Author: michael

Issue 11 is now available to all subscribers of Good Light! Magazine. Like always, our precious subscribers are the first to get ahold of new issues. With their subscription, they also enjoy a nice discount. 

The cover image is from our workshop at photokina. Remember the 4 tips from the video?

Here they are again:

More than a thousand readers provided us with valuable feedback, and in the coming months we will do our best to use it for making your experience with Good Light! Magazine even better.

One wish stood out in particular – for us to update more often. In this fast-paced time, a quarterly magazine just isn’t enough…

So brace yourselves – Good Light! Magazine is going monthly, starting now!

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With the next issue coming out on January 15th, we will start a little series of tips for spicy holiday photos. Emily and myself did shoot these on our recent holiday at Club Spice on Lanzarote. A very first half-minute impression of can be seen in my

==> Last email (Holiday Photo BTS) 

I wish you good light!
Michael

Image above

Model: Emily Wei
Photo: Michael Zelbel

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Would you like to see your work on the cover of a magazine? Maybe even on my little ol’Good Light! Magazine? Then I have a few technical tips for you. We recently held a little workshop at a trade fair called Photokina. Playboy playmate Coxy Dominika was posing on the Phottix stage for us and we were allowed to play with the prototype of the awesome new Indra500 TTL Studio Light. 

So we quickly set up a one light setup with the Indra light in an octa box above camera angled downwards to Coxy. Our participants one by one came up on stage and were shooting totally awesome, cover-worthy photos right there.

While the visitors were happily shooting, I explained a concept that’s supposed to make cover photos very E.A.S.Y. 

E – Eye Contact
Photos with strong eye contact engage potential readers more than photos without eyes looking away. Want to make the contact with your lens even stronger? Then let the model lean towards your lens retaining that strong eye contact and probably try to shoot a shorter lens, around 35mm.

A – Angled Light
In order to visualize the features of your model, the light of your flash must come from a certain angle. Shooting with the light coming straight from next to your camera will flatten out her face and her body. You don’t want that.

S – Sharpness
A small aperture, at least f/11 (fullframe) is your friend when it comes to cover photos. Eliminate blurriness.  Make sure that the closest eye is really sharp and that your model is crisp from front to backside.

Y – Yield Space
Don’t crop into your model on your cover photo. Leaving negative space around the model will give the editor some positioning room. A lot of space should be left especially if the photo background will be part of the cover.

Keep E.A.S.Y. in mind whenever you are shooting something that potentially should find it’s way onto a cover.

I wish you good light!
Michael

Model: Coxy Dominika,

Photography Coach: Ortwin Schneider, Studio Fotomagic 

Special thanks to the awesome Achim Dunker from Netlektionen.de for helping me with this video!

Check out his webinars (in German), they rock!