Photographic Impressions

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

Bernard — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:41:40 +0000

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.

Photo selected for the International fotofestival 2012 Knokke

Bernard — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:03:11 +0000

Fantastic news! One of my pictures was selected for the 36th edition of the International fotofestival 2012 in Knokke-Heist (Belgium). Its a great feeling to be selected out of thousands (6944) of pictures from photographers world wide.

The ‘fotofestival’ has evolved a lot this year. For one thing, its free. There is a nice mix of in- and outdoor. The outdoor has a route of 16km that can be visited with rental (electrical) bikes. With nice weather its a great way to explore. Also most galleries in Knokke have nice expo’s (whole year long) worth visiting (and if you want to see lots of high end cars…).

Old Part 3

Bernard — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:42:10 +0000

Yep, still working on the OLD series. We’re still 2011. I know, I should be posting pictures from 2012 by now. I would love to post more and faster but it just takes time. Really, sorry for those waiting.

A few months ago I had the magnificent Joke in the studio. We had our first shoot together, now 2 years ago. I then wanted to try something with olive oil. Once I explained the project to Joke, she gave the very best of hereself, and it ended in one of my most memorable photo shoots. Her charisma, willingness to achieve the idea I had in mind and devotion to give her very best really makes her special.

Reason enough to work together again on some other series. This time OLD, Transparent and some portraits.

OLD:

Transparent:

Note: I would like to finish the Transparent series with a duo. Read it as a call for candidates It will be great fun.

When we did the olive oil shoot we did not have the opportunity to work on the last 30 minutes (due to the excessive oil in here hair, eyes and on her body) and so did it at the end of this shoot.

OLD – part 2

Bernard — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:26:20 +0000

Still some pictures from 2011.

I met Laurie during a bachelor party @ Dare-2B-Different and asked her if she would be interested to work on the Old project. To my surprise it didn’t take her long to decide to cooperate. We planned the shoot a few weeks later, worked from 8 till around 11 o’clock in the evening. She had never modeled before (in this way at least) and gave the best of herself for every picture. Real fun to do, and something that makes pictures special (natural people prepared to experiment and create).

For the OLD series I use a pair of halogens with an 2 by 1 meter Lasolite diffusor. I try to get all pictures right out of the camera (because I’m not such a PS guy) and apply one of my NIK Silvereffects presets to get the old picture effect.

2012 Is a fact!

Bernard — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:41:35 +0000

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.

New Site is finally live!

Bernard — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:27:27 +0000

Every time I was asked to show my work I had to tell the site didn’t reflect the latest work. This is finally resolved. A new site, updated blog, links to Flickr and Facebook. I hope you have as much pleasure watching the different albums as I had sleeting the pictures and building the site.

Serge Romanov @ Luxillag

Bernard — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 20:41:52 +0000

A huge thunderstorm flooded the studio last Tuesday. 180 square meters of water and mud. Nothing to do with Serge Romanov, but the reason this spost came later than planned.

So, Luxillag organised a workshop on the usage of continious light of Dedolight last Tuesday. The day was organised like every other workshop I followed. First some theory. A bit of marketing and then live examples. We kicked off with some insights to the low voltage small Dedolight systems. These use lamps (12 and 24V) as one finds in cars. The system also has a lens and focussing system. During the demo the light system (not the transformer part) was put under water. Interesting if you use it in extreme conditions. A demo was given to shoot a product. They started with one light, added accent lights, a flood light and so on. Seven in total. The whole thing is to have nicely directed, focussed or unfocussed light, relatively long exposures or high ISO to create a very controlled picture.

After a very nice lunch and meeting up with fellow photographers it was Serge Romanov’s turn to give us an insight in his world of (feminine) beauty. He kicked of with his vision on composition, contrast, brightness, light, colour, creativity and inspiration (I remember the renaissance and citizen Kane playing an important role). Also the usage of the golden rule in composition was a fantastic eye opener.

[Show as slideshow]

Serge brought with him the beautiful Anna (they only spoke Russian by the way and the translator did his work marvellously) as model. They worked together numerous time, which is something you notice when he build up his picture. Here also he started with one light (3 to be honest) to light the background, one for the face, one 600W for the golden paper reflector to shape the dress (to make the effect softer he added a second normal reflector). One light for the accent on the wall and ono other for the doorway. Lots of light. He made his picture at f3.5, 125sec at ISO 1250 using an Ukrainian T&S lens.

Working with continuous light has a relaxing working atmosphere. You see the impact of the light in another way than with using strobes. Also the absence of flash is in my point of view more conformable. I asked Anna how she experiences it, and she said that the continuos light is less anoying than flash but more fatiguing because of the intensity of the light and the heat.

After the shoot Serge showed us how he finishes his pictorial work. Also here an interesting insight. Not the way I would finish my work but some intersting ways of manipulation. Like making duplicating your picture, make a smaller image size, use liquify, save as a mesh and then apply the mesh to the larger picture. This saves lots of time and frustration.

At the end of the day I was not sure I really learned something new. I like workshops to be advanced. Delivering lots of insights at the limit of my own understanding, changeling me to dig deeper into the matter. So, interesting – yes. Well organised – yes. Worth the 150 Euro – not really.

Elinor Carucci @ FoMu

Bernard — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:58:21 +0000

I had the pleasure to meet Elinor Carucci today at the pre opening of her expo at the FoMu in Antwerp.

A nice eye opener. It was a long time that I experienced such an honest, touching photography.
Initially here photography is not what will attract me. It was when listening to here story, what goes through here mind when taking these pictures, the relationships she has with the people around here and here loved ones that the Elinor’s photographs identify with the world I live in. The way she interacts, show herself in all intimacy and make us part of here world is confronting.

What was even more confronting is how Elinor brings here art photography to the commercial work she does.

The person Elinor Carucci: open, honest, vulnerable, sensual, gracious and beautiful.

God created women and hats

Bernard — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:48:00 +0000

Inspirational weekend after our first ‘Body Of Art’ expo at Dare 2B Different. We had a great bunch of visitors and were able to sell some of the pictures. What was even more rewarding were the comment and interpretations of the work presented. Thanks to all who came and helped at the expo.

This weekend we went to Leonhards Gallery for the new series of Marc Lagrange ‘And then God created women’. Again really nice and inspirational pictures full of emotion. One picture telling a whole story.

On Sunday we finally decided to go and visit Stephen Jones expo at the MOMU. Finally because it was the last day. We arrived at 17:00 and closed the doors at 18:00. One hour of pure enjoyment seeing different shapes, colours, fabrics, constructions, humour, … .

The Dark Project

Bernard — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:23:41 +0000

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.

Body of Art @ Dare 2B Different