Enkele frisse beelden van een gloednieuwe Blok K op Campus Sint-Jan te Genk (ZOL).  Blok K herbergt een innovatief thoraxcentrum voor hart- en longbehandelingen evenals 75 kamers en een ambulant centrum voor geriatrie en diabetes.  TV Archiduk  Ar-te Stabo (uitvoering Strabag Belgium nv)

Recently the Erasmus House in Anderlecht, Belgium had relighting.  Designed by Fosfari.  Here are a few impressions of the main room on the first floor.

At the end of september I joined Explore More for an into the wild adventure in the heart of Croatia. We teamed up with Croatia Open Land run by Kreso and Rene.  I took my favorite camera, the fuji X100T, to document the trip in the Croatian mountains and woods.  Make sure to check out Explore More or Croatia Open Land for more info about their upcoming trips and events.

Ar-Te en Stabo sloegen de handen in elkaar voor de renovatie voor het gebouw "onder den toren".
Hierbij enkele sfeerbeelden van de renovatie voor en na -  interieurbeelden in opdracht van Fosfari Lighting.

Before

After

The International Color Awards is a leading international award honoring color photography.
6 images were submitted, 4 of them got nominated.
Here are my nominated images and their category.

Saturday was a nice day: I came back from a freezing 3 hour bike ride and checked my inbox while having my energy drink.
An email was send by the Monochrome Awards revealing the winners on the website...
The 2014 Monochrome Awards received nearly 7000 submissions from 86 countries around the world. Winning images were selected by panel of international judges, including: Ted Preuss, David Fokos, Roman Loranc, David Johndrow, Stefano Brunesci, Tomasz Lazar, Dominique Bollinger, Andre Brito, Giacomo Brunelli and Martin Stavars.

10 images in 4 categories were submitted by me: in Architecture, Abstract, Fine Art and Portrait.
5 out of 10 made it through the jury's selection so I'm a happy person to say the least.
To see all winners of the various categories you can visit the Monochrome Awards website.

Here's a quick view of my winning images and their category:

Kom gerust een kijkje nemen in de open ateliers van het IKA (Instituut voor Kunst en Ambacht) in Mechelen, nu zaterdag 7 februari doorlopend van 10 tot 17 uur.
U kan een kijkje komen nemen of zelf wat workshops bijwonen van 
- fotografie
- edelsmeden
- glas
- keramiek
- boekbinden

Wie interesse heeft in een opleiding fotokunst kan alvast een keer komen proeven van de Camera Obscura op deze Dag van het Deeltijds Kunstonderwijs.
Zelf ben ik aanwezig van 9 tot 12 uur.
Tot dan!!

Over the years I’ve been practicing high dynamic range photography.  Especially when shooting interiors of abandoned buildings and need to capture detail in shadows as well as in highlight areas.  I don’t want to go into detail about HDR photography. I wrote some words about the technique in my book 'Lost In Time' I self-published in 2010 and loads of articles are online for further reading.  I do suggest you invest in (a) good book(s) about HDR photography, some titles will be posted later on. 

Capturing and post processing images takes a lot of time and practice.  A well-known software tool Photomatix Pro is a very complex, but at the same time a complete tool to achieve subtle, realistic HDR images.

Not every image turns out as expected after processing, I’m sure many of you encountered white walls turning grey, color cast in blue skies to name but a few…  Trial and error is bliss but in the end man knows what to avoid, what to capture and how to process to create a stunning image.

A few days ago I stumbled upon a plugin, a Lightroom plugin (and I love Lightroom) so I tried it out. The LR/Enfuse plugin designed by the guys at the Photographer’s Toolbox is a nice and easy to use instrument to get realistic images without the hassle of several sliders, complex algorithms and disadvantages mentioned above.

It doesn’t generate HDR images though but the technique is based on exposure blending and the use of multiple exposures resulting in realistic photographs.  For shooting interiors this is by far one of the coolest plugins or software I ever used and it all starts from the Lightroom library, excellent!

Check it out, don’t forget to donate so you can use the plugin for high-resolution files too!

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php

Next time I’ll talk about the new Fuji X100T mirrorless camera I recently bought and some handy tips or tricks regarding the setup.

For some time now, I've been thinking about starting a blog. However the feeling that there are already many blogs hampered my own blog kick-off. In addition I didn’t see myself as a writer let alone a blogger.

So why do I give it a try then? Well, because I tend to spend quite some time on the Internet, where I often bump on cool stuff. Regularly I saved the related URLs to be able to read them (again) later. From time to time I also posted them on my Facebook page. Unfortunately, I noticed that tracing these posts back on my timeline was just a waste of time. In addition, I realized that most of my and other people’s posts just get lost in the flood of Facebook updates, video clips, cartoons and food-related posts. Not that I dislike tasty plates, but you get the idea.

Ok, so I have to admit that this blog will be updated for personal use in the first place (ouch, that sounds so selfish!). Nevertheless, I do want to blog about meaningful things that are worth sharing with others and as such be able to inspire you in one way or another. Whether you are a photographer, a friend, a client, a die-hard fan or just passing by, this blog is for you! Then again, my apologies when not every post is up your alley, but I do hope you get to read some interesting posts about my experiences, thoughts or inspirations for photography or life. In the past, many people asked me about my workflow, the equipment and software I use, the places I’ve been and the ones I'm planning to go to... Well, you'll finally get to know and find out about all of these features while reading my blog. The message here is ‘sharing is caring’! Mind that I am auto-didactic, which means that most things I will share, are derived from my encounters with people or are derived from books, magazines articles or online sources. Of note, I definitely don't want to pretend that I am ‘the all-knowing photographer’, but I just believe that some of the things that raise my interest, might be of interest to others as well.

I want to end my very first blog by welcoming you all to my brand new blog. Feel free to get in touch and if there is anything you would like to ask, just shoot!

Jim

P.S.: This was probably my longest post ever as I'm planning to keep things simple, minimalistic, as in 'less is more'. Further I have no idea when I will place my next post yet, but it will probably involve a cool plugin that I recently tried out for Lightroom. Keep an eye open!