Last week I wanted to have a go at a new shoot with a promising model, Marine from Modelsoffice.  So I went out looking for a nice location and checked the agenda’s with my make-up artist Peggy Timmermans and stylist Bjorn Verlinden to find a empty spot…

Didn’t take long to find a date and last Sunday we had our shoot!

Marine, Peggy and Bjorn did a great job, only the weather let us down…  so we had to stay inside.  No worries, the location was really nice to have a blast!

Thanks to the crew… and as we said before…  see you next time!  The results were really stunning!

Saturday September 24 was the day of Stephan Badal’s Haute Couture show Fall-Winter 2011-2012.

The fabulous location “Elzenveld” in Antwerp was tailored for the magnificent event of Stephan and his crew.  The new collection for this Fall & Winter was showed and for the first time ever, Stephan had a male model in the show to present his fantastic suits.

A short impression of the show & backstage.

A few weeks ago we had a great shooting day @ the Rentaloft studios in Anwterp.

This location has an awesome range of possibilities for shooting with natural light.  The loft-building has lots of huge windows, which offers lots of light.  Also the light interior colors only add to the positive influence in lighting.

Together with Bjorn Verlinden for styling and Peggy Timmermans for makeup, our models Nathalie, Lucie and Tosca did a great job!  It was really a day with tropical temperatures, but the whole crew stood out and performed like never before.

For me it was a great experience to enlargen my portfolio with some nice shots!

With this post I would like to thank again all the boys and girls who helped me out that day:

• Bjorn, for setting up  some sizzling outfits for the girls
• Peggy, for making the girls sparkle and look really radiant
• Frank, for assisting me in difficult moments and providing some crazy movie captures
• Nathalie, Lucie & Tosca for showing your most beautiful selves and being super kind models

Many years ago, when I started out at photography school, digital photography was still at very beginning. No huge sensors, incredible amounts of pixels and everything in digital was really expensive!

Nowadays, anyone out there can afford a brilliant camera with enough pixels to print a wall-size poster! Is this bad? No, technology evolves and it goes faster and faster, you can’t stop evolution… just as life… goes faster and faster… time flies by!

Sometimes it’s that part that really annoys me, that everything has to be done at a really high speed. That’s why I decided to go back, and take time again for my pictures… think, frame, focus and push the button. And yes…look at the back of the camera to discover that there is no LCD-screen! Right, I was shooting film!

I decided to get back to the beginning of my education and started getting out with a film-camera again. A few months ago I purchased a Leica M2 and took it with me on holiday to see if it did what I expected it to do! No light meters, no nothing… only the sunny 16.   Also the Hasselblad 500C, it had to be taken on a test-drive to after all those years of digital madness.

As I wanted to do test on color negative I tried the new Kodak Portra 400 with my Leica and the Fuji Pro 400h with the Hasselblad. Why this choice? Well, I think the Portra is better suited for scenery, landscapes and vacation shots as the Pro 400h is better at portraits. The Hasselblad has his test-drive at a fashion-shoot, so portraits it would be!

As I can only develop B&W film myself, I relied on the services of Richard Photo Lab (California) to give me the best they could. And they did a good job! I certainly will have to get used to work with film again, but I think this was a quite good start for the first 2 rolls.

The hasselblad will be used more often again, the Leica needs a CLA. Some of the shots (at slower shutter speeds) lagged, resulting in a dark left side of the frame. But hey, the camera is already over 60 so a few minor mistakes are allowed. Only 4 of 36 frames suffered from the lag.

To give you an impression of the try-out, a few of the shots….  I can assure you one thing.  More of this will follow!

No editing aftwards had been done, only resize for web.

A series from my holiday in Rota, Spain, shot with the Leica M2 on Kodak Portra 400

One of the frames suffering from the shutter-lag, resulting in the dark part at the left-side (bottom in portrait stand)

And some of the Hassy shots, shot on Fuji Pro 400 H…  the sun was very strong in back-light so I took a risk, but it ended out quite good I think.

Last sunday we had a great day shooting some new fashion stuff for Bjorn Verlinden in the fabulous Rentaloft location in Antwerp.

With the great services of make-up artist Peggy Timmermans, the models Nathalie, Lucie and Tosca really were the stars of that day!   This time we decided to make it possible for you to have a look behind the scenes of this hectic, hot, but especially FUN day.  Therefor our super-assistant Frank van Durme made some video-footage which I converted into a small backstage video.

I hope you enjoy the summary of this day full of jokes and leg-pulling by this great team!  Really hope to be able to get back together soon!!!

The magnificent location of Castle Belvédère in Schilde (Belgium) was the location for a fantastic evening organised by Maserati West-Europe and Stephan Badal, fashion designer.

It was an evening filled with exquisite products, to start with the complete line of Maserati luxury sports cars and the haute couture line of Stephan Badal, presented in an overwhelming fashion-show. To complete the event, the guests where spoiled with an overview at the luxurious jewelry and watch collection of Baskania, with a taste of the finest chocolates of Pierre Marcolini, the best bubbles of Laurent Perrier, etc…

We had the opportunity to get a view on the best cars Maserati has in its range at this moment, including the Granturismo MC Stradale, a state of the art sports car.

All this elements made this an event never to forget.

A few weeks ago, I had a shoot with Tahnee, very good and nice model.  I wanted to make a few beauty head-shots and some “casual” fashion-stuff outdoors.  The weather was nice, so that wasn’t any problem at all.  Tahnee has already built up a nice experience as model, so it didn’t take much of an effort to get her where I wanted to be.

For the make-up, I asked the professional services of Peggy Timmermans.

A small impression of a fun day:

On saturday 19th of March I was invited to make a photo-story on the presentation of the Haute Couture collection 2011 of dutch couturier Stephan Badal.  Stephan Badal, who is  established in Antwerp, chose the wonderful location “‘t Elzenveld” (Antwerp) for his Haute-Couture show.

Before the show, we had the opportunity to shoot some images for the First Line Prêt-à-Porter Fall/Winter 2011-2012.  In the unique setting of ‘t Elzenveld, we combined Stephan Badal‘s collection with an extra detail:   a Frisian horse.  The combination of the stunning collection, the beautiful models and the Frisian beauty gave us the opportunity to create some extraordinary images!