The Alhambra, or officially “Al Calat Alhambra” – The red fortress. A beautiful Moorish fortress/palace-city located in Andalusia (Spain). We went there on our last travel and we were lucky that we were able to purchase entrance tickets (we did not realize we had to reserve them upfront due to the limitations of the number of visitors per day by Unesco World Heritage).

We did the whole tour, so that includes Alcazaba, Nasrid Palaces, Generalife, Palace of Charles V and the Bath of the Mosque. We walked 5 kilometers, and what really surprised me was that our 3 years old daughter Nicki almost did the whole walk on her own, trying to spot princesses and knights in shining armor.
I have to say; “What a wonderful place!” we walked around looking left and right, not knowing what to photograph. I tried to prepare before we left the hotel. And oh man what did I feel like an amateur when I discovered that I misplaced my 24-70mm lens.

By doing so I left it in the hotel safe and brought my 100mm Macro lens instead. What a bummer. So all photos were taken with my DSLR were with the 16-35mm lens. The other photos were shot with my G12 so I was lucky we brought that one as well. But a good lesson for future trips.
With the Canon 5D mark II is shot mostly HDR images, and a few panorama’s (and a few with a little bit of both) For me the Alhambra was the ideal place to use HDR. The warm colors and the many shadows were the perfect setting to experiment with the high dynamic range technic. Just check the gallery and see for yourself.

Finally I found the time to go trough my travel photo’s of the last 5 years…. Shame on me for letting it slip so long. But they are finally here.
Below you’ll find some samples. (each photo represents a gallery, so when you click on it you see the rest)
Roma, Firenze, Pisa

Vienna, Luzern, Strasbourgh

Cyprus, Curacao, La Palma

We went to Artis, the Amsterdam zoo which has a wonderful butterfly garden. For me it was the second time I photographed butterflies in Artis, so this time I was a little bit better prepared. Unfortunately this time there were a lot of kids (school class) who were running around chasing the butterflies in stead of just looking at them.
The one you see on the left is a glass butterfly with wonderful transparant wings like glass windows. I do not know the names of the other ones but that will be something to remember for the next visit.
I selected just four photos, because those were the only ones that I think were worth publishing.

var gallery_name = “Butterflies 2012 Artis”;
var gallery_count = 3;
var description = “”;

Finally (with the help of my mom, and an early birthday present) I managed to get my GoPro HD Hero 2 sports camera. I went for the motorsport edition due to the fact it contains the suction cup which I want to use for inside the car.
I also bought the GoPro Ride, a mount for on the steer of my bike (and of course on the bike of my daughter.

We already had some fun testing the camera. I mounted the camera to her bike helmet with some additional pivot arms and connectors to extend the distance and pointed the cam to her face. With this setup she was running around the house. This gave us some nice footage.
But that is the fun part. So what is my first impression; I did some testing with time-lapse, straight out of the box. As soon as I got back in my car (after leaving the store) I placed the cam to my windscreen with the suction cup and set the camera to time-lapse (without reading the manual). All looked well and I managed to get a very nice time-lapse of my ride back home. The only mistake I made (by not reading the manual) was that I forgot to flip the image, so I recorded everything up-side down. Something which i could easily correct with the software provided by GoPro.

The camera itself is very tiny. Which I think is the whole idea behind it. This makes it very easy to attach it to a helmet or other locations or parts. And the whole beauty of the product is that you can buy literally almost any mount to attach your camera. If not from GoPro itself, you will be able to find a 3rd party product that will fulfill your

Have been playing around with Adobe Photoshop to get a new look and feel for my next project. And am still not convinced what road to follow.

Feel free to let me know what you like best. Color or the old fashion Black and White? Just leave a comment.

Click on the photos to see more (I also included the originals so you see what was changed)
[Canon G12, with flash]

Today we went to Hindeloopen, a little village close to the coast of the IJsselmeer (a big lake (former sea)) Although most of the ice has melted over the last days there is still a lot left on the IJsselmeer. And the south west wind has made it drifting towards the coast of Hindeloopen. Some of the piles were six meters high. This is a pretty unique scenery for The Netherlands so you can imagine that it attracted a huge crowd.
We also went to see these wonders of nature and I have to say it was a pretty amazing sight. Despite the cold and the crowd I still managed to shoot a few nice decent photos.
See below for an example and click on this link to go to the gallery to see more.

[Canon 5D mk2, 24-70mm, Flash 580ex mk2]

Been playing with something new – cinemagraphs, a photo with a litte bit extra. Cinemagraphs are photographs with a subtle moving element in it. Originally the idea was created by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. On their website you will find some very beautiful examples (http://cinemagraphs.com).
For me this was the first tryout and I still see many hurdles to take before I get the image that I want. But hey practice makes perfect. Just let me know what you think of this one.

North Sea Jazz Festival, July 10th 2011.
It was five years ago when I went to the North Sea Jazz Festival for the last time. So I was happy when I got invited by my mate. I looked forward to all the good music and the opportunity to take some nice shots
Most of all I loved the fact that Prince was doing a full show. It was many years ago that I saw a live performance by Prince, so just that, was already worth a visit. But also the other artists that we saw were more then just entertaining.
It all started with the preparation of my camera kit. What to bring, and where to put it. This year they only allowed compact camera’s or camera’s with fixed lenses. Personally i do not see the reasoning behind this. If you look at the quality and options of the modern compact camera’s. Some of them can easily compete with some ‘not so old’ DSLR’s. But anyways, I decided to take my Canon 5D Mark I body with a 50mm prime lens. (the smallest configuration), and my Canon G12. I gave my 70-200mm lens to my mate, who putted it in his bag.
The check at the entrance was though but I was terrible lucky that the doorkeepers were paying attention to some visitors that started a discussion. So they let me pass without a real check. So we were inside. We enjoyed Raphael Saadiq, Tea for 3 (with Dave Douglas, Enrico Rava and Avishai Cohen), and of course Snoop Dogg, one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Nowhere we were bothered whilst taking pictures. Below some examples of the shots, I was able to take.

var gallery_name = “North Sea Jazz 2011″;
var gallery_count = 6;
var description = “North

A year has passed and I thought it would be fun to re-shoot a studio session I did with Nickita, my daughter, a year ago. Unfortunately we were not able to let her wear the same dress (little girls grow fast), but at least I was able to use the same props.
The biggest difference I noticed was the fact that she was more aware of what we were doing. At moments this resulted in her playing a role as she was acting. Another side effect was that it was even harder to keep her attention. There were moments she wanted to walk away to start playing with her toys. So we had to dose the amount of time we were actually shooting.
With a little help of mom we managed to get the required shot (for her birthday card). Below there are a few more shot made during the shoot. If you want to see more just click on one of the photos to go to the gallery.

var gallery_name = “Studio 2011″;
var gallery_count = 6;
var description = “”;

Ever wondered how to attach your Canon E1 hand strap? I did. Luckily I found this little manual a while ago. (sorry can’t remember where I found it, otherwise I would have credited it). I discovered that I did it all wrong, and with the help of the pictures I managed to do it the right way, which gave me a more secure feeling. At the end it is your (expensive) body that hangs on a thread.

Keeps me wondering why I never received instructions with the product……

I have been cleaning up my archive and found some shots I made last summer. I made some close-ups in the garden while i was enjoying the nice weather. This was the first summer that we had wasps in our garden. Normally I am happy when this little bug(ger) stays away, but this time I was glad that I could make some shots. (it is a wonderful creature after all). All shots were taken with my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L USM Macro and my Canon 5D mark I

We also went to the zoo (Artis in Amsterdam) where we visited the butterfly garden. This is paradise for the close-up fans. Sometimes the butterflies even land on your shoulder, which can be frustrating and wonderful at the same time. (You have a nice close-up view but it is impossible to take a nice shot) We went together with Nicki, my daughter, so it was not really possible to concentrate on the pictures, so this is definitely a place to go back to (when i am alone)