Pictures with Stories

This one took me some time to make. No, actually it took me a lot of time to make.

As you can see, the water is forming a perfect ball-shaped drop. I can tell you, that's difficult to achieve.

When I first set up the entire construction to make this picture, I was quite enthusiastic. Everything was an experiment. I was going to shoot some random pictures and come up with a good one. Forget it. What followed was a few hours of frustrating light-adjustments, the alignments of objects and the continuous disappointment of shooting crappy pictures.

Until, finally, this one. It was so beautiful that all my sweat and tears seemed worth it. I had done it. I had shot a wondrous water picture.

I'm quite the geek, so naturally I'm in love with everything that has to do with space. So logically, a telescope is part of my range of tools.

However, more can be done with a telescope than just looking at the stars. With the right pieces of equipment, the telescope can be transformed into a huge lens for your reflex camera. And that's exactly what I did.

I had already shot some pictures of the moon and the stars, but I wanted one from the sun. Careful not to burn my camera's sensor, I went to buy a fancy solar filter for the telescope. (It's more expensive than you would think, actually.)

Oh but that wasn't the end of it. You see, it seemed that the filter blocked out any kind of detail and just gave a big red dot. On picture, it could be anything! So, I took a bald move! A very bald one indeed. I shot the above picture without any filter.

I'd planned things out carefully. I would go at sunrise with all the equipment, when the suns rays are still weak and couldn't damage my camera. I would set the shutter speed as such that it would very quickly open and close, as not to expose my sensor to, well, 'sensory overload'. Really, if you have a reflex camera yourself, I'd advise you not to do it. It's really not so safe.

But, I succeeded! I got to make this moderate picture of the sun. You like the effect?

There are two thing in particular which I like about photography: macro photography and night photography. The above picture is an example of that first one.

Macro photography is actually photography at a very detailed level. The example above is macro photography just at the edge of it. The 'real stuff' goes even deeper, in more detail.

What I love about this style is, well, obviously the amount of detail. The number of drops on the leave. The small threads of spider web hanging between the leaves. The texture of the plant.

I'm sure that many of you know the crystal manufacturer Swarovski. They produce many, many, many wonderful things with crystal.

In Austria, where the Swarovski headquarters are, there is a kind of museum called 'Kristallwelten'. In this museum, Swarovski honours the amazing crystal with which they make their magnificent pieces of art. The museum is filled with all kinds of oddities and curiosities.

I love to go there for one reason in particular: great pictures. So, whenever I'm around Austria, I tend to take a detour to visit Kristallwelten. The picture above is from my fourth visit there and every time I've seen the giant grow and grow. The giant? Yes, the Kristallwelten is based around the character of a 'giant', who is actually quite present throughout the entire museum. The museum is a bit like a park, where the 'head of the giant' is the central point and also the entrance to the museum. Quite enchanting.

What you see in this picture are neon lights who are part of a bigger construction of neon lights. They are curved and twisted in all kinds of ways to make a nice 'portrait' with neon lights. I've had many interesting pictures of this, but the one above is the nicest one, I think.

The Kristallwelten is always a very interesting and wonderful experience for me and I'd strongly suggest all of you to pay the museum a visit when you are in the neighborhood.

More info: Kristallwelten Website.

My parents used to be self-employed. They had a big workspace with a nice shop in which they sold all kinds of stainless steel and related products. I spend many, many hours with them in that place, both as a child and as an adolescent. I helped them out with many things and the older I got, the more responsibilities I was given.

At one point I was designing their website and I needed some nice pictures. This is one of those pictures. And personally, I really like it. In this picture there is a certain technique which is called 'optical balance', where the objects in the picture are in perfect balance. The left and right side of the picture are in harmony. Lovely, ain't it?

Unfortunately my parents decided to stop the company. The many years of hard work had finally caught up with them and they just couldn't take it any more. All that's left for me are some nice memories and these pictures.

During my time in Lisbon, one of the very first things I was told to visit is the Oceanario, the big aquarium in the modern part of the city, 'Parque das Nações'. And it's really a great place to visit.

Funny thing. In four months time, I visited this water tank four times. One time alone, then with my parents, then with a Turkish friend and then with a Portuguese person who had never before been to Lisbon. I can tell you, after four times I had quite seen it. However, it did give me the opportunity to shoot some very nice pictures.

But, there's a challenge here. Since it's very dark in the aquarium and we can't shoot with flash (Animals don't like it. NEVER do it!), I had to carefully use the available light and hold my hands steady in order to take some nice pictures. It was quite a funny sight at times, me sitting there very still, in some strange positions while tons of kids where trying to get a peek at the 'fishies'...

As I've said before, I've got two favourite kinds of photography. This is one of them: night photography or experimenting with light.

Once you have a reflex camera, you can start to do all sorts of crazy effects with it, without using Photoshop. You can create ghostpictures, you can amplify light just like that or you can make a picture with what I like to call the 'plastic effect', such as the one above.

It was a cold winter evening and two people are jogging up a half-frozen bridge. One has a laptop in his hands, the other one what seems to be a tripod with a camera attached to it. With a lot of wheezing, coughing and rubbing the hands together, they set up their construction at the highest point of the bridge. Below them is a highway. Cars are racing by at full speed, clearly neglecting the frozen state of the road. The two 'daredevils', a father and his son are getting ready to take the first picture. The tripod is balancing on a small piece of rock. One slip and the entire experiment fails....

Luckily I was able to take some very decent pictures on that hellish night. A word of advice, when it's really cold, don't take your camera outdoors to take pictures. It can seriously damage your lenses.