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.