Less experts, more exploration

A couple of days ago I came across a blog post on Stu Maschwitz' Prolost.com titled "Eschew experts, follow the curious", in which Stu explained his take on people sharing knowledge from a point of view that they are an expert in their field:

I’m not interested in hearing from “experts.” By that term I mean a certain type who seem to feel that they’ve crested the mountaintop of knowledge on a particular subject, and are now prepared to dole out this valuable accrual of information to whomever will politely listen. Experts tell you the “correct” answer, because they know.

He goes on to explain how it can be much more interesting when one approaches problems by openly exploring all the possible options, instead of proclaiming there's one "right" answer. I like the whole idea of exploring various options, solutions and possibilities. Taking things apart (sometimes literally), look at them from all sides and discover new insights unexpected outcomes. The cool thing is that this process becomes even more powerful if ideas are shared and bounced back and forth between several people. As Salomon Ligthelm says in this interview: don't just copy the tutorial litterally, but make it your own and expand upon it. We need less experts, and more exploration. But don't just take it from me. I'm no expert after all...

From the edge of the world

In two days arctic explorer Ben Saunders will set off from Cape Discovery in northern Canada to ski solo and unsupported to the North Pole and set a couple of speed records along the way. After two earlier attemps had to be aborted because of gear malfunctions and fuel contaminating his food, Ben has decided to give it another go, more determined than ever. Failure is not trying, so in that respect this expedition is already a success.

The cool thing (pun intended) is that filmmaker Temujin Doran is traveling with Ben to Canada and has managed to produce a couple of beautiful mini documentaries over the last few days. The one at the top of this post is an introduction to Ben and the North3 expedition. Watch the other episodes on Ben's website.

Although I've never visited the high arctic myself, I have supported various polar expeditions in terms of getting their story out to the world. One constant factor is the difficulty to get any information (a text or voice message for example) out of those remote locations via dodgy satellite connections, let alone sending out this kind of high definition, artfully crafted video poetry. What's even more impressive that new updates are released as things develop, not weeks after the fact, lending the whole thing an extra dose of excitement. So make sure to check back regularly over the next couple of weeks...

Recording dual system audio outdoors or in noisy environments

Some time ago I found myself on a boat, capturing footage of whales off the beautiful coast of South Africa. In between shooting the whales (with the camera that is) I was trying to get some good shots of Jason, co-owner of Ivanhoe Sea Safaris, who was explaining all sorts of interesting facts about the whales.

I was using my trusty combo of Canon 5D mark II plus Zoom H4n to record some decent audio. I quickly found out however, as soon as there was some wind - which is all the time if you’re out at sea - or the engine started roaring, the audio from the in-camera mic quickly became unintelligible, making it a challenge to sync the audio with PluralEyes, or even manually.

If the H4n were mounted on the camera I could have easily fed it’s signal into the 5D's external mic input, but  I find that setup ergonomically cumbersome, plus the noise from focusing or merely touching the camera will be audible. So in this case my wife/assistant Brit was operating the H4n separately. Running an audio cable between two continuously moving people on a wobbly boat with other passengers moving around at the same time would not have been very practical, so afterwards I came up with a different solution.

The basic solution: wirelessly transmit the audio to the camera

Using my Sennheiser wireless kit, it’s possible to transmit the signal from the H4n to the 5D, giving you a nice clean in-camera audio signal for syncing in post. This setup works for any noisy or windy environment, where the camera's built-in mic might not alway be able to capture enough of the dialog or interview audio.

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Launching the new lightscapes gallery

I've recently made some changes to this site. In the old version, my photography work got more and more buried under the more recent (video) projects, so I decided to make separate sections on the site for motion, lightscapes and my other photography work.

Also, I've updated the lightscapes gallery with a lot more, previously unpublished intentional camera movement (ICM) images. The most exciting part however, is that I'm now offering fine art prints of almost all the images. They come printed on Kodak Endura metallic paper, a glossy metallic paper that makes the images shine - quite literally. If you want to go really high end however, you can order prints on high-gloss aluminum. The glossy finish, in combination with the reflective surface of the aluminum gives the images al almost-3D look. It's an effect that similar to that of a Daguerrotype, an early form of photography. The light hits the base layer - the aluminum in this case - and is reflected back out through the image.

Thanks to Brit for spending countless hours helping me set up the new galleries and sourcing the right suppliers that can deliver high-quality prints!

Oh, and by the way, I've also taken the opportunity to redesign the home page in order for visitors to find their way to the different parts of the site more easily. In the future I'm hoping to implement a similarly minimalist/sleek design for the rest of the site.

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.

Featured in MyToyota online & print magazine

I'm happy to report that the photography and video I did with Marc Cornelissen around the new Toyota Auris is featured in the December issue of MyToyota magazine (online as well as in the print edition). On page 3 of the online edition you'll find the Auris video as well as the trailer I did for Marc some time ago.

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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.

Click to read more ...

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.

Launching a career in advertising

While updating my photography page, I came across a photo that I had taken two years ago at Cape Agulhas in South Africa, the same location where The Edge of Africa was filmed. This place just seems to lend itself to automotive photography. This time the subject was an Audi A4 (as you can tell I'm not partial to any particular brand, but I do lean towards German car manufacturers). The photo looked almost like it wanted to be an ad, so I decided to rework it a little bit in Aperture and try my hand at ad design. The result is below. Do you think Audi would buy it?