GIANT opening party

WOW! Guys... WOW!

We had hoped that it will be a success... but  you have really cut us down!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

"You rock!"

Saturday was finally the opening of the lightGIANTS Studios. We have sent out many invitations and have hoped that you join to celebrate the opening with us. We have brought up food, we have filled the fridge with drinks, built the seating and played good music. But what happened this evening, we haven't had even expected...

The party started according to plan at 3:00 p.m. The first guest, John, was also the most widely traveled. John traveled 3 hrs by train from Aachen to our opening party. The youngest was the 2 months old Rafael. Overall we had more than 50 guests throughout the day. In part, we were concernes that we might even run out of standing room. Even at midnight we still had new visitors and the last guests left the studio shortly before 4 o'clock in the morning. Therefore we had full 13 hours of celebration.
We would have never expect that.

We have photographed everybody for our "guest list". We will show these images here at the blog, either in a gallery or a video. If someone wants to get his or her picture of the party, please contact us.

We have photographed the entire evening, everyone could have tried out the studio, the various light equipment and setups. We have explained a lot and were able to clear some confusions and take the "fear" of photographing in the studio, both before and behind the camera.

Many thanks to all of you at this place!
Thanks for the support, presents and donations!
You guys blew us away!

t0m, Stefan, Scott (Milla) & Markus

Did you have as much fun as we do?
We would appreciate a short summary of you in the comments!

This wasn't the last post of the opening party. However, we must first cope with the flood of pictures we've made. The results will of course be shown here in another post. But we wanted to thank you first. That's the reason for this summary.

Softboxes – cheered too soon

Here are some news from the studio.

As some of you may have noticed, we have ordered some more soft boxes.
Last Saturday it was time to have a closer look at it and take some test-shoots.

We have ordered a 1,5 Meter octabox and two 1,2 x 0,3 meter strip lights .

Now we could finally test them...
Octabox
At first we wanted to test the octabox. So we unpacked everything and carefully assembled all parts. Didn't look bad so far! Full of anticipation, we mounted the octabox to the flash head, a small twist to the right to lock it in the bayonet and...?
It didn't stay on (?!?!?). Ok, once again - slowly... slips of again?!?!

Long story short, after a closer inspection of the speed ring we recognized that the pivot for the bowens bajonet was too shallow and slips through the locking bolt. Because of the weight and the lever action of the soft box, it slips of the bayonet itself.

OK, so we disassembled the octabox again and returned everything to it's packing.
We start looking for another model!

Striplights
But we still had the strip lights. We are 100% satisfied with them. They have a great haptic, they fit perfect and steady as a rock and are exactly as they should be. Highly recommended.
The label of the soft boxes is Quantuum (ordered from foto-tip.pl)

After all, of course, we made a little photo session to test the new soft boxes.
So here are some results.

before & after @ t0m's blog & @flickr

Since the setup was the same for all shots on this evening, the other images without separate setup.

-	@ Scott's flickr
@ Scott's flickr	@ Scott's flickr

This were the pictures of our test shooting.

At the moment we all stuck in the preparations for the opening party tomorrow. There are some more things to prepare and we are really looking forward to it. See you Tomorrow!

-t0m

opening party [update]

The opening party is coming closer.
We are delighted and looking forward to the August, 21th. ;-)

In the last days there came up a few questions and we slowly have to finalize the planing for the opening event.

For this reason we wanted to give you a little update...

First of all: Here is the original blog post for the opening party.

Are you with us? Yes/No
Now there are only a few days until the opening party. Therefore we slowly need to know, how many of you can we expect.
For this reason, we ask all those who have clicked "maybe attending" in the Facebook-Event to finally choose between "attending" or "not attending" if possible.

Oh, and again: should you not just come alone, then please notify us in any way. You can either comment on the Facebook-Event or here on the blog.

Program
This point is quite simple ...
... there is no fixed program. So you can join us either right at 3pm or later that day in the evening. It's up to you. Music, food and drinks will be available the whole time (while stocks last )
Food: there will be hot sausages, baked goods, salads, cakes and snacks.

Directions
It seems the Google Map link in the last post got lost.
So here again the explicit hint. To be on the safe side, the address again:
Gablonzerstrasse 11 - 76185 Karlsruhe
If you arrive at the courtyard, it is the right building. The entrance can be found at the transition, the studio is located in the basement.
But you will find some guide signs in the yard.

Miscellaneous
To the photographers - think of your cams if you want to take some pictures. Everything can be tested ...

So, hopefully we'll see you on Saturday!