I have attended around 3-4 workshops on studio lighting and model photography. When I was thinking about joining another workshop, it struck me that I had almost everything I needed myself to take these kind of pictures. I had the lights, the camera, a model, and after reading so many websites and books and attending workshops I believed I had the knowledge as well.
The only thing that I didn’t have was a beautiful venue. Most of the workshops were held in a large studio with props, or a fancy hotel room. My own living room was fine for even-colored backgrounds, like the shots you have seen on my website before, but this was becoming a bit too boring as a backdrop for my pictures. I contacted one of the workshop organizers and asked him wether he made special arrangements for his hotel room shoots. He told me that he just rented a suite for the day in a hotel of his liking. I could do that…
So I contacted the Art Hotel, a new hotel which was recently opened here in Eindhoven, and asked them for the possibilities. They could rent me a room for a reduced price, as long as I would be out at six. I went to the hotel to have a look at their suites and chose their “bridal suite” with jacuzzi.
Vesna was willing to model for me and I also invited Paulo, her boyfriend, to come along to help out and take some pictures himself.

After Paulo and Vesna arrived I started taking pictures and Paulo was admiring the room.
“Shall I already fill up the jacuzzi?”, Paulo asked. I thought it was a good idea, I had no clue how long it would take to fill it up so, yeah, “go ahead”.
A few minutes later me and Vesna were startled by a the spray of water and a scream of Paulo: “oh my god, how do you turn this thing off!”.
Within seconds the whole room was wet! The water was spraying everywhere, bright colored lamps from inside the jacuzzi were lighting the catastrophe which by now resembled the pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney land.
I jumped up and moved my equipment out of the way. The water was filling up the room fast and Paulo wasn’t able to find the “off” button.
I threw some towels at him to cover up the jets and started fiddling with the control panel myself. Finding the off button in the menu of the jacuzzi reminded me of finding the “change language” item on an old Samsung phone after you accidentally changed the phone’s language to Korean, well that, but during a water balloon fight.
After turning it off and cleaning up the room, we continued the photo shoot. I reminded Paulo that whenever you see a note saying “Let op!” in bold print, it most of time is a good idea to ask a native speaker what is written there.

Afterwards Paulo gave the term “partial nude photography” a whole new meaning, as he had to spend the rest of the day taking pictures in his boxer’s. Not as a punishment for his screw up, but because his pants were soaked.
Sharing these pictures with the rest of the world however, IS part of the punishment.

Even though we wasted some time cleaning up the mess, we still got a lot of great shots. It was great to test out my new Leica as well. I wrote below each picture with which camera it was taken. The Canon camera pictures are sharper, and have more contrast, but to me it looks like the Leica pictures somehow have “something” special, intimate and artistic.

I bought a Leica M8. For a long time I have been checking the internet, reading reviews, forums and user experience reports. Why were so many people that had a rangefinder camera so enthusiastic about it? I wanted to try it myself.

So I regularly checked marktplaats.nl to see if there were any good second hand deals. The prices were so high, that I forgot all about it. Up until last week, when I, while browsing some advertisements on marktplaats, came across a low priced second hand Leica M8. Still I was in doubt, did I miss something, did prices drop? I checked the other ads on marktplaats, checked prices on Ebay, and after someone on another photography forum also pointed out the reasonably priced M8, I mailed the seller.
The seller told me the camera was in good shape, but had some marks from being used. I decided to buy it and drove to Haarlem to pick it up the same evening.

I have been using the camera for a couple of days and I truly enjoy the picture taking process. Composing the shot with the fixed lens, manually focussing the lens, setting the aperture and the funny noise after you press the shutter release, add to the whole experience.

The pictures the camera produces are nice, they look special. As James Russell from Luminous Landscape said: “It’s like every time I shoot something with the Leica it produces a look of history or better put the photograph looks like it should have historical merit.”.

The camera is small compared to my monstrous Canon 1Ds and the lenses (which by the way are more expensive than their weight in gold) are a lot smaller since the camera has no mirror. This seems to be a great travel camera, and I can’t wait to shoot some more with it.