It is project time. Outside is cold and windy so I open my computer and go to DPS (digital photography school) for ideas. A few weeks ago I had seen an awesome picture and wanted to know what this photographer had done. Basically he had taken pictures of bubbles with a macro lens. Since I have no macro lens I'll have to settle with my zoom. Therefore my results will be different. I also tried the set up with umbrella flash, but the lighting in the bedroom was going to be enough.

So out to the store for straws. Back home put soap in a cup and blow bubbles. I had two cups set up, one with some water added and one with hardly any water added for different sizes in bubbles. Put a black t-shirt out for background and voila see the results below.

Vanvouver Canada

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Beijing wonderland

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Colourful Canada

Dear Reader,

In October of 2009 I visited a friend in Vancouver and brought my trusty Pentax camera with me. Living in Beijing makes me long for colours. Spring and fall are very short (2-3 weeks) and I feel colour deprived in the big city. I am from a country that has lots of green and my favourite seasons are spring and fall because of the range of coulrs you see around. It was my first time visiting Canada and I have heard many stories about the beautiful maple leaves in the fall, but I also realized I was not going to visit the east coast which is known for the maple leaves, but what I did not realize was that Vancouver is actually located in a rainforest. From the moment I got off the plane till the day I had to return to China I had my eyes open in amazement. The variety of colours is just stunning and although I tried to capture the variety it is just not the same as seeing it with your own eyes. In the pictures I attached below you will see I have tried to not limit my composition to one colour or tree. Instead of using my prefered 28-300mm lens I actually switched to my 18-50mm lens so I was able to get broader views and therefore more colour in one frame.

I hope you enjoy the beautiful vistas of the west.

A/M

The world under snow

Dear reader,

These next few pictures are not going to be remarkable at all. I am a snow lover and living in Beijing doesn't give me the opportunity to see a lot of it. Even when I lived at home (in The Netherlands) we were not blessed with a lot in general, but this year seems to have been crazy all over. Europe has been getting the biggest dump in forever and so has North America. Well Beijing is following. It may have been seeded it may not have been, who knows, but it doesn't take away the fact that there is a lot of white stuff out there now. Since It snowed heavily on Sunday and I have to get back to work on Monday I only had the time during my lunch break to go out. This means no nice, fancy, big pentax camera for me this time since it's too much lugging around, but my slim coolpix camera (nikon) that I acrry around in my purse for emergencies.


I hope you enjoy the snow as much as I do.

Christmas lights

Dear reader,

After reading a post on strobist (here at Blogger) on how to capture Christmas lights I decided to go out and give it a shot myself. Only one problem arose and a big one at that. Most places here in Beijing think that the lights do not need to be turned on till it's pich black dark outside (which would be 5pm) and that is catastrophic for the photographer. Strobist is telling us that you can only catch great lighting for about 10min and that is at around dusk. So much for me and experimenting. But I am not giving up and shifted my point of focus to a different new technique (for me that is) which is zoom photography. You take a point of interest and zoom in while taking the picture. Since it is difficult for me to set the aperture right I decided to use my TV function (shutter speed manual and aperture auto) and set it to "1. Keep your camera steady, point, shoot and zoom while the picture is beijing taken. For some swirl effect try twisting the camera 45 to 90 degrees or so.

See here the result.

End of the line - lost in Beijing

Dear friends and visitors,

This blog will not be me talking about trivial things that keep us all busy (I hope), but about sharing what I have learned and will learn about photography. I am not claiming to be....wait let's rephrase this....I am by far not an amazingly great photographer. I am simply someone who loves to go out and capture the city I live in, my travels and now als my friends through the lens of my camera. I feel comfortable looking through the view finder of my Pentax and shutting out the world around me.

My first entry here will be some picture of an assigment I assigned to myself. Last weekend I went out with the photography club I recently joined (BeijinGX). The purpose was to have an outing called 'the end of the line'. We hopped on the Beijing subway and went to line 8 (also known as the 'Batong' line) and went to the last stop, called 'Tuqiao'. Since we would be a bit out of the city I was hoping to find wasteland, ruins and torn down walls because it would be a great surrounding for an idea that had formed in my head. I had promised my friend's 13-year-old daughter that I would take some portraits of her and asked her to join me on this excursion. The assignment: Lost in Beijing.

I hope that these pictures are giving you the feeling that this 13-year-old girl is trying to find her way back.