Pinhole Seascape Photographes

Posted on 27/04/2013 by gregor

Every last Sunday of April is World Pinhole Day so here we go:All photos are made with a modified Agfa Clack camera. The lens is removed and is replaced with a very tin piece of metal foil which has a very small pinhole in it. It’s aperture is approximately F/180 or F/250. This small aperture lets only a little bit of light through so even on a bright day the shortest exposure time on a 100 iso film would be around a second. When it’s cloudy, or very cloudy or when the lights starts to fade exposure times rapidly increase. Most of the photos here have exposure times between 2 and 16 seconds. During twilight exposure times can be even minutes.The AgfaClack pinhole produces 6x9cm negatives, 8 photos on one roll of film. Clack-seascape-14

Fashion designer Mart Visser for “Eva Jinek ontmoet”

Posted on 13/04/2013 by gregor

Mart Visser is a Dutch fashion designer, interviewed for Weekeinde/Telegraaf by Eva Jinek.

Photographed for deTelegraaf , with Nikon D800, 50mm F1.4.

Actor Thijs Römer for “Eva Jinek neemt stelling”, telegraaf.

Posted on 06/04/2013 by gregor

How Marijke Helwegen and I got in the newspaper like this

Posted on 11/03/2013 by gregor

Below my photo of Marijke Helwegen that appeared in the newspaper two weeks ago.

I admit it is a bit of a weird photo and what follows is an explanation of how it came in the newspaper like this.

Marijke Helwegen is known in the Netherlands for her work as a spokesperson for the cosmetic surgery industry. She is also a well-known socialite, she loves animals and animals love her. And best of all, she loves being photographed.

The set up with the photos that I make for “Eva Jinek neemt stelling” (weekeinde, de Telegraaf) is that I’m present when the interview is taking place, listening and hopefully hearing something that brings me onto an idea. The photos are always improvised on the spot.

The goal is to get a photo that surprises, is catchy, spontaneous, different.

We made a lot of photos like the one below here but I knew it there was too little going on for it to be catchy enough. I really had trouble with coming up with something in this setting that would give me what I needed. Marijke however was quite happy with it. She really liked the setting of the Amstel hotel as a background and charmingly steered away from all my small suggestions.

So when we were finished I said “Marijke let’s do one last thing, something funny, a joke”.

And we started to make some last photos in the mirror. I had no idea were she got the flowers from but I liked it. (She later told me she had taken them from a vase in the hotel lobby.)

The editors at the newspaper immediately choose this photo.

Photographed for deTelegraaf , with Nikon D800 and Quantum portable flash

More Photos from Myanmar

Posted on 28/02/2013 by gregor

It took me some time, but here are finally some more photos from my trip to Burma last December/January.

Usually when I travel I take a “snapshot camera” and my old Rolleiflex twin eye camera.The rolleiflex-photos will even be more delayed. I seem to have a problem with my scanner, an Epson 4990 and I haven’t figured out yet if it is a software failure or hardware…

So all photos below, made with an Fuji X-e1 and edited in Photoshop raw 7.4 with the VSCO filmpack 03 pre-sets.

Continue reading →

Some corporate portraits, zakelijke portretten bij Exact

Posted on 28/02/2013 by gregor

Here are some results from this weeks shoot at Exact with Hartmut Wagner.

Over the past few years I’ve photographed quite a few ceo’s and members of the board at Exact. We usually take about an hour to walk around in the building and shoot several different portraits that they can use for all kinds of publications throughout the year.

They have a nice office filled with lots of daylight and some nice spots to use as a background.

The picture below is an outtake but I quite like it, especially with the vsco software editing.

Some more photos for exact you can find here and here

Photographed for Exact, with Nikon D800 and Quantum portable flash

Thomas Rosenboom lights one up

Posted on 17/02/2013 by gregor

Here are some out-takes from the shoot with writer Thomas Rosenboom.

These days it’s hard to find somebody who doesn’t mind having his picture taken while smoking. It’s always the same, we walk outside for the photo, subject immediately lights one up. I like how it looks, the smoke twirling up from the mouth, the look in the eyes. I ask “can I make a picture like that” and almost always I get a polite refusal. Apparently it’s not done anymore. But maybe writers are the last real rebels…

Thomas Rosenboom smokes a sigaret during the photoshoot

Thomas Rosenboom, some more out-takes.

Photographed for Esquire, with Nikon D800 and Quantum portable flash

The photo of Mr Ed van Thijn and how it came together

Posted on 12/02/2013 by gregor

Some time ago I had the pleasure meeting Ed van Thijn for a photo-shoot.(former mayor of Amsterdam, and a retired politician)

As usual I was present during the interview to get a better idea of what kind of photo would fit the interview. I don’t always manage to get a photo that matches with the interview. Sometimes interviews are about abstract stuff, hard to capture in a portrait. But this time the one thing that echoed trough my head was his comment during the interview that he “was now more Jewish than ever before”.

That was something to hold on to.

But how to visualise such thing?

Nervously I started to look around in the room we were in…looked just like any other living room. Outside the daylight was fading…

While the interview ended and Eva Jinek (interviewer) chatted a bit more with Mr Van Thijn I asked his wife Odette to show me around in the house to see if there was a room or a place that I thought good for a photo. Although it was quite a nice house I didn’t see any inspiring corner that could suit as a background for the photo. Outside, in the garden, there was at least space…

It was cold outside so I figured the man needed a jacket…But I wanted a stylish one, one that was good-looking enough for a photo. I asked his wife and she helpfully showed me what they called the funeral jacket… To me it looked perfect.

“Do you want him to wear a hat as well? She asked. A hat? I couldn’t be happier. Hats and portraits go very well together…I felt the photo was coming together.

With jacket and hat we went downstairs and I told Mr Van Thijn what I wanted. Just a short time in the garden. With hat and jacket.

And so we headed out in the garden.

Since it wasn’t very warm, and light was getting dim we quickly made various photos.

The rose I already noticed during the interview. Somehow I knew it had to be in the picture even before I knew how the picture was going to look like. So when we went outside I quickly took one rose (with permission) hoping I could fit it in.

As a portrait photographer you often feel like that to get a better picture you very humbly need to persuade people into doing something that they don’t really feel like doing. I was afraid that asking for the rose to be in the picture like it is now would be too much acting for him, or might feel too weird, or just overdone but to my joy it was no problem at all.

(a red rose is also the symbol of the political party he is a member of. The rose in the picture isn’t red, but hey…you can’t have everything, can you?)

Ed van Thijn

some alternatives: red scarf, just the jacket and hat, eyes closed.

Photographed for: “Eva Jinek neemt stelling”, de Telegraaf. With a Nikon D800, quantum portable flash.

First Post, contactsheets and snapshots from Burma, Myanmar

Posted on 08/02/2013 by gregor

This blog is something that I was thinking about for already quite some time. And Finally it’s here! Thanks to Ulla Schirmbeck, who designed my website and takes care of all the maintenance that needs to be done. Thank you Ulla! ;- ) My goal for this blog is to provide some additional information on my photography, give some information on how some photo’s were made, to show other sorts of photo’s, and all kinds of other insights.

I thought I’d kick off this blog with some snapshots from my travel to Myanmar/Burma last december/january.

When not traveling for work I just take with me some rolls of film, an old Rolleiflex twinlens camera and a what I call snapshot camera. Nowadays a Fuji Xe1.

Gregor Servais Photography