iPhone Photos from South Africa

I arrived in South Africa last night. I am here with Sharon Kips for her performance at the World Aids Gala in Cape Town. We're here for a great cause! Weather is awesome, it's so nice to be in summer during our long and grey winter.

The flight was very enjoyable with amazing views, here are some of them

Engagement Shoot

A long time ago I had an engagement shoot. I have not posted these photos yet, namely because I was struggling with CS4. It just takes time to get to know the editing program. These poor friends needed a lot of patience with me. The downside to these photos is that I can't seem to upload them in high quality.

Some of the results:

Family Weekend - Oma turned 85

A teaser for my family

My oma turned 85 5 weekends ago. She wanted to celebrate by treating the entire family to a weekend away. It sure was a good time. We went out for walks, rested, went bike riding, ate delicious food, swam, spend time in the sauna and so forth. Our family isn't together a whole lot so I quite enjoyed this outing. Of course I had to be the photographer and I am still working on a photo book for oma. The weekend turned out more important than we realized, it was our last time with Kees.

This is where we stayed

Of course the weekend started with cake. My sister and I decided to be creative and suprise oma with home made cakes. This one is my sisters. She just started her business DekoFun. She's amazing at it, as you can see...

This is the one I made

After coffee and cake we had a long walk in the woods

Kees

Time for dinner and good wine

The next day we went for a long bike ride, it was raining, very Dutch like. But we still had fun.

Silly uncle, he really is nice

Saturday night was a special dinner night!

The table setting

Oma

Apetizer

And for the kids there was a pool to enjoy, I jumped in once but had more fun in the sauna

Canon PIXMA Pro9500

No photos, just an exciting thing to share. Due to my work schedule there is little time to blog but I have been taking photos, for the 2 courses I take. The Portrait Photography Course with Jocelyne Moreau and I continued with the group from the Photo Academy. During my time at the Photo Academy I was told it is required for people to own a printer. I was still using the store for my printing. So when we recently had our follow up the teacher learned I was still using the store. He explained it was not without reason he expects us to do our own printing. It teaches us how come up with the best results, influencing our photos till the very end. It also teaches us if our photos are really what we desired. So I looked into printers. I remembered some of the students who came up with amazing prints, all due to a good printer with a grey cartridge. I looked up their printer and it cost quite a bit. But after some thinking I bought the Canon Pixma Pro9500!

Canon Pixma Pro9500 - Achieve remarkable, studio quality prints from your digital SLR camera with this professional 10-color A3+ photo printer. Benefit from complete in-house printing control. The range of 10 ink colors provides the flexibility to produce both high quality color images and neutral monochrome prints, without messy cartridge changes.
The PIXMA Pro9500 utilizes pigment inks for each of the 10 colors to ensure exceptional image permanence for all your printed work. You can always depend on highly durable and fade-free prints for exhibitions, art sales, quality samples or other commercial purposes.

Produce professional quality neutral monochrome prints with Photo Black, Matte Black & Gray inks. The two black inks deliver outstanding black density whilst the additional gray ink ensures subtle shading in the mid-tones. The end result is print perfection for all your monochrome work, with minimum metamerism.

Single Ink technology ensures economical operation. The high capacity ink cartridges can be replaced individually to minimize ink wastage.
The robust and reliable PIXMA Pro9500 is built to last. Enhance the capability and profitability of your studio business with this durable and professional printing tool.

You Capture - Photographer's Choice

This week isn't all that hard at You Capture because it's photographer's choice.

Today is a sad day, my oma's new love Kees died suddenly today. Both their spouses died and they've been together for years making one another happy in their old day. Today Kees just collapsed on the street. They were exercising (supervised even) and Kees wanted to go home early to have fresh oj ready for oma when she was done with her exercises. On the street is where he just collapsed and died. Two weekends ago the entire family went away for the weekend to celebrate their 85th birthday.

This is a photo of the wonderful weekend, in honor of Kees.

Kees you were simply wonderful! Kind, gentle, loving are all words that suit you!

Thank you for taking such good care of oma, and spoiling her ;)

(double click photo to get enlargement, much better that way)

You Capture - Autumn

The second week in a row that I can join the You Capture Challenge. It was a lovely one this week, FALL photos. At one of the offices I work fall is so obvious, there are yellow leaves every where. At the end of the day I have to clean them off my car, you don't see a brick on the ground anymore and it rains yellow leaves so you enter the building with leaves in your hair. It really is an amazing season.

Portrait Photography Course - Neutral Portrait Series

I had my second Portrait Photography Class this Tuesday. Again it was much fun, mostly because I go home with more good baggage. It's really exciting and I experience much joy because of it.

It was time to show the results of our first shoot to the class and teacher. We are to do 4 shoots, and we're supposed to use the same model for all shoots which is quit challenging. Find a model that will fit in all the different assignments?!

This week we were to deliver our Neutral Portrait. I choose to photograph a farmer that I "picked up" from the street. I did it this way due to lack of time, but as you all know, I do love farmers and the live they have. He was great for my Neutral Portrait shoot, the 3 other's shoots I wonder about :)

Taking a neutral portrait is quite challenging as well. What is a neutral portrait anyways? The photo is not to communicate a whole lot. So I had to watch his facial expression, I needed low neutral light (no sun glare in his face) and of course the neutral background. Hard to find.

I was excited to hear my teacher say that the first shot was right on the mark, exactly what she meant for us to do. Here's my series, all SOOC:

What I learned during the shoot was who I am as a photographer. I wondered how I was to give my model directions and give him confidence. I realized I do that by knowing when to talk and when to just be quiet. I also spoke a lot about what I was doing and explaining things. This model had no clue about camera's and such so it was a good way to get him to give me his time. As I said, I lacked time to really prepare for this shoot. I walked up to his house instead of driving so I could just calm down from the crazy work schedule. I knew if I'd arrive in a rush he would notice and it would have an effect on my shoot. I tried hard to just breath and stay calm and decrease the adrenaline I had been living on for the past weeks. When you do a shoot as a matter of fact, it's doomed and I really had to watch my focus. At least I was aware of my state and thus need to keep an eye on the details. Since I needed a neutral background and it was hard to find around his house, I had to play a lot with my aperture and speed, causing the background to be neutral. It's awesome to see a shiny green door turn into a dark background by adjusting settings and no use of editing programs. So overall it was a great experience and it boosted my self esteem as a photographer.