Friday the 6th of april I made photos of songwriters Frank Doesburg &  La Corneille. Last friday I made some photos of Sue the Night and Eland. The whole serie can be seen here and here.

Frank Doesburg

La Corneille

La Corneille

La Corneille

Sue the Night

Sue the Night

Eland

Eland

Eland

Arthur Tress make still life photos which are not as normal as most still life photos are. He doesn’t just arrange the objects in a nice way but makes them come to life as they were part of a play. During the making of his series ‘Fish Tank Sonata’ Arthur Tress was staying in a small cottage filled with collectibles and vintage items from the forties and fifties. These items fascinated Arthur and I wanted to make some still life photos with them. He wanted to use some sort of container as a setting for the items but he couldn’t find one. He went to some antique shops and eventually found a fish tank that belonges to the mother of the owner of one of the shops. This is how the series Fish Tank Sonata started. He published these photos in a book together with poems to accompany the images.

Besides ‘Fish Tank Sonata’ Arthur Tress has some other interesting still life projects like ‘Tea Pot Opera’ and ‘Hospital Constructions’. Have a look on his website.

Fish Tank Sonata:

Tea Pot Opera:

Hospital Constructions:

“uit de oude doos” is a dutch expression which means things from the past. In this category I want to show photos I made some years ago.

I made these photos in 2009 with an Agfa Isolette III, which was my grandfather’s camera in the 50’s. These photos were made as part of a small project called “Two makes one”. For this project I made portraits of some of my friends and nature stills to accompany them. For these nature photos I searched for shapes and feelings that represented the person’s personality.

One of the artists that inspire me the most is graphic designer and photographer Storm Thorgerson. Storm makes images for album covers in a surrealistic way. What I like about his style is that the ideas are very original and you have to look at a photo a little bit longer too see all the small references and the idea behind it. In the introduction of the book “Taken by Storm” Storm says “We like to think of ourselves as translators. The main objective is to translate an audio event, the music, into a visual event, the cover design. Our hope is to represent visually the music in its many diverse aspects and as faithfully as we can, although not always in a very straightforward manner. We invariably listen to the music in question, read and re-read the lyrics and talk in depth to the musicians about their work”.

In my own music photography I also this philosophy. A lot of bands are very happy when they finally release their first album. They put a lot of time, effort and money in the process of getting good quality recordings but a lot of them forget that the album also has a cover that has to be of good quality as well. A lot of bands just use a photo of themselves (mostly an old one that is of low quality) or a design that’s similar to the design of another band they like. But especially nowadays , when the music industry is changing a lot, not just the music but also the cover of the album should stand out to become successful as a band. I like to work together with a band to create more than just another generic band photo and dive deeper into the music to get an original image that fits the band.

In his work Storm Thorgerson uses all kinds of objects to translate his ideas and what I most like about that is that he tries to do as much as possible for real. “Doing it for real is our avowed philosophy – rather the computer in the head than the one on the desk” Storm says. So he doesn’t use photoshop to put a giant pig between four towers, he really lets somebody make a giant pig and put it between the towers. (funny detail: the wind was too strong and the pig broke lose and they even had to interrupt the the plain flights into Heathrow for a while until the pig was caught).

I really like that philosophy because it is the same thing I like to achieve in my photography. I also combine music and photography and also try to find an original idea and translate that in a somewhat surreal setting. The only thing I unfortunately don’t have already is a budget to create objects myself. Sometimes I have this wonderful idea in my head but I don’t have the means or money to translate it into a photo. So I have to think in more affordable and simpler ways to communicate my ideas in a photo but still keep it interesting and surprising. But who knows, maybe in the future I can start some bigger projects. But besides that, creating interesting photos with limited resources is also challenging and something that makes me think in creative ways.

In this post are some of my favourite works made my Storm. If you like it, have a look on his website for more: stormthorgerson.com/ And if you really like it buy one of his books to get a better view at the photos and read all the stories about how they were made. I’ve got “Taken by Storm” and “Mind over Matter – the images of pink floyd” on my bookshelve but they’re not available on his website any more. But the new book “The Raging Storm” should be just as good.

“uit de oude doos” is a dutch expression which means things from the past.
In this category I want to show photos I made some years ago.

Recently I’v been thinking about what I want to do with my photography and how I can find new clients. I want to start some new projects aimed at showing some skills I have which I can offer to possible clients. One of these things is Product Photography. In the coming weeks I want to make make a short series where I make styling arrangement of products I own and make some interesting photos of them. When I was looking for inspiration I stumbled upon this photo I made some years ago. It was an assignment for my photography study where I had to make an interesting photo with glass.

13:06

13:11

Seems like nature can’t make up her mind whether it’s winter or spring..