Running on the rocks

This shot was taken in De Kelders, near Gansbaai, South Africa. This particular area is great for photography with its variety of rocks, sea and the local fynbos vegetation, that only occurs in this part of the world. Used a single flash without any light modifiers: an Nikon SB900 camera left, mounted on a gorillapod and positioned on the rocks.

A moment in time(lapse)

The above shot is one frame from a timelapse I shot last week. The idea was to test out shooting timelapse in RAW and aplying some color grading in Aperture. Normally I would shoot a timelapse in JPEG because of the excessive amount of storage required for large numbers of RAW images, but that severely limits my options in post production.

This location struck me as interesting because of the grungy old warehouse (soon to be renovated into shops and appartments) and the construction cranes behind it, working on what will become a large new highrise.

This is a typical example where a tilt-shift lens would have come in handy, to eliminate the distortion in the warehouse, and give the whole thing a more flat, geometric feel.

Void

Most of my intentional camera movement photography is rather bold and colorful. This series, that I called Void, is a bit different. Even though they might look almost like black and white photos, they were taken in full color. It just so happens that the subject was rather monochromatic. What I like about these is that they have some subtle textures that you only notice when looking up close. Click on the "read more" link to see some more.

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Alien skyline

After the previous blog post I decided to experiment some more with the low-key monochrome look. Just like the previous one, this photo is also taken just a short walk from where I live. The domes in the foreground are part of a floating pavillion that houses an exhibition about climate and sustainability. It reminds me of artist renderings of a human habitat on Mars or some other extraterrestrial planet.

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Beyond the obvious

Sometimes it can be fun to think beyond the obvious when deciding on the look of a photo. The above image for example was taken on - believe it or not - a bright sunny day in Rotterdam. You can see the original here. While it was a nice architecture shapshot, I decided to see what else I could do with it.

Photography is often about leaving things out, and focussing on one particular thing. The original shot was quite cluttered, with lots of lines from the glass roof, the buiding, and the tree on the right hand side. So the first thing I did was crop the image to get rid of some of the distraction. A square format seemed to work well here.

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More intentional camera movement photography

Usually when I'm doing intentional camera movement photography I take anywhere between a hundred and five hundred shots of one particular subject. It's not uncommon to get only one or two good ones out of a series of a few hundred. The majority always gets thrown out right away during the first pass of editing. After that, I'm left with around 10-20% of the shots.

At that point I have to walk away from them for a while, since I find it very hard to pick the best shots right after I took them. So they'll just sit patiently in their Aperture folder for a couple of days/weeks until I feel the inclination to look at them again. Only then I can quickly pick the ones I like best and, if need be, do a little post processing or cropping. That's what I did this morning with the above photo, one of a series I took a couple of weeks ago.

Normally I'll see if I can create a little series of at least three photos from the same set, but sometimes, like in this case, there's not enough shots that really grab me, or they're too similar. So I thought I'd just post this one...

Behind the scenes

I'm trying to make a timelapse from a series of images of myself doing some intentional motion photography. The idea is to use a long exposure for these "making of" shots, so that you can actually get a sense of the motion. The idea is to show these behind-the-scenes side by side with the actual photos I'm taking. This whole process takes quite a lot of work though, so it'll be a while until it's done.

Creative postprocessing

Above are two images from a recent photo shoot in South Africa. I did some post processing to achieve the kind of look that I had in mind, with a blurred background, and the light wrapping around the subject. Normally I might go for a more subtle look, but it seemed to work for these images.

Auris impressions

A while ago I shot some impressions of the Toyota Auris, together with Marc Cornelissen, who has been featured on this blog before. The Auris is a new hybrid model that Toyota is introducing right now, combining a traditional car engine with an electric engine, which makes it extremely fuel efficient.

We decided to film at the "Maasvlakte", an artificial extension of the Rotterdam harbour. Here you'll find traditional heavy industry and coal-burning power plants right next to windmills, representing a move towards renewable energy sources. We thought it would be a nice metaphor for the gap that the Auris is trying to brigde.

Hope you enjoy the end result. The spoken parts are actually in Dutch, but if you don't speak Dutch, hopefully the images speak for themselves.

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Something completely different

The experimental photo below was inspired by the work of Shane Robinson. He uses a technique where he moves the camera around in various ways while taking photos with relatively long exposures. When I first saw his photos I thought they were paintings. I had tried something like this a while ago, with very mediocre results. Inspired by Shane's recent work, I decided to have another stab at it. This time the outcome was somewhat more presentable. However, where Shane produces his images completely in-camera, I have to admit to cheating and doing some post-processing in Aperture in order to infuse some extra oomph. I posted some more results on Flickr.

I have to say this kind of photography is quite liberating, in that you have very little control over the outcome (at my skill level at least) and the results are usually a quite surprising and unpredictable. It seems almost impossible to create the same photo twice. It also makes you look at the world around you in a completely different, less literal way. The subject for this experiment, for example, was my desk and iMac. It's like revealing a hidden world below the visible surface. A parallel world that exists on a different time scale. And it changes every time you catch a glimpse of it.

UPDATE: I've created a gallery page for my intentional camera movement photography here.