We went to the Amsterdamse Waterleiding Duinen (AWD) to do a shoot of the girls before they are donating their hair to the Children’s Cancer foundation. Because this proved to be the perfect location last time for some nice Bokeh Panoramas or Brenizer shots I decided to try them once more. At first it did not feel good because the whole look and feel of the area was just off. But then I realized that it was just stupid me, Last time I was there, there were almost no leaves on the trees and now it was the opposite. So I missed the wildly growing branches and the nice structures. But nevertheless I decided to continue and after explaining to my wife what needed to be done we started. If you are not familiar with the concept of bokeh panoramas please read this earlier post on the Brenizer method tutorial. I will give you a clear description on how to create this kind of images. Because my daughter knew what the end result would look like she was enthusiastic from the start and before we knew we had several shots made. Once at home I tried to combine the images with the new lightroom CC but it failed horribly. My MacBook crashed several times and it was just too much. Lessons learned… you need to downsize your individual shots or the shot should match perfectly so your pc does not have to do too much calculations. To give you an example. A shot out of 32 images worked fine but a similar shot out of 24 images failed due to lack of processor and memory. I tried to use AutoPano Giga 3.0 and that managed to stitch all the images but then I noticed that there were huge gaps. And I […]

For my last entry of the project 50mm shot I wrote that I used a group portrait. But actually it is a composite created using 3 different portraits. See below I combined the three portraits in Photoshop and then processed t in Lightroom, you can see the difference below with the before and after. Just to show you a bit of my workflow.

For project 50mm I went on a completely different route this week, not following the rules of a 52 weeks project at all, but still an amazing result. This weeks photos are made by my six year old daughter Nickita and not by me. I love how she shows interest for photography and how she tries to make great shots. She takes the time to watch and tries to figure out what the best composition is. Not that she is following any photography rules, but it all seems to come natural. So again this weeks entries for project 50mm are made by Nicki. Nicki So this first shot is a selfie made by Nicki. I have to admit that she had a little help from me due to the fact that my Canon 5D with battery grip was a bit too heavy to hold with fully extended arms. But at the end she pointed the camera at herself and gave me directions what to do. The following shots are all made by Nicki without any help. It is fun to see how she supports the heavy camera body and how she waits for the right moment to press the shutter button. The shots are not posed, they were made while we were having dinner at the Greek restaurant. I was about to take some shot for project 50mm when Nicki asked me if she could take some pictures. By the time she was done dinner was served and I forgot all about taking pictures myself. Once at home my wife suggested that it would be fun if I would use our daughters photos. And so I did…. Joan Betty As a bonus I also added a photo she made of me, in the same style as the other shots. Fun […]

I have been playing with this idea in my head for the next crea workshop trick photography on my daughters school. Last year we tried to play with floatation and multiple exposures. And next to that we also did some shots where we used a frame. (see the gallery for the earlier workshops) But I always wanted to use a laptop screen as a frame. So today I did a shot with my daughter to tryout a few things. Below you see the best shot. It still needs a lot of rework in Photoshop, and I know I can do way better with the editing, but hey for a first (quick) tryout… The trick is simple. Just shoot two photo’s one with the arm and without the laptop, and one the other way around. I actually just closed the lid of my laptop for the shot without the screen. Then combine the two photos in a program like Adobe Photoshop. I actually set the background of my laptop screen to green so I could easily remove it (green screen principle). Remove the inner space of the laptop screen and you are done. One of the easiest trick photography that you can do, and is easy to understand for kids. If you happen to know any tick photography techniques that are easy to understand for kids please let me know so I can consider to use them during one of the workshops. update: I have added a new version of this shot which I think is a bit better. Comments are welcome

Once in a while I like to bring my camera while I am driving to work. I know it is not the safest way to photograph (you know; moving vehicle, both hand on the steering wheel, focus on the road, etc.) But there are these days you have this gut feeling that you will encounter something on the road that you should not miss. During this time of the year we have the most beautiful skies here in the Netherlands. When I woke up there was already a hint of orange that might predict nice skies. So I grabbed my Canon 5D, 50mm f/1.4 prime and stepped in the car. And I was not mistaken, after driving for a while the sun started to rise and this produced the most beautiful Dutch skies you can imagine. I am not saying that i shot the most beautiful Dutch landscapes or clouds or anything else close to that. Nope just the color in the sky was so wonderful. Of course driving (moving), camera-shake (low light conditions) and miss-aimed shots (shooting while driving) aren’t the best ingredients for a great shot. But somehow I managed to get these (lucky) shots and I must admit, I like them in a weird kind of way. I cannot tell you if this has to do due to the fact that they are ‘my’ shots, or because I just like the weirdness of them. I know the shot are not focussed correctly, and composition could be a lot better but if you look at them and deal with them as being abstract it is a whole different ballgame. I am curious what you think of them. Can you accept them as art, or just as fun shot/snapshots, of maybe you have a different way of looking at […]

It took a while but today we finally had time to go to the woods and start on part two of “Paint your dreams”. A little project I do with my six year old daughter. We think of scenes where we can combine a photo of the scenery with a kids drawing. We did this a while ago (see other images in the gallery) For today we picked the theme animals. At first we started the think of situations where animals were hiding on a funny way (see the giraffe). We came up with many other scenes but Nicki still needs to make the drawings for those so that can take a while (We don’t want to rush the creative process do we.) While we were hiking through the forest there were some small puddles due to the rain of the day before and we came up with the idea to start fishing and looking for sharks. Officially the fishing photo is not painted by her, and she is not using her paint brush, but it did fit the rest of the series. With the shark photo we had a lot of fun while we took the picture and even more when she started to make the kids drawing. Nicki was pleasantly surprised by the idea that she could get this result by just painting a small triangle. You’ve got to love the way kids think. Finally we went to a small meadow with a bit of water, because we were walking around the whole time with the idea to do this with a whale. Unfortunately all the waters were too small for a whale. Even for a fantasy whale. But at the end we did find the right spot. I do hope you line the idea and if you have suggestions please […]

My daughter was reading a book before going to bed and I imagined that she would see all these different worlds created by her fantasy. This gave me the idea to create a dreamy image (sorry don’t have any other words for it). Luckily she was sitting close to some colorful pillows so it was easy to create the effect with Photoshop

A wonderful day and some spare time. My 5 year old daughter and I decided that we wanted to go for a ride with the cabrio and shoot some trick photography shots while we were on the way. She decided on her own what we had to shoot, she wanted to use the picture frame and the stool. So it would be a combination of floating and framed. We had a wonderful day, and at the end we went to a nice restaurant and had a fancy dinner together. Once at home we picked the shots and I started to do the afterwork. See below for the results. I love to see how she gets involved and start to use her own creativity.

Zoom.nl contacted me with the question if they could use some of my work for their magazine. They are doing an article on smoke photography. Of course I said yes and at the same time I felt the urge to try to improve the work I did in 2008. So tried some improvements while I was in the studio but noticed that I need to experiment more with different props so the experiment will get a sequel.

Marcia shot a few photos of her son Noah. And we came to the idea to use these for a tattoo make-over. Both shots had the perfect pose for a though boy with a tattoo. So I tried the little tattoo trick again in Photoshop. If I find the time I will write a tutorial on it. I probably went a bit over the top with the back piece but that is the whole idea of this series. Un realistic tattoo situations… Don’t be surprised if more will follow soon.

First rule of fight club is…. I found a nice tutorial on how to make dripping blood with Adobe Photoshop. Had a plan with a photo of my 5 year old daughter and halloween. When I was done it looked so realistic that after a short discussion with my wife we decided it was not fit to be put on the world wide web. So at the end I ended up with photoshopping a self portrait. Maybe I can convince my wife i can do a portrait of her as well.