people

Very random stuff actually.

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Bought some thick paper to create a new product studio. So far so good. I also got a HUGE black sheet so that will be fun to play with. In the meanwhile: test shots and some skateboarding action from Arnhem where I had a job interview..

And now the promised skateboarding stuff…

Ronke and some animal friends.

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As I said got a new lens, so I couldn’t wait and had to test it.

This is Ronke, we’ve been friends for a very long while and her smile just makes everyone smile as well.. couldn’t resist to capture that piece of magic!

This is the cat of our neighbours. However it often sneaks into our house to be found chilling, sleeping or hunting for food. Nice cat though!

Now prepare for some BIRDS!

Strike a pose!

Huh what?

NINJAAAAAA!

Promised the swan she’d be on my blog too. Not the best picture I ever took but a promise is a promise… eventhough I’m QUITE sure she would never see my blog.

Swan… You’re on my blog. Feel happy, fuzzy and warm now? I do since I’m inside Muhahaha.

More stuff later, cheerio’s folks!

Ghent, Belgium.

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It already has been a week, but a good memory anyway. Me and a friend went to Ghent to have a Maxforums gathering. What’s that? Well, some 3D/photography guys in Ghent drinking and talking geek stuff! Well.. we talked a lot about design, the current economy, more design, visual stuff, infinity (don’t ask.. please don’t) and we indeed had drinks. I brought my cam, 2 lenses and had lots of fun!


Means something along the lines of “love please.”

Martini bubles, I loved them!

The Cat. What a beauty!

The roof during our lunch the second day.

A very funky and happy colored bar!

Also 3D visual designers can look very ghetto.

Next stop, more drinks.

Some stairs at the place where we stayed.

Nd more…

The living room, well, small part of it. Looks great!!!

That’s all for now.

Random stuff.

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Okay okay, I know I still have to add some pictures from my trip to Sweden, but hey… it’s one of those jobs that’s going to take hours and you don’t have a deadline, after all, it’s a hobby. So instead here some random shots from the past few days.

 

Followed by this picture, which I took in Almere Stad. It’s quite a famous building here. I just like it’s pattern a lot. Tried to capture it.

And then… sunny Caribbean beach life, apart from the fact it’s taken over here in cold Almere, the Netherlands.

Oh and if you wonder, no this picture has not been edited except from the frame. Don’t we love color settings in the 5D MKII ?

That’s it for now! Much more to come, like I always say…!

Famous last words, bye 5DMKII.

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Due to an accident, my 5D MKII went to the bottom of a small river. I dived in but it was already submerged. Goodbye Canon 5D MKII. I loved it, it was all I had so here are the last pictures I could get back from the camera.

Day before, Joost calling…

Cows the day before, not edited by the way…

And another picture.

This camera was my everything. Photography became a way of life for me and I loved this camera to the bone. As a student I can’t just get another one… I can’t afford it so for now this will be the last post. It’s a sad day.

Cheers all, it was fun.

I’m rich!

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Allright, expect a normal decent post soon but I just couldn’t resist… so here are some pictures from my last movienight!

Movienight you say? Yes, movienight.
My beloved parents (still have to make a picture, this tends to be quite hard…) actually allow it that I can have a MOVIENIGHT every 2 weeks. What does this mean?
Lot’s of foods (mostly home made pizza… and yes it’s HUGE), movies, drinks, lot’s of people and lot’s of laughter. The pizza is actually about a meter wide and you can decorate your own slice of the whole thing. Pretty cool aye?
Before I show the pictures (unless you skip this part..) I want to stress that these pictures are not technically perfect, they are not funny nor are they well spotted. They are friends. They are the basics to human existence. They are what make me. And they alone are a reason to live.
So here they are.. and yes a LOT of good friends are exluded… so yes… count me rich. 😉

ANYWAY let’s start with this guy Joost. He’s been a friend for more than 12 years now… or even 13… I can’t even remember. This guy is really cool. And eventhough we are totally different, we also share a lot of thoughts and humor that just no-one else will ever understand. Big ups for him haha!

And then Victor, yes what to tell. Difficult case… hehe. I went to London with this guy, met him at uni and he’s proven to be a weird-ass. Seriously he is. How-ever whatever he is, you can always count on a good party when he’s around. He’s one of the few who got verbed and got accepted at urbandictionary. OMG. I tried HARD, my friends know this, but even I didn’t succeed in getting verbed. Omg.

Then this guy Feraaz… I’ve actually finished the OVC college with this guy… we both did HAVO and stuff, was really cool. Now we’re still in touch, crashing parties and making any small station in the Netherlands unsafe.

And then Emma. I mean.. we’ve seen her before, her beautifull eyes.. And the ones who know her well also have seen her photography. I mean she still surprises me and eventhough she’s relatively new to photography I’m a bit jealous at how well she sees… funny things in life. Seriously she’s good. Her creative skills and my technical skills would outperform a LOT of design agencies. Trust me, yes. Okay… well… maybe.. sortof. Anyway… Emma.

And then we have Chantal. A straight weirdo and trust me you don’t want to have her as your enemy. But as a friend, she’s sweet as sugar.

P.s. she’ll kill me for posting her picture at my blog… MUHAHAHA.

And I just had to post this.. I mean… 2 girls picking cherries from the tree for me. How lucky can I get? O_o

Then last but not least. A picture of me. Through the glasses of Feraaz. Real cool guy,

Here’s a pic of Feraaz and Emma………. aaaaaaaaand my DAD!

I didn’t place pictures of a LOT of friends I truly love, but well this is enogh for now. Most you’ve seen already… Erfan, Jeffrey, etc etc etc…

Cheers all, off to bed, it’s late.

Summer update!

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Hey there!

Small update, it’s getting hotter so let’s first announce…. summertime!

Soo much is on the planning. One of them is a trip to SWEDEN per BIKE! Yes people I will go on my recumbent bike:

This one is actually scaled, for the larger version click HERE.

Fair enough, I had to buy bags for it so for the rear-bag I went to Tilburg with my good friend Chantal. Here some travel pictures:


I went from Almere to Hoofddorp where me and Chantal would meet up. But thanks to my lovely Dingoo A320 I didn’t hear the train stopping, or noticed anything of Hoofddorp so instead I had to go out of the train at Nieuw-Vennep and go back to Hoofddorp. Thing is, I was raised in Nieuw-Vennep so I took this picture where I noticed I was in complete shadow while the rest looked really sunny. Nice.

Then, I met up with Chantal and we went to Den Bosch station. There we waited for the next train and I took these two pictures:

And outside the station was this waterfall:

After that we went to Tilburg, had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and bought the bags from some die-hard recumbent-bike fans. They where really nice so we sticked there till quite late.

During our walk back to the station we met some skaterguys who liked to perform in front (and above) my camera:

Of course taken with the 15mm Sigma Fisheye lens on my Canon 5DMKII haha. Don’t I love google tags?

After that we had to wait at Tilburg train station for about 40 minutes but it gave me plenty of time to tease Chantal and make this people (I’m such a multitasker):

And that’s it for now. The day after I bought the side-bags for my bike, will take some pictures soon. Take care people!

The Beach and more.

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Yesterday I went to the beach, in Zandvoort. Yes more German stuff I hear you say. Zandvoort, Dutch costal town right? Yes it is but it *still* has a lot of German influence hehe. Lot’s of tourists and the people from Zandvoort are all trying to make some money out of it. Ah well, who wouldn’t?


Picture of Emma standing over there. Yes it’s edited since I changed the blue to red, but I love the picture so much more like this.

Here’s the original by the way:


I call this one “Left out”, simply because the subject is standing alone while the other groups have 2 people.. and are not alone.


Final destination for this shell.


More from this series, love the silouette.


Some typical beach sand plus fence. You see this a lot at Zandvoort.


And here’s a view on the beach. Was a lovely day!


And then nature treated us on a lovely sunset! Lucky us!


This one has a personal touch.


And the cat from the neighbours “chicky”.. what a name lol.

That’s it for now.. got lot’s of pictures but I’m just too busy to resize/upload/post them…! Ah well! 

Have a good weekend folks, Formula 1 is up tomorrow!

Steve went to Germany – GERMANY SPECIAL!!!!

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Hey boys and girls!

Thursday there was Queensday in the Netherlands. It’s supposed to be a day of parties, open market (everyone can sell stuff on the streets, some sort of national garage-sale) and the Queen makes visits to villages… well this year it was difference since some total lunatic tried to attack the Queen, failed but DID kill and injure a lot of people in that brutal act. 

The party atmosphere all suddenly became bitter…

— But —

The day after, 2 friends and me had the idea to do a random travel. Victor, Erfan and me took a train to the border of the Netherlands and Germany. And the result was that we actually made it to Germany. We had some trouble finding the proper hotel so at an early hour we took the first train to Duisburg from Emmerich am Rhein. We had a great trip and thus we present you all:

 

It’s going to be a lot of pictures… so get some popcorn, have a drink and enjoy my pictures!


Okay, we went by train to Arnhem, then to Doetinchem and from there we took the bus to ‘s Heerenbergen (pronounced as zerenbergen).
But we didn’t know what the end-stop was so aparently we went back to Zeddam. The next bus was due in one hour so we decided to WALK to Emmerich. This picture was taken there. Look, we DO have hills!

 
Sun was getting lower, looked lovely.

 
And the path continued…

 
Just a random Sepia pic I thought it fitted the moment haha.

And then we actually went over the boarder and arrived in Germany!

There the sunset still looked lovely haha:
 
But yes it was getting later and later.

 
Then we arrived in Emmerich am Rhein, and since this is in the “Ruhr area” there aparently is lot’s of industry. Yes there is.

We went to the centre of Emmerich to check out the city centre and look for a hotel.
 

After lot’s of hassle with hotels we went to a german pub that actually appeared to be a Polish pub and we LOVED it there!

 
So this was the whole travelcrew. Me, Erfan and Victor.


At 4 in the morning we where wating at the Emmerich am Rhein Bahnhoff. This was our lovely view. Well Vic and Erfan where waiting inside the station, I took a walk.

 
More Emmerich am Rhein Bahnhoff stuff… and more to come:

 
Here.

 
And here. This train was at quite a distance but I walked there and walked on the track to make this picture. The day after I took another picture in broad daylight with my new Canon EOS 3000 analog camara.

 
After a VERY turbulant journey to Duisburg, we actually arrived. Here we where standing on a bridge looking at the morning light.


In the far distance we saw this massive building. Just thinking of buying it to do photoshoots and host huge parties just makes me shiver!


Another harbour shot.


We climbed over a fence and went to the large building. Especially from up close it became obvious: it needed some renovation lol.


The older harbour crane from up close. Looks like a mech warrior for some reason…


When we left I saw this pole at a gate. And yes I forgot to add the borders haha.


The large building had some old compound close so I took a picture from within. Quite some over exposure there haha.


The building itself was quite dark. I think it was built just before World War II.


Then we left. After this shot I saw my battery was extremely low so I had to save for film (since I was filming with my 5DMKII all the time)

In the afternoon we went home, so we took the train:
 
And arrived home safely around 18:00.

It was a hell of a trip but I loved it. Tired as I was, I went to bed around 22:00 and woke up the next day around 6:00 am haha.

Can’t wait for my next trip. This was it for now hope you all enjoyed this update which took me 2 hours to create haha!

-Steven.

Randomness.

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Just another random post… the last 2 weeks I made some pics that didn’t belong to a serie or what-so-ever so this is the random post with these pictures… 


OR the guy was kicked from his apartment, or he is wasted or tired. Fact remains with a bag of stuff he was just sitting there for more than 5  minutes. Then I took the picture and walked off… he didn’t seem to want any help either. Poor buggar.


Lakeside Almere Buiten where I was chilling with me mate Feraaz, was really nice and peaceful.


Here I tried to make my bike to look really small. The trick is to zoom in zo there’s a LOT of DOF (Dept Of Field), when zoomed in you take 12 pictures (three rows of four) and you merge them together into one image. This is the result.  Original picture was (with smallest source files) about 80 megapixel… Yikes.


Here I tried the same with Victor. These where eight pictures merged toghether. Don’t think it worked that well but it’s still a nice picture haha.

That’s it for now, if you live in the Netherlands or any other location with nice weather like we do at the moment: Enjoy!

In addition..

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In addition to my previous post, here some more work! All with the 5DMKII and the Sigma 15mm Fisheye.


This was like 2cm from the watersurface hehe.


I really like the cold colours here..!


I see a smiley in there:
[    ]       [     ]

        [   ] 

Like an alien face… okay never mind let’s continue haha.


Almere Stad the old part of the city. This is the roof of the shopping mall.


Saturday around 5:30 pm… these are the main shopping streets… can you believe it how silent and empty it is?


The muscles of Almere Stad haha!

That’s it for now,  already go the next post kinda prepared so check back regulary!

Sigma 15mm Fisheye lens. Google will love this title.

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Been a while, but I got 13 pictures ready for you! Now I present the first 6 since I don’t want the posts to be too large. I will add the rest later on in the week…

Let’s start with some abstract architecture, shall we?

Oh small side-note… ALL (except one) pictures are, apart from the border and resizing, UNEDITED!!! 


People who have been following my blog have probably seen this scenery before. However, today I took the picture quite differently. I only had my 15mm fisheye (how unpracticle, but how much fun!) with me so this is the result.


It’s quite a funky effect with the fisheye properly used and buildings that have strange shapes and corners. Love it!


The road to the sky, a futuristic road-scene… well okay it’s just a big shiney building with lot’s of plastic and glass… but it looks nice this way hehe.


I’m not sponsored or whatso-ever… but yikes this stuff is delicious! Gave me enough energy to walk all day!


This picture IS edited (only one) since I used the famous HDR technique to show everything.


Liked the building and the fence…


Last but certainly not least. My 2 mates who joined me today in Almere Stad. We walked through the city’s streets all day… while I captured a lot of stuff they patiently watched how I used the camera. We talked, we laughed, we discussed and we ate dinner. We had drinks, we talked to other people and chilled out at the waterside.

Jeffrey and Feraaz thanks for the great day!

That’s it for now, more to come! 

And thanks for all the comments so far! Really kind!!

Skate evening.

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Tonight, Quinten called me if I came over to Almere-Stad to do some skating photography. Loyal followers of my weblog will know him from some old skating-action already. Also Jens was there and we had a great time doing some fisheye luvin’.


I really like it that you see his whole deck here. The camera was actually UNDER the deck… I risked my camera here haha! Poor EOS 5D Mark II haha!

 

Just like the rest also shot with the 15mm Sigma Fisheye lens… it just does justice to skateboarding-photography!

 

And yes friends, Jens landed this trick. Amazing, not?

 

Quinten looks kinda funny in air. Trust me, on the ground as well haha!

Both of you guys thanks for the great evening and thanks for doing all the tricks!

Small post.

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Hey!

Only three pictures. Yesterday Joost and me went on a trip to Utrecht where he was going to buy an ukulele. Here’s him relaxing in the train after he tuned it. It sounds really cool. Be sure to click this link.
 

Today we went on a bicycle trip since the weather is really nice. We’ve had coldness and rain for the past weeks so all of a sudden sun is like a blessing!
On our bicycle trip I’ve bought 2 lenses. Here’s two pictures made with Lens one, an Enna 28mm 3.5 lens. I also made a picture of the other lens I bought…
 

This is really a cool lens. It’s a Pentax P-Wire 55mm 1.8 lens made byAsahi Opt. Co.. It also states Super-Takumar… whatever that might mean.. Hehe. 

Here’s another picture I took with the 28mm lens:
 
I did NOT edit this picture. I adjusted the colors on the camera (and contrast and saturation etc) just the border was added… I love these 2 lenses!

That’s it for now, expect more on sunday or monday!

The weekend…

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Okay I really had a crazy weekend! 
Friday: party  Came home at 9AM.  (first train…)
Saturday: 2 parties, my brother’s daughter, Nina turned 2 years old. So this one is for her:
 

Happy Birthday li’l one!!

And here some pictures from Friday-evening where we partied and eventually me and Jeffrey walked from Amsterdam Amstel to Amsterdam Central Station…


Lot’s of friendly people… the guy in the background tries to strangle me too, so don’t worry it’s fine. Hehe.

 
The Amstel, a river that flows through Amsterdam.

 
Image created for an anti-alcohol campaign… lol!


I bet Jeff will go crazy if I didn’t post a picture of myself, so yeah that’s me.. Thanks Jeff for the picture! Next time I’ll explain how to FOCUS the lens…. Hehe.

That’s it for now, lot’s more to come soon I already got lot’s of stuff ready.

Don’t forget to comment and if you got any questions or remarks: post ‘m or mail me!

-Steve.

Second studio attempt.

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Lights, background, music, the camera’s, lenses but most important: some friends over.

Yeah we had a great day to test out the studio. We had a lot of fun and made some fun pictures, here they are!


That’s Victor.

Here’s some shots from Abby.
 
And here’s another one of her:

Doesn’t she look happy?

Speaking of hapy, what about this smile haha!

And last but not least Erfan, who looks really classy/stylish in my opinion…


 
And then he also took a picture of us all and me… thanks Erfan!
 

 

Thanks you guys, I had a great day and learnt a lot…. I’ve still got a long way to go but at least it’s already fun… awesome!

-Steven. xD

First post, new studio, all new! :-)

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Been a while since I updated the old wp.stfoto.nl. Since it was running an older version of wordpress I wanted to update it. Also I renewed the template (while we’re at it) and replaced the old stfoto.nl with the new blog instead of  a simple gallery.

Thing is, I see my photoblog as my portfolio… For my general portfolio you can always look at www.stmedia.nl.

Anyway…

The Studio.
I bought studio stuff!  Bought two studioflashlights (lumen8 400W/s version) and today my background support + 2 backgrounds arrived. So here are some test results with a big thanks to Joost for posing! Thanks man!



So that’s it for now, already got some shots for the next posts so keep an eye on this page. Also update your bookmarks… The old http://wp.stfoto.nl will NOT be updated anymore!

Take care!

-Steven.