by René Timmermans | Sep 16, 2010 | Photography
The autumn is approaching and the evenings are already rapidly getting darker. Temperatures are dropping and more rain is upon us. It is only one and a half month until we change the clock to winter-time. It is time to dream about wonderful summer evenings.
The past summer in Sweden has been great and with good weather, nothing to complain. However, when I was browsing through some old photo folders I came across images from 2002 when we spent some summer weeks in Cuba. Memories went back to the evenings we spent at Maria La Gorda, they were spectacular.
Maria La Gorda was then a small diving resort in the far west of Cuba. It was recommended by one of my business contacts, who had been there recently. To get to Maria La Gorda was not the easiest. In a five hour drive a taxi drove us over bad roads and in high speed towards paradise.
At the time Maria La Gorda existed of nothing more than some simple cabins near the beach (see photo below). During the day there was little more to do than sunbathing, snorkeling or joining a boat ride for some scuba-diving, and that was just what we did.
During the evenings we could enjoy the sunset, walk over the beach and relax with a Cuba Libre in one of the many beach chairs under the palm trees. Is there anything more one could wish for?
I remember that holiday as the first one with a digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix E885, ancient by now, and with only 3.2M pixels. The first photo in this post was taken with it.
The second photo in this post was taken with my Nikon F801s, that I had bought back in 1992, and was thus 10 years old, but reliable as always. I mostly used positive film at the time and would scan it in with a 35mm scanner.
The above photos, as well as some other newly uploaded photos, including bad weather over Maria La Gorda, can be viewed in the Cuba gallery.
by René Timmermans | Sep 11, 2010 | Photography
This week conditions were much better in the city center around City Hall. As you might recall from my post two weeks ago it then was cloudy, I was late and the tower was not lit.
But this week I guess I was lucky and we experienced a very nice late-summer evening with a blue sky. I was in good time to set up my equipment and make test shots. On top of that all the top of the tower was in full light. Here is one of the results.
While I was taking images it struck me what a beautiful panorama view you have when you look from Riddarholmen towards City Hall. The view stretches all the way from Södermalm to the left, over the water following the bridge to Kungsholmen, than City Hall and the futuristic looking new World Trade Center in the background of the archipelago boats to the right.
I took a series of 5 images covering the whole panorama. Back home I used Adobe Photoshop’s photo-merge tool, which works fantastic in the latest version (CS5), to create a panorama photo. You can see the results from this weeks shoot at City Hall in my Sweden: Stockholm gallery. Obviously the panorama photo does not view well on screen as it it too small to get the full impact, but once I have printed it at 100x25cm it will look great.
by René Timmermans | Sep 5, 2010 | Photography
On Saturday evening I went out to have dinner at the home of a good friend. Since she has a lovely dog I suggested I would bring my camera and take some shots of him.
The dogs name is Khille (pronounced as Shille) and is named after a Swedish policeman, Mr. Khilberg. This is their story:
One winters night in Sweden, when it was only minus 15 degrees (C), Khilberg was on patrol in the streets of Stockholm. He suddenly heard whimpering in a plastic packet in a dustbin and he bothered to check it. He looked inside and found a small puppy thrown away in the packet in the dustbin. Horrified by such cruelty, he took the puppy and brought it to the local animal shelter. That puppy was Khille. Shortly after he was left at the animal shelter my friend picked him up and adopted him.
Khille is one of the happiest and, without a doubt, one of the most beloved dogs in the world that I know of. It was a pleasure to photograph him.
Children and animals are among the most difficult subjects to photograph. They are often impatient, are moving too much and hardly ever listen to or understand given instructions.
As a photographer one of the best tactics is to just follow your subject in their being, understand their natural behavior, anticipate what is coming and be ready with your camera when the right moment arises.
When it is done successfully it is among the most rewarding photography one can do, because the end result is inevitably bringing joy to the parents.
by René Timmermans | Aug 31, 2010 | Photography
Tonight I went out into the city of Stockholm for some location spotting. Stockholm is regarded as a beautiful city, in my opinion it absolutely is, and I am determined to shoot more images in my home city. After the success of last year (see my previous blog-post here) I felt like discovering more good sights and wondered why I had waited so long…
One of the main sights in Stockholm is city-hall (Stadshuset). It lies beautifully on the waterside facing towards the south island of the city, Södermalm. I went to Riddarholmen, a small island just in between, as I figured to have the best view on city-hall from there.
Unfortunately the conditions were not great. First of all I was a bit too late and had to rush setting up to catch the remaining light, second of all it was cloudy and third of all the lights in top of the main tower were not lit. I was happy I went anyway as I could test my new tripod (Manfrotto 190CXPro3), so I shot some images. One of the results you can see above. I will definitely come back to this location under better conditions, i.e. clear sky and with a bit of luck with the lights lit in top of the tower. I will keep you posted.
On my way back I crossed the bridge towards the old city (Gamla Stan) and experimented a bit more with long shutter times while the traffic was rushing underneath me. Here is the result.
The new Manfrotto was a pleasure to use. It was easy to carry, quick to setup and I just love the new ballhead which gives me the ease of use I was looking for in a tripod.
The only thing that remains now is that I do not wait another year until I take out my camera in my home town.
by René Timmermans | Aug 27, 2010 | Photography
This summer we spent a week at the west coast of Sweden, near Falkenberg in the province of Halland to be exact.
The weather forecast promised sunshine and warmth, so we packed our camping gear and headed westbound… and we were not the only ones. The various campsites were completely packed with caravans, mobile homes and tents, and most campsites had a big sign “FULL” in front of their reception house. Stupid enough we had not pre-booked a place, so we drove from campsite to campsite to find an available spot. Eventually we were lucky and were given a good spot on a campsite with good facilities.
We had some wonderful days, the weather was indeed great and during the days we relaxed. In the evenings I took my camera and headed for the coastline. In front of our campsite was an interesting seaside with some spectacular sunset views. The rocks at the shore made some good foregrounds to bring some depth into the photos. The two photos in this post were taken during the same evening, at the same place, but in various directions and with a slight difference in time.
We enjoyed ourselves until the weather changed… a storm came with heavy rains and strong winds. Spending time in a tent is fun when it is about 20+ (C) degrees with sunshine, but the fun quickly disappears when you need to hang on the tent poles and ropes to keep things in place. It does not become much better when you look at the secretly smiling faces from your neighbors looking down at you from their caravan window. Thus, it did not take long before we packed our dripping tent and went back eastwards towards Stockholm. In the car it was my turn to smile, because I knew I had some great photos in my camera!
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