Tale of the photo-shoot: Marie Magenhann

Recently I had the chance to shoot with someone I really didn't know at all before, Marie - this is another part of photography that I really love, I get to meet these amazing people from all over the world. It's actually quite fascinating to see all of these different people come together for one common goal - to create something. To create something that maybe someone in this world will find and think to himself "holy shit, this is awesome", something that someone in this world might come across and be inspired by. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't go out on shoots thinking "I'm gonna change lives with these photos" but the idea that maybe that will happen is still a special kind of thing and to have people come sacrifice their time and really not get that much in return for it makes me a very lucky guy. 

But alright, let me tell you about the shoot now, first of all - assistants are the best kind of people in the whole wide world, seriously - if you've ever helped me on a shoot, I love you! This time a good friend of mine Angeline took the time to come with Marie and I to this creepy ass train station and help me take these photos. To be honest with you, I thought Marie and Ang would be a little.. put off by the place because it's rather creepy and not very inviting, no soft fluffy shit basically. However, what happened was quite contrary, they both loved it and they got the creative aspect of the location. Still to this day if anyone asks me what I love most in life, I always answer that it's seeing people come together and work on something creative in harmony. It's such a beautiful thing and it really does happen to some scale on virtually every shoot I do. It was one of those buttery smooth shoots, everything just worked out as we planned it (apart from the fact the batteries for my wireless flash transmitters had all died sitting in my bag but oh well.. happens to the best of us). Shooting with public places can be a little strange sometimes, we had a worker at the train station just come have a look at what we were doing for a while and although I don't speak French very well at all, I think he found what we were doing pretty interesting and I believe that my assistant even had a little laugh with him. Later on in the shoot we went down to the waiting area for the trains. It was really loud there, most of the trains don't stop at the station they just storm by, one after another. Soon after I took a picture there where I had to sit on the ground, that resulted in another pair of jeans ruined - although I admit, getting myself white pants was a dumb idea. 

So apart from me obviously not making very good decisions when it comes to fashion, I had a great day. There are two things I want to do on every shoot; have a good time with the models and everyone else on set and make sure it's not just serious work and then of course get some beautiful images - I believe we managed both of those.

The adventures of location scouting.

I've always believed that good prep work is crucial to a successful photoshoot, you have to know what you're doing before you're doing it, you need to have a vision, a goal which you want to accomplish - this is why I spend hours upon hours just walking around, looking for cool places to take that next big photo at. On Friday I went to a really creepy train station.. no seriously, it was kinda scary actually but it's such a wonderful feeling to go and explore something new. When I got to the station I immediately fell in love with it, the possibilities of what you can do with something like that are tremendous, it is such an interesting place, it doesn't even feel right that a place like this exists in Brussels just 10 minutes of walking from the Royal Palace. It really had this Soviet vibe to it, the white tiles and the grey corridors. The fact that there was virtually no-one there was also a very strange thing to come across in Brussels, this is a city that is always full of people, it's always busy, always flooded with cars, trams, buses, trains etc -  to find a place that is just sitting there in the heart of the city is really very rare. As a photographer places like these are goldmines, I already have two amazing shoots planned there, one of them I'll be doing already on Tuesday and the other one, which I've been dying to already do for months will hopefully happen in a week or two. At first we were actually supposed to have that shoot in the metro station, Maalbeek, but we had to delay it a little and boy am I glad we did. There is always something good that comes out of delays and situations which aren't ideal in the current moment - if we had done the shoot 3 weeks ago, it wouldn't have been as good as it will be now. I posted some photos below for you to have a look at the place, what do you think? Do you come across places like this often? 

Street photography adventures.

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Street photography has always been a bit of a special thing to me, it can be so beautiful to just capture the world around you as it is, no photoshop, no models, no staging, no bullshit. Yesterday I went out and walked all over Brussels snapping some photos, a few turned out pretty nicely however it can be challenging, I didn't get any decent photos for the first hour and a half and that can be really frustrating as it feels like you're wasting your time. That being said however, when I did get the shots, you know you got some good images, it's a special feeling - very different from when I do staged shoots. Staged shoots you capture your creativity, with street photography you have to figure out how to capture to world from a certain perspective that creates a meaningful image. An image that makes someone stop and think about it for a second, our lives are so busy these days it's hard  to stop and think about what's happening around us. I'll leave you with a few images from yesterday, I'm no HONY but this is what I ended up with!

Doing more and more

I was feeling a little down yesterday, I'm always pushing myself to do more and more and if I feel like I haven't been doing that for a while I feel like I've let myself down, I feel like I just haven't been arsed. I like to think like I'm a pretty hard worker so realising that kills me, it just sucks all the life out of me, however - I am not big on whining about things, if there's something that is bothering me I always get back on my feet and try to make the situation better, the next month is panning out to be a great month for my photography and video. Yes that's right, video - I haven't really done a lot of it but I am determined to get into the game of videography, it's something I enjoy doing and there's a lot of value in being able to do it, in this world we have created for ourselves today it's not good enough to just be a photographer anymore, you have to be a videographer, marketer, CEO - your skill set has to be really well rounded to actually make it in this crowded world. There are so many creative and talented people out there, everyone needs to step up their game, take risks, go above and beyond to satisfy their clients - this is what I'm pushing myself to do, do more and more.