Vehicles

Hannover trip with Victor

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Anyway, here are the rest of the pics, abandoned base included. Enjoy!

VLN 6 hours race at the Nürburgring

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So, after going to Belgium for the Formula 1 Belgian GP at Spa Francorchamps, my photos were noticed on Instagram.

I got in touch with Domenico Solombrino who is a Porsche driver at Mathol Racing and he told be the VLN 6 hours race at the German Nürburgring was next Saturday. I got in my car at 3AM and raced my way to the Green Hell to be just in time for quali.

The day was just awesome. I was able to walk everywhere on and around the track, also during the sessions. The smell, the sounds and the atmosphere, everything was just perfect. Here is just a small selection of the 120GB of shots I’ve taken. Enjoy!

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And here’s the rest in a gallery.

CLASSIFIED – A Germany Poland Czech roadtrip short series

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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

München, Dachau en Salzburg: vakantie 2014

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Emma and me like to travel a lot. Especially she likes Germany, and I like to go to new places. So it became München since it was also close to the Alps.

We’ve seen a lot of stuff and we experienced a lot of diversity. I mean, we stayed at a 4 star hotel in a shady neighbourhood, and used Couchsurfing to crash at an awesome guy’s place. We saw the horrific Dachau, and cheered at the finals of the World Cup. Saw nature in the Alps, and enjoyed the exciting city center of München. Here’s some pics, but be sure to check out the whole gallery for your enjoyment.

 

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Check out the whole gallery

A new start

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For a very long time, stfoto.nl has been a blog about my work. I’ve never offered my services professionally, but things are changing.

Last Wednesday my manager offered me a new contract at work leaving me working for 4 days a week. This means I will have 1-2 days a week to spent on other stuff. I’ve decided I want to dedicate these hours to photography and video. So here it is, me working on a new version of the website where I offer various services.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m still starting up and I have a LOT of boring paperwork to figure out, but it’ll be worth it.

Many thanks to friends and colleagues for their support.

– Steven.

From Emmerich, with love.

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Oaky it’s been a while but life has been crazy! I moved to Emmerich, I STILL don’t have internet there and I’ve been busy at work as well. Working 40 hours a week is quite a lot, especially if you do a lot of crunchtiming.

Photography still has it’s place in my daily routines and I occaisionly still take pictures. Especially in the weekends of course. So here are some very recent pictures all taken around my new house. Enjoy!

Just some tests.

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Trying out a new studio setup with a black background and an improvised softbox. So far I’m quite happy with it but I’ve got lot’s to learn… luckily!

Heikki’s helmet when he still raced for ING Renault F1. I got this helmet from Isabelle Connor after an assignment I did for her. That made me so proud!

Here you can see Heikki’s autograph really good, awesome!

A bit edited to my likings, but probably less than how much you’d suspect… the light setup, less contrast and the white balance already does a lot.

Last but not least, where the magic happens:

Comments/questions are very welcome of course! Hope you enjoy.

Canon 50mm 1.4 USM lens!

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As the title already indicates, I got a new lens. And it’s a beauty! The Canon 50mm 1.4 lens. Why is this one so special? The 24-105 covers a wide range and 50mm is in that range… Well the aperture is really nice.

Explanation
The lower the aperture number, the more extreme the Depth of field (DOF) effect is. What is in focus will always be sharp, but what’s out of focus will be blurry. The lower the aperture number, the blurrier out of focus objects are.

Anyway… Back to the actual photo’s. Here are some test shots I made with this lens:


Picture of my desk… kind of messy, 2 camera’s, phone and coffee.


A car in our street. I edited the numberplate for privacyreasons. It looks quite miniature I’d say..


Small shed in the garden…


Don’t eat them! 😛


Painted this one myself…


Attempt at product-photography..


The cat singing.


How cute… Yes it’s real btw.


Water tower in Ijmuiden.


The harbour in Ijmuiden, I ate fish with my girl somewhere there…


And at the beach.


That’s it for now! Bye-bye, and leave a comment!

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:

 
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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.

The Trip.

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No I wasn’t high, or drunk (as far as I can remember) or on acid. But in the train.  And that is a trip as well, just a bit different than the others mentioned… hehe.

So here are some pictures (oh and YES, it’s all 15mm Sigma fisheye…AND it’s all UNEDITED! ) :

 
This is how it all begun at Almere Buiten, my train arrived.


And there we are at central station. The people thought I was making a picture of the sky… well… fisheye rocks! 

A BIT over exposed but well… I still like it.  I wanted to adjust the exposure but then I heard the whistle… and since I had too much gear to jump on the rear of the train I just took it for granted and normally entered the train…

 


Then finally this was in Alkmaar. I loved the atmosphere and the old Dutch buildings. This is a picture of a small cafe/restaurant. Then I saw this old car (I believe Volvo…) passing by and it just completed the whole scene.


OH NOES Steven doing cliche’s? Well yes it’s as cliche as it can get but I like this one since it’s all red/yellow/orange with blue bars. Also the fisheye makes the lines go funkeyyy!


This is in Alkmaar as well, as you guys might know I like shots like this. Symmetry and well.. emptyness. I dunno just catches me I guess.  And well yeah forget the I guess part, I know exactly why it catches me.

That’s it for now. Enjoy your week and send me some comments! ^_^

-Steven.

While I’m at it…

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Okay the new weblog is really nice for me. So I thought it update it with some recent shots. Here they are! Oh about the blog: going to update the layout soon.
Still I love the black background, makes my pictures way more easy to view! Awesome!

 


Yes I love my 15mm Sigma Fisheye lens haha!


This was taken through a Pentax lens… at 300 mm and I just loved the colors. I only made the car purple instead of red which is more… funky. Except that no editing.


Shot from Amsterdam, just liked it I guess haha!

 

That’s it for now, keep checking back and I’ll keep updating it.

Don’t forget to comment!