Life’s an ocean with too much commotion

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).

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.

This picture got selected for the year (2008) book of Antwerp!

On a cold winter day in december, me and Jeroen Van Aken decided to drive to Doel to take some pictures of a city that is going to be completely demolished. This to make room for a new dock for Flanders Port.

When we arrived, we surprisingly noticed that there are still people living in Doel. However, most of the houses are empty and ruined. Fragments of glass, trash and broken walls are filling the picture of Doel. The few people that still live there, live near to each other.

Taking pictures in Doel only gets interesting if you can go into left houses. However, most houses are so loaded with trash that it’s often difficult to enter them. When you finally manage to go in them, you often hear noises or people moving, because there are crackers living in these houses. We managed however to enter the former restaurant of Saeftinghe,  which has been left in it’s original abandoned state.

I think Doel was once a very cosy town with a tight community, where neighbours still knew each other. The only thing that reminds us of the livingness of the city, is the “De Lijn” bus that has some halts in this city and still drives through it.

I also noticed that there is a certain smell hovering in the city. I don’t know if it’s caused by the Schelde that passes the town or from the nuclear powerplant.

I’m looking forward to see the increased turnover for Flanders port now that a new dock is ready to be build, when all you hear is stories about too high energy costs for boat transport.

Ah well, at least it was a well-spent day and I managed to take some pictures…

On our trip to Presqu’île de Rhuys, in May this year, we noticed that we were only on a 100km trip from Nantes (South side of Bretagne). That period, Nantes was something fresh in our mind because of Beirut’s song.
So we jumped in our car and drove to Nantes! Once there, the city overwhelmed us with festivities, warmth, beautiful sights and cool-dressed people (cfr. picture).

The picture with the brass band above really represents what the atmosphere in this city was. It was really like walking through the video clip of Beirut.

I participated in the Fnac Fotomarathon in Ghent. The concept was to select two pictures for each theme. Fnac chose three themes, which differed depending on the city organizing the marathon. ‘letters’, ‘stone’, ‘tasty’. You had to subscribe with a team of two persons. My team existed of Jeroen Van Aken and me.

The first theme was ‘letters’. Of course everybody ran to the city library. We did too, not to take pictures but it was on our way to the Boekentoren, a building that stores an amazing archive of letters, books and other artifacts. Unfortunately we couldn’t access the Boekentoren, so we had to take some pictures in the environment. At the ground floor, there was an archive publicly available which contained quotes of some people, sorted by category. We were lucky, because a category ‘letters’ existed.

The second theme was ‘stone’. This picture was taken in Ghent at ‘de Poel’. I found this theme a little bit too abstract and difficult to do. The pictures taken for this theme were very widely interpreted (which is a good thing). The actual elected picture for this theme was not that good, in my opinion. Except for the picture you can see here, I also had another nice idea for this theme. We bought scissors in Hema in Ghent and tried to make a composition of ‘stone’, ‘leaf’, ‘scissors’, as in the game . Stone was the ‘Gravensteen’ on the background, a bush on the foreground and the scissors for cutting a leaf of the bush.

The third theme was ‘tasty’. This was a nice one. It was the last theme, around 17h-18h, so everybody had to eat something. Of course there were plenty of pictures of food, ice creams, and so on. We went to the Wok A Way and asked the cook to put some rice on a dish and place it on the conveyor belt. Maybe we had to do more tricks with the belt and a clear shot of the food. It was very dark and I didn’t have my tripod with me.

The pictures of Jeroen and me were not selected. Some of the pictures that actually won, weren’t that good in my opinion. Of course it’s always a very subjective choice..

The organization of the marathon day was very good! The reception at the evening for the picture election was well organized, good wine and food. Download points during that day weren’t too crowded. No critics for Fnac

In the beginning of may, we went on a trip to Morbihan, located in the south of Bretagne. We’ve booked a
chambre d’hôtes on Presqu’île de Rhuys, a peninsula in Morbihan. Of course I took a lot of pictures on the trip Actually, this HDR picture of Mont Saint-Michel was taken on our way back to Belgium.

Except for the abbey, which you really can’t miss, there’s nothing to see there. The city/village Avranches is full of tourists, so our visit was very short

There’s a small road heading for the abbey and at the end of that road, there’s a huge parking lot. As a reference, this picture has been taken at the right side of the abbey. I tried to avoid the touristic flood, took my car and try to see the left side of the abbey. It’s hard to get there because there are no roads heading that direction. Of course this was no challenge for me and I got there anyway. On a certain spot at the left side, their was a farmer who was organizing guided tours of a panoramic view around the abbey. He told me that, in ten years, there will be no water around the abbey anymore, due to the sand that is constantly being put off on the small road. To avoid that, they will break up the road and build a viaduct, so that the water, in the rising tide, can flow beneath the viaduct. They will also build a dam, which they can open so that a massive flood of water will wipe all the sand away again. Originally, when the abbey was built, the environment was full of trees, not water. Some natural reaction caused the area to be flood by water. That’s all I could remember of our little conversation

The HDR picture was merged by three pictures of different exposures. I used qtfpsgui to merge them and do some tone mapping.