project will come up next for her) I could realize the images I had in mind. Add to this the images of another project and the book grew from 20 pages to +60.

Body Of Art by Bernard Panier | Make Your Own Book

During 2011 I also started the series 'Old'. Using fixed halogen light, a Tilt & Shift lens (the create the specific depth of field and unsharpness) and long shutter speed I'm searching to emulate the feeling of the glass plate photography. First impressions can be found on the site .

It must have been September when I did the session for the 'Old' series with the great Victoria Rose. It was one of those shoots I will remembers because of the fun we had in creating the images. It was also one of those shoots I will remember because so many things went wrong. I tried some light setups that didn't give the result I was looking for, the tethered connection failed at the most inconvenient moment, we ran out of time so quickly, etc. In the end I got out of it what I wanted.

Hereunder the result of my studio shoot with Victoria Rose:

This series shows a typical flow of my work in studio. I start with the main project ('Old' in this case), experiment with some ideas and end the last 30 minutes with a portrait session I do with every model. Here I always use the same conditions of light, clothing and lens (60mm @ f4). Have a look at  the site to see more.

The Dark Project

At Dare-2B-Different I am the one that can play around a lot. Assisting Nancy doing portrait shoots, preparing Boudoir shoots and bachelor parties is great fun. Doing projects like 'a Body of Art', 'She' and personal projets is where I can even put more of my photographic Impressions. 'Dark' is such a project. The starting point was one light with a grid in a dark environment and see how one can use the flexibility of the body to create shapes and beauty.

On Februari 4th and 5th we will organise our first expo at Fotolocus and Dark will be part of it.

Until then, I'm still looking for some flexible models. If you're interested ... just send me a mail.

Enjoy some impressions of Dark below.