I’m not a person who gets very excited when photographing birds probably because I hardly even can come up with interesting and unique ideas and composition concepts for photography which includes birds. Therefore, I have a standard rule in such situations: make it scary and mysterious. That’s what I did when I was in Poland for my winter holidays. There were so many seagulls that I couldn’t pass them by without taking few pictures. If you visited you would know what I mean. The sheer population of the birds makes people who rarely take photos reach for their iphone 4, disposable or digital camera to take a few snaps. They are impressive, and beautiful. I have to admit that I’m not extremely happy with this photos but at the same time I don’t think that they are too bad – so I would like to share them with you

I hope to have time for another Brussels Photo Walk soon, so feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested in joining!

My father took me to Wisloujscie Fortress (you can read about it here ) on a beautiful but very windy day. There was a watch tower used to observe whether any enemies tried to enter land from the sea. Although the view was beautiful, I couldn’t stay there for more than 5 minutes because of extremely cold wind. So I quickly snapped few pictures and went back down. The result you can see attached to this post: ‘When dark clouds take over the sky’.

Low-key lighting is a style of lighting in photography and can be seen as an opposite to high-key lighting. Low-key lighting provides higher contrast to a picture and the controlling color of a picture is black. Low-key lighting provides an opportunity to highlight only the contours of a subject or an object and to use fill light or a reflector to illuminate shadow areas in order to control the contrast.

I met with some of my university friends for a small reunion in November 2009. I hadn’t seen one of them, Anna, for a long time because she spent considerable amount of time in Alaska in the past few years. During one of the conversations, I heard that Anna plays a guitar and without much hesitation, I grabbed a guitar from a corner and I handed it over to her.

The result are those low-key lighting portrait pictures, which create mystery and at the same time focus light on particular subject within a picture – in this case a musician and her instrument. I didn’t use a reflector for these pictures, just SB-900 SpeedLight.

The first impression of the city on me was crushing – I got a kind of a ‘city shock’ after moving from a small city like Maastricht to a much much bigger one like Brussels. I have to admit that it took a couple of weeks before the shock went away…actually I don’t this is gone completely because it’s hard for me to acquire my photography spirit/creativity back at the moment Hopefully the situation is going to change soon because tomorrow I have a photo session at a customer’s place.

I’m also looking for a place for a photo studio in Brussels and I hope I will find something soon. Although my hopes are much easier than the reality because I don’t have enough money to rent or even buy a place for a studio but I hope to meet someone who will be kind enough to enable me to use some space for free. I will also have to make some new photo equipment purchases by the end of this year and get my equipment insured. The latter is quite important because I had some bad experience in the past when I wished to have insurance for photo equipment. It looks like I will have lots of expenses in the future for all that but I will have prioritize with them because I don’t have enough money at the moment.

Today’s picture: It’s a typical low-key picture and I tried to be creative with it as for my first picture from Brussels. It’s a view from my living room and if you look closely, you can see my ghostly posture on the right.

The main problem I have in making my decision is with two things: the light reflector and the tripod. I will definitely shoot some portrait pictures but I won’t have an assistant with me to hold the reflector (well an option is to ask a model to hold a reflector when you take a picture of a face only but never mind). Decision #1: the light reflector stays at home.

Second thing: the tripod. I have a relatively small Giotto tripod…but…will I need it? Hmm… might be useful to put flash speedlight on it and position the light source appropriately. However, there is a ‘but’: I will take pictures outdoor and it could be a great opportunity for me to work and experiment with natural light sources. Besides, I don’t see myself carrying a tripod. HA! Poland! It would be stolen probably anyway! Decision #2: the tripod stays at home.

That was quick decision-making process! What’s it?

I have come up with my new photography motto or saying: “I don’t take pictures. I just try to capture the past”

Now about the picture. I dug out few old pictures taken still with my old SLR (yes, there is no “D” in front of it so it’s not a Digital one) – Minolta 505si – old, good traditional 35mm film camera. There will be posts called “From the Attic”, which means that these will be some old pictures, most of them taken with this old camera.

Unfortunately, sometimes unexpected situations or photo sessions mean that you might not have all the necessary equipment with you. But at the same time it doesn’t make much sense to take all the equipment with you all the time – the most important are the camera, your eyes and creativity..ohh.. and a subject for pictures. Some of you might notice that the use of a light reflector for some pictures could be handy, especially in such light. Here comes the second important rule of portrait photography: never, I mean NEVER, take portrait pictures in strong sun (unless you want to create a special mystery in pictures by tweaking them in post-production). Strong light/sun creates lots of contrast in pictures and some features typical for portraits will be either gone, exaggerated or just a customer will be very dissatisfied from the final result because he or she won’t look natural in the pictures.

What is particularly interesting about Josine as a model and in this set of pictures are two things: eyes and curly hair. I tried to concentrate on these features since it was NOT a real portrait photo session. Why? I believe that for a portrait session or portrait pictures, you need to have a person in his/her natural environment (work, home, etc). Therefore, portraits are not only about a person, but also about the environment in which a person operates, lives, works, etc. In portraits, a person is complemented with the surrounding, which provides additional information about the person. Only such portraits establish well the image of a person.

For the time being, the extract with few selected pictures of Josine are below. You can find all the pictures on my Flickr account here