23-JUL-2012
The depth of the field
This was during a family holiday in England. I was looking forward to have some photo moments those days, and hoping to find some gently rolling fields of wheat or other grains. But I did not expect to see opportunity knock right on the evening of arrival. After setting up the tent I made a short stroll 'to inspect the surroundings'. Right behind the campsite there was a small and very steep 1:4 country lane going down and after the first bend I saw this perfect field and sundown. I like to see the fine inner details and the overall view at the same time to demonstrate the immense complexity of the inner world of just one field that most of the time you pass by without thinking.
09-JUL-2012
Thinking along the line of...
25-SEP-2011
Copy Right (Colored Version)
28-JUN-2009
Triggerfinger
Ruben (vocals, lead guitar) from the Belgian rockband Triggerfinger
05-MAY-2011
Fascination
After a long day at the yearly festival on the 5th of May, Liberation Day, with lots of music, I wanted to leave but suddenly realised the potential of portraits of people in the Ferris Wheel. It is a great option for the lazy photographer, although the movement and constantly changing light made timing difficult. The whole series for me represents a kind of microcosm of human relations and emotions. I like this one in particular because of the light and the clear fascination of the girl with the giant wheel. It seems the mother (I presume) genuinely wants to follow her daughter in that fascination, but of course as a grown up she is not able anymore to clear her mind completely of all rational consciousness and be fully engulfed by fantasy and fascination. But at least she tries!
30-OCT-2010
relax
I have good memories attached to this one. On top of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig most people come to gaze at the 360 degree view. But these rather tough looking guys came up the stairs and got some already open beer bottles from the inner pockets of their jackets, perhaps proud to have fooled the guards. When they leaned on the wall and started to enjoy their drinks I realised this would make a nice photo. I made a gesture and asked for their permission to make a photograph, but instead of standing still they all immediately backed away thinking they blocked my view. When I made it clear it was them I wanted to picture they where quite flabbergasted but willing to pose. Of course I should have taken more time to compose carefully, but I still like the image with such soft and kind expressions from tough guys drinking beers.
16-SEP-2011
Sally Pearson
one leg length ahead, but down on the track two hurdles later
28-DEC-2009
Grouping
I like this a lot because it is completely unposed and unstaged. People were standig on a dike waiting for a spectacle starting to happen so they made a chat like people normally do when strolling through a park with friends. The very strong backlight from late afternoon sun reflected on the sea behind the dike made the view a pure silhouette accentuating the poses. I like how the woman leans backwards to balance the weight of the baby. The pose of the wide-legged guys on the left supposedly doing men's talk is a bonus.
21-DEC-2009
In the Dutch mountains
This is part of an ongoing project to find seemingly real mountains in the otherwise flat Dutch landscape. The opportunities are scarce of course, but the snow on these heaps of sand posed a good one. The snow cover prevents any sense of scale and I like the very basic forms of the slopes and the basic shadow and light combination. You can go photo hunting all day, but sometimes when just cycling back home from work you have some luck in spotting two heaps of snow covered sand...
05-DEC-2009
Triggerfinger
Triggerfinger is one of my favourite rockbands. It's a classic guitar, drum, bass 3-man band from Belgium, with a magnificent drummer, a stoic bass player and a hard playing guitarist and vocalist. This gig was in our small local rock temple called Burgerweeshuis. The room is actually too small for this type of band, but that makes the concerts a thrilling experience (with good ear protection, that is). The guitarist/vocalist who leads the band is a very flegmatic, tough looking guy doing the dirty man act on stage with expressive eyes and body movement. I was just in the middle of the crowd and made my way forward to get this shot. In was quite dark, but the high iso did the trick without having to use the atmosphere killer called flash.
18-OCT-2009
In the Dutch mountains
At first although I did notice the scene out of the corner of my eye as I rode past it on my bicycle. I did slow down for a moment but thought it not interesting enough. But for some reason or other I stopped 50 yards further down that road and contemplated, then I walked back and thought, well, why not try and make the most of it? As you know the Netherlands are more or less flat so you got to use every relief you can get.
I like this one because of the somewhat silly posture of the cow and the fact that with a big dose of imagination you could mistake this mountain for Uluru, because of the way it rises out of the flat grassland.
13-FEB-2009
Taking the measure of light
This is one of the newer buildings on the campus. Its form resembles a supertanker and it has haut reliefs on the outside. I saw an image like this on Flickr. It convinced me hat night photography in the area was a good theme for our local photography club photoshoot. However, we were unlucky and had too much rain for long exposures. I went back on my own 4 days later and was more lucky. It is a difficult shot and it required some post processing on the shadow areas. By the way, Minnaert was an optimetrician and astronomer working at Utrecht University...
25-JAN-2009
WWII heritage
What I like here is the light and the way the clouds are reflected in the freshly painted shiny steel. I encountered the bridge on a bicycle ride a mere 20 kilometers from home. I had seen it earlier but passed it without close inspection then. Being a 'temporary' bridge built by the Britsh shortly after te war, the construction is basic but apperently good enough to last this long. It still carries motor verhicles, but only one way at a time. I did some lens correction on the image using Photoshop to get the verticals straight. That is not something I do as a rule, but I like the effect here.
21-NOV-2008
Nights of rum
This is the 1973 Annex building of the Bacardi headquarters by architect Ignacio Carrera-Justiz with stained glass decoration after a painting by German artist Johannes Dietz, depicting the production process of rum. On a business trip to Miami I went there, it was one of the few things I really wanted to see. So when the rest of the group went to bed I took a taxi from the hotel and started circumventing the building looking for the best angle. After a few long exposure shots I walked to the main building to continue shooting there. When I looked back, suddenly the lights of the building went out (at exactly 1:23 AM), and the magic was gone. I like that there is some colour left in the background. This marvellous building proves that my conviction that the seventies were a dull and flat era culturally cannot be not completely true.
06-JUL-2008
Framing the tension
I am very glad with this image, because I managed to change lenses, focus and choose the right settings for a a great depth of field before the start of the hurdles race. It is also dear to me because it was a reward for my decision to ask offcial permission to shoot at a large sporting event for the first time. To be able to walk around the stadium during the event was a thrill.
05-JUL-2008
La Grande Parade by Compagnie Off
This image has two layers of meaning. What it is is something completely different from what I saw in it. It is of course a human-canonball combination, a climactic scene at the end of a spectacular theatrical parade. What I saw however was someone kidnapping earth and taking it out into a new interstellar orbit ... I was very happy finding out that earth exactly coincided with the sun's edge. One drawback: on full scale it is clearly not fully sharp. Well, you can't have eveything always...
18-JUN-2008
Sara Petersen, street length, but not enough
Sara Petersen (Denmark) who came in second on the 400m hurdles. I like this image because it has drama, depth and everything is in the right place and right focus. What I also like, for a change, is that the athletics pitch at Papendal is blue instead of the eternal red.
18-JUN-2008
synchronicity
Richard Alleyne (l) and Karl Jennings (r) are unaware they were running exactly symmetrically, creating a nice balanced image with a funny effect. I like athletics photography, because it is relatively easy to come up with some satisfying results, compared especially to more unpredictable sports such as ball games.
08-JUN-2008
Released
Made some shots while taking a ride with my sons in this machine at the summer fair in Deventer. The images were not really convincing, so I lingered around looking for other photo ops. This shot was pretty boring straight out of the camera, but my addiction need a good shot so I started fooling around in with the curves and contrast in Photoshop. That was when I saw the lines were disappearing and my day was made.
24-MAY-2008
Yvonne Hak after her 4th place and PB on the 800 m
My first convincing sports portrait, a picture that made me decide to explore sports and athletics photography a bit more. In athletics the emotions are shown only after the action, but this captures it nicely, in the warm evening sun. I have good memories of this day. It was a very nice outing with famlily and friends. Photographically it was special because it was my first time renting a professional 70-200 lens capable of producing smooth backgrounds as shown here. I can recommend that to anyone doing photography for a special occassion and lacking the money to buy those lenses.
09-MAY-2008
look, he's down there!
Il Pozzo di San Patrizio. This place is quite special. Although it is a standard tourist destination, once inside your imagination may start running. This was built long ago to lead people and livestock down from the Orvieto plateau to the well and back. Quite ingeneously it is built as a double helix, much like the 1932 double spiral staircase in the Vatican Museum. This was done in order to prevent collision of herds. Today visitors have to go down and back as well. You can see people playing with being close together and yet so far apart. The light, come from a glass roof and from small bulbs, quickly changes with each round that you go. This image was made about halfway down, where the mixture of cold and warm light is in balance. I had no tripod, which would not be of much use anyway. Instead I leaned through one of the holes and pressed my camera against the wall for a 4 second exposure while at the same yelling back as well mannered as I could to my two boys who were shouting from the bottom of the well.
30-APR-2008
after
These two images are the day and night side of sunset. There is no processing apart from some cropping and a slight increase of contrast. The colours are as recorded in raw by the camera. I saw these magical hills are after our meal on the Urbino camping in the Marche region of Italy. The view is towards Umbria in the west. The yellow image was shot half an hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains (it was to the right of this frame), the blue one half an hour after sunset. When I sat there amazed at the show put up before me I did not realise the stark difference in colours because of the gradual change. I think this is what sets photography apart: because it isolates moments in time it strenghtens impressions. The striking colour difference only became apparent to me weeks later, at home when viewing full screen versions of these images.
30-APR-2008
before
These two images are the day and night side of sunset. There is no processing apart from some cropping and a slight increase of contrast. The colours are as recorded in raw by the camera. I saw these magical hills after our meal on the Urbino camping in the Marche region of Italy. The view is towards Umbria in the west. The yellow image was shot half an hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains (it was to the right of this frame), the blue one half an hour after sunset. When I sat there amazed at the show put up before me I did not realise the stark difference in colours because of the gradual change. I think this is what sets photography apart: because it isolates moments in time it strenghtens impressions. The striking colour difference only became apparent to me weeks later, at home when viewing full screen versions of these images.
23-MAR-2008
View on Deventer
There are several things I like here. The whole image is quite blurry, as if looking through one's eyelashes, but the image is still quite strong. I like the road, its curve and its sudden disappearance. You could compare it to life, but that's a bit cheap of course. I also like the texture of the heath, which is like a woolly mammoth. But most of all I like the way the long lens emphasises the height diffrences, which, being in the Netherlands is still very modest here: some 60 meters. On the horizon is home: Deventer, one hour of cycling to go. Well, that is if there are no intervening photo-opps.
January 1986
Farewell II
This is another scan from a colour slide converted to B&W. I like the long lines and mist. The man and child seem to wander along without a specific goal, something I also like to do when waiting for trains. But I imagine of course something more dramtic: mama has just left for two years or the child's best friend has moved to another city. It is clear that they won't be seeing each other for a long long time and daddy and his son will have to carry on without that beloved person.
19-MAY-2007
This is my favourite among the many photos I made of this piano. It is left outside by the canal and decomposes slowly but surely and changes with the seasons. I have been at the place numerous times, because it is on one of my regular cycling routes. But for this photo I went there on purpose carrying the music score of Verdi's requiem. I like the dark upper half with the out of focus hammers.
:: My old favourites ::
these were among my favourites, but as I list only 36 of them in my main favourites gallery I moved those that don't make it to the very top anymore here.