London Aquarium
I visited the London Aquarium and decided to film a bit rather than take photographs. I lost quite a few takes because somebody bumped into me while I was filming… The place was really packed with people.
The video is CC-BY-SA.
2009 Favourites
I’ve picked my favourite photos that I’ve taken in 2009 and mashed them up in a slideshow! Some pictures in the video haven’t appeared on the site yet, they’re mostly part of the PAD project with which I’m slightly behind my uploading schedule… oops. August is complete now though! Check it out.
Let me know what you think of my selection for this year in the comments. Better or worse than 2008?
Photogen Fouermeeting 2009
This summer a handful of photographers from Photogen.lu met at the Schueberfouer (like last year) to hang out, test the rides and chat. I decided to film rather than take pictures this time. It’s fairly busy there and I didn’t have my shoulder-rig yet; my apologies for the shakiness. I still have loads to learn about the whole SLR-video thing.
Scout Vakanznomëtteg
Each summer the schoolkids from Pétange visit the scouts on the Prënzebierg for an afternoon of adventures and games. The scouts get an opportunity to interest children in the movement, and the kids get to have some fun as well as finding out whether scouting is something they’d like to see more of.
After my first attempts with DSLR video the day before I decided to practice filming a bit more.
Wedding: Stéphanie & Alain
On May 16th this year my friends Stéphanie Valenti and Alain Engelmann got married in Pétange. I met Alain in the scouts when we were about 10 years old. Sté joined the scouts a bit later; that’s where they met as well.
I’m glad that I could actually make it to their wedding; it was during the exam period at uni. The wedding was on Saturday, I traveled back to England on Sunday and wrote an exam on Monday. Alison had come down to Luxembourg with me. We were their photographers for the afternoon and their guests during the evening … although when I saw an opportunity too good to be missed I got the camera out again for a couple of photographs after the dinner.
You’ll notice that I’m on some of the photos from the evening, Alison took those after setting up the lights with me.
Réserve Naturelle Albert Hopp
In 2004 the CFL presented a project to add a second track to the railway line passing through Bascharage, Luxembourg. For the laying of the tracks and the underpass replacing the level crossing, about 1 1/2 acres of woodland were chopped down. In 2009, the works are nearing completion. These are impressions of the Réserve Naturelle Albert Hopp.
Arcelor-Mittal
This summer, knipser from Photogen invited me and a couple other photographers, mostly members of the Photogen community, to visit the Arcelor-Mittal steel plant in Esch-Belval. It was an impressive mixture of deafening noise, smoldering heat and a thick layer of dust covering every inch inside the plant. Not the kind of place where you want to change lenses all that often.
All photos: 5D MkII and 24-70 2.8L USM.
Update: I’ve added a bit of video from the trip, also recorded with the 5D MkII.
Thorpe Park
My friends and I went to Thorpe Park to relax a bit after all the exams. I took the Canon G9 along and made some videos, which I put together in Premiere.
Credits: Rakieta and Dom from Alterwizje Single by Babilon, http://jamendo.com/en/album/42291. My video and Babilon’s music are licensed separately under the Creative Commons “Attribution Share Alike 3.0” license.
Über den Wolken
Our flight route
Anyway, we drove to a field near Hivange, asked the farmer for permission and got ready for take-off. I had to help get the balloon ready so there are no pictures of that. We flew over plenty of small towns that I didn’t really recognize from up above, one of the places I did recognize fairly easily though was the Aire de Berchem (and in case you were wondering, no, the police car did not stop at the stop sign), the pig farm near the Kuelbicher Haff (the latter is hidden rather well in the woods) and the Mariendaller Haff, near which we landed gently in another field – this time we didn’t ask the farmer’s permission beforehand though
And with gently I mean that none of my camera equipment got damaged when the basket tipped over during the landing. That’s all that matters, my head has seen its share of bumps.The title refers to the song Über den Wolken by Reinhard Mey.
Fashion Show 09 Photos
My computer’s decided that stitching panoramas isn’t going to happen tonight. Instead, here are some photos from this year’s edition of the University of Kent Fashion Show, organized by the Photography and Modelling Society. We had guest appearances from the Pole Fitness and Capoeira societies. All the profit that we made has been donated to the British Heart Foundation. I still have to find out from our treasurer exactly how much that was but I think it’s something around £700.
This week will also be my last as co-president of the society, on Saturday we’re holding committee elections and a new team will take over. Ooh I’m getting all sentimental about it…
Fashion shoot: BHS & Burton in Abode
[The video may take a moment to load and contains strong language.]
The inQuire newspaper features a section on fashion. For this issue the focus was on suits, which we got from BHS and Burton Menswear. I met up with features editor Laura Harrison and five models in the Abode Hotel in Canterbury, who kindly offered us a common room and one of their regular rooms to shoot in. Alison Begeman assisted me for this shoot; since things had to move relatively quickly with changing models, scenes and clothes I needed someone to position the lights where I needed them and set the required power settings.
The common room had a great antique athmosphere to it. The furniture looked expensive enough to stop me from attaching superclamps to any of it. I was shooting with my 40D and the 17-55 at around 1/15-1/50 @ f/4 throughout the shoot to balance ambient and strobe light. I used an ST-E2 to trigger the flashes using Canon’s wireless system and the main flashes were gelled to make them match the colour of the ambient light. One of the advantages of the common room was space, I didn’t have too many problems putting the lights exactly where I needed them, albeit we moved some of the sofas out of the way. I used my shoot-through umbrellas most of the time, but I think it’s time to invest into a softbox to get a better control over the way the light spills.
As you can see in the video, the doors to the room had glass windows. A few of the guests that passed by the room stopped to have a look at what was going on, including one old lady who seemed to check out the models as they were changing… Still the audience was smaller than during the Varsity Poster shoot.
The second part of the shooting was in a regular-sized hotel room (the Cathedral-view room they were going to give us had unfortunately been booked that morning). With six people in that room space was more of an issue but I think it worked out alright. The only thing I’m not so satisfied with is the shadow that one of the flashes has cast in the mirror shot.
Terres Rouges
In late December I met fellow photographer Shantideva for a shoot in the Terres Rouges industry buildings. The model was my cousin Nickie. We photographed for a few hours despite the blistering cold (something around -4°) and incredible amounts of dust. There was dust everywhere. It took well over an hour to clean all my gear when I got home, but my camera was scheduled for a trip to the Canon headquarters anyway.
If you want to see some behind the scenes footage, watch the video, but keep in mind that I’m not a videographer
2008 Favourites
[The video has 23MB, give it a moment to load.] I’ve made a selection of my favourite photographs that I’ve taken during 2008 (with the exception of those which can’t be published.)
The slideshow is made using Animoto. If you’d like to make videos like this yourself, use vemwztgh as voucher code when you sign up to get $5 off an all-access pass.
Notes to the photos, in order of appearance: (more…)
Wedding: Martine & Mike
Martine and Mike are now enjoying this slideshow in DVD quality on their home cinema, as well as a costum designed hardcover photobook and an elegant traditional leatherbound album, all part of the coverage they ordered for their wonderful wedding in Mondorf.
UKC Summer Ball 2008 Promo Video
The Fashion Show promotional video which Lee Francis filmed for the UKC Photography and Modelling Society got quite a bit of attention. As a result, he was recruited to also film a promotional video for the University of Kent Summer Ball 2008. I was at the filming location, one of the exam halls at the UKC, to help with the lighting and to take some ‘making of’ pictures, which you can see above. Oh, and I also pushed the caddie for the zoom effects, which led to the Ben Hur photo (taken by David Cater).