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Occasionally, I go back to the easel, pick up a brush, and express myself on canvas using oils or acrylic paint. Although I prefer oils to acrylic, the speed at which acrylic dries outweigh the pro’s of oil paint.

I know this student, Eline, whose picture inspired me to do some RGB (Red Green Blue) work, using her as model. Other painters paint of a picture, so why shouldn’t I do it?

It has taken me about 2 years to finish this thing, not because she’s a difficult subject, but because I just didn’t set aside any time to finish the darn thing. I’m very pleased with the thing, except for the jewelry, which, in hindsight, I should’ve left off.

I finally finished it on the eight of august (I planned to, since it was a nice date 8-8-2008).

And I tried to take a decent picture of it, that was difficult, as specular reflection of the light made some parts unsightly. I added a layer in photoshop, filled in parts with green, put the layer in overlay mode and lowered the opacity to 60%, making the green reasonably close to the real thing. Photographing my own paintings make me realize that a photograph doesn’t tell the whole story; you’re missing a lot of the real colors of the original, the depth of those colors (especially the green) and the detail (perhaps that’s not so bad )

Note that Eline’s original hair and eye color is brown, but as I wanted a RGB type work I replaced her eye color with blue, and her hair color with red. Eline herself was pretty impressed with the result, she told me. And she added, that if I didn’t have enough space to hang it, she’d be more than happy to hang it at her place

Partymania put me on the list for photographers to shoot at beatstad. But there were too many, so I told them I’d be their reserve photog. Then the owner of the website got a back problem and asked me to fill in.

We were supposed to only take pictures of the public, and some overview shots. So I took my nikon d300+strobe with me, my trusted 17-55 and my 10.5mm fisheye.

All went well, but it turned out we were allowed to shoot the performing artists.

So there I was, practically plastered to the stand, trying to get some decent shots of the bands while the other photogs stood there with their 70-200 lenses getting all the close-ups. Bummer. But better than nothing I guess.

I took some pictures of Within Temptation and some of Live (who were rather timid and seemed frozen to the same spot for a ‘live’ band).

The picture I liked best has lots of negative space. It is one of the guitarists of Within Temptation. I just loved their light show. It is a bit of a crop though. I used the healing brush to remove the lead singer as one could see her silhouette to the right. I spiced up the colors as usual.

In the last week of my vacation I arranged a shoot with Helga at Clingendael park. As I wasn’t satisfied with the first shoot, she agreed to do a re shoot the next day. We played around with my panama hat, that I’d gotten for a film noir idea that didn’t work out.
The picture below was shot with my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 17-55 AF-S f/2.8. I used three SB-800 strobes to light Helga; one to her left, one to her right, and one just below the lens. They supplied her with just the right amount of light to give her a natural looking, shadowless appearance. (the sun is right behind her by the way-it was a cloudy day)
I used two layers, using a mask to show the dark background of the top down to the second that was perfectly exposed on Helga herself. I also did a bit of healing on some parts of her–but I wont tell you where

I was bored.
It happens sometimes. So I surfed around the net a bit, and I found a blog somewhere, where this guy posted a picture of himself and his camera, but with a twist.
Being the lazy copy cat that I am sometimes, I did some experimenting with my manual focus Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ais @ f/1.2, live view and my Nikon D300, and presto!
Dit some shopping though, the light n the bathroom isn’t the most flattering light in existence as seen through a camera.

Last week I snapped another beautiful sunset. Well actually the clouds that accompany a beautiful sunset. I found out that I could really capture the saturation of the clouds if I shot them with the white balance set to “flash”.

I upped the clarity slider and the saturation slider in Photoshop’s RAW converter.

So I wanted to go to het Paard again on saturday the first of august. But the guys from partymania said that Whoosah beach party would be a better bet, so I went there.

It was a small place, with not many people. And after the shoot I got a text message saying the Asta in the hague would be better with more people.

Oh well, the whole bit cost me 8 euro, the drinks were way too expensive (6 euro’s for 33ml of carbonated water is steep)-but entry was free for everyone (still, I’m used to getting free enrty and cheap or free drinks, I guess I’m spoiled).

I went to Club Mad in het Paard van Troje (through Party Mania) on the 31st of juli. unfortunately it was the middle of the summer vacation, so the number of students was low. But as the Hague is near the sea, it is a given that many went to beach parties, so het Paard was pretty empty.

Oh well, nomatter where I go, there’s always at least one good picture, relatively speaking of course, not absolutely

I did a crop, levels, contrast and clarity slider.

I had another shoot with those guys from photophoria. This was two days after the wedding shoot for Sandra and Davidson. Although the weather guys weren’t sure about the weather (they expected rain) it was a beautiful day, and the rains passed to the south of the place we chose for the shoot: Wijk aan Zee. A colleague of Remon, Mhoi, posed for the picture below. I took a few pictures, but I’m not really satisfied with any of them, so I’ll have to coerce her to do another shoot with me someday.
The picture had had some healing done here and there, I also added a bit of liniair contrast, then desaturated the whole thing. next time though, I have to watch my DOF a little better.

Sandra and Davidson, friends of mine, asked me to photograph their wedding on the twentyfifth of july 2008.
I’ve never done that before so I agreed, provided they would also ask a backup.
The other guy, Carlos ws a relaxed dude, and he also had Nikon equipment. Turned out he used to be a wedding photog in a previous career.
I went to the apartment of the bride’s witness, where Sandra stayed the night before and took pictures of her and her kids getting make up done and getting ready to go to the city hall. The timing was a bit off (we arrived a teensy weensy bit late at the city hall), the father was a nervous wreck, and I was pretty cool about the whole thing. I guess I realized everybody else was nervous, so nobody would notice me or my camera, so the whole thing was a breeze.
I took nearly 800 photographs during the whole day (I was also invited to the party afterward). I really liked the whole affair, the dress code was red or white, I wore a combination of both, and as the wedding party walked from the medieval city hall to the party center we really stuck out and everyone noticed us.

I think the picture below is really a sweet moment, just after the customary kiss. I took it with my old D200 and Nikkor 70-200 AF-G VR f/2.8. I did some PS tricks, you know, the usual stuff, to pep it up, except no saturation, but I guess I still have to edit it a little. But I’m going to wait until the happy couple gets back and sorts out the pictures they want before I’ll PS the whole lot and do too much work.

You know why, we photogs are a lazy lot

I was asked by Marty to take pix at the Extrema Outdoor dance event for the organizers. I was at the event in 2007, taking pictures for technolusion, a website that no longer exists. Apart from it starting to rain cats and dogs at 8 p.m., it was a blast way back then.

This year, it was totally different. It started to rain much earlier
But I was well prepared with plastic bags and raincoats. Bummer that when it started raining, I found out that I’d forgotten them in the press room :’)

Anyway, I had loads of fun and took loads of pictures. Maybe I’ll make a new entry in my portfolio for my best dance event stuff.

The picture below was more of an journalistic type shot than a posed one. Let’s face it, whenever mankind gathers in great numbers even the tidyist person turns into a littering bum.

I like the picture because of it’s journalistic aspect. The garbage, the cut of head that shows anonimity, the carelessness way in which people walk around nog caring about the junk.

I’ll post an update as soon as the organizers put my pix online.

The saturation, vibrance and clarity were pushed up a few notches, I did some recovering and fill lighting of the RAW image, added a bit of contrast (to bring out the cloud filled sky). You know the drill, nothing spectacular going on here.