What makes a good picture?

So what makes a good picture? I am saying picture and not photo as this is in general for photos as well as paintings.
So what does it take? Is it the equipment you use, the location and or the model you working with? Well, in my opinion the answer to those two points is NO... Knowing that Picasso used a certain paper and colour wouldn't make you do the same kind of work, and a £10,000 camera even though great quality won't take a good picture by itself... so it is the artist and his/ her vision of any given object/ person.
Saying that, of course equipment still plays a roll, but mainly it mainly helps you to achieve a certain image quality as well as helping with the creativity such as motion blur or freezing a moment, depth of field or certain colours.

Having said all that, I thought I start again with some iPhone pictures after last years success of my picture of the day. This shows that you can use a simple camera and get some interesting shots, often even at places that most of us pass every day. Today I am taking you down into Londons Underground... The images have been taken on the iPhone with a 3mega pixel camera and then I edited them with PS Express which allows you to change contrast, saturation and exposure...

More iPhone shots to come again soon on here, it wont be pic of the day but i will show on a regular base some shots taken with the camera thats always with me so in a way the best camera...

Rowing shoot

Another sunny day in London and another edgy sports shoot, today with Francesca a winner of 3 World Championship medals at Junior and U23 in rowing. And fingers crossed, Francesca will be competing in 2012.

The shoot was done at low tide in Putney with a 3 light set up, 1 flash with full power on each side and a 3rd flash next to me again at full power and on top a bright London sun. Aperature of 15-20 and fast shutter got a dark backdrop while Francesca stands out.
Images will be edited soon with 1-2 images to be uploaded to my webpage.
Till then, just a little teaser to get an idea of the shots that you can expect to see.

My weekend

Busy shooting the last days. After my boat shoot on Wednesday I had a day off. Then Friday morning I got picked up by my man Andy D from Method Works Production to do a behind the scene shoot for a documentary about 2 new film makers. After finishing at 5pm headed home and got ready to shoot at Amika, bad bad bunny ball, pictures soon to be seen as usual on Amika Facebook.
After a very short night sleep got picked up once again at 7:30 for day two of behind the scenes which just finished and to follow by another night at Amika.
Tomorrow, Sunday is a day to relax and edit the weekend shots so they are ready to be uploaded on Monday.
Monday then continues with sport shoot and Tuesday another behind the scene shots for a music video.

On top of that, I agreed on taking photos from now on for Street Fashion Blog (link will be posted once the first shots are up), it's an already existing blog that so far covers Paris and New York and soon London.

Come back next week to read about the sport shoots and see the first images as well as any other shoots I'm doing.

With that, have a lovely weekend everyone.

Swimwear shoot

Today's shoot with model Devina brought me over to Brighton where we met up with hair stylist Alex Martinez and Mua Zena McCarthy.
After getting ready we headed down to the beach to do the swimwear shoot, however this amazing weather somehow made a few 100 people do exactly the same so beach was absolut packed... Next option 1 hour on a sailing boat in the marina. After 10min shooting the news, captain was actually free much longer so we went out on the boat and got some great swimwear shots.

So shows sometimes you got to be flexible with locations.

Here some of the shots from the day after just some lightroom edit, so no airbrushing done yet. Final images will be soon on MO-ST Photography

Again a huge thank you to all involved, Devina, Cisco Karma, Alex, Alex, Zena and George. Thanks to all we got some great shots

London Marathon

First of all congratulations to the winner Emmanuel Mutai for an amazing time of 2:04:39 as well as everyone who participated in todays event.
I was on the side line and taking photos, playing around with movement as well as fast shutter speeds.
The movemnet shots really take some practice but if you manage to move the camera with the runners the results are great. Shutterspeeds were around 1/8th of sec with low ISO and apperature of 20 to compensate for the slow shutter.
Post production was just done in Lightroom, playing around a bit with saturation, exposure and contrast.

E.Mutai second on the right.

 Female leading group, with 1st place 2nd on the right

Time to look after our environment

I just saw this video of photographer Chris Jordan and I think its a real eye opener. Its a quite shocking video so if you are faint hearted maybe better dont watch this video. With the first picture I thought this guy is quite a bit starnge but then hearing the story behind the birds filled with plastic is quite shocking and I think should make us think twice about throwing rubbish into the ocean. Have a look.

Horse shoot - 12-04-11

another day of sunshine...
today i did a shoot with cat and 3 horses. idea was to create a black and white implied art nude shoot on a horseback... ok, it wasnt total nude but nude underwear so i will have to do some editing to cover up the underwear but for now i show you the unedited result of today.
i was told that i would only have a few seconds before the horses will start to walk away but unexpected they were real good and often even tried to get a bit more into the shot by turning the head towards the camera.

biggest problem faced really were the clouds that covered up the sun every few minutes makeing the lighting not easy and constant changing of shutter speed...
so unlike my last few shoots, today was only natural light, using apperature of 2.8-5.6 and shutter speed of up to 2,500, really shows you how bright it was at times.

so a big thank you to cat and her partner chris who was kind enough to provide the 3 horses... well done to all

Sun in London and another shoot

a warm welcome to the london spring. it has been a number of great days, nice, sunny and warm... perfect for some outdoor location shoots.
so on wednesday i met with a previous model of mine to discuss some ideas for shoots and made some use of the great weather for some nice simple shots, just the 2 of us and my camera... no flash or any setup.... love this black and white shot of porscha i got on the day...

one of the ideas we had for the next shoot (which ended up being the day after) was to play with some more edgy shots at one of my fav. locations (even though now security told us of to be on the top due to health and safety... but hey, we got some shots before)

so now that the summer is finally coming i see again a number of location shoots coming up, looking forward to some more days in the sun.

31-03-11

Shoot with David White

did a shoot with friend and model david in old warehouse. idea was to get some edgy shots out of it. we started with some skateboard shots and towards the end we went to some angry shots hitting the table.
i was inspired by a shoot from www.chasejarvis.com

lighting setup for the shoot was natural light behind david, 1 flash on 1/2 power on each side and a third flash slightly above him.

see the behind the scene video with final result

final image, photography by Moritz Stragholz, model David White, postproduction Moritz Stragholz

Welcome to my blog

hi
after having a look at other people and seeing their blogs and my previous success on facebook with my picture of the day i now decided to start a blog myself...

i will show you here on a regular base behind the scene shots from my shoots as well as video footage giving you an idea of how i work. also i will show you some of the final images .

so for all of you who want to see what i am up to, come and have a look on a regular basis