Sound of silence

I would like to say that the sound of silence heard on this blog for the last month was deafening, but it probably was little more than a soft hiss. You
know, the kind you hear when your fixing your bike tyre and just know there is a leak, and you can't find it, bu you are damned sure that you hear it. Then it turns out to be so soft that you aren't really sure whether you really heard it or not. Well that kind of silence I believe I left ;)

All and all that is going to be over soon! As usual I had my slow month (I am really beginning to see a pattern in my work on the blog) so now I'm going into my fast month :)
I have a lot of photos laying around and have quite a few dates for shoots, so photos all around!

Just keep signing in and I will see you then.

Cheers

A Riddle pt VIII

A Riddle pt VII

A Riddle pt VI

A Riddle pt V

A Riddle pt IV

A Riddle pt III

A Riddle pt II

A Riddle

Shades make the dog!

One of the photos in my street photography portfolio is this dog. The sunglasses look really nice on him, and slightly funny, but were absolutely necessary! This is because of the snow! When the sunlight reflects in the white, white snow the dog, who is very close to this shiny snow, gets easily blinded by it. That's why he was wearing the glasses.
Nice huh!?!

Ice Cold

Sorry guys and gals... I have been away for two or three days, but it has been rather a busy time these last few weeks. No excuses now though, so I'm back up posting every day from now on again :)

The photo to the left I took while on holiday in France a couple of years ago. We were hanging out in the snow somewhere in the month of March and had some beers with us. Of course I brought my camera along and this is one of the photos I took that week. I asked him to grab the beer out of the snow (Aaaah..... Ice Cold) and hold it up like that. The little bit of snow on the can, his smile, his red & raggy hair, the glasses and the sun all contribute to this photo. The only thing I would different now (three years of experience later) is use a flash to lighten up his face a bit more. I could of course do this in photoshop, but I refuse to!

So let me know what you think of it in the comment section below.

Drawer where I keep my lightbulbs in

A little of fine art today. It is a photo I will once want to recreate with a different setup and a different cupboard, but for now I will show you this.

I like this idea although it goes around a little bit against the rules of where light should come from (only let light come from a place that is logical). But because this is fine art I think I am allowed to ;)

Let me know what you think of this!

Cheers!

Snow, boards and riders

Seeing that the air is getting colder and the clouds are pulling together more and more the need for snow is growing larger and larger by the day. I can already feel my feet snugly secured in my Burtons and strapped to my Nitro. I can't wait for the winter in that aspect! I hope you will all enjoy these photos of the NSSK of 2009.

Read on after the jump >>>

Painter @ Central Station

Last Friday I had my driver's lesson in Nijmegen (a neighbouring town where I lived until last July) and I decided to catch the early train so I didn't have to run from the platform to the car. I got out around 11am and was rather surprised when I found that we had stopped at the far end of the platform quite far from the actual station. I got out, stepped into the warm fall sun and started off towards the station to shoot some photos from anything I could see. When I had taken about 2 steps I saw a man sitting in the shade of the train.

Read on after the jump >>>

Rehash

Okay Guys and Gals, the thing is I am incredibly busy at the moment right now! So today I am going to show you a photo that some of you will have seen before, but which I think is great! It was shot on a walkway bridge over a motorway in Brighton. The sea fog was kicking in hard and we thought it was a great night to go out and make photos... This was one of the results. I hope you enjoy it... See you tomorrow, hopefully with a larger blog post filled with the painter I shot earlier.

Cheers!

What a great day! (or Me in BnW)

Today is turning out to be the best of days with regard to photography! I already know that I will be shooting some of our local elderly at a hospital/living facility, but what I didn't know when I got up this morning was: That it would be great weather out, I would meet a painter at central station who agreed to having his picture taken, the staircase in our building has some great light when you're there at the right time, and that just fooling around with my old D70 and 50mm f1.8 could lead to the shot you see the the left. More of these to come coming week, as well as the shots I took of the painter, but for now I will go and test&pack my gear for the shoot later on.

Have a great weekend, enjoy the great weather out, and I hope to see you all on monday!

Cheers!

A day of ugly faces

So today I am showing you the work of yesterday's mini project: Ugly Faces. The deal was that I would make a strip of four photos every waking hour with me looking like an idiot. Or ugly at the very least. So I took a photo strip every hour and am posting them now by following the hours of the day. So the morning is first, and from then on all the way to nighty night night. Why do this. Well I like the fact that I can see myself throughout the day and witness first hand what other people see when they see me during that day. Of course I won't be looking the same way when they see me for I will be looking in weird ways, but I like it that way... Maybe I will do something similar but then with a photo an hour for one week and put those all together. Though I'm not sure about that yet, it will take a ridiculous size of my brain to keep thinking about it and remembering to shoot every hour or so.

Keep on reading after the jump >>>

Ugly Faces

Today I have started a new mini project which is called ugly expressions. This project entails that I will take a photo of myself every waking hour today and post them all tomorrow. This idea started when I was lying on the couch fooling around with the Incredibooth app. This app is a sort of Hipstamatic but it makes four photos in a row (like the photo booths out there). The main difference though is that it makes photos using the front camera on your iPhone (so the one facing you, which you use for face time e.g.). I really like this app as well and decided to do this project. The reason I like doing ugly faces is because I like them! I like making them, I like shooting them, and I especially like the combination of both. So except for this free sample right here, you will see nothing else of me today.

See you tomorrow.

Monkey Island

 I have noticed that I like photographing a couple of things best and two of those are people and.... Monkeys. I wonder what the link ;) I have posted quite a lot about portraits and today I will show you the monkeys :D

The photo to the left I took on Peninsular Malaysia and I was just lucky to find such wonderful animals in the middle of the street in  a small village. It was even more amazing to see how the entire pack worked to protect the pack and its babes.

Read on after the jump >>>

Some Photos, I Think....

There we go boys and girls... Today I am having a little bit of an off day. I had one of the weirdest dreams ever. It was about a terminator kind of post-apocalyptic world and I was in the smack dead middle of it. That brought me a weird waking up.

Read on after the jump >>>

An Impromptu Beach Shoot

Last weekend we celebrated my father's 60th birthday and for that we went to The Hague and spent a night at the Hilton. Close to The Hague lies Scheveningen which is a sea side beach town. As always I brought my camera and I had decided to bring a small flash as well. I was really bummed out over the summer when I realised all the missed opportunities in France because I didn't bring a flash. 

Read on after the jump >>>

Hipstaing Again

For those of you brave enough to have thought: "Ooo... Hipstamatic! I want to see some more of that!", I bid you all a very big welcome. For those of you who accidentally clicked or misread the link and are now bummed out that there is still more Hipstamatic... Ah just keep reading anyway ;) I love having you on the blog :)

As for the photo on the left, I realised that people like to see me as the blithering idiot. That in itself should probably explain the photo, doesn't it? No? Ah well...

Read on after the jump >>>

Vera

Right guys and gals, normally I would be showing some of my own work here, but today I give you Vera! I have before blogged about her here a little while back talking in the Friends, iPhones and Hipstamatic post and today she's back.


Read on after the jump >>>

A 70's Safari - The Tale (II)

As Bishop was looking out of his airplane window he could not help but wonder at the efficiency with which this all has been arranged for them. Within a mere ten hours from the moment the beautiful blonde walked in the door they were now sitting in a row of three off to the wilds of Borneo. And first class at that. The thing he noticed when he switched his conversation from Ludwich to the girl is that she wasn't a real blonde at all and decided to inquire about it.
Read on after the jump >>>

Comics?

I am still trying to get a bit better in this comic making, but it is still incredibly difficult for me. Some people have a natural knack  at thinking up good lines for these darned things, but I just don't have it. I do keep up trying though, so you will be seeing more of these in the coming months. Really curious to hear what you think of them, so if you would please reply to that in the comment section below it would be great. If you don't like them, that's okay, I just want to hear your honest opinion.

Read on >>>

A 70's Safari - The Tale

Wonderful things are to be found in the deep dark jungles of Borneo, but only for those daring and brave enough to seek them out. Deep chasms, dangerous predators, venomous spiders, blood-sucking bats and savage natives are what stand between our two protagonists and the wondrous benign wild life of that of the tropical birds, and great apes. Our tale begins when Alexander Bishop and Ludwich van Pudelstein, on a day like any other, are working in the studio. Only just in the first couple of rolls of film and they and their model are interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. As Ludwich climbs down from the scaffolding he is on where he was repositioning the lights, a rather impatient knock sounds once again. He jumps down the last few feet and calmly walks towards the door. When he is nearly there another sharp knock sounds right in his face. Even though Alexander cannot see Ludwich's face he can clearly see him getting agitated by the impatience and impertinence of this man at the door. Ludwich does not aprove of this kind of behaviour, to be sure. As he slowly opens the door he is almost hit in the face by the brut standing at the door. As he ducks and is missed by inches he recovers almost scolding when he suddenly recovers and swallows his words >>> Read on after the Jump >>>

Back to yesteryear.

I thought it would be nice to take a look at some photos of yesteryear, and so here a three.
The guy to the left, who apparantly is trying to phone home or something rather like it, is a lightpainting shot. You can read more about this technique in a post of some time ago.
I did two posts about the lightpainting technique, one about what I call canvas painting, and one about scene lightpainting. The first is like the photo to the left, just a blank canvas of black with light painted on, where the other consists of light painted on a scene with subjects in it. A slightly more difficult technique, but immensely more fun to do. There is a third technique, but we'll discuss that later on this year.

Read on about other photos after the jump >>>

Some film sprockets

Today some photos that are twice as wide as a normal photo. Added to that is the fact and effect of exposing the entire film including the sprocket holes in the film. Groovy effect, no?
Take a look after the jump >>>

Fish Eye

Short post today.... One of the cameras I own is a Fish Eye No. 2. This 35mm camera has one fixed lens, which is a fish eye. It's quite a nice little camera, but far from my favourite. This has to do with the fact that the built-in flash wears out really fast (or at least the battery does) which results in a lot of failed photos. I ruined the first roll like that completely. Still it has some nice effects, but I reckon I should get in closer for cooler effects.

Flowers

Right.... So yesterday I finally ran out of holiday photos with the favs post. This of course meant that I had to come up with something new. No more digging through old stuff, but instead shooting new pics and for once digitally. I can tell you that it has been a rather long time since I shot and posted digital photos. My baby the D200 was starting to feel neglected. Also the 22" beauty dish arrived today, so playtime. Seeing that my girlfriend to some nice flowers from her new colleagues I decided there was not better thing to shoot.
Read on after the jump >>>

Five Favourite Fotos From France

So today I will show you my five favourite photos that I took during my/our holiday. Today as well I will let the photos do the talking and only comment shortly. This is something I am practicing with. I am thinking of creating a collection of my work and if I want to exhibit any of it I have to work on short, telling sentences or names for my work.

The photo to the left I dubbed:
The Scream of the Privileged Young

More photos after the jump >>>>

Aaand Back to France - Part 2

So, I reckon this will be the first to last post regarding France, which would mean that tomorrow I'll finally show my collection of favourite photos! I am hoping that those photos will make it into my portfolio and that you love as much as I do. One or two photos will show themselves for the second time, maybe. The photo to the left I like very much as well. Next to having two beautiful models in it, I also like the light very much. The colours are interesting, and the slightly blown highlights and the deep blacks are amazing.
This photo also sort of sums up the way the holiday was. Relaxed, free, sunny and beautiful! We were four young people in the prime of our lives in a wonderful place. I think there is a short story in there somewhere. *writing cap on*
Read on after the jump >>>>

Aaand Back to France - Part 1

So I decided it was about time to head back to France for the final series of blog posts about my holiday. Remember? I went on and on about food, wine and friends. Yep, that's the one. So I finally got the last roll of film printed and today I will be showing some of the photos. Tomorrow or the day after I will be doing a "best photos" post, but today I thought it would be nice if I used a picture which is about the only one I am in myself. For those of you in doubt: I am the middle one!
One blessing and curse of being a photographer is that you never are in any photos yourself. I'm very grateful that Yal took this one of me and the two ladies, for I wouldn't have been in any otherwise.
Of course there are some more after the jump >>>

England - Part 3 - Hastings and such

As I sit in the train writing this blog post I squint to see the beautiful landscape that surrounds my home town. In the rising sun and with a slight mist everything seems to be beautiful. Long shadows, warm tones and incredibly soft light make for a rather beautiful scenery. It all makes me remember England. Although I have to admit that I didn't see many sunrises there, I saw plenty sunsets. I've often listed the many differences and commonalities between England and Netherlands (yes without the THE because it's more correct) and today I can list another which is sort of both. Brighton has amazing sunsets, both Arnhem/Nijmegen has beautiful sunrises. Brighton is great in spring, where Arnhem/Nijmegen is best in fall.

Sadly I won't get out of bed early to catch that light in the morning. In my mind there is no light as beautiful as the darkness in our room during those five extra minutes of sleep. Ah well, I still have the photos of the sunsets in England.

Read on after the jump >>>>

England - Part 2 - These Too

Next to the photos I took of landscapes and a lovely model I will get to later, I also took some photos of other people and things. Today I will show you three photos. A landscape, a street portrait and "portrait of a bird".
The photo to the left is of my friend Kub, who was one of the Dutchies in Brighton. We often made road trips and so we ended up at the beach at Hastings (think Battle at Hastings, 1066) and I squeezed the shutter. I like it very much. It has movement and something special to it. What is she thinking, what is she doing? Where is she going? Who the hell can she be?

I do like photos that raise questions, or in other words tell a little story.

Of course there is more to see.
See more after the jump >>>

England - Part 1 - Sunsets

As most of you know I have spent a couple of months in England at the South Coast. I lived in Brighton and made quite some trips to neighbouring hamlets. I can assure you that if there's one thing to be liked about photographic England, it has to be the sunsets. The late afternoon skies were absolutely amazing and thus I took a large amount of photos. Today I will show two of the sunsets from that time.

Read on after the jump >>>

Holiday in France - Part 3 - Friends

And one more please... Not only do I have another post today with a photo of Yalmar which I believe to be one of the coolest photos I have taken during the holiday, I also have some good news.
I dropped off the not yet printed film roll at my (very) local photo store and they have given me the best news this week: They can print it!!
Which means, that what is supposed to be me best roll, will in fact be up very soon. Coming Wednesday I will pick up the prints and hopefully put them up on Thursday morning.
In the meanwhile I will be showing you some pics I took of my friends.
Have fun!
Read on after the jump >>>>

Holiday in France - Part 2 - I took these too

Part 2 of the Holiday Photos. This post is called "I took these too", which sounds a bit derisive although not meant that way (well a bit). The thing is that you will always have photos you love, photos you like, photos you rather like, photos you don't really like and photos you find ridiculous. These photos fall into one of the middle categories. I do like a lot about the photos, but they may have something in it I don't like so much (although I think the photo to the left pretty okay, and I rather like it :) ).

I like to discuss the picking of photos in this post so read on after the jump >>>>

Holiday in France - Part 1 - The cameras

Like I mentioned in my last post we went on holiday in France. Of course I took way too many cameras with me and in my camera bag I had my Nikon D200, Holga, Diana and SprocketRocket. On the Holga and Diana I shot 120 film roll on 6x6 (although I screwed that one up as some of you may have noticed on the photo to the left).
I took quite a lot of photos on both the digital as the film cameras and I will be showing the film photos on the blog over the coming days.
Starting off today with a couple of Holga photos.

Read on after the jump >>>

Band

And so we went on holiday to France, me and my lovely girlfriend to together live the good life. If there is anything you can make us happy and content with it is certainly great food and a bottle of fine wine. And boy let me tell you, they have an abundance of that in France. Cheese, wine, dried sausage, olives (sweet sweet Nyons olives), some more wine, trout in butter sauce and slow roasted guinea, Crème brûlée, even more wine and more cheese, and amazing weather! We also had the pleasure of some great company seeing that some good friends of us were staying nearby. All and all a great holiday!
On one day the four of us decided to go to the market in Nyons and there we stumbled upon an amazing Jazz-Fusion trio playing in the streets. I grabbed my camera, got in up close, and squeezed the shutter.

Read on after the jump >>>

Comics

Right guys and gals, something slightly different today.
If you keep up with today's world of the visual arts you can read everywhere that it is becoming more and more important to not just dabble in one field, but in several at the same time.
Well, although that may be true, it's not the reason I did these.
It is a form of crossover from photography to comics, but I am just fooling around with a new app I got for my iPad some time ago.
It lets you create pages out of a comic book with any material you have on you iPad.
So I decided to grab some pics and try to make one page comics.

Read on after the jump >>>

5 minute self portrait

It's always a good thing to keep practising, whatever your art may be. In my case this is of course photography ;) I haven't had a model sit/stand for me for quite some time, that's why I decided to do another self portrait.

It took me about 10 minutes to set up, and then another 5 to take the photo.

Read on after the jump >>>

Friends, iPhones and Hipstamatic

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the new family album functions in Hipstamatic and it gave me a idea. Since it lets us share photos with other hipsta users I decided to ask a friend of mine to join in this album and fill it together. The quest: to take photos of whatever you see, tag it with a special tag, with that put it in our shared album and share it with each other, do this all one month and after that see what we've created.
Today I will show you some photos that didn't make the cut (and so weren't uploaded to the shared album)
Read on >>>>

Day 67 - What do you think? (Skipped Post)

Sometimes it's hard to know what people see in art.... some of us see a polar bear in a statue where others simply see a naked woman (come to think of it, some of my friends see naked women in everything they see), and it goes the same for photography.
I see a lot of possibilities for this photo, as well as a lot of names for or stories behind it.
Today I want to keep my ideas a secret and have you all name this photo, or otherwise give it a story.
This could be anything ranging from Sleeping Beauty (NL: Doornroosje)(for the Dutchies: Saw what I did there *wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know what I mean, you know what I mean?* ) or telling me that it should be an advertisement of some sort.
Just let me know...
More about the photo after the jump>>>

Wanted: Models

Hello All,

as most of you know I love doing portraits and now I want to expand my portait portfolio. For this I have everything I need except for models. So I am asking you to sign up as a model. I cannot pay you anything for it, but, if everything goes right, you will have some nice portrait photos of yourself.
You can sign up by sending me an email, phoning me up, talking to me in person or leave a response down at the bottom of this page in the reply section.
I'm not sure yet whether it will be a day of shooting everyone on the same day, or maybe private shoots, but I'll figure that one out when I get some signer-uppers ;)
I want say one more thing, and that is that everyone is welcome
Read on a little bit to see what you need to do >>>>>

Panoramic

Some time back I bought a camera (film 35mm) that was able to get great panoramas. I thought it was about time that I scanned some and show them to you. So without further ado here are the first scans from my panoramic film camera.

 The photos have all been made by a camera called the sprocket rocket and it takes photos over the length of two normal 36x24mm frames. This also means it's a "true" panoramic, because a true panoramic needs to have a ratio of at least 3:1.

The bnw photos are converted colour photos and are made in Antwerp, Belgium.
The single colour photo has been taken in Berg en Dal, Netherlands.

You can see the other two photos after the jump >>>

She will be missed

It was iconic, angelic even! Amidst all those generic blacks and silvers it stood alone guarding the gates of better computing and GUE (General User Enjoyment). The right hand of many a photographer and musician, fully giving itself to them to further help them struggle for artistic freedom.. It was a symbol of us who were not afraid to show that we were different from the rest, secretly knowing that our friend with the half eaten apple let us explore ourselves more than any other instrument of art.. If course it made some of us snobby, but for the larger part we simply stayed true to the initial mindset: a better tool for specific purposes. Yes she looked like a movie star, but that was just part of the attraction, it was what was inside that counted most, and even more so counted that what she did with the capabilities she had. By all of us who have named her and kept her close to their hearts, she will be missed..

With all my love R.I.P. White MacBook

Photo Books NSFW

As I am working hard on my second photo book (this one probably not so affordable by the masses as even I myself will have a hard time coming up with the money and it's my book for COL (crying out loud)) I have also been looking at work by others. There is a lot of really bad stuff out there, but between all the clutter you sometimes find something shiny. In this case it turned out that the shiny object was silver. Black & White silver. Take a look at this photo book by Eddy Rosa.
Enjoy

Tomorrow All the Candy Goes on Sale by Eddy Rosa | Make Your Own Book

Antwerp - Teachers and Hipsta

Hello All.
After two weeks of absence I am back again with some nice shots of Antwerp, Belgium.
Me and all my fellow teachers of UC (the school I taught at until recently) went out for a trip to Antwerp and we had a great time, great beer and above all, Great Weather.
Next to all the rolls of film I shot I also shot some hipstamatic :)

Read on after the jump >>>

Photo Book

A couple of weeks ago I made a book. Weird to say made, but "wrote" isn't really the correct word for it. I could say "I shot, compiled and put in order" a book. Well, this isn't really the place for semantics, but you'll probably get my drift..
The book is compiled of photos I took exclusively with my iPhone, and better yet, Hipstamatic...

Want to find out more?

Read on after the jump >>>

Morning Light

Long time no see faithful readers ;)

Today a short post to try and get my blog running again. 

Although I have been taking numerous photos with my new cameras  I also still run around a lot with Hipstamatic (HIPSTAMATIC. YEEEEEEY).

Read on after the jump >>>