Those 3 days were perfect for me not only for ‘recharging my batteries’ but also to get some photography inspiration – the fresh sea breeze can work its magic. The weather was perfect. It was a bit windy but taking under consideration that it was only the end of March and the very beginning of spring in Belgium, it was just perfect.

Remember, everyone is welcomed to join a photo walk – you don’t need a fancy camera or photography knowledge. As long as you enjoy photography, you’re more than welcomed to join and have fun with us!

Remember to join our Facebook Group and the Flickr Group (links below) to stay up-to-date!

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=290912725588&ref=ts

Flickr Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/brusselsphotowalks/

By the way, despite the rumors going around, I’m still alive I haven’t been much active online lately (on the blog, Facebook or Twitter) but I hope that this period of limited online social activity will disappear soon. I have lined-up few new and exciting photography projects for the end of 2010 and for the beginning of 2011 so these new assignments will keep me busy for sure.

Why is it important to always have a camera with you? The answer is very simple and it’s common sense: you never know when an opportunity for a great shot will be. It’s important to have a camera not only in situations where and when you’re expected to shoot but also in random situations, like a walk, family meetings, going out for a dinner, etc. Having a camera with you allows you to be ready to capture a moment that will pass and disappear. Scott Bourne goes a bit deeper into this topic in his article “Capture A Moment – Before It Goes Away Forever” on PhotoFocus.com.

1 November (Monday) was a public holiday in Belgium. I took an opportunity of having a long weekend and I went to Maastricht (the Netherlands) where I used to live before I moved to Brussels (Belgium) in 2009. I lived in Maastricht for about 5 years, so you can imagine I have lots of good memories from there. Going back to the city where I spent 5 years of my life was a great experience and even a time-machine, if you know what I mean. I took plenty of pictures during that weekend, counted in hundreds, and it’s a great feeling to look at them now.

Fiesta Latina Festival takes place in Brussels each year and is a unique opportunity for everyone to get away from her/his culture and start discovering the traditions, rhythms, colours and flavours of Latin-America. We spent there with Norbert about an hour but we experience almost everything: music, dances, food, cheerfulness and the great spirit of Latin cultures.

As some of you might already know, I spent my summer 2010 holidays in Gdansk, Poland, which is actually not only a beautiful town in the north of the country, but it’s also my hometown (surprise, surprise! ). I managed to convince my friend to model for me (it actually wasn’t so hard to convince her) for a photo shoot at the seaside. I always wanted to do a photo shoot at the seaside

Although the shoot was in the evening, the light was still quite hard so we did few shots under a pier and then we moved to a little forest just next to the beach. I used Nikon’s SB-900 speedlight for all the pictures taken in the forest and also for few of them under the pier.

Why so late? Well, I’ve been quite busy recently and I’m actually going to be pretty busy with various photography assignments for at least next couple of weeks. Having said that, let me tell you what I’ll be doing this weekend: I was asked by the organizers of Antwerp Diamond Triathlon 2010 (www.adt2010.be) to be an official photographer for the event. The triathlon will take place on Sunday 12 September 2010 and will start at 14:00, so come over if you’re around!

The area near Brussels Airport is easily accessible. They are many roads, bike roads, fields, etc. and the place is very interesting for some creative shoots. But my attention quickly turned over to the airplanes. I was amazed how low they get when approaching the airport and I couldn’t stop taking the pictures. The feeling of a low-flying airplane together with the enormously loud sound of the engines was simply AMAZING! I can’t wait to go there again!

It took me awhile (being so deep in digital cameras nowadays) to realize that film cameras limited me by certain number of pictures a photographic film roll could contain (not like digital cameras, which can take from few hundred to few thousand RAW pictures, depending on the capacity of a memory card). The limitation of a number of ‘exposures’ (in photographic jargon of course) in film cameras forced me to spend some time and think about a composition of a picture, how to frame a subject, inspect closely foreground, background, double check the lighting and any other details that could improve a picture so that no film and frames would be wasted. This limitation of a film camera was (and for someone who uses a film camera still is) a very important step in the learning process of the art of photography and I personally believe that it still should be a part of the learning process of photography.

I think that digital cameras with their huge memory cards give us the freedom that actually does more harm than good for those who want to learn photography – we don’t take that extra time and effort on checking composition of a picture like in a film camera because we know that we can re-take a picture countless number of time and delete easily ‘bad’ pictures without any financial costs (as it wasn’t the case in the photographic film roll era).

I think I have found a solution for those who own only digital cameras and who want to learn composition in a way it was done before. The solution is quite simple: next time you will go for a photo walk, do an assignment for yourself or just take pictures, leave your 8 or 16 GB memory card at home and take with you only one memory card of 1GB or even less (the less capacity, the better; I just checked that 1GB for shooting 12.1 MP RAW will give you about 68 exposures). Depending if you shoot RAW or JPEG and how many megapixels your camera has, you should find a memory card that enables you to take not more than 30 exposures. And remember to leave all other memory cards at home! This way you will limit your gear but you will definitely expand your knowledge and experience in composition!

I strongly encourage you to try it out few times and I guarantee that you will see improvement in your photography soon.

Happy Shooting!!!

Article Picture: I took it in the evening with my Nikkor 35mm f1.8 lens in Jubel Park in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium. Jubel Park in a part of Parc du Cinquantenaire (click to see Google Maps). EXIF info: Nikon D90, Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec., f/1.8, ISO: 200.

Exposure is NOT the same as shutter speed!

I won’t go in detail but I will just give a quick summary to those of you who are still confused a little: exposure is the total amount of light that passes on a film (or a digital sensor). That total amount of light depends on the aperture and on the shutter speed.

Note: Some photographers use ‘exposure time’ as a ‘shutter speed’. Although this is correct (shutter speed defines for how long a film or a sensor are exposed, therefore ‘exposure time’), I personally don’t use ‘exposure time’ because it’s very much different from ‘exposure’ itself but can create much confusion.

Article Picture: This is another picture taken at the Cemetery de Molenbeek in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see google map). Previous one was posted with THIS article. I saw this statue while walking around the cemetery and I was amazed with it’s look. EXIF: Nikon D90, Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec., f/1.8, Aperture Priority, ISO: 200, EV Bias: +0.7

Again, the answer is quite simple (at least at first): The inclusion of video-making in Aperture 3 is because of the changing trends in the photography world and among photographers! Aperture’s developers have noticed (which actually it’s hard to miss) that more and more photographers start including video-making into their portfolios and services. I won’t elaborate too much here on the reasons for that and the specifications of this changing trend because next article will be specifically devoted to the changing trends in photography. However, I will mention just 2 reasons for the moment:

1) Market Saturation - the photography market has started to be more and more saturated with “wanna be” photographers thanks to the falling prices of semi-professional and professional equipment as well as to its growing availability. I think I should clarify what or rather whom I mean by “wanna be” photographers before people start jumping on me: I don’t mean young photographers who know what they do (although they still learn the art of photography) and know how to behave like a professional photographer towards clients. If you still wonder what I mean by a “wanna be” photographer, watch this video of Judge Joe Brown – Cheap Wedding Photographer.

2) Video becomes a standard in DSLRs – yes, if you’re a photographer and you’ve bought a DSLR in the last couple of years, there is a pretty good chance that your camera records decent videos. There is no need to buy an extra video camera. So why not getting new customers for video-making (and earn extra money), while you can keep using existing gear which you’ve been using for taking (or rather making) pictures?

Few real-life examples of photographers who have started or plan to include movie-making into their services:
- probably the most obvious is Chase Jarvis. I have no idea when he has started making movies… but he does and does it often with DSLRs;
- Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com – to me, he is a photography veteran (of course in a very positive sense). He’s been a long time photography-only Nikon shooter (at least to my knowledge) and only recently he decided to get few Canon DSLR bodies and add-ons to make movies;
- Eric Roy – a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (US). I spoke with Eric just last week and he confessed to me that he is going to start making movies very soon as well and include movie-making in his portfolio and as a part of his services.

Article Picture: “We’re Waiting For You” – I think this title suits best this picture above. I took it at the Cemetery de Molenbeek in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see google map). EXIF Info: Nikon D90, Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec., f/3.5, Aperture Priority, ISO:200, No Flash