Various
This is what a Mig jet fighter looks like from the inside
So, I was just cruising in the Czech Republic when I met a guy who knew a friend who had a Mig jet fighter. Checked it out and it was really cool. Now I want one too.
Germany has some Stonehengy buildings
Went on a 90km recumbent-bicycle ride and found this place. Monument remembering the fallen German soldiers in World Wars. Impressive monument.
Who doesn’t like pizza?
Between video and photoshoots, it’s important to eat good. There’s nothing better than wood-stove-baked pizza.
Shooting a tank from an electric skateboard
Filming and e-skating are both a lot of fun. Combining that while riding alongside a 12-tonnes military vehicle was seriously something else. Video and driving shots can be seen on Uktimaker’s Youtube.
I’m also in video production
Video production is a whole different ballgame. No flashes but steady lights, movement both of the environment and camera, and it needs to be SMOOTH. Also, if you think raw photos are fun, wait until your storage has to handle raw video. Good luck. More on STMEDIA.NL.
Hannover trip with Victor
Victor and me really like to travel. So when I got a car, we decided to plan a roadtrip. And here it finally was! We didn’t have much time, but hey, a 2 day trip would prove to be great fun.
During this trip, we found a lot of nice places. We quickly found an abandoned factory building which gave us some really cool shots.
After that, we drove, stopped in a lot of small places, had dinner and then crashed in Hannovers most shady hotel ever.
When we woke up, it was Christmas morning. We left quite early to find an old steamengine which they had turned into a restaurant. We did a live broadcast on Facebook, whished everyone a mery x-mas and headed off back to the Netherlands so we could be with our families and celebrate.
But halfway home we saw an abandoned military base on our map. We decided to check it out. When we got there, access was really easy. There was already a hole in the fence, so we could just hop in, easy as that.
Anyway, here are the rest of the pics, abandoned base included. Enjoy!
Old dynamite factory im tal
Took the car for a spin. Picked up a friend Veghel and drove off to Germany. We went to this awesome abandoned valley where we saw the ruïns of an old dynamite factory.
After that, we went up a hill to enjoy the view. We ended the day eating pizza in Wuppertal where we also saw the “Wuppertaler Schwebebahn”. It’s like a tram, but hanging under the rails. Cool stuff!
CLASSIFIED – A Germany Poland Czech roadtrip short series
So, Herman Bluemink, Victor Eekhof and me (Steven van de Staak) went on a roadtrip. How did it all go? Well…
To sum it all up, we rented a car and went East. Blasted through Germany, hit Poland, touched Czech and raced back. Some things were planned as in, we had some “waypoints” but the actual route and time schedule was quite a tombola. Besides taking a ton of photo’s I ended up capturing hours on my GoPro. Here are 7 episodes or roughly 10 minutes each for you to enjoy. Enjoy.
Classified – TheSeries [S01E01] – The First day
Classified – TheSeries [S01E02] – SAUERKRAUT
Classified – TheSeries [S01E03] – A steamy museum
Classified – TheSeries [S01E04] – Hotel Lidl
Classified – TheSeries [S01E05] – Looking for abandoned stuff.
Classified – TheSeries [S01E06] – Old stuff and mountains
Classified – TheSeries [S01E07] – Goin’ home
Tutorial: Facebook 360 degree panorama photos
New camera’s and even smartphones often have an option or app to make beautiful panorama photo’s. Remove the frame around a photo and let others relive the view you had!
So Facebook added a feature to show panorama’s with their new panoramaviewer. It works on PC’s by draging your mouse over the photo, while mobile users can actually look around with their smartphone.
Facebook panorama example
Click the image to see it at Facebook.
Easy steps: how to do it yourself
- Create a panorama photo. This depends on the equipment you have. Suggestions: DSLR with fisheye lens, Smartphone with panorama app or use a 360 camera (not many out there yet, but it’s coming!)
- Drag your photo to Photoshop or any other edit tool. Your photo needs to have an aspect ratio of 1:2. So for example 5 high, 10 wide. The maximum for Facebook is 6000 pixels wide and 3000 pixels high. That’s what I use.
- The horizon should be in the middle of the photo. Also, the absolute center of the photo is where your Facebook viewer wil start.
- Export the image to JPG, try to get it around 4-6mb max.
- Edit the META data of your image. You can do that within Windows (Right click on the image, go to details) or use the online tool thexifer.net.
- Change Make to “RICOH” and Model to “RICOH THETA S”.
- Save/download the image
- Go to your Facebook timeline, and upload it like you’d do any other photo. Don’t post it in a comment, but use a new post.
Here’s the above panorama, but flat. The red square indicates the absolute center ánd also the startingpoint where Facebook will position the viewer.
The lower part was a bit messy, so the black part will become a small disc. The grey line just becomes a dot. It’s good to have a center-point for oriëntation.
CHEATSHEET – Download the template
Here’s a PSD-template for Facebook panorama photo’s! Just download it, drag your panorama in and make it fit. The metadata is included, so no further editing needed! You can leave the black area on the bottom and edit the text or remove it if your panorama has the ground included as well.
stfoto-facebook-panorama-template.psd (3mb)
Enjoy!
My work in a museum
Get the champagne out of the fridge, because it’s party time!
The Swiss Museum.bl asked me if they could use a photo of mine. I didn’t hesitate, found the original, edited it again, exported it for print and sent it as a gift. They were happy, and they delivered me with a photo which made me truly happy. Look mum and dad, I’m in a museum!
Abandoned factory in Czech
So, a couple of weeks ago I was at Borderer in the Czech Republic. When I couldn’t do much on the field, I decided to walk the road back 2 km…
When we arrived at the field, I noticed a large factory hidden in the hills. So I walked there, jumped the fence and this was what I found…
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”7″ gal_title=”AbandonedFactory”]
Random “product”-shots.
It’s been a while since I used a studio setup, so I thought to get some paper sheets out again.
Used my large roof window for a nice sunny toplight, and added another light to the scene for the pics with a black background. I made thsese float using fishingwire. Anyway, enjoy!
Small disclaimer: The guns are all toyguns, I do not own any fire-arm.
Some birds
So, Camilla and me had a nice day in the citycenter. Talked, laughed, laughed more and we did groceries. Seriously they should add bars in grocerystores. It would be very profitable.
When going home, I saw a lot of birds being fed by people… so the birds got close. Of course I had my camera with me, so I decided to shoot.
Back to Almere
Well, it was Christmas after all. So here I went, back to Almere to visit my parents.
It was not a snowy white Christmas as we all hoped for, but it was cold enough to keep most people inside. Especially since all the shops were closed on Christmas day. Perfect oppertunity for me to grab my camera and shoot an almost abandonned Almere-Stad city center. Enjoy!
Autumn in Velp
It’s Autumn, and you probably see all your friends posting pictures of yellow/orangy leafs. Well, I’m not so different…
Lucky for me, I live not far from the Dutch Veluwe. A large natural area with beautiful places. It’s not flat at all (like the rest of the Netherlands) and has amazing areas of meadow, sandfields and forrest. I had a small stroll and took these photos.
The local shipyard
Had a small ride to he local docks today. Not many pics, but I’m experimenting with the style. Enjoy.
All taken with the 5DSr and Sigma 12-24 frickin-wide angle lens.
Grand opening Arnhem Pathé Cinema
A grand opening of a beautiful cinema, with great people, drinks, great bites and a fantastic movie seen in all of it’s glory. Sounds great? It sure was.
Monday evening was the opening of Pathé’s new cinema in Arnhem. And they sure know how to open a cinema. From the welcome untill the end, the evening was very enjoyable. The evening started with a drink, a bite and some nice chats with nice people. It was great to walk through the building now it’s finished, and it sure looks amazing. The interiour has a nice loungy atmosphere, combined with a beautiful view over the city.
After all of this socializing, we crowd headed for the movie. It was shown using the most advanced IMAX hardware available today. Actually, the whole cinema “Zaal 1” was designed for the ultimate IMAX experience. And an experience it was…
IMAX
Imax really pushed their limits with this new cinema. Using 2 advanced projectors, the screen is crystal clear and beautiful. The 3D-effect was superb, nothing like I’ve seen before. I actually dodged and blinked a couple of times during the movie. And let’s not forget the 12-point mega advanced sound system. They did a demonstration to show how sound was back in the days, some years ago, a year ago and then demonstrated why this new system was completely awesome. An excellent performance.
Bottomline, it’s a great cinema with a very complete package. An amazing movie-experience and a great location for social gatherings and parties.
Canon EOS 5DSr first shots and more
Allright let me start with this: a LOT has changed. But a lot of good things too. I got a LOT of new gear, so I’ll be showing off soon. Also a new camera body… the mighty Canon EOS 5DSr. took it for a spin, here are some results. Will give a nice review later on.
I guess the last shot kinda gave away what one of the new gadgets was… hehe.
Fitbit Flex – how I keep track of my activies
The Fitbit Flex is Fitbit’s beginner-model in a range of advanced activity trackers. It’s stylish, clean, small and it is a very nice introduction to the world of activity tracking.
What does it track?
It basically keeps track of two things: your number of steps and the way you sleep. Now, this sounds very basic but it takes the data a nice step further.
Steps
It registers the number of steps, intensity and also when you made these steps. This is great because at the end of the day you can look at a graph and see exactly when you were most active. This is actually a fun part for me. While looking at the graph you can often explain all the statistics. Useful? Not sure. Fun? Yes!
For example, this was me a couple of days ago. Woke up around 7:30, got dressed, checked my e-mail around 9 and went for a walk since I needed to do some shopping. I walked quite fast (hence the red and even green bars) but you see around 9:30 I seemed to drop pace. Why? I was in a very busy story and had to wait for a lot of people.
I walked quite some the rest of the day, had a late lunch around 1 and met a friend around 2, we talked for quite a while.
Around 8 I had to catch a train so I walked very fast for quite a while, the train station isn’t around the corner. As you can see, I got into the train because I didn’t walk for a while.
Sleep
The Fitbit also measures your sleeping behavior, and I must say it’s quite an insight. It shows you from when to when you slept, when you were in a deep sleep and when you were actually awake(ish). Apparently I’m even more awake than I feared, and I really need to go to bed earlier to get my 8 hours of sleep. I was actually only getting 3 hours tops! No wonder I felt so horrible in the morning. It also showed I was seriously active during the night, so I made some changes to fix this. No coffee after 3pm, going to bed earlier, close the pc down a bit earlier, go for a quick walk an hour before bed… and I started seeing my statistics getting better. Great insight!
You have to tap the Fitbit five times before going to sleep, and do it again as you wake up. You mark your sleepytime by doing this. You might forget this once in a while, but no worries you can fix that afterwards on your online dashboard.
App
AppThere’s also a Fitbit App. You can see all the stats you want, see the number of steps, set the silent alarmclock (it will vibrate until you wake up, perfect if you have a partner who can sleep longer than you) and much more. Works very fast and it’s included without additional charges. Nice!
Friends!
You work on your body for yourself and you should always compare your achievements with your own previous ones. However, having friends who have a bout the same life-rythm as you can be fun to challenge steps wise. You can add each other, start challenges and just keep a weekly score-table to see who’s ahead in steps. I can assure you that this is a huge boost and made me walk quite some extra kilometers already.
Fitbit, the company
The company Fitbit really impressed me. They put a product on the market, pioneered and while growing, they kept genuine. I had an issue with mine (at first I believe it was my own fault) and they helped me greatly. Seriously, I can’t even come up with tips how to do it even better. Good stuff!
Bottomline
The Fitbit is a nice tool/gadget to have. It will give sporters a lot of insight to their performance. Are you a serious sporter? Look for the other models from Fitbit, they will give you more data. For the average user, the Fitbit will be quite the stimulant to move just a bit more, and live a healthier life. Money well spent!
More info: http://www.fitbit.com
Periscope, let’s go live to you on location
Once in a while, there’s this new app which shakes us all up. It’s the latest “have you heard of..?” trend and everyone jumps onto it. Think of things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Happening… and now Periscope.
What is Periscope?
Periscope is an app which let you broadcast your phone’s camera on the web. People can join in and see what you are doing. We’ve been broadcasting webcams for ages, so why Periscope? Well, because it works seamlesly with your phone’s camera. At any place, any time.
You can look on a world map, zoom in to your desired location and check out if anyone is broadcasting. When you see something interesting, open the stream and enjoy. You’re now officially peeping along.
When you are watching, you can either send hearts by tapping the screen, or say something by chat. This is great for live vloggers who do Q&A’s. Yesterday, I saw some therapist do a broadcast and she told about life and how to handle it. Very interesting…
What kind of content can you expect?
Anything, really anything. So far the nudity-level has been great. I have yet to find anything 18+. So it’s fine if your kid uses periscope.
Right now, these are the typical feeds you will find:
Groups of people having fun. Especially in the Spain and New York area. Youngsters who have a party, or their chilling out at a terasse and one of them is the goofus who takes his/her phone and starts showing the world what they’re doing. Then, some people join in on the fun and type something like “Hi from Brazil!”. This will make friends of the user ask “What, some-one from Brazil is watching us?”.
People comuting People love broadcasting their ways of transportation. You see people walk on the streets, drive a car to the bank, to the mall, ride their bicycle, ride their skateboard, from a boat or boarding an airplane. It’s all there.
Couples just saying hi There’s a lot of people who just sit in their (living)room and talk. They feel like they’re hosting a popular show. They talk about their opinion and answer questions… about them.
Turkish girls not living in Turkey There are a lot of Turkish people using the app in Europe. Most of the broadcasts are by Turkish people. For some reason (especially in France) a lot of Turkish girls just play pretty and talk a bit about… actually no idea. It’s all in Turkish.
Events There’s always this guy at some event who thinks he the world wants to join in on this global (local) event. Cyclists, paintball, jeux de boulles… it’s all there.
Live shows and holidays people have no idea what the costs for roaming are. That is obvious when you see some people in foreign countries stream whole vacations. In this case, a dolphin show with 24 watching people simply loving it (see all hearts).
A test on my iPhone 6 with 4G
So yeah I bought an iPhone 6 just two days ago. The 4G made a huge difference with my old IPhone 4 3G connection, and thought why not give it a try. As you could see in my previous post, I did a nice bicycle trip yesterday.
So I got into a meadow, with no signs of civilisation as we like it for at least 10 miles around me. Grabbed my iPhone and voila: I was live, on the internet. And the stream quality? Really nice! I was seriously surprised how well it performed.
So, bottomline: Periscope is a fun app where you can see other people’s live, actually meet people and inspire others with what you are doing. I like it.
Ye olde flowery lens garden
Today, something different. A while ago I bought some lens-cups from Dealextreme. Received the three two months later and loved them. However,…
One of the bastards started to leak at the bottom. I wasn’t going to glue or fix it, since I don’t like glues in my drinks, so I decided to recycle it.
I live at the top floor of an old building, so as you can guess I have no garden. Now I sorta have.
From a Windows PC to a Macbook Pro
The last time I bought a laptop was back in 2007. And while the machine still works, it became as slow as a steam-engine.
So what’d I get? I’m planning on new adventures, travels and trips so it needs to be lightweight and not too large. I want to write on it, browse the web, update my website and edit my pics on the fly. I don’t like posting photo’s straight from my camera to my website, so I need Photoshop to run smoothly.
Even though I’ve never used a Macbook before, I decided to take a gamble. Victor has been using one for a while and he loves it. He also brought it along to the USA during our bicycle adventure, and that was damn convenient (for him). So what can go wrong?
Went to the iCenter store to get a Macbook Air. However, the regular Macbook was even smaller, faster and cheaper. So the Air lost my vote. Compared the Macbook with the Pro version, and decided to go for the 13″ Macbook Pro. It has a large superfast SSD, a fast processor, it’s retina screen is amazing and the resolution is great. The new touchpad is designed for me. I mean, it has the same action as on my camera. A soft press for focus (first click) and a harder press for a second press. Good stuff.
First impression as a loyal Windows user
So far so good. It works super smooth and I got the hang of it in a matter of minutes. Yes, sometimes I have to google how to do specific stuff, but in general it’s very intuitive. Installing software is amazingly simple. Just drag, drop and you’re good to go.
Browsing the web is great. Everything is smooth and fast. I’ve also installed Photoshop, Office and it works all above expectations. Any downsides so far? Nope.
The Magicmouse
Lucky me; they added a EUR 130 coupon to my Macbook pro, and I decided to go for the Magic mouse and it’s wireless dockingstation. I’m used to my EUR 7 Logitech so the switch was quite, impressive. The mouse is precise, but that’s not why it’s so great. The whole top is one big touchpad, and that’s amazing for scrolling through pages or photo’s. Overall: highly impressed.
A whole day of Macbooking
So, yesterday my dear friend Camilla came over and we worked on our Macbooks all day. I was mainly installing software and configuring my shiny new Apple. So I also had to test Photoshop. Camilla brought a lemon and mint leaves so we had some nice cold refreshing minty-lemon-water. I took a photo, and it became the first EOS photo I’ve edited on my new Mac. It suits, since I find my Macbook Pro amazingly refreshing. Cheers!
Arnhem panorama: Boulevard Heuvelink
So my landlord thought it was a good idea to explore our rooftop. Brought my camera, and I liked it’s view. So what’d I do?
Exactly! Pretty sure you guessed correctly that I took my 15mm fisheye, slammed it on my 5DII fullframe and I captured it’s view in 360 degree panorama. The result is OK, not perfect but it’s fine. I had to patch up quite a lot of things in Photoshop, but who cares. One of the photo’s is actually from the first panorama attemt, which I found out when I saw the shadow of a tree was a lot further than the other pic. I guess Earth DOES rotate around the sun hehe.
Want to watch the full 52 megapixel photo? View the full panorama picture (9mb!)
Omegle photo edits
Took a bunch of random pics from earlier times, asked random people how to edit them.
They had no idea what they were… so it’s quite random. Here are the results.
So that was Logan. I’ve not been chatting a lot on Omegle. I guess less than 10 convo’s in 30 days, but yet I re-found a really nice person. Here’s the pic that came out of that convo:
Some nature, and a parrot
Today, the Dutch have been celebrating Kingsday. For me it went a ride on my bicycle to two friends.
They live about 20km away and ended up, with a detour, making it a nice 50km ride. Took some photos along the route, and also capture my friends parrot, Senna. What great name!
Stencil art paintings I’ve done
Throughout the years, I’ve made quite some stencils. I mostly design them on the computer, print them and cut them out with a hobbyknife.
It might sound a little basic, but just painting a piece of canvas in one solid color and then adding a black stencil is quite cool to do. The results are smooth and look great. Here are some examples of “paintings” I’ve done. They’re all from my livingroon.
A new beginning, and a new website
So a new website, and a totally new approach. What has happened?
Well, about 8 months ago I was able to rent a very large space for a great price. So I took the deal and started my own company. Stfoto was finally something official, and I had a place to set my own studio up.
I’ve learnt a lot in a very short time. Both about photography and about the whole business side of it. Financial stuff, customer journeys and customer service: I had a long way to go.
I must say, if I’d do it again I would do it totally different. Is that a bad thing? Nah, means I’ve learnt a lot which is fine. Bottomline is; I’ve had a LOT of fun in the studio.
Anyway I had to leave the place since the owner found a new destination for the room.
So what’s next?
I decided to focus again on my life rather than work. I have a great job at VGZ and my passion for all of my hobbies hasn’t vanished. So that’s what I’m going to focus on. I’m working out too to get myself in shape which brings a lot of traveling, workouts, healthy foods along. I’m going to travel more again, do creative projects, work on the airsoft field and so much more. I want to capture it all and blog about it here. So the corporate website Stfoto.nl had became turned again back into a very personal blog.
Well that’s it for now, enjoy the new website. I started all of this after talking to Ola who I met yesterday. She inspired me to actually blog again, and I ended up working on this website and writing this update until now, which is 3:30 AM. Gheez…. I need some sleep… Did I mention I’m working on a healthier lifestyle yet?
Day at the barberstation
So, I needed a haircut. Saw this advert about this barbershop and decided to go.
As a photographer, I often have my camera with me. Started talking about photography and I ended up making some portrait pics of all the people working there. Best thing yet: I had a free haircut!
Be sure to like their Facebook page, they’re awesome.