photo heart connection june

creating fine art with my camera

this image touches my heart every time i look at it. from the moment i finished processing the original shot i kept saying to myself: this is it! for me it is a piece of art and it enables me to experience myself as an artist. it is 'just' a simple shot of some cheap glass objects seen through the window of a big chain store. by coaxing out the myriad exquisite colours and reflections in Lightroom i was able to create something very special. i just love it!
i am planning to have it printed on plexiglass

an embarrassment of riches     

photo-heart-connection may     

creating a royal homestead

at the end of april we got a new king. actually, the queen stepped down and her son became the first king in ages. it was a huge event, things like this don't happen very often :-) it also generated a lot of commercial activity: all the big stores pushed their own little toys, cards, crockery and other 'royal' gadgets.
i got blessed with a couple of soft furry orange balls with gold carton crowns. i kinda liked them and named them willies, after our new king Willem Alexander. after the coronation, my friends started adding to my collection by asking for left-over willies at the store. (you can say they literally gave me the willies lol!). i ended up with 49 of them and decided to give them a home. so i ordered this wooden 'palace' from a toy shop and had loads of fun glueing them in their rooms and on the roof and finally setting up this tableau in my shed window, arranging the remaining willies on the sill beside the royal home...
i call this an embarrassment of riches, because the first thing people say when they see my willies is: wow, you must have spent tons of money at the supermarket...! (they came free with every spent 15 euro)
this photo was taken with my iPhone. i love it as much as i love seeing my willies every time i walk past the shed. so this is most definitely my photo-heart connection for this month!

water magic     

reflections and distortions     

"if there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water" - Loren Eisely

a sunny day in the city, the quiet water in the canal reflects the buildings in the street

a bit of wind disturbs the tranquil surface and creates long, slow ripples in the mirror

zooming in on the colorful distortions. all context disappears, what is left is an abstract interplay of color, shape and light

this is not a wedding     

my november photo-heart connection

this photograph is part of my 'exposing the layers of life' project, a collection of multi-layered images that reflect different realities converging in one single moment in time. 

i always shoot RAW and then post-process in Lightroom. i love 'exposing' the different layers by playing around with the tools in the develop module, trying to coax the hidden story out of the RAW material. sometimes the result is so stunning it takes my breath away

i especially love this shot because it reminds me of the paintings of Rene Magritte (hence the title)

night time is the right time    
joining the photo-heart-connection

two weeks ago i started my advanced photography class in the city center
on my way back i took a couple of night shots of the shop windows and the street lights

this one is my absolute favorite, and therefore my contribution to the photo-heart-connection.
the image gives me a feeling of emptiness and desolation, because of the alien green fluorescence that is repeated throughout the frame. i love the intense shiny blackness of the chairs and drawers, all lined up neatly, waiting for customers to bring liveliness and color into the sterile looking scene. most of all i love the curved woodgrain-finish board with its eerie green shine (just off the top-center). it makes a perfect transition to the dark grainy wall on the right

here's a shot with a completely different atmosphere. the abundant colors of the flowers and plants are enhanced by the warm yellow shop lights and the bright aqua of the big painting in the back. 

a typical night town street view: trees forming a wide green roof of leaves above, lots of bicycles parked in front and around the tree trunks, the antique streetlamps providing soft star-like points of light and the red taillights of a car leaving its parking space providing a bit of contrast and a sense of movement

and of course i couldn't pass this shop window without taking a picture.... especially when the name of the shop is so beautifully accentuated by the light of the street lamp and the lush and luminous colors of the displayed objects

sharing my august photo-heart connection     
celebrating a new photoblog collaboration
there is absolutely no doubt about the image that best represents my photo-heart-connection for august

here is the image i picked for the launch of a new photoblog i created with Els, a woman i met in one of Kat's classes and who happens to be dutch as well... somehow we 'clicked' and our connection has grown over the past months with this blog as a creative and mutually inspiring result.  it would even be better if i had a photograph of Els or of the two of us together, for she is my true photo-heart connection for this month, but although we don't live far apart, we haven't seen each other yet.... so maybe next time....!

Joining the August Break  1    

sharing a summer shot a day

9:40 am

exploring point of view part 2    
letting your lens do the work
shooting from a fixed viewpoint 


A telezoom is a great tool for shooting a subject from different angles and perspectives without having to move around much. When your mobility is limited for whatever reasons this can be a real blessing...!

My dad lives in a beautiful apartment complex that was designed by Ricardo Bofill. It was built in a crescent shape. Sitting on his terrace on the ground floor, looking up,  i can almost see the whole building. I love looking at the rows of windows, glass rectangles that gather and reflect everything at the opposite side of the building's half-circle. Above are some shots taken at 150mm with my Olympus PEN P3 (which means a 300mm focal length on a full frame camera) while leaning back in my chair. For the second shot i turned my camera to the left and upwards, providing a slightly different view and perspective, with brighter and more detailed reflections. I've added a small pink spot to indicate where the shots overlap: the window in the top left of the first shot is situated below the top right in the second one.

Here i've changed my perspective by zooming out. First to a focal length of 85 mm, showing some of the layers of grey concrete framing the rows of windows, then to a focal length of 40 mm, providing more contextual information about the shape and size of the building.  The pink spots again indicate the orientation, on both shots the spot is somewhere near the left middle of the frame.

dynamic diagonals

exploring direction and movement within the frame

Kat Eye Studio's monthly theme for april is the function of diagonal lines within an image. When I read her post i had just come back from my dad's with a camera full of shots filled with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, so I picked a couple of them to further explore the theme.

My favorite subject is reflection, and the office building behind my fathers apartment, standing in a big square pool of water, always provides me with multiple reflective surfaces. The straight horizontal and vertical lines of the buildings become diagonal and slightly curved when reflected in the windows, which has an interesting visual effect.  I tried cropping and straightening the shots in different ways, first straightening along the horizontal lines of the office building, then straightening along the horizontal lines of the reflections. 

The middle image is not a reflection, but an example of converging lines, that create diagonals within the shot. I straightened the first shot along the white balcony on the top of the left building, the second shot along the top of the roof of the house in the background, behind and between the two buildings. I like the extra diagonal created by the shadow on the bottom right, it adds more energy to the image.

Here are some horizontal shots, the first one straightened along the left vertical line of the building, creating several diagonals: from top left to bottom right (the window and blinds) and from bottom left to top right (the reflections). The second one was straightened along the horizontal line of the reflections, creating a whole different set of diagonals, mainly from bottom middle to top right, but also in opposite direction on the building at the left.

sparkle and shine

celebrating the spring buzz

This month shutter sisters have chosen two words for their one word project.... SPARKLE and SHINE

It is spring, and nature provides both sparkle and shine in abundance!

This morning i captured some of the beautiful glittering gold reflections in a stagnant muddy pool with overhanging branches. 

reflections in a pond     

rippled architecture

different reflections
more silent lights
Yesterday I took some more shots of the lights along the river. The weather had changed and so had the reflections of the light in the water.