Life’s an ocean with too much commotion

It’s becoming a yearly tradition, the picture contest organised by Fnac. This year it was organized in Bruges. I went their in a two-person team with Nena Driehuijzen. This time, the three themes were ‘Music’, ‘Rest’ and ‘Nostalgic‘. After eating some gingerbreads, we started walking through the city.

Music.. First we had no idea what kind of picture would fit that theme. It needed to have something to do with Bruges, but not too obvious. We saw many contesters walking towards the conservatory or statues holding a music instrument. While wandering through the streets, we passed an afro hairdresser. We came suddenly to the idea of taking a picture of the hair cutter singing a song. Taking the picture was harder than it sounds, it turned out that the only thing she could express while singing, was opening her mouth. At the other hand, it needed to be naturally. It was very funny seeing the girls trying to sing their heart out, as you can see on the left picture.

Nena had the idea of taking a picture of a bird, so we searched for a pet market. Good thing we had a backup line we could call once and a while for help navigating through Bruges.  On a bird’s cage, there was a tag ‘Fijn zangertje’ (translated: nice singer). It was perfect! While Nena was taking the picture for our theme, I focused on the bird’s picture as seen on the right.
Finally, we also needed a picture that was somehow related to Bruges (we thought this would make our election more easier, but it turned out the jury didn’t mind after all..). Lacking a good zoom lens, we made a picture of a small replica of the Belfort of Bruges.

The second theme was ‘Rest’. This gave us back the hope we lost during the first theme, as this is somewhat easier. Per definition, every picture is a snapshot of a something, hence it’s in rest. So we went to the park and took two pictures of Nena sleeping on a bench. It needed to look a bit caught-in-the-scene while hiding. I think it were good pictures. Looking at the winning pictures, I think our pictures were better than the winning ones. It was a girl puking some food out of her mouth. Hard to see the ‘rest’ part in that picture..

The third and last theme was ‘Nostalgic’. It’s actually in your advantage for not knowing the city in which you have to take pictures. It forces you to walk around and open your eyes. Earlier that day, we came across a little store that sold old (1920-30) post cards. One of these pictures had the print ‘Une Pensée’. When we knew what the last theme was all about, we returned to the shop and Nena took a picture of it.

Some time ago, I went through some pictures a friend of mine took in Bruges. Suddenly I remembered she had taken a picture of a writing on a wall. The writing had everything to do with ‘Nostalgic’. It was located at the Katelijnepoort. Unfortunately, we didn’t know where it was, so we had to ask for directions to some people. We hiked about a half hour (which turned out to be a big detour..) to get there. The detour was worth it as in my opinion the resulted picture is great.

At the end of the day, the results of the jury’s selection were shown at the concert hall in Bruges. We were hoping for some price but unfortunately the jury thought otherwise. In my opinion, some of the elected pictures were much better than ours, but there were some (e.g. for the theme ‘Rest’) where I didn’t understand the motivation of the jury.

Our conclusion is to focus on compositions with figures and mis-en-scene. Lets see how it turns out next year..

Everybody who loves taking pictures of abandoned places will have visited the http://www.abandoned-places.com/ site at least once.
One of these places described on that site is located in Aalst (Belgium), the abandoned factory of Bonneterie Bosteels - De Smeth.
This factory was very famous for its knitwear, better known as it’s product line ‘Du Parc’.

I’ve visited that location twice. The first time I took my flash with me, the second time I brought my tripod.
I’ve looked at the pictures on the abandoned-places site and compared them with my pictures. It seems that people stole and broke a lot of things, which makes this factory maybe not that exciting any more.
There was also a big fire in 2006, which burned down most of the offices on the first floor. Apart from that, taking pictures of objects and small corners turned out interesting.

You can enter the factory by crossing the gate, right of the main original entrance. If you want to access Du Parc from the city park, you can enter some small doors of the factory as well.
It’s best to stay out of the surrounding (abandoned) houses near the factory, as there are still people illegally occupying them.
The factory is really huge, it took us two times more than three hours to walk through it (of course including the necessary stops to take pictures).

In the center of the factory, there is a little garden with lots of bushes and trees. Through some of the windows, nature was already giving its best in infiltrating in the factory.
Most of the objects on the ground floor are stolen or gone, except for hundreds of cotton spindles, which are placed around the factory in a very weird way (you’ll notice it immediately when you’re there).
On the first floor, you can still see some knitwear, clothes, and the machines used for assembling and creating them. The first floor is much more interesting than the ground floor.

I’ve made a very small selection of the pictures taken in the factory, I hope you like them. If you have visited Du parc to take some pictures as well, I’m very interesting in seeing them, especially pictures taken before the fire in 2006.

I just had some time to upgrade my WordPress to the latest version. Next to the upgrade, I also applied a new (nice?) theme to my website.
It’s more dark and obscure than the first theme, but in my opinion it makes the pictures look prettier.

Do you hate it or love it? You can always leave feedback

See you!

Now that I have a new laptop, it enables me to run Adobe Lightroom again. This means, new pictures!!

About a month ago, I was shooting pictures of the Vibe Productions studio. The aim was to have some pictures in an industrial and dirthy atmosphere. I’ve made some close up pictures of the material in that studio, and applied some heavy Lightroom effects on that. Some of the results are listed here, other ones are viewable on my Flickr account.

It was actually the first time I did a project with an actual goal. Most of the time I just walked around and shoot pictures of things crossing my way. I find it exciting but nevertheless stressful to shoot pictures with a goal. I realize one needs actual training for doing things like that (light usage, composition, …). Maybe I should consider taking lessons, but they all start from zero and I’m afraid it’ll be too boring in the beginning. Anyone with tips?

What can you expect from me in the near future.. I’m currently processing my pictures from the ‘Du Parc’ textile factory in Aalst. I’ve visited that factory twice, the second time I’ve spend more attention to the places I loved the first time. Next week I’m visiting Paris, so you can expect some cliché Eiffel Tower and Moulin Rouge pictures

I’m also planning a huge (one month) trip to the US & Canada, which takes a big gap of my spare time. Isn’t that the perfect excuse for not posting regularly on my blog?

See you!

Oh yeah, before I forget.. the pictures

It has been a while since my last post, but I’ve been extremely busy with planning my trip to the US this summer (more about that later), taking pictures of the Carnival in Aalst three weeks ago, and working out in the fitness on a tri-weekly base.

Normally I’m not really a Carnival-fan, but my girlfriend is and once the date is approaching, I’m more enthusiastic about it. At Sunday there is a procession of Carnival cars going across the town. I managed to take some pictures of it, and selected a few of them (see below). It’s hard to be creative while shooting these pictures, as you always have the same perspective (you have to stay at the pedestrian road).
Having a press-card would make things so much easier …

This one (above) is a rather interesting picture to take. In Adobe Lightroom (or any other photo editing tool) you can select profiles that result in subtle differences in color and contrast. The black gets purple, the purple gets blue. I’ve selected the Camera’s profile, which has the best result in this case.

I like this picture because of the time spend on dressing this bald kid. It’s a mask that lays on top of his head, but you really have to focus to see any marks for that.

This picture is one of my favorites. It’s being converted into sepia colors (the original picture didn’t have the same atmosphere with the variety of colors). I especially like the expression of her face.

I like the dressed clothes of this kid

A picture of a carnival car, without any houses on the background
(the tree and the fall of night really does the thrick).

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More information on openID can be found at http://openid.net/.

A week ago, I decided to extend my photography material with a new lens and a new flashlight:

• Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8: A friend advised me this lens. It can be compared with the Nikkor 17-55mm F/2.8. The difference is that the Nikkor lens is three times more expensive than the Tamron. The feedback from the Tamron lens is also very positive. The image is overall sharper and colors are more real life than the Nikon alternative. I’ll use this lens as my new main kit-lens, replacing my former Nikkor 18-70mm F/3.5-4.5. The picture displayed below has been taken with this Tamron lens, during my recent visit to the Bourgoyen (Mariakerke, Ghent, Belgium).
• Nikon Speedlight SB-900: I didn’t have a flashlight yet and I’m getting more and more interested in taking pictures with managed light. I chose the SB-900 because it’s of course the best and I could use it as a master to trigger other flashlights (e.g. SB-600’s or so), and as a slave that can be triggered from my camera built-in flash. I’m planning to take some pictures with this flash later.

I shot this picture below with my Sigma macro lens, while drinking a Gin Tonic. The distortion in the left lower corner is coming from the glas, with the reflection of objects behind it. There’s also a DOF in the bubbles. I like it

This weekend I went to Puyenbroeck (in Wachtebeke, Belgium). It’s a provincial domain with a huge kids play-yard, a lake full of pedal boats, a golf terrain and lots of green. My friend and I wanted to take some pictures of the snowy landscape and found Puyenbroeck the most ideal location.

In my opinion, taking lots of pictures of snowy landscapes gets bored after a while. The color spectrum of a snowy landscape does not have much difference with a black and white picture, and it’s more difficult to introduce contrasting and interesting elements when you can’t play with color. Therefore, accentuating the color of this unusual snowy landscape element had a very good result.

Of course I took pictures of the beautiful landscape as well:

When you live near or in Belgium, you know the Ardennen from in to out and left to right… Yet, if you drive a little bit further to Luxemburg, more specifically in the region of Echternach, you’ll find some places you don’t find in the Ardennen.

I made benefit of the location and situation to take some close-up macro pictures. It worked out pretty well! If you walk for a couple of days through the forests, you don’t mind the little details. Bringing your camera with you can be a real burden to carry with you, but it forces you to mind the little details nature has to offer you

It’s a yearly habit of me to visit the Ardennen or Luxemburg with the family of my girlfriend, especially if you can combine it with some trappist (Rochefort, Chimay, …) and some good meat! As finalizer, a portert picture of my girlfriend with her brother.