It is always fun to play some tricks with my little girl. Today we went to visit her aunt who lives in the woods and has this lovely house. Nicki insisted that she would wear her new dress made by mom for carnaval. This new Merida (from the Disney movie Brave) dress comes with a bow and arrows and that inspired us to do some fun shots in the setting of William Tell. But now with arrows, but an axe. Just some innocent fun while we are playing in the forest garden. No special tricks or effects. Just some color enhancements in Lightroom and Photoshop CC, all shot with my Canon G16. Like I said, just playing around and no big tricks, but thrust me, we had double the fun….

While I was working on a photo shoot in the studio I came to the idea to use the wide spaced area and the large walls. I never unpacked my background. The walls were so rough that it worked perfectly for the setting I wanted. Once at home, behind my laptop I started to experiment a bit with the colours and other settings. Before I knew it, I had this graffiti like look and feel. So I decided to try this as a background for the studio shoot that I had doen that day. I immediately fell in love with the result and before I knew it I had a commissioned job where I asked to use this technique. I’ll put in on my to do list to create a tutorial video on how to do this (it is actually quite simple to do)  

Did a shot as an example for the workshop “Trick Photography” at my daughters school. A floating photo of a (in my humble opinion, impossible) yoga pose.   Four days with 6 kids from 11 years till 12 years old, teaching them how to make a trick photo. The main focus is on the creative process and not on the technical side of photography. I was hoping that they would start to think out of the box. And man o man you got to love the imagination of a child. In other words – success!

Just a tryout with my 16-35mm lens and flash while my daughter was eating a sandwich with apple syrup. (one of her favorites). I love the (slight) fisheye effect that the 16mm produces on my full frame Canon 5D. And I really like the fill-in effect caused the flash. Basically the same technique I used while I was shooting Nicki with her sandbox toys in the garden. Set (in manual mode) the right exposure for the surrounding on your camera, and you the flash (also in manual mode) to make sure that you light your subject correctly. You can leave the flash on ETTL (auto mode), but I prefer to have full control over my camera and flash. Next day I tweaked some settings in Adobe lightroom (exposure, clarity, and vibrance) to give it a little bit a vintage look. Click here to see the larger version and the other photos from the same series. [Canon 5D, 16-35mm, Flash]

After reading many articles on the internet I decided to buy an Infrared filter. Based on my camera I had two options; the expensive Hoya 072, or the cheaper Cokin P-007 (89B). Because I was not sure if I would like the whole IR thing I decided to go for the cheaper option only 1/8 of the price of a Hoya filter. (Hoya 77mm costs 200,- Euros, and the Cokin only 25,- Euros (if you already own the filter holder and adapter rings)). The first try outs were not as expected; it took me a day to figure out that I did not use the correct white balance. So the next day I took some outside shots and I am not really sure if I like the results. The problem is that I am not sure if I am doing something wrong. Or if the cheaper filter is not providing the expected result, or that maybe my camera body is not capable to shoot IR. According to articles found on the internet, I should be able to get some good results with my canon 300D body. So that should rule out that possibility. Unfortunately I have not been able to found any articles that describe the 300D in combination with the Cokin P-007 (89B) filter. I did found a Dutch website with examples of what I am trying to achive. Cklck here to go to this website and click on ‘infrarood’

I have been playing with my new underwater housing for my Canon Digital Ixus 75. And I love it. The main reason why I bought it was because I started swimming with my daughter, and I wanted to capture these wonderful moments. Here are some first try-outs. I have to admit that it is a pain in the @#$ to get the right images when you have a 6 months old baby in one hand and a camera in the other. So I do realize that I have to wait until she will be a bit older and can float by herself without my direct help. Till then I’ll have to be happy with the ‘lucky’ shots from close by. The main problems that you need to be aware of are the fact that you build-in flash is very limited and has a short range. Second is that you need to be aware of the fact that light diffuses differently underwater then above water. There is an example in the gallery where the lens is halfway under and the flash is completely submerged. Last but very annoying is that every little particle in the water will be emphasized by the flash light, and therefore becomes visible. But maybe I will figure out how to bypass these issues. …to be continued. for more check the gallery