The SE-R Project

Cool car advertisement shot with a Canon 5D. Look below to see how they made this video.

What is In Your Bag? – Part 8

Damon Webster is publishing a series of videos where Kristian Dowling explaining what he is carrying in his bag. He is a Nikon shooter and also tells about the lenses he uses in part 2 and 3. In part 4 he tells about the cameras he uses.

Part 1
 
Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The Making of the House Sonneveld Panorama

House Sonneveld is located in Rotterdam and is built in the Nieuwe Bouwen style in 1933. It looks very modern, even for today's standards. Since 2001 it is a museum house and you can visit it.

I visited this museum house during Wiki Loves Art/NL. During this photo contest the collections of a large number of Dutch museums could be photographed. Each photographer made his/her photos available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence. This way the photos could be used by others like Wikimedia Commons. The 10 best photos would get a prize.

Let me tell you how I made this panorama. I was shooting all objects the organizers wanted me to. Besides this museum I also visited the Tropenmuseum and later on the Verzetsmuseum. I was thinking that in order to win a prize the photo had to stand out from the crowd (one way to stand out is to give the largest number of photos to the project…click here to see my 314 photos which made me the top contributor :-).

When I entered the living room I decided to make a panorama so you could see all the objects in their surroundings. I assumed no-one else would submit a panorama. Click on the photo below to see the individual photos:


Normally the camera is put on a tripod with a panorama head to ensure the photos align with each other. However, the usage of a tripod is forbidden, so I took the photos ‘guerilla style’. This means you take the photos while rotating your body around a foot (in my case the left foot). It was a very sunny day and the orange blinds were down on the windows of the right side. You can see the orange cast on the individual photos.

All photos were shot in RAW, so colour correcting them in post production was easy. Autopano Pro was used to stitch the photos together. I was not sure to include or exclude the door on the left side of the panorama. In the end I submitted the photo with the door included, because it was my way to lead the viewer into the panorama.

When I won the seventh prize (see here and here), I was extremely happy, of course. I smiled when read the jury’s comment (translated from Dutch):

“Photo does good justice to the subject, beautiful panorama, disturbing is the composition on the left: the open door. The composition is better when the door is omitted". I am very glad they still awarded me with a prize!

What Is In Your Bag? – Part 7

Moose Peterson explains how he packs his bag in this video. He has a lot of setups, depending on the task at hand. You can read about it here. I like these explanations because I am always amazed how much stuff the photographer can fit in in his/her bag.

The World of Abbot and Atget

Take a look at this documentary of the photographers Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott. I have seen Atget’s photos in the BBC documentary The Genius of Photography, but I did not know that Berenice Abbot was heavily influenced by him.
The documentary is in English with Dutch subtitles and voice-over. Click here to watch it, or watch it below (requires Silverlight 2.0)

Dubai Metro

Dubai is building one of the most futuristic looking metro systems I have seen. When finished, the metro system will be the longest, driverless and fully automated metro system in the world.

The metro stations look like rail guns which fire off metro cars.

 

They also look like star ships docked to the buildings, ready for take-off.

 

Entrance of Dubai Metro Union Square Station.

 

 
Dubai Metro Union Square Station stair and escalators.

 

Inside Dubai Metro Union Square Station.

 

 
Dubai Metro Station at night (charging for the next blast?)