Been busy

As a New Media consultant, producer and expert it’s still difficult to get a job. If photography is involved: great. If not: well it’s still my hobby. So I’ve been very busy getting my stuff together and trying to get a job. Either way still I took some pics.

Some power plant near Sittard… taken from the train.

And a nice friendly spider in our back garden.

Ronke and some animal friends.

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!

GTTV

My final schoolproject is gadgettribe.tv as some might know. I created that webpage and the video with my 5DMKII.

Anyway today I’ve been busy working on the filmstudio that we’re going to use in the new episodes of Gadgettribe.TV.

This is the black board that’s going to stand in front of the anchorman.. It’s all made of wood!

ALSO some other news… bought a new lens!!

Here you can see the Canon 28-300mm IS USM L lens… wich is attached at the Canon 1D MKII wich I also have.

So far: it’s GREAT!!

Ghent, Belgium.

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.

Smokin’!

First I’d like to start saying: All a merry X-mas and a happy 2010 with lot’s of work, joy happiness, adventures and health.

Then now of course some photography!


That’s it for now. See you next time!

P.s. I’m currently looking for a job in New Media. Know anything? Let me know. For more info also see www.stmedia.nl. Thanks!

Foods!

I simply love to cook. I made this for me and my dad. Two baguettes filled with veggies and roasted chicken. Added to that some sauces and some nice quality herbs. Cooking is very nice.

Blub.

Some experiments with water and stuff. It’s fun, trust me!


The drainage.


Beer!


More water.. and then it will fall:

More to come soon, got a lot of things planned. I need to work on focusingand the fall speed. Right now I had to shoot these at 1/160 but I should see if I can go to faster speeds..

Thanks go out to Photogavin and some of his youtube tutorials!
http://www.youtube.com/user/PhotoGavin

Helmet and a path.

Weird title aye? Well… kinda fit’s the pictures. Very experimental.

The first is a small path next to my house.

I simply LOVE the colors, really peaceful.

Now my fisheye lens. Oops I spoilt it. Why? Well it reminds me of a helmet. But in fact it’s my lens upside down.. Nevermind.. here it is…

Darth-Vader-ish aye?

Thats it for now, If you have any comments please leave them here. Always appreciated!!

Canon 50mm 1.4 USM lens!

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!

Random stuff.

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…!

Testing the Polarisation: New wallet.

Yesterday Chantal, a friend of mine, came to visit me since she’s been to Australia for quite a while. And well just like some other friends she knew I needed a new wallet. Refusing to buy a new one since I really liked my old one, she bought me one. I have to say it’s bigger, holds more space and looks way more stylished and quite a bit more mature. Ah well…
One thing I liked more about the old one, is that in order to fit my money in I had to fold it and thus making it look I had twice the amount of money. Ah well… Let’s earn more money so I get that same feeling, hm?

Polarisation filter.

Hey guys! How’ve you been? Well I’ve been to Sweden by bike and all went very well. I will post some shots very soon. Still in the process of selecting them, sorting them out etc etc.
But for now I have something funny, I’ve started using and understanding the polarisation filter.

Why now? Well at first I heard “yes it’s a must have, it removes reflections“. This is basically what all articles state and they show some pictures which look really nice. Still often I hardly see any difference. Once again I read one of those articles, and since some company accidentaly sent me one of those filters for my new lens, I thought let’s give it ONE more shot.

So where did it went wrong all other times? Aparently you can ROTATE the filter to change the effect. And all of a sudden a world opened to me…
When you try it… ROTATE THE FILTER!!!


Okay so now to the part “it removes reflections”. Sounds nice but … what does it really do?
According to my own observation it removes light with a high intensity. And the light range that you remove is adjustable (rotate rotate rotate….) I even managed to look at my PC screen and with the right setup I made the complete screen (which was for 90% bright white) completely black. Speaking of a difference lol!

But also reflections such as highlights on shiney smooth objects or matte objects.
When is this handy? I’ll show you in some examples.

Also something that is nice, imagine taking a picture from a car but you see the reflection from the window, you can allmost completely remove this reflection with this filter!!!! OKAY you will still see some, but hey who doesn’t love Photoshop these days aye?

So enough words, let’s get some examples where it’s obvious that it HELPS.

See the difference? NOTE: these are ALL taken with the filter on, but by rotating you can “turn it off or on”.

That’s it for now, hope it helps you guys! Oh and by the way the filter I used “Massa PL 77mm” on my Canon 24-105 L lens, on the 5DMKII.
Yes it’s a cheap filter from hong kong but seriously, it does it’s job!

I’ll be gone for a while!!

Hey loyal followers of my blog!

In 2 days, so well next Sunday, me and Joost are going on a trip. Yes. A Bicycle trip.
Why is this worth mentioning without posting new pictures?

Well you see… it’s quite a bloody long trip… it’s going to be 1550 km and we’re gonna take aprox. 3-4 weeks for it to happen.

I’ll be riding my recumbent bike, Joost is riding my old tour bike… a Kenosha.

Good thing is, we can be followed every day through the following website:

http://stukjefietsen.idreamto.be

which will be moderated by my dearest friend Roxanna. (www.roxaap.nl)

Here’s a picture of my bike:

Anyway all, take care and any words are appreciated through the other website!!! I’m gonna need some luck haha!

Seeeeeee ya!

Website updated!

Hey people!

Before I used a template from a website, but now I finally made my own. I used an application though, but still so far I’m happy with the result. There will be quite some tweaks and updates soon but the most important thing works: The website is wider!
Because of this I can post my images a bit bigger than before. With the old template I had to use a width of max. 600.. now I can go up to around 850!

AH well, I’m off to the gym!

-Steven.

Hi Germany, I’m back.

Alright, Chantal and me where bored so why not go to Germany? Well that wasn’t the actual plan. We took the first train from Almere-Muziekwijk where I picked Chantal up. We ended up in Utrecht, from there we picked a random destination (Chantal pointed out a random place on a map while she wasnt looking) and by that we ended up in Venlo. There we took a train to Germany. So here’s that trip in some pictures.

This was at Almere Stad central station.

This was at the place where we ended up.. It was a place called “Dulken”. Quite small but it was really nice.


View Larger Map

Pigeon in Venlo.


An old railway house. I love deserted buildings, really nice. Too bad I had to take this shot from a moving train.

This is the Dulken train station, pretty cute aye? Way nicer than all those modern stations that we have.

Some old houses in Dulken, deserted… would love to live in such a house!

Too bad we didn’t have much time left, otherwise I would have loved to have a drink there!

Nice old German Mercedes truck. Really liked the atmosphere… felt a bit like I was in an old movie haha.

Then we went home, I saw this bus and thought it was a nice sunset…

That’s all for now! I have sooo more many new pictures, will post a bit more regular from now on haha! Bye!

Still kicking? Yup.

Okay fact, I’m not out of the game yet. Even a 2-3 minute submergion of my camera couldn’t stop me. On the bad side, I did lose my 28-135 USM IS lens. On the bright side, I could finally justify buying a new L lens so I went for the 23-105 and got it for a bargain! This guy was really friendly and gave it to me for a very very good price.. lucky me!

Still it was enough to allmost get me bankrupt lol.

Here some new pics, let’s start with some taken with my 1DMKII and the 100-400 IS USM L lens.

And another one..

And here it was tired of posing… so it went off.

And then this image, it’s one of the first images I took with my 24-105 lens… I love it now already!

And here’s a final, kind of random picture I took with the 5DMKII and an extremely cheap 28-80 lens.. lol.

That’s it for now!

Famous last words, bye 5DMKII.

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!

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.

Amsterdam + Spider

Allright quick post from the last few days. Starting with 3 pictures from my trip to Amsterdam. I’ve met up with a friend who I’ve known over internet for quite a while… we met, had lunch, walked through Amsterdam and had a great time. This is what I had for lunch:

After that I made this picture of a building close to Waterloo Market:

And on my way back to Weesp I took this picture while waiting for the train…

And this morning I saw a spider hanging around on a window, so here’s Spidey:

He started being mysterious…..

Then I fully exposed him:

And then he started doing karate:

I filmed this spider too, will post the movie later-on because it’s kinda cool!

See ya, till next post!

Summer update!

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.

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!