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.

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On the 4th of September our friends Conny and Roman got married in Zürich. It was an impressive service and their party was amazing. Both Conny and Roman are excellent Salsa dancers and they invited a lot of their dancer friends and Salsa teachers to the party. I was happy that I could hide behind my camera, because the only dance I can squeeze out is the “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” dance Adrienne and me practiced for our wedding. Since this was a Salsa party there was of course no chance that they would play that song.

The couple had a professional photographer, a talented friend of the groom’s father. I offered to take some overview pictures that the photographer, since he couldn’t be in two places at the same time, wouldn’t be able to take.

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Like every year the BioMedical Image Analysis (BMIA) group of the TU/e, my former workplace, organized a weekend in the Ardennes for its group members. The Saturday evening of the event was dedicated to Markus and my goodbye party.
As every year the event was a great success. This year’s special activity was a GPS tour through Rochefort. The group was split up in five smaller groups and each of the groups got there own GPS device with way points. At each way point a number of questions had to be answered. It was a great way to tour the city.
For our farewell party the group had organized a “Who is the biggest Apple fan” contest. Which tested our Apple knowledge and iPhone skills. One challenge was that Mark would play a tune on his melodica and we had to find the link between that song and Apple. For example, he was playing “New York, New York”, which is the “Big Apple” (Markus got that one right). Next thing we had to do was SMS an incredibly difficult message to Hans’ phone as fast as possible (here I was faster). It was a lot of fun. In the end, however, Markus won first prize. A device which was much better than an iPad. A frame with a glass plate (an empty photo frame with no back). This device had infinite battery life, infinite resolution, adopts to the environment’s light, has flash support as Ralph demonstrated by holding a flashlight behind the glass plate and flashing it a couple of times. It even has face to face chat as he demonstrated with Tim, and many many more features.
My second price was a melon. Which was as good as a real iPad because, it also didn’t have SD card support, no USB connection, no keyboard, no flash support, no video camera, and no DVD drive.

All in all, like every year it was an amazing weekend!

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As a gift for our wedding my sister arranged a ‘special’ weekend away for or Adrienne and me. Special was indeed the right word. We were told to go to Dearsum in Friesland this Friday where we were given a tractor and an authentic old fashioned trailer. After one training round we were found qualified to take our new home anywhere we would like. We set out for Sandfirden to find a nice camping along the water. After about a one hour drive through the country side and small villages we arrived safe and sound. We found a great camp spot and thought we could just easily maneuver the trailer backwards into that cosy space. But it turns out that driving backwards with such a huge trailer isn’t all that simple. After one hour of trying (we didn’t give up that easily) it turned out that it was much easier to drive it forwards into position…
We uncoupled the trailer and spent the next two days scouting the surroundings on the tractor. The earplugs my sister gave us came in really handy for the long drives.

We had great fun and we would really like to thank everybody that was involved in giving us this great gift!

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It has been a long time since I posted a message on my blog. I have been very busy with my new job at Fraunhofer MEVIS within the Radboud University Hospital in Nijmegen. On top of that of course came the wedding preparation stress. All for a good cause, because it was an unforgettable day last Thursday. I will soon post a longer story with more pictures, but you can have a look at the pictures Elena Maier, our professional photographer, has taken.

I am very happy with the results.

click here to go to her website and log in with
Benutzername: adriennebram
Passwort: platel

In case the page above does not work, you can also find the pictures by Elena Maier on my Picasaweb.

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Yesterday I received a copy of Photo Digitaal. They printed a selection of my portfolio pictures and a short interview in this month’s issue. I feel flattered that they asked me for their readers portfolio, and I’m satisfied with their selection of the pictures.
Have a look at the scans I made of the magazine. The magazine should be in stores this week.

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This Wednesday a girl came by for pictures, she was impressed with my pictures from Vesna who she knew from a dance class and she liked to have some pictures taken of herself. For me this was a great way to test my new strip light and honeycomb reflector. I wanted to play with the lights and create something a bit more “edgy”.

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From the 19th of May until the 23rd I went to Saint Petersburg with Evgeniya. We had a great time and it was super to have somebody there who could speak the language. The only English I have heard from the museum staff was: “No pictures!”.
St. Petersburg is a great place for a four day visit; its palaces, churches and museums are all extremely impressive.

One of my favorite churches was The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood. The exterior really looks like none of the churches I have seen, and the interior, completely laid out with mosaic, was perhaps even more impressive.

Another really beautiful church was the Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. The interior is majestic and a walk around the dome gave us a great view on the city.

We took a boat ride to check out Peterhof, a great palace and sometimes referred to as the “Russian Versailles”. I think it is worthy of that name. The fountains, gardens and palaces were perfect. It was a pity that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside the palace.

Evgeniya’s friend Olga took us to Novgorod, where we visited an open air museum which exhibited traditional wooden architecture. It was great that she brought us all the way there (it was three hour drive to get there, and the state of the Russian highways didn’t make it a very relaxing trip).

On our last day we visited the State Hermitage Museum, an incredibly large museum that spans a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace.

All in all it was an amazing place to visit.

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Our wedding invitation had to be something special and creative. Adrienne and I discussed what we wanted the card to say: love, happiness, creativity, activeness, warmth, etc. We didn’t want to settle with a standard card so we decided we would make one ourselves. After brainstorming we went out to buy a lot of water washable paint. By using our hands and feet (kindergarten style) we painted the decorations of the card on large pieces of white paper which I used to use as a background for my photography.
It turned out that water washable is kind of an over statement. It took about a day to get rid of the blue color from my feet and hands.
The next day I prepared a studio setup in the living room and I took pictures of the painted text and decoration. After putting paint on ourselves it was our turn. Luckily we had Tomasso over for dinner. It was great to have someone not covered in paint to take our picture. It took about 30 shots and a hernia to get the picture we really liked, but it was well worth it.

The next day I sat down to photoshop it all together. I must say I’m really happy about the result.

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This Wednesday me Vesna and Tim went to Lisse to take some pictures in its famous flower fields. Lisse is known for the “Keukenhof”, but the whole area is filled with flower fields. It was a sunny day, but nonetheless it was very windy and cold (10C)! Luckily Vesna brought a wardrobe along that would even make a winter scene on the north pole look like a hot mid-summer day. After Photoshopping the blue lips and goosebumps, the pictures actually give a feeling of a warm spring day.

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