Photo Ops

Once in a while you just walk into a setting that you can’t ignore. We were visiting theĀ American Motorcycle Museum in Raalte when we encountered this old tractor, which is for sale by the way. The kids started to climb it and we took some shots. My eye fell on a little stool next to the barn, so before we knew it we were make floating photos. It was the first time for Mart to pose but he enjoyed it. And of coarse I couldn’t ignore Nickita, so she climbed on the tractor too as you can see in the shot below. For those curious how this was done, check my previous articles on floatation photos. Regarding the work done on these shot; mainly they we both edited the same way. I did the floating trick, added motion blur to the background, added radial blur to the wheels with Adobe Photoshop and spiced them up a bit in Adobe Lightroom. Both were shot with my Canon G12 and without tripod (had to use a fencepost for stability)

A day at the Apenheul in Apeldoorn is always a nice opportunity to shoot some nice monkey photos. Especially when there are newborn monkeys. Today we went with the kids and we had a wonderful day with many photo opportunities. Click on the monkey photo above to go to the gallery. There you will find more monkey photos. I especially like the ones with the little baby Squirrel monkeys. The small hands and the one where the mother is feeding her baby. I was able to make these with just a lot of patience and some good luck. All shot with my Canon 5D mkii and 24-70MM or 70-200MM lenses.

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]

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. For prince we had to leave the main building and went to the large arena. […]

There fell a lot of snow just after new yearsday. So I decided to get up early so I would catch some nice light. Not knowing that I had to remove ice from my windscreen for almost 30 minutes. But it was worth to get out of bed at this early hour. The light was beautiful and the fog added just that little bid extra. It was good to see, that many people could appreciate this beautiful view and they went outside armed with their camera gear. I used my Canon 5D, and overexpossed 1 stop to get the nice looking white snow.

I love to shoot while I am on the road, just traveling and taking pictures. It does not mather if I travel by car, bike, or train. I just like to shoot images of little things that I see daily when I travel. The images below are just a few examples. [Canon 5D and Canon IXUS 75]