I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with world renowned fashion & celebrity photographer Frank Doorhof in west London. A luxurious hotel – Great Fosters – in Surrey, provided an awesome backdrop to an unforgettable experience with one of the best known photographers in the business. We all sipped our cups of tea while the anticipation built as we waited for his entrance. The side door opened and entered Frank Doorhof, a very friendly gentle man from Holland, who always has his wife with him to video and take shots of the workshop as Frank is a very pro social channel user, as one must be to keep up with technology and in Franks case his 20k followers on twitter! We make our way out into the grounds.

First Frank instructs model Marie Korf to get into position and directs the guys from The Flash Centre where to put the lights. As Frank does this, he explains the reason why, with questions thrown in for us to try and answer. We then get the chance to tell the model how to pose and then shoot. As we are using battery powered light (Quadra from Elinchrome – probably the best in the world) we are limited on how many shots we can take.

Frank asked each attendee what areas would they like to concentrate on, what they struggle with and reminded us to ask questions throughout the day ‘there as no such thing as a stupid question’. I wanted to concentrate on communication with your model and how best to create trust and well being between you and your subject, as Frank has this area so well mastered! I also mentioned the ‘fog machine’, which was followed by a hilarious story from Frank about a talk he gave on stage, his Dutch accent being misinterpreted,  he now uses the word ‘smoke’ instead of ‘fog’.  The day went so quick as Frank made us feel all at ease and gave us an insight into the glam world of portrait photography with a ‘real’ model, with make-up and big fancy ‘stage’ wardrobe.