About light, lighting & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

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About light, lighting & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by Stany Buyle »

Last sunday, Rudy, Guy and myself had both the honor and the pleasure to spend a day learning about light, lighting and portraiture with Leen Koper, -winner of several wedding and portraiture photography awards in the Netherlands- @ his workshop in Zierikzee, Netherlands. Wow, what an experience...

In this topic about our visit I'm not going to dig into all details from what we learned and what Leen was telling us, I prefer to let this grow in the reactions, contributions and questions on this topic with remarks, impressions and reactions from the master himself...

Leen koper, -also looking like an artist-, is a friendly, hospitable, philosophically, intelligent, funny and modest man, many qualities in one person...

First he showed us some of his latest work, where he's changing his style from classic portraiture to portraiture close to painting. To my surprise he's working on a PC, not on a Mac... It's all the same, he said...
After a little chat about who is who and where we're coming from lesson started...

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"Gear is not important, only light is..." When I asked Leen to borrow a good portraiture lens for the occasion he gave me a nikkor 85mm F1.8... "As good than the 85mm F1.4, and @ 1/4th of the price", he said...

Eventhough Leen said gear is not important, he mentioned his strong preference for Fuji S3/S5pro for wedding photography, mainly because of colour rendition and DR...

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All 3 of us could try while Leen was explaining, I include underneath the nice result captured by Rudy.

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From there we went to another location outside, no flashes and soft-boxes there, only natural light and some reflectors...

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The importance about how a model has to be positioned was explained until every little detail...

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And again a nice capture from Rudy after an hour of instruction how to...

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From there to our last location, in the nature, simulating situations for nice portrait and wedding photography...

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And Rudy's result...

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After that came the really interesting part, we went for a drink...
At that time Dirk Vermeirre, another master joined us and we really had a good time. Rudy, Guy and myself were soo busy listening to the highly interesting discussion about light between the two masters that we forgot to take a picture... Can you imagine that???

A real photographer like Dirk is always prepared to capture the moment... Here the proof:
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I was fascinated by the story Dirk told us about how he started with photography: Since his childhood he had an extreme interest for light...: "Light is everywhere and anytime, every day and even every moment different and all this for free..."

Unfortunately it was time to say goodbye to Leen and we drove to another place close to the sea where we took some pictures and where we had a both entertaining and very interesting conversation with Dirk...

After that, one last click for that day and we drove home...
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Thanks to Leen Koper and Dirk Vermeirre for that unforgetable day...
Thanks to Rudy and Guy for joining me...

Thanks to all of you for reading this little story...
Last edited by Stany Buyle on Wed 22 Apr 2009 00:10, edited 3 times in total.
kindest regards,

Stany
I like better one good shot in a day than 10 bad ones in a second...
http://www.fotografie.cafe
Guy Van Hooveld
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by Guy Van Hooveld »

I would like to shortly comment on a wonderful experience I had with Leen, Stany and Rudy this last weekend.

Leen gave us a quick course in portrait photography and it has been an incredible eye-opener, the professional way he is looking at light and take all the small (but relevant) details into account. He is an excellent photographer, but also an excellent teacher (maybe a new hobby ?), enthusiastic and hyper-friendly.

I'll post a few pictures when I have time, I already have uploaded a short selection to give an idea, but those are just unprocessed jpegs, I have a lot of work to do on these pictures to get more out of them...http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanhooveld ... 3098/show/

Thanks for watching.
Guy Van Hooveld
Nikon equipment, semi-pro photographer My website http://www.techniphoto.com My wiki http://www.techniphoto.com/wiki
ChrisBergstrom
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by ChrisBergstrom »

Nice story and seems like a super nice guy and a great teacher!
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Stany Buyle
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Ko

Post by Stany Buyle »

Guy Van Hooveld wrote:I would like to shortly comment on a wonderful experience I had with Leen, Stany and Rudy this last weekend.I'll post a few pictures when I have time, I already have uploaded a short selection to give an idea, but those are just unprocessed jpegs, I have a lot of work to do on these pictures to get more out of them...http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanhooveld ... 3098/show/
Goodmorning Guy,
Thanks for joining us, it was a pleasure having you there and thanks for posting the pictures.
Underneath one of the "portraits" I like the best from your series, much of expression inside.
Image
kindest regards,

Stany
I like better one good shot in a day than 10 bad ones in a second...
http://www.fotografie.cafe
Leen Koper
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by Leen Koper »

ChrisBergstrom wrote:Nice story and seems like a super nice guy and a great teacher!
It seems they say I am. Besides, I like myself too. ;-)
Duplo
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Re: About light, lighting & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by Duplo »

Now that sounds like an amazing day.
And some pretty neat results too.

Leen sound and looks like a very good teacher, not to mention excellent photographer :)
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
ChrisBergstrom
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by ChrisBergstrom »

Leen Koper wrote:
ChrisBergstrom wrote:Nice story and seems like a super nice guy and a great teacher!
It seems they say I am. Besides, I like myself too. ;-)
Well Leen, I'm glad that you are! You have a great aire about you that makes you seem very personable and approachable. Nice story here and I'd love to see more days with Leen! Leen is a lean machine if ya know what I mean... :-)
Duplo
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Re: About light, lightning & portraiture, a day with Leen Koper.

Post by Duplo »

ChrisBergstrom wrote:
Leen Koper wrote:
ChrisBergstrom wrote:Nice story and seems like a super nice guy and a great teacher!
It seems they say I am. Besides, I like myself too. ;-)
Well Leen, I'm glad that you are! You have a great aire about you that makes you seem very personable and approachable. Nice story here and I'd love to see more days with Leen! Leen is a lean machine if ya know what I mean... :-)
I am with you on that one Chris.
I would not mind driving for a day like this, if I happended to be in Europe when held.
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
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