The world trough the eyes of Steven vd Staak

Dear readers:

From now on the renewed and updated weblog can be found at:

http://www.stfoto.nl

THERE WE CONTINUE!!!!!!!!!

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Hello people, It’s been a while since I posted but let me give you a small update on all the changes.

First off, bye bye Canon EOS 5D. I sold it yesterday in quite a hectic weird day, and well I’ll miss that camera.
But a Steven without a camera? Not possible.
I’ve bought 2 new camera’s that replaced my 5D and 350D (which I sold a while ago). Anyway here some pictures and updates.

Here’s the first beauty of a camera. It’s the 5DMKII with the 100-400mm L IS USM lens.
I’ve already told you I bought the 5DMKII, but now with the zoom lens too.

I bought this lens, again, since I wanted a good tele-zoom with the optical image stabilizer. Why? In moviemode stabilizer is a must-have…. not a gadget. My rating of the 5DMKII? 5/5, no brainer.

Here’s the beast. It’s really an awesome camera and I bought it from a really cool photographer who seemed very experienced. Shooting easily over 10 year his enthausiasm was the same as when I got my first 300D some years back.
It’s fast and robust, the perfect field camera for me whereas the 5DMKII will be my studio cam.

Let’s get down to business, some new shots.

I liked the coldness of this picture..

Quite cold a well but it’s more the perspective acting weird, taken in Amsterdam.

I’m more and more working with lights, colours and backgrounds. Here I used my second computerscreen as background. I like the limegreen combination with shiney red metal a lot.

VW Beetje, just love it’s abstract shape.

Attempt at a product studio shot.

Portrait picture of Willem who visited me to learn about the 5DMKII.

Spider with a nice macro setup… click on it for the original photo.
Photo will load in a new window. To get an indication of size click here.

Another studio setup test.

Once again click on the image for a better resolution image. Was too lazy to rescale it and wordpress makes posts a bit narrow. I’ll look into installing a wider template soon, promised!

And let’s finish this post with some skateboarding. It was a picture out of a serie of about 11 pictures… It’s nice to be working with these fella’s!

Take care and for questions/remarks please leave a comment!

-Steven.

Hello everybody! Christmas is today officially over, still I wanted to share a picture I took 2 days ago… and thereby whish you all the best for 2009! Hope this will be a superb year for everyone! Anyway enough talk, photo’s I say!

We start with this picture. It’s special in three ways…
1: It’s taken with my new camera, the EOS 5D MKII.. And I love it!
2: It’s taken through my new 15mm fisheye lens.. finally fisheye! I wanted that feature since I had the 300D but now I finally have it…
3: I just like it haha!

 
It actually reminds me of this picture… and well I never posted it before so let’s do it now. This has always been one of my personal favorites.

To continue the series… here some escalators also at Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena. Also taken with the 5DMKII and the fisheye lens.

A toy bus, wanted to show my dad what my new 15mm lens is capable of… well…. this!

Then I tried a studio setup, I got some more pics but I keep those for later. For the primitive setup I’ve used I’m quite happy with the result. Sorry for the noise but ISO was at 6000 which is… awefully high.

This lens is actually less than 1 inch wide… so it’s a scale 3:1 or something. It’s a fisheye lens that you can put on a mobile phone… I’m actually quite happy ith the results from it… and it’s cheap!

One more from the series, by far not the nicest…but I liked the blue on the right. Somehow I look at that more than at the whole lens. Funny effect… I think.

And last but not least….

Also this post has been dedicated to all my friends and family who’ve been supporting my photography hobby over the last few years. And today I’d like to mention Hailie who showed me on msn why I do photography. She comfirmed it and that made me very happy. So Halie…. there ya go.

 Till next post… hope to add lot’s more since I got my new camera!

-Steven.

P.s.
Here’s a picture taken with my mobile phone in low light and with the wide-angle lens on it…

Oh….. and it shows some…. photography hardware! 6 bodies and 15 lenses…. Ah!

Hey folks… been a while but I’ve been so amazingly busy! Financial crisis aye? Anyway here’s some of my latest work, all shot yesterday in Amsterdam.
They’re a bit edited but not even that much… just contrast mostly and sometimes a color tint…. nothing contentwise!
Enjoy and leave some comments please, thanks!

The busstop where I had to get out, loved the symetry of the dark shapes.

The urban island amongst the cars!

Some random building, used a soften filter on my lens here… it’s a bit obvious. Also added some yellowish colortone but to be honnest I could have done that on my camera…

Actually taken at 17 mm, this picture is 10 pictures merged toghether to achieve the large FOV. (field of view)

The marketplace, like the bright shapes in this image…

Quite a long corridor lol.

That’s it for now….. I’m awaiting lot’s of new photography hardware.. amongst the orders my new Canon EOS 5D MKII.. can’t wait for it to arrive! I could have bought a nice studiobackground… (support for paper rolls) but I didn’t…. still not sure if I should have or if I made the right choice…. hmmmm!

Everyone’s going green these days. You MUST buy green products, must support green initiatives and you need to think green. So here’s my addition to the world’s polution problem by photographing green… Haha!

Starting off a bit in the style of my previous post, apart from the colours. Someway I’ve always liked OR old stuff OR abstract smooth stuff.

I’ll post the rest in order of shooting them… and tell the story behind it. This actually was all 2 days ago at around 2:30 or so… yes at night.

So first I took the abstract picture while sitting at my desk, then I shot a pic of these markers.

Of course I had to brush my teeth so I went to the bathroom…

After that I went upstairs and looked through the stairs:

Hope that picture looks not as dark as on this screen which according to many replies is calibirated too bright…

Then I went up a couple of steps on the stairs:

Just really liked the atmosphere and ligh-focus…

And here a combination of 2 styles: smooth, stylish in order, combined with a grungy old atmosphere.

After that I took a picture of some books:

And then I took a pic of the candle-dude as I call him. He holds 2 candles but one melted… he’s still confused as we speak…

Oh and I found out the ink didn’t get off the wall so it’s still there, haha!

That’s it for now…. Bye!

Hello viewers of my log!

Some days have passed and I’ve been utterly busy doing, stuff. Yeah stuff can’t really tell anything concrete. Oh of course: I had a birthday party. I turned 23 on the 4th of October. Made some cool images on my party as well but I might post them later-on… MIGHT *might mostly is not in my case haha!*

 I was walking the street’s of Almere after work, and saw quite some illuminated signs. I had my camera, 135mm Pentax lens and a new 8CF card with me to test so I said to my self let’s make some abstract pictures. These where the ones I liked most from a total of 15 pictures:

Black and whit logo.

From the same sign.

Funny when you look at the full logo it’s a plain OK logo. When you make this crop all sudden it looks weird and completely out of balance/harmony. I’d even call it wacky!

Cool detail the open “e”. It looks a bit macro-ish but well.. not weird if you consider the f-stop was 2.8 at a 135mm lens.

Looks a bit like a jaw or claw this way haha! Wasn’t a fan of the red line but if you take in mind it’s a very cartoony jaw/mouth… well you might as well see that as a tongue haha!

And a final picture with some more curves in there.

 Comments welcome, I know it’s something quite different from what I usually post but I was pleassantly amazed myself so I posted them.

Take care everyone!

Today I went on a trip with my recumbent bike. It was a nice chilly evening and I just wanted to shoot some nice black and white with large exposure times. I also tested a new way to carry my bag with camera on my bike and that went surprisingly well after some small modifications I did halfway there. I went to “de dijk” which is our beautifull “wall against the water”. I won’t get into detail with that, if you want to know more look up “flevoland”.

Anyway here the photo’s!

Here’s an image of my bike.

Here are some plants growing between the rocks.

This picture had an exposure time of 20 seconds, I was 9.5 seconds at place one and 9.5 seconds at place 2. And one second to switch places. Of course these are estimates!

Here the 2 silo’s, again. The majority will know them by now. Notice the planes in the back look like roads.. The effect was more obvious last year when I took a picture with this effect in London. Will try to recover that picture!

And from my bike… trust me you don’t see a lot when you go in the darker places!

Please comment with an answer to the following question:
Are tmy pictures quite dark in general???

Reason I ask is, I think my screen is brighter than other pc’s…. sorry for that if it’s the case!!! Will look at other pc’s tomorrow at work…

Take care readers/viewers!

-Steven.

Allright. For the following post please, while watching my pictures play the music from “Amelie” which can be found here:
Youtube link.

 Anyway here the pictures. I tried to go for very warm colours, nice flares and “glow”. The pics are un-edited, apart from the border, and thus came directly from the camera with these colours.

This is where my father works. He’s a math-teacher and here he checks students tests and give them marks. He can be found here quite often.

A quite old Dutch cupboard, this is what people used to have in their kitchen. Meel is flour and eieren means eggs. And there are some other drawyers like sugar, pepper etc etc.

Here the colours are less warmer and also a bit more desaturated. Still I love the sweet soft glow feeling from the 2.8 lens.

An oldfashion latern that can contain a candle, now it doesn’t haha. Quite desaturated and for the real Amelie feeling it should be warmer, but still I like it this way… it’s “broken” so this gives a bit more the less-happy attitude.

My parents bedroom again… I love the decorations on their bed. It’s also quite old… fits the old French atmosphere completely. Not too happy about it’s colours but hey as I said: no editing!

That was it for now! Ta!

Hi.

Recently I’ve tried some urban photography. Just the places I regulary visit with a bit of a dark flavour. Why? No idea really. Experimentation is nice I guess!

I went from work, visited Emma in Weesp again and started doing some photography. Here’s a shot I really liked because it’s really raw and cold looking.

Then I took this picture, really like the gradients and contrast between smooth surfaces and some really rough ones.

After that I went to the train station again to head home, and saw this strange wall. Would be cool to place toy soldiers, ladders, ropes etc everywhere. Or even toy-knights.

Then went upstars to the train platforms to discover my train left 2 minutes ago, and well grabbed my camera again. I like this picture because of it’s almost symmetry.

And then I just had to take a pic of my mobile. The style with the nice background really caught me. Was just playing around but I liked it so why not posting it!

Arrived home back in Almere, walked down the platform and took this picture, the only photo in colour haha.

Once again it’s the allmost-symmetry that cought my eye. Was fun to capture!

Walked outside and saw the trainstation… I think the atmosphere was quite depressing in the allmost night setting. It was also cloudy and about to rain so that wasn’t really cheering me up either.

After that I went to my bicycle, took this picture and went home.

That was it for now, cya and thanks for the comments and even e-mails! Very much appreciated!

Allright here some more pictures…. some are taken with a new lens  I bought. Yesterday I bought for 6 euro’s 3 lenses… quite a good deal? Well Pentax P-Wire which is, as most will know: old. But it does fit my EOS and they work as a charm!

Anyway here are the pictures:

Went to Almere Stad with a close friend, and well we had lot’s of fun. Sitting there at the waterside, watching various birds. Here three pics from that moment. Unfortunately I could only take about 10, then my battery was too tired to do more work. Lazy batterypacks!

Here’s another one from that serie:

Looking at the picture… did it poo?

Oh just so you know, this was taken with a 55mm lens, so this is actually very close. I believe the camera was 20cm from the animal posing like a model… nice! The swan didn’t bit me and I actually fed it some food.

Sorry for the size, this is from Amsterdam where I was with Emma. She also took some pics of this freaky bird. Guess not only humans love the fact the smoking of pot is legal in Amsterdam.. Look at the birds kids, drugs is bad for ya hmmmkay!

Another picture of my mate Joost in Lelystad… damn was a fine day and damn you for leaving to the UK. Come back! He went there for his uni… and he’ll be gone for 4 months.

And of course to celebrate our being-healthy-because-we-bicycled-60km we had to take a nice big homebrewn pint. Made by the… eh… pannekoekekoekepannekoeken-restaurant (or something along those lines… can’t recall LOL!)

Here’s a shot from the Noorderplassen. This was on our way to Lelystad…

And here 2 pictures from my parent’s bedroom… I like the soft style a lot… was just experimenting with the style.

And

I really like how the light falls, the shadows are great too and it just looks really warm.

That’s it for now! Enjoy!

Hello everybody!

Been a while, yes I know. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything apart from school and ING work. So here’s some pics from the last few weeks…. enjoy and leave a comment if you like

Here’s Joost sitting in Lelystad near “Bataviastad”. That’s a small place made to buy clothes and stuff. It’s really nice and we go there once or twice a year by bicycle. It’s about 25 km from home so it’s a 50 km trip. Really nice and I got some more pics from this trip!

This is one of them. It’s Joost’ bike in the foreground and my normal bike in the background. Why “normal”? Well I bought an recumbent bike. And that’s really cool. It has less to do with photography I guess but let me show you a picture of it:

Be aware this picture was taken with my mobile phone lol!

And here’s a picture of Emma. I like this one very much because she’s quite impulsive… and I like it that the focus is exactly on her eyes and her hands are blurred because of this. Yay for F1.8 haha!

And another Emma photo. Just look at her eyes… *sigh* haha! =)

This photo was taken on my trip to the Bijlmer, Amsterdam. Me and Joost went there to see what route was the fastest, safest and quickest. I work there (well not HERE) and want to go to work on my bike more often. It appeared to be 28km and I already went there 4 times now by bicycle. Quite nice!

This one is really subtle. In Dutch “weed” is written as “wiet”. This scooterbar thing sells really sweet drinks. So instead of sweety he called it swieti…. but with the “schaafijs” through the S and “smaken” through the “i” it clearly states “wiet” (so, weed…) haha! I wonder what this guy sells apart from Swiet ice-drinks!

More to come soon, already uploaded like 5 pics haha so stay tuned!

-Steve.

Allright here at least 2 pics I’m really happy about… so that’s good. Let’s start with them… Both taken with my EOS 5D and Pentax 55 1.8mm lens! I love it!

This was actually the 6th picture I took with this lens, when I saw it I instantly knew: okay that lens is really cool!

Picture of Almere Buiten, was going to visit a friend when I saw the sunset. It’s actually allmost unedited, of course I added the boarder and I made it like 3% lighter.
Settings on my Camera:
Sharpness: high
colours: warm, low contrast and quite saturated.
Lens: 55mm Pentax at 1.8 for the soften effect. So well yeah this was the result of that!

And let’s now post some reverse lens testing haha ^_^

This was a test using my old Canon 100-400mm L lens from canon, extended with the 500D Macro lens filter. Sold the lens and bought the 50-500mm Sigma aka “bigma”. Still was quite happy for the lens, but I think price/quality wise it just wasn’t enough.

Here another picture from the Bijlmer where I had to wake up way too early haha!

And a closeup of my bracelet!

That was it for now! Hope ya’ll like ‘em!

Hey!

Allright as promised some more, and I actually made some really cool ones today as well! So it’s not just a “from the last months” collection, no some recent work as well! Enjoy!

We start with Dennis at hist last day at work, you’ll be missed and I’m sure it won’t be as much fun without you. Good luck with your future man and we keep in touch. We deffo need to open that Bacardi soon during a movie-night!

Was for a test but the thing is… it came out quite artistic. Nice! Oh and don’t worry thing isn’t dangerous.

 
Really liked the lines in this picture and it’s contrast.

Don’t we all LOVE macro to see what buzzes around in your own room?

And from a brown lovely eye we go to a blue lovely eye… I got some lovely eyes around me!

See you guys next time! Probably tomorrow….

Hiya!

Today a bit of a weird post, it’s quite a random dump of some pictures I liked for various reasons… so here they come!

 
I really liked the coldness in this picture, but surrounding the barbed wire is actually the warmer colours… funny!

Pineapple! Just liked it’s colours and despite it has been dead for a while it still has something flower-ish.

Unedited, just a cropped it a bit that’s it. You can see me in the reflections.

I just love gradients on cars.

Joost’ guitar… we bought 2 that day and thanks to my negotiation skills (with some hints ‘n tips from Mark from ING) I got it for a REALLY good price. So indirectly: Thanks Mark!

You decide what it is…. would you give it to your girlfriend?

That’s it for now! Comments are very welcome!

Hiya!

Woah….. so much has happend since last post. I haven’t had the time to update the blog but I’m back. I did however use my camera quite a lot. I sold some lenses, bought some lenses… and well I got a new favourite, that’s for sure.

Bought a Pentax 55mm lens and eventhough you can get it for like 10 Euros if you look good…. it’s the sharpest and nicests lens I’ve ever used. No zoom but the F1/1.8 and the nice DOF makes up for it…. Oh and not to forget it’s sharpness. Anyway here some new pics… next few days I’ll post loads more since I already prepared them…. But not too many at the time hm? Enjoy!

It’s going slow, believe me.

Had to be at the ING WB offices at 7:00… this picture however was taken at 6:30 in the Bijlmer Arena, Amsterdam.

“The Bag” and well what’s there to say…. it’s mine. Hehe. Got it from a friend, thanks!

I liked the colours. Was making pictures of Nina, my niece and then I saw this apple. Changed the colours and the difference: From super happy pictures to this. It’s unedited (except for the frame…wiseguys)

Our lovely metal metro in Amsterdam.

HA gotcha… was wating for a drip and well it’s quite hard to actually capture it…

Nature at it’s best. When it seems impossible to grow: it still does. Nice job Mother Nature. Or who-ever controlls it…

That’s it for now, comments welcome!

Allright. I came back from London and just had one week off. I HAD to go somewhere. So a friend invited me over to Kyiv, capital of Ukraine. The following morning I was in the airplane to Ukraine. I had a great time there. Surprisingly I didn’t take a lot of pics and even some got lost but here are some things that made great impression on me.

Old Russian car in the street where I stayed. I love this pic it’s very cartoony somehow.

A very large and famous bridge. Notice the fences so you can’t go UP? Well normally you can get to the other side while going to the top of the bridge. Pretty freaky!

This is around the corner from where I stayed.

I just LOVE the colors!

In the kitchen with my roommate

The Dnieper River.

Again the brige over the Dnieper.

A statue in Kyiv representing the cooperation between Russia and Ukraine. Trust me this statue is BIG.

In opposite of the Dutchies at home: I had snow yay!

Part of a religious complex, old but still in use and damn I fell in love with it. I believe I saw some-one from the Adams Family… hehe.

And then I saw it. The Hind. OMG! Seriously this has been my favorite helicopter since I was young and then all of a sudden I saw it standing there. The guy also actually let me in and the first thing I said “yeah I take it”. Damn!

The very famous statue in Kyiv. For your information: it’s higher than the NY statue of liberty. It was even higher than it is now: the sword is cut off a little bit.

Escalator downstairs. These go faster than we’re used to in the Netherlands/UK etc but some are so long it still takes you 2-3 minutes to get down. They do play music and stuff and they look very nice so it’s an enjoyable “ride down”.

Had to take 5 pics with my 18-55 mm lens to get it all on the picture. This building is HIGH. Damn. But that’s one typically thing about Kyiv: you feel like an ant. It’s well impressive!!

And I couldn’t resist to make a cloud shot. It felt weird to leave. The city is so different from what I’m used to. Then the plane lifted off, I looked at the airport, the people walking there who would go by their car back to Kyiv or where-ever… and then after just a splitsecond we went trough the clouds. We couldn’t see anything but white….

Then the plane flew on an attitude above the clouds where I took this pic. Out of this dream, back to the Netherlands… it was very surrealistic to me.

And here you can see Flevoland…

So this was all from a traveling/photography point of view. But this whole trip wouldn’t be this great without Leo, Sasha and Roma.

But a very very special thanks goes to Nastya, she talked me into coming over and showed me all around in Kyiv. She told me so much and we had such a great time. I am really impressed with the way they live over there and how nice everyone is. Relaxed, serious and with passion. Not like most lazy bums we have over here…

Here she’s chilling in the kitchen

She always thought I was “silly Dutchie” or “Miester van de Staak”.
The others called me “Dutchie” or “Dutchie from Hollandski”

Nastya thanks for the great care and the absolutely great time we had!!! Hope to see you in the future and much love from the Netherlands to you!

From holland, with love. =)

Okay been VERY busy. Lot’s of things has changed. I am back from the UK in the Netherlands but in between I made a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine. This was a very impressive trip, made lot’s of friends and really needed just a quick break. I’ll post some more pictures of that later on!

 My internship at ING Renault F1 has ended after a long and succesfull collaboration and I’d like to thank everyone who worked with me, who gave me so much joy and guided me there. And of course everyone who made this possible.

At the moment I’m working at ING Wholesale Banking in Amsterdam. My first thought was “hm, from the Formula one team to Wholesale Banking…Yaaaawn” but they’ve proven me wrong. The office is great, the people are well nice and the work itself is everything except boring…. most of the time.

OH NO! Too much text! Some pics I shot YESTERDAY. Haha! Been ill for 9 days so… got bored:

The Money Pig.

The hook, got this from my grandpa, reallllly handy tool! =)

The Life:) simcard was from my Ukrainian nr…

That’s it for now gonna post a lot of pics from the last few months soon, I hop Cya!

Hey guys ‘n girls. Okay not the reptiles as I promised but here’s a post nevertheless.

 The daugher of a collegue of my manager (get it?) plays football on the American school of The Hague. Here in London at ASC Hillingdon they organized a competition for American/International schools based in Europe. So we had teams from the Netherlands, Germany England etc.

Anyway I had a to film there on the fields at thursday, friday and saturday since they went to the semi-finals. They did a great job and it might not have been the premiere league, it was exciting to watch. The girls made a convincing win with 5-0 in the first match and that was great. After that they made all matches exciting. Eventually they won the Bronze medal. Especially the last match was a killer. Anyway since my battery was being nice (out of power) I didn’t take a lot of pics but nevertheless here a couple of pictures.

The yellow player is from The hague.

A nice pass! (It arrived briliantly)

Nr 16, she did some amazing moves and passed any opposite player easily. Was well nice!

2 Opposite players coming in, but still she had the ball after this action. (And they where on the ground lol)

Yes it went out…

Aaaand pass!

Nice try nr 10 but 3 sec later she was too far and nr 12 passed.

Last picture, nice fight for the ball… they didn’t score out of this one.

That’s it for now, I worked very hard this weekend I must say, especially considering I was a bit sick after standing 3 days in the cold trying to stand as still as possible (in the icy cold wind) and that…. is not very nice. But it was fun to be there! Sunday evening me and Victor also played football because we really wanted to play as well! (Victor won with 20-19… it was VERY exciting since he was first in front of me with 9-3 but I managed to come back to 18-19 for ME but then he scored twice…).

That’s it for now. See what a nice internship position I have? Sometimes your filming F1 cars and sometimes your on the football field. Coolie!

Hey guys and girlies reading this! How’ve you all been? I’ve been great and I’ve been trough so much! So that’s why I didn’t update for such a long time.

 I don’t know where to start but since this is a photolog I just gonna post the new pics and give a small description of what happend etc. And I also want to tell the highlights of the last 3-4 weeks. Hope you enjoy =)

We begin with last sunday. It was Victor’s birthday so: congrats dude. We went to a random place by tube. We also used to do this with a mate in the Netherlands, but instead of a tube we went by train. Fair enough, here some pictures covering our day traveling:

Added some colors to the tiles, I like to do that, dont ask me why I just like it okay? This is also the place where we went to a show where they only sold stuff from Poland. We had a nice energy drink over there:

After walking trough that village (although it was part of London) we went back to the tube station. We had some Russian Delights, drinks and well we couldn’t find a place to eat. Since it was Victor’s birthday I wanted to eat at a nice place and well pay for the check as his birthday pressie =)

This was at the corner of a street, can’t remember the name of the street anymore… it was some sort of church building but smaller.

When I turned around I saw the sun getting lower so I took this picture:

At the tube station I made this pic which I slightly editted with 2 screens from work hehe.

Another thing that cought my eye was the condition of the tube stations around this area. While waiting for the next train to arrive I noticed quite some holes in the wall with cables visible and with huge traces of fire or acid:

As you can see the condition is kinda poor…

A good thing was about the location that they had some metal sphere’s so you can see what’s coming around the corner. We took this oppertunity for a nice picture.

AH well, then we went to a different tube station. We came out and saw 10 policemen standing there. As happy as we where we smiled and walked on. Then we asked where the nearest place was to make some fun, like a center or so. The nearest center was miles away in the next village on the tube line. With the courage we had we walked. Normally in the Netherlands between villages you have meadows. Here you have houses, houses and more houses. The area around London is 100% filled with houses. They’re all quite typical and most of them are quite unique as well.

Ah well eventually we arrived, and well came to the conclusion there wasn’t much to do there either. We went to the tube again, went home, changed clothes, went to camden town and then finally we found a place to eat. It was a nice Italian restaurant with nice people.

The day before we also went random traveling. On Friday we went out to Fabric so on Saturday (the day I’m now talking about) we woke up smashed and tired. Well I cam out of bed at 10 (smashed) and Vic came out of bed around 2 pm (funny as usual).

Anyway we started the random traveling at Barbican and went to Bank Tube Station…

 …and we came out at Swiss Cottage in the end:

And:

And after taking some pictures we saw the next tube coming along:

Then around the corner we went upstairs and my first thought was: sjeez they love dark greyscale ‘colors’ here! Check this out, it’s very dark and black-ish:

At least it was obvious that THAT was the way out.

As we moved ourselves up the street we noticed the fact we left house quite late for a ‘day’ of random traveling:

As you can see the sun was already going low at the horizon of Swiss Cottage. Oh and the reason the place called swiss cottage? There’s a Swiss cottage near the tube station. D’oh.

As time went by we walked and walked in the North direction, farther and farther from home. We went to some shops, aquired some forks, knifes, a ball and a new adapter for my mobile phone. After the shops stopped being there and houses where the only thing to see I took some more pictures. It was now getting proper dark and almost scary. Here some pictures of the houses:

And

And….

Houses like these keep coming for ours it seemed, and me and Victor just walked on and on.

Then we came to a nice place where some more shops occured. There we found a nice asian buffet restaurant and we had dinner. After that we walked to the other tube station called Golders Green. If you google for a tube map you’ll see we walked quite a big end haha! On our way to the tube station I made this picture, it really caught my eye allthough I don’t know why, gheh.

Then we got on the train, in direction to St Paul’s after one transfer at Holborn, and of course I couldn’t resist taking some tube station pictures. Earlier today at Golders Green I bought a book with photo’s from 100 photographers, this was quite an inspiration. There was a guy who took pictures of tiles and stuff but I thought they missed something. I tried to do the same and add my own influence to them:

And

Guess that’s how I look at life. People see dirty black and white tiles (if they see them at all). I color them in! Haha.

And here’s another pic taken from that location:

It’s quite funny to see all people go one direction. No-one comes back. They’re all doomed. Doomed I say! Haha.

Fair enough… then we walked out of St Paul’s, in direction of our house and we saw a nice Zebra in an office. Of course you’d expect it. I asked Victor to pose like he was at the zoo and he actually did it. Good boy.

Yes a proper office-zoo. Get your own today!

After that we went skateboarding and playin soccer at an empty warehouse, was really cool.

Anyway let’s go a bit more back in time now! =)

The weeks before where very hectic. Why? There was an ING F1 conference going on and I had to make some corporate movies for that. Also because of it being so corporate I can’t post them but just believe me: I made them.

Aparently I did a good job and I got this helmet from Heikki Kovalainen (signed!!!!) from our manager Isabelle. I’m VERY gratefull and it’s like a trophy to me!

ANYWAY

Now we go back another 2 weeks when my girlfriend came over. She stayed here for a week and we had a marvelous time. We went to the zoo, watched the final GP race in Brazil (well watched it in the UK). We did this at Mark’s place where also where some other collegues of work and we ended up tipsy (well they where tipsy HAHA) and tired. We went home around 12 and had a great evening.

Me and Annelies also went to Greenwich to see the GMT+0 line. It was pretty cool although I heard that the Cutty Shark (old ship) was burnt down. That’s sooooo sad!!! grr! I wanted to see it. Ah well we took pictures there, not too much but some nice ones:

I just love wrecked walls like that, dunno why.

Here Annelies and me where about to get home again:

And while waiting for the train to arrive we saw the sun getting lower and lower.

We sat in the train and watched the sun get even lower, was quite beautifull…

Ah well on friday we went to the London Zoo, I took some great pictures there.
This was a church in front of the zoo entrance, well close to it hehe.

The aquaria-rooms where brilliant. They where very dark and the places where the fish were in where very bright (well most of ‘m.) That was also the case for the lizards and other reptiles. So here are some of the zoo pictures…

We started off seeing a squirel:

Ain’t it just a fuzzy cute animal?

Then in the aquariums we saw Dory coming along from Finding Nemo.. hehe.

Dory.

There were lot’s of tropical fishes with cool colors. Check this one out for example…

I wouldn’t eat one of those though…

And there goes another Dory look-a-like:

But there where also other fishes such as this one:

And this tiger-fish (no clue what’s it really called)

Next to the tropical fish, there was a huge aquarium with ‘big bastards’. Them they where big!

And here you can see the size a bit:

See that’s no ordinairy fish-stick!

But next to those was also a small brave fish who thought he was a real though guy…

Don’t you recon he’s ‘the shit’ ?  hehe.

Ah well, also nice to see was the other seastuff like plants they had..

I really like this one, quite subtle and a nice collection of various types on a small area…

Anyway I got load’s of other zoo pictures but I haven’t resized them yet for the log so I promise I will post more reptile pictures (snakes and stuff) later…. some time

At sunday I brought Annelies to Luton Airport. Was a touchy goodbye and on my way home it felt quite lonesome already. That brought me in a strange mood so at King’s Cross I got out the train and just randomly walked. I took quite some pictures, here are some highlights:

This was some sort of old portal what was replaced by a wall. It reminded me of the old sanitarium game. That rocked.

Here I experimented with the same scene taken from a different perspective.

Then I walked on and I saw this chair. It was in a corner but very bright and lonely like some-one said on it and left it. OKAY that might be a bit too dramatic for a chair but still…

Then I made 4 pictures and I stiched them toghether in this picture. The real picture now has a resolution of 31MP (a mobile phone these days shoots 0.6 or 1.2 MP pictures…  hehe):

And I also made a picture of the tube, but from the other side where you’d normally take a picture.

That’s it for now. I hope to update it more often but I really didn’t have a lot of time. Some other important home-update is that we have a desk now at home. I’m very pleased with this since I finally can work a lot better behind my pc.

Hope to hear from ya’ll!

- Steve.

Hey folks!

Last weekend I went to the Netherlands. I left the UK at Thursday the 20th and came back on Tuesday the 21th in the morning. At 12:00 I was already at the office (and devastated).

Fair enough, I made quite some pictures when I went to the Netherlands so let’s post em up! hehe.

At Wednesday the 19th Linda and Maxime cam to our apartment, also I should have a pic of that but can’t find it so might upload it later-on

Anyway I had to go the day after it so it seemed Vic had a weekend with the 2 girls

Then I went to the Netherlands at Thursday, as said, and arrived quite late. Annelies picked me up and we went home. The next day I went to her work and it was really nice. She works with kids and they’re simply adorable!  Before I knew it I was playing along with them haha!

After that we went to a Chinese restaurant, walked a bit trough Amsterdam and visited club Meander to see Ravage Ravage, a very promising artist if you ask me =)

There I took this picture with my gf!

After Ravage Ravage there was a group called K-Oz Collective. They where pretty cool as well. Kinda a mix between hip-hop and jazz. Funky stuff!

And for those who ask how the heck I did this headache-creating effect:
Just zoom in while taking a picture. That’s all! So no running required!

The next day we went shopping and fun-making in Almere-Stad and it was good to be back there!

Here some pictures from Almere-Stad.

I hardly editted this one, I love the colors and the black shape in the middle…

The Hema in Almere Stad. This was actually a set of 3 pictures stiched/merged together. I really like the colors of this one. I added a bit more contrast and used a yellow filter but didn’t touch it for the rest.

And I couldn’t help it to make a picture of my girlfriend since she was shining in the sun!

Then at Saturday I went to do where I came for (except seeing my gf of course): I went to ERIK’s BIRTHDAY!

Here’s a picture of the partydude and Kimberley and Bridget on it as well.

Yes he looks much older Hehe was a nice party and I was overwhelmed  by the reactions of certain people to see me again. Seriously guys ‘n girls big-ups and much love to ya’ll!!!!

After that me and my girl had some fun days, but on  the tuesday morning I had to go home. We went to Amsterdam CS together, almost got a fine for having a ticket and no valid reduction card (wasn’t valid before 9am BASTARDS) but eventuallythe train-guy thought I’d be sitting in that train till schiphol because he ‘would be right back’.

At Amsterdam CS I skipped trains and well no-one checked me ^_^ hehe.

I was a tad late (well compared to the usual time schedule I have…) and took this picture:

Lovely innit? AND EARLY!!!!

Ah well I arrived at Gatwick a tad later and on the train platform I made this piccie:

During my trip home I also took this picture, Red Alert players will recognize this one immediately:

That was it, I had more pictures so expect an update very soon (as I usually promise)

And leave some comments if you read this! I want to know what people think of the pictures and the stories….. THANKS!

Cheers y’all!