I bought a new lens today.. I am sorry. I kinda promised not too, but I did. But damn, what a lens it is! The Nikkor 50mm 1.4G lens is just amazing. I absolutely love the bokeh you can create with it. At the top of this page is a sample image I took two days ago of my lovely girlfriend. She’s cute isn’t she.. whatever lens it would have been, she would look good. Though that’s not the point here I also included some links to reviews of this amazing lens. Sorry if you arrived here and didn’t find a review, that’s why I included the links, especially for you!

Ken Rockwell: 50mm 1.4G Nikkor review
Photozone.de: Photozone.de with a good review
CameraLabs: Another good review

Last saturday I had a great day! I participated in the “Worldwide Photo Walk” which is organized annually by Scott Kelby. This was my first year to join, but definitely not the last! Worldwide in over a 1000 cities people gather and go out to shoot their city. It’s an amazing concept. I joined the walk in my hometown, Amsterdam. We had great fun and captured some very nice pictures. Below are some of the pictures that I took.

Some more info about the concept can be found here: Worldwide Photo Walk
Pictures taken during the Amsterdam walk can be found in this Flickr group.
Pictures taken in other cities can be found in the group created by Scott himself.

Click the images to view them large and on black!

Last february I went to New York. It was the second time this huge city welcomed me. The first time I went was a couple of years ago, together with my girlfriend. This time I went with all the people I work with. It was an amazing trip. We had so much fun and did the most extraordinary things. Of course I brought my camera (who goes to New York without one?!!?).

Check out some of the pictures I took below.
Click on the images to see them large and on black!

Hope you liked the pictures. If you do, please feel free to comment below, post to twitter or facebook or subscribe to my RSS feed

The last couple of weeks it has been fabulous weather in Amsterdam. This ment the flowers and plants on our roof terrace grew like crazy! My lovely girlfriend has been hating the fact that all of our plants keep dying on us, so she decided it was time for some maintenance

Behold, the life on our roof terrace…

Hope you liked this series and having a peak on our roof terrace. Let me know what you think! Oh, before I forget.. the feet in the picture are mine. A little dirty I know.. been walking on flip flops a lot lately

Last sunday we played Spain in the final of the World Championship 2010. Sadly we lost, though being second in this amazing tournament still seems like a damn good reason to celebrate So that’s what we did today (13-07-2010). Below are some pictures I took while waiting for the boys to pass through the canals of Amsterdam.

Click on the images for a large version on black!

Well that’s it. Some pictures taken during a great day! Really really enjoyed it and almost forgot we ended up as a runner-up

The guys over at fstoppers.com did a fashion shoot with just an iPhone 3GS. The reason for this is that they wanted to prove that taking good pictures doesn’t rely on the gear you own, but it’s you, the photographer who creates either a great picture or an awful one.

Today I’m going to prove to you, that this isn’t about having good camera equipment…

— Lee Morris

My workflow with Adobe Lightroom 3

So let’s start with my workflow. The first thing I do is get those pictures on my macbook pro (MBP). I usually do this by connecting the camera to my MBP, but you could also use a card reader. During this import I do two things.

• Add shoot specific keywords
• Add copyright information to my files (I created a simple template for this in Lightroom)

Lightroom import dialog

After all the pictures are transferred to my MBP I start making backups. I can’t stress this enough. Backups really need to be made before anything else happens! My backups are stored in two ways. I use a 500GB Western Digital Passport Essential in conjunction with Apple’s Time machine for the first backup. Next to that I have a ReadyNas Duo with two 2TB drives which are configured in RAID 1. This means that all data is stored on both drives, giving me 2TB of mirrored data. Together with the WD Passport I have a total of three backups next to the version that lives on my MBP. For security purposes the WD Passport should be stored at a different location, just in case my home burns down.

After the whole backup proces has been taken care of, I can actually start with arranging the files in Lightroom. First I take a quick look through all the imported pictures, deleting the obvious bad ones (press X) and flag the keepers/picks (press P). I do this while going into full screen mode (Shift Tab) and making the background dark (press L twice). Also make sure you have Caps Lock switched on, because with every X or P you choose, you automatically move to the next picture. At this stage I try not to spend more than 3 seconds a photo. When done with all pictures, I make a collection out of al the keepers and call it “Picks”.

Notice that in the new collection “Picks” all the flags are gone. This allows me to go through all the keepers for a second selection round. What I do now is select a certain set of pictures which are similar. I press the N key to get a view with all selected pictures. This way I can determine which one is going and which one is staying. The collection I make out of all the second round keepers are put together in a collection named “Selects”.

Judgement view in Adobe Lightroom

Depending on how many pictures I started with and how well the shoot went, I have around 20 to 50 pictures in the “Selects” collection. These are the pictures that get edited, go to a client, or maybe even work it’s way into my portfolio.

Great photographers and their workflow

I came across some links that contain information about the workflow of some great photographers. Scott Kelby talks about his workflow for travel photography. Chase Jarvis shows us the way he uses backups to make sure he never loses data and Thomas Hawk talks gives us a great example of his workflow. Go check it out!

So that’s it. Care to share your workflow or comment on mine? Please do so

Photographer Ryan Schude reveals the amazing lighting setup he used for shooting photograph “The Diner”. With his guest post on Scott Kelby’s blog he shows the world how to do some advanced lighting. With the use of 24 light sources this really should be called advanced Check out the video and his website for some great photography! Also included after the video is the lighting setup in bird’s eye view.

It’s a large scene that is set in motion, that we freeze…

— Ryan Schude

Lighting Setup The Diner by Ryan Schude

Well known and respected photographer Chase Jarvis did a campaign for Sandisk, the producer of many memory cards we use in our cameras. In order to deliver a good result he was asked to shoot with a wide range of cameras. From point and shoots, to the highest end gear you can get your hands on today. While doing so, he delivers some great tips on how to get great images on a budget. Check it out!

I came across this guy last week, Kilian Martin. He performs absolutely amazing skateboard tricks. I never knew that the things he is doing were even possible on a skateboard This brings me to something else. I would love to do a shoot with some of you skate boy/girls out there. So if you live close to Amsterdam, let me know and maybe we can get together to create some great shots!