Ken Knoll Photography

Let’s be honest: This summer sucks. It’s nearing its end and I’ve been at the lake only once or twice. So I am really craving for some nice summer mood shots. Sparkling grains set on fire by the sunset, corn fields, luscious greens… so for the past weeks I’ve been looking forward to a summer shoot with Ruta who shares my passion for summer. Alright, weather didn’t look too bad, I get my stuff packed, we head over to the location… and the second we pull in, it starts raining like there’s no tomorrow. Being optimists, we waited in the car for the rain to pass, and it finally did. So we hiked out to the fields just to check out some potential spots rather than with the intention to get a shoot started. Everything still dripping, sky overcast, so I thought, why not take some detail shots? Fellow photographers know that grey sky makes for a pretty even light – and as long as you stay away from showing sky in the frame, you’re golden. Before I knew it, we were in the middle of an awesome shoot – totally different from what I expected, but suprising myself often brings the best results. Didn’t even have the time to play with any equipment, so this was all shot with natural light and my trusty 50mm lens opened wide at around f/2. There will be a part two of this shoot – featuring summer sun. Pinky promise!

Check out Kya’s blog here… she’s a great designer I randomly ran into in my home town. So I met her at her new atelier the other day and I took the liberty to take some portraits.

Some shots I took while relaxing on a tree at the lake. Those cool guys were totally up for a spontaneous band shoot. Ah, I wish we had more summer moments like these.

Haven’t been blogging for way too long. So here are some portraits I took in Frankfurt. Nothing fancy, but I love to take my camera with me occasionally to snap some quick portraits. Keeps the creative juices flowing.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to do a co-op shoot with the incredibly talented fellow photographer Claudia Wycisk. Weeks of planning went into this little project: Claudia agreed to leverage from her network to get us two models and a make-up artist, while my responsibility was to get a location. Claudia came up with the wonderful models Laura and Ina and the make-up artist Yulia Nekrasova, while I scouted an old public swimming pool that hasn’t been used for years and can now be rented as a photo location. We had about four hours time on location, so we had to be quick. This post is just a glimpse of the many beautiful pictures I was able to take. Be sure to check out Claudia’s website as well to see her pictures that make me look like a beginner with a lack of talent! Big, big thanks to Claudia, my assistants Basti, Verena and Xue (who owes me a BEHIND THE SCENES video – stay tuned!!), my models Laura & Ina and the wonderful make-up artist Yulia! Enjoy! If you can’t get enough, check out the series section for more pictures!

Hey folks!

Since 1&1, the previous hoster of this site has killed my site 5 times in the past 4 weeks (and seems to be completely unable to do anything about it) I decided to move the entire blog to a new hoster – allinkl. I kinda had to rush this operation, so there might be things missing. Please be so kind as to give me a shout if something doesn’t work! I’ll move the domain over in the next days, until then it’s “younghill.net” – but I put a redirect on younghill.net, so it should take you there, anyway.

Thanks for your patience!
Ken

Hey folks,
last weekend, I had the opportunity to take some portraits of Phil – he’s a great guy to hang out with, incredibly friendly and laid back and super cool at the same time. We had a great time shooting. Two hours went over in the blink of an eye! My goal was to sort-of convey his coolness and simply try something new – I even got to use the big brolly. Here’s round one of the shooting – still got a great bokehrama sitting on my hard disk waiting to be published. Enjoy!

I got myself a big umbrella reflector on ebay – it’s quite cheap and even though it claims to be a parabolic umbrella it certainly isn’t as parabolic as the really expensive stuff you can get from broncolor, briese or others. Parabolic umbrellas are, if used correctly, used to throw a big beam of hard light. To achieve this effect, you need to have the right light source and the right kind of umbrella and so on. I actually never intended to use the umbrella like this, I just wanted a big light source to fill in shadows by using the umbrella either on-axis or as fill from the side. So today, I took the baby (162cm wide) for a little test drive. I was told that I could never fill this thing with a normal speedlight, and there is some truth in that. With the diffuser cap on, though, and aimed right at the dead center, I could see that I used pretty much the whole umbrella (check the reflections in the eyes if you’re not sure). The umbrella was right behind me, aimed at my subject at eye level (thus, the on-axis fill that you can even use to achieve a ring-light-ish effect). Beauty dish from the right, reflector from the left, gridded spot on the background. I tested several levels and found that I only needed very little power (1/64th) on the umbrella to fill in some of the shadows that the key light made. Looking forward to more adventures with this big thing – never gonna use it outdoors without an assistant, though. This thing is a sail.

Can be used as a background, too!

Hey folks,

I had such a great time shooting with Kevin! He is, hands down, one of the coolest guys I personally know. You know, one of those guys that you immediately feel at ease with. I met him in my gym last year and he became my trainer. Ever since he’s chasing me through the studio, but I just never get to curse him ’cause he’s just too nice a guy! I learned that, among the many other talents he has, he’s also a musician. Of course I had to take some nice pictures of him. Actually, as my facebook friends might have seen, a couple of weeks back I had already helped him out with some shots of his work (see my Commercial gallery – since there’ll be more work following this up this project, I might blog about it soon).

This time, I wanted to do something for my personal portfolio. So I went with something simple and classy. Just one light in most cases so I could focus on the subject and the mood rather than on the complex lighting. I put it to a quite extreme angle so that every slight turn of the head resulted in a different look. Also, I felt that it matched the mood. I played some music and we were having a good time shooting and grooving. What really made the shots for me was the microphone – it’s a Shure 55, a classic model back from the time when Elvis was rockin’. I borrowed it from the super awesome, friendly and competent guys at Musikhaus Crusius in Darmstadt -thanks so much, I really appreciate it!

Sit back and enjoy – do you feel the music?