Ronny Gabriels Photography

Lately I'm doing some trials with timelaps photography.  It's actually harder than I thought, especially the changing lighting conditions when you do it during the day are a real pain.  I have put my first attempt on my site (watch it below). 
I'm not gonna give up in trying to make some really fun videos with timelaps, but I think I'm gonna need to do some more research.  Hope you enjoy this first try.  Let me know what you think and if you have any more tips for me on how to control the conditions, please let me know.  I'm very open to suggestions about this.

The first weekend of June saw the highlight of the still very young season of the BTCS championship with the 12 hour race at Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Saturday was jam packed with great races leading up to the big event. It started with the European GT4 Cup. GT4 might not be as popular as the GT1 or GT3 championships, but it's a unique race nonetheless, since the GT4 calendar is not that packed.



After the GT4 cup, the Belcar Endurance race was held over 150 minutes at the Ardennes circuit. Not only did we see the wonderful Belcar fields rolling out, the field was extended with cars from the British GT and Aston Martin Challenge to make for a very large and diversified field that actually had to start in two waves.



But then at around 2PM, the BTCS cars got the green flag to start their 12 hour race. Sadly I wasn't there for the start. I actually drove to Spa twice that day because I had to attend a wedding reception in Mechelen in the afternoon. But I got back about two hours before sunset and I must say that it had something magical. The golden hours of the day did not only make for nice pictures, but also for a wonderful atmosphere. I had to say I was a bit disappointed in the number of spectators, but it was great nonetheless. I actually didn't shoot too many pictures of the BTCS because it was just a treat to watch the race go by at dusk. As always you can find more photos on my site. The direct link to the gallery is: http://ronnygabriels.smugmug.com/Public/Racing-Season-2010/12H-of-BTCS

Google




Microsoft

Besides some great updates to Hotmail, like for instance let you send 10GB of documents with one mail (the docs are uploaded to SkyDrive and then linked to the mail), the coolest news is that they finally listened to me and made some major updates to SkyDrive. If you are going ... "Sky..what?", maybe a little explanation is in order. SkyDrive is the online storage Microsoft gives it's subscribers (so anyone with a Hotmail address has a SkyDrive). Now why is this a cool feature? Well, because it allows up to 25GB of online storage. That's right 25GB!

Up to now however, it was a little hard to use, mainly because you couldn't download everything in a folder at once. So if you shared a folder with 200 photos, you either had to download each one individually, or the person sharing them had to put them there in zip files. Since the limit for one file is 50MB (to prevent SkyDrive from being used to share illegal movie files etc.) that wasn't always too handy either. I think I made about 20 suggestions to the SkyDrive team (as probably did many other people with me) to get a "one-shot" download for all files in a folder and now ... it's there!! You have the option of downloading all files in a .zip file or via Photo Gallery (a free program not unlike Picasa from Google). So now, SkyDrive has become a very handy and very easy to control online sharing platform that I will use much much more because of this update.

On the 24th of July Scott Kelby, photoshop guru/instructor, is organizing his third annual Worldwide Photo Walk. In Belgium there are already 4 walks to choose from. Antwerp, Leuven, Turnhout and Kortrijk each have their own walk already with Brussels or Ghent probably to follow soon. Last year, I attended the Antwerp photo walk and I have to say it's a great event. It's fun to meet people that are into photography as well and see how everybody takes pictures in his or her own unique way. It surprised me last year how many different types of pictures were taken on the same walk.


So the idea of this WWPW is to get 50 people together in each city and make a two hour trip through the city taken photos. After the walk you all meet up for drinks somewhere to compare your work. I'm 100% sure I want to do this again, the only question that remains is "where?". Of course Antwerp is the logical choice since I live there, but on the other hand, it would be nice to explore another city. Since Kortrijk is a little bit too far away and Leuven is actually very familiar to me, the choice now is between Turnhout (the city where I was born and went quite a lot when I was small) and Antwerp (the city that I currently live in).


Anybody have a suggestion? Anybody else going on one of those walks? I will be deciding this weekend, so let me know as soon as possible. Hope to see you there, whether it's in Antwerp or Turnhout.


So if you're into photography and want to spend an afternoon with likeminded people, I really urge you to participate. The official website is http://worldwidephotowalk.com/


Oh BTW, you can't register for two walks sadly, so that's not a valid option ;-)

Almost a month after the fact, I finally got through all the photos of the Le Mans Series. I know it took quite a while, but I really let myself get dragged into shooting way too much frames. Over 4000 in one day amounting to over 12GB of harddisk space (luckily I don't shoot RAW at the races). But hey, I'm not complaining since I got some great shots, found some new angles of the Spa circuit that deliver high quality shots and in the end had a great time with my favourite of championships.


My price shot of the day must be this shot of the BMW M3 GT2

Here are some other good ones, and as always, you can find a lot more on my site. The direct link to the photos is: http://ronnygabriels.smugmug.com/Public/Racing-Season-2010/1000km-of-Spa-2010. Enjoy!

Last week, my sister invited me to go and shoot in a small nature preserve in Oud-Turnhout called "De Liereman". As good nature photographers, we got up way too early in the morning to go and shoot the sunrise.





Sadly, the sun never broke through the clouds that morning, so it wasn't as spectacular as we had hoped. Of course that didn't stop us from getting a few shots of.



You can find some of the shots on my site. Enjoy.

Last weekend I was invited by my buddy Kris to go and shoot a local festival with him. The "Straatfeesten" in Kalmthout is a three stage local festival that was at it's 34th edition this weekend. Kris is more or less the official photographer of this festival, so it gave me not only the opportunity to try my first concert photography, but also get some tips from someone who has done this quite a few times before in the meantime.

The first thing I quickly learned that fast lenses are vital for concert photography. So I worked with only two lenses all day, my "24-105 f4" and "50mm F1.4" and even with those lenses, ISO's had to be pushed towards 1000 or more quite often. So a camera that can handle those ISO settings without too much noise is a nice addition to your kit. And all this because artists don't like to flash, tssss. My respect for concert photographers has grown considerably since Sunday.

Luckily I had two seasoned phtographers there to answer my questions and give me tips. I have to say that concert photogrpahy is unlike anything I have done before. The rules of aperture, shutterspeed and light seem to be completely different because of the fast changing conditions of the lighting and actions of the artists. So it was a bit trial and error, but in the end the photos I brought home were not as bad as I had feared.


I uploaded the best photos to my site. You can check them out on my site. But the photos were also added to the official site of the festival. There my photos are paired with those of the other photographers Kris and Patrick. This can give you an idea of how my photos stand up to those of the more experienced guys. The website is http://www.straatfeesten.com/.

Lastly, big thanks to Kris for the invitation! You can find his work via his blog http://raptordigital.blogspot.com/ or website http://digital.raptor-tec.be/.

The end of April marked the occasion of getting our first membership cards of the Antwerp Zoo. We go several times a year and now with the membership we can go whenever we want without paying anymore, ... sweet. That means that you will be seeing some more animal photography this summer. OK it might not be as spectacular as last year’s trip to the US, but hey, the animals still fascinate me.


Our first trip was to the Antwerp Zoo (Planckendael in Mechelen is also included in the membership). Now the Antwerp Zoo's main attraction these days is the one-year old elephant Kai-Mook. A cute little fellow and something you can watch for hours especially the interaction with the other elephant. I'm always a little sad to see the pen being a little small and fenced in (Planckendael is better in that respect), but for the space they have in Antwerp, they have some room to play nonetheless.



I'm always surprised in how many different animals are actually in the Antwerp Zoo and although the big cats are probably some of the most impressive, there are others that, if they can be viewed outside like the hippos below, are very impressive as well.


There is also a lot of building going on. Some animals are getting new pens and those include the lions. Their current pen is just not big enough in my opinion, so I'm glad the see they are getting the upgrade.



But a Zoo is not only the big animals, but the small ones as well. The most industrious little buggers were definitely the meerkats. If you have ever watched the wonderful BBC documentary series on these animals you know they are busy animals in the wild. I must say, they are just as busy in captivity. Sadly because they have no predators to worry about, standing on their hind legs is not something you see often at the Zoo, but hey, they're just fun to watch anyway.



For more photos from our first trip to the Zoo this year, please check out the gallery on the website. You can go there directly by clicking here.

What a difference a couple of days of holiday make. I finally got through all the photos of the World Series by Renault on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit on the first days of May. About a 150 photos for your enjoyment ;-)

Brendan Hartley - Formula 3.5

You can find all the photos here. Enjoy!

The voice of the masters of photography is very often forgotten and replaced a print of their images. We see those prints and take them as a true representation of what was. Then we start comparing those to digital work and very often you hear about crusades against post-processing (often referred to as "Photoshopping").

The truth is that behind those "classic" images, often as much work was done in the darkroom as we do now on our computers. So why did they do it and why are we still doing it? Why can't we just make a picture we take for what it is? Many people have tried to explain, many have failed, and I for one am not going to try. A blog post from Jim Goldstein (read it here) actually pointed me to an interview with the "Grand-master" of nature photography Ansel Adams who can explain it rather perfectly. If you have any interest in photography I urge you to watch all 4 of these videos. This is photographic wisdom like you are never going to get it from anyone else. Like Jim Goldstein indicated in his blog post, in part number 2 the most profound wisdom is displayed when Ansel talks about "intentional manipulation".

Watch and learn!

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Source for this article: Jim M. Goldstein. Be sure to visit his website or his blog to check out his work.

Last weekend, the 1st and 2nd of May, the Spa-Francorchamps circuit welcomed the World Series by Renault. An entirely free weekend of motorsports organized by Renault. Although it is more or less focused on people that normally wouldn't come to a racetrack, it still has quite a bit of interesting races. You have got the F4 Eurocup 1.6 (for drivers between 15 and 20), the Formula Renault 2.0, the Mégane Eurocup and as top of the bill, the Formula Renault 3.5 which has been the step-up class to Formula 1 for many a driver. This is intertwined by demos of the Renault RS Sport team, the actual Formula 1 team (in Spa, local boy and Renault test driver Jérome D'Ambrosio drove the F1 car) and some other stunt teams. Clearly the focus was family entertainment and actually that was something that was made even clearer when you looked at the audience. A lot of families, young people and even elderly people were there. Not really people you see at the track every weekend.


Renault Formula 1 R29, driven by Jérome D'Ambrosio

I think Renault deserves a lot of praise for that, and if you know me a bit, that is very hard for me to say since I'm not a Renault fan at all. Getting people interested for racing by organizing a big event like this is something that I as a race fan can only appreciate. Sadly for most of those people, this is the only weekend they come to the track, but if only 5% of people get interested and return, it has been entirely worth it. Sure this is, first and foremost, a commercial stunt for Renault to show of their entire line-up (including Dacia and their sport cars) and tie in customers a bit more, but if this helps the racing scene in Belgium forward, who am I to argue.

Formula Renault 2.0 - B. Bosi

For me, this weekend provided me with some photographic opportunities that I otherwise would not have had. Open wheel races are not that common and having three categories in one day is just to good to pass up. Unlike other weekends, I went on Saturday and that turned out to be a pretty good gamble. Sunday was drenched in rain and although Saturday it rained in every part of Belgium, Spa remained dry (except for 5 minutes of small raindrops, but in Spa, that's not rain).

F4 Eurocup - winner Stoffel Vandoorne

I will be uploading my shots as soon as I can get through them, but I'm a bit behind with my workflow and next weekend, the Le Mans Series comes to Spa, so I will be there again. The photos in this post are some teaser photos from the World Series by Renault, but I will make another post when the final edit of shots is uploaded to the site.

Formula Renault 3.5 - D. Move (Lotus Junior Racing Team)

Two weeks after the BTCS and Belcar Championships were officially presented in the streets of Leuven, they both had their start last week in the Gordon’s Finest Race at Zolder circuit.  The BTCS had rounds 1 & 2 of the championship on the calendar that day and the Belcar Endurance Championship had it’s first 150 minute race.


What was clear from the get-go was that both championships had a good starting field which was especially the case for the Belcar.  Although this new season actually merges the former Belgian GT and Dunlop Sport maxx championships, to me it seemed as the new Belcar was greater than the sum of it’s parts.  The starting line-up was, for lack of a better term, impressive.  Not only the cars, with the Dodge Viper, Porsche GT3 RS, Aston Martin DBRS9, Audi R8, Lamborghini Gallardo and more, the driver line-up was probably even more impressive.  Next to the well known names from earlier season like Jeffrey Van Hooydonck, Bert Longin, Pierre-Yves Corthals, the Wauters brothers and many more, there were some more international sounding names as well starting with Anthony Kumpen (FIA GT), Marc Goossens (IndyCar) and Jaap Van Lagen (FIA WTCC).  So all the ingredients were there to make a great racing weekend and a great start of the season.



The BTCS held some superb new additions as well.  Especially the new Volkswage Scirocco, that we got to see in Leuven already, was a very nice addition to the line-up, but probably the most anticipated new car was the (world premiere of) the Volvo S60 Racer.  OK, it’s just a race car with a Volvo S60 body-kit in essence, but it was stunning to see.  Volvo and Volkswagen for that matter could not have chosen better representation in the Belgian Touring Car Championship.  There were other newcomers as well.  I personally liked the pretty inconspicuous Mitsubishi Lancer Evo and hope to see a lot more of that car in the next races.




For me personally this is going to be an exciting season as well I hope.  Hopefully my “Day-at-the-races” is a bit of a success and there is quite a lot of variety on the agenda this year as well for me.  But this first weekend of the season is mostly a practice session to get re-acquainted with the gear and the way of shooting.  Brushing up the panning techniques, looking for the angles and getting the camera settings sorted out, means the first race is often a low on quality shots.  This years however, I must say it was not that bad and so I gladly redirect you to the photo gallery on my site. Go there directly by clicking here.



It was an action packed weekend that was plagued with a little bit too much technical difficulties to become really nail-bitingly exciting, but it was a very action-packed weekend nonetheless.  I saw a couple of race marshals almost get run-over when they towed an Aston Martin out of the gravel pit in the first corner and a accident in the chicane (which sadly I did not get a photograph of).  So I can’t complain, and more importantly, I’m looking forward to a very interesting season in both the BTCS and the Belcar Endurance championships.  Next race I hope to announce the first Day-at-the-races, so keep an eye on the Blog. 



More photos on Gordon's Finest Race Gallery on SmugMug

Last Saterday, the BTCS was in Leuven for their second city demo. That means that the streets of Leuven were filled with the loud roars of the race cars participating in the BTCS (and some in the Belcar Endurance Series) this year. It’s always fun to see these cars outside their natural habitat, the racetrack. This year was no exception. There was quite a lot of people there from all around the country (and surroundings). I did have the idea that only a small portion of the participants had showed up, but even then, there were enough nice cars to make the trip worth it. Especially the new VW Scirocco GT was a very nice newbie in the pack.



Renault, Volkswagen, Porsche, KIA, BMW and Lamborghini were present including some of the major sponsors of the BTCS and Belcar Endurance championships.



KIA even brought their most famous driver, Koen Wauters, to do an autograph signing. He was not the only one of course. Other drivers included Steve Van Bellingen, Bert Longin, Marc Goossens, and many more.



So now that we got a glimpse of this year's cars, the wait is on for the first race of the season on the 11th of april in Zolder. We may just be in for a great fight for both championships this year.


For more photos see: http://ronnygabriels.smugmug.com/Public/Racing-Season-2010/BTCS-City-Demo

On Sunday, Antwerp harbor was the site of a gorgeous sunset. Sadly I was in the car and without a camera. Although I felt a bit of a warm glow seeing it's beauty, my inner photographer died a little bit.
Yesterday, I got my revenge.  I went out to shoot a panorama of the Antwerp skyline and in doing so stumbled upon a sunset rivalling that of Sunday.  Not quite as perfect, but hey, you can't have it all. The photos here are from about twenty minutes after the sun disappeared behind the horizon and were taken on a location that I drove after my panorama shots were taken.

This picture was taken on an outdoor walk with my dad.  The house you see in the background is an old house built as part of the old drifter's colony, in Dutch "landloperskolonie". This was probably the house of a high ranking officer because "the colony" was treated more like a prison than a shelter or refuge. Since the official status of "drifter" is no longer recognized in Belgium, the buildings there first became a real prison and now I believe they are a place where children hold agriculture camps (or something).

The fact remains that these houses are still beautiful and worth photographing.  Now actually this picture is not a very good example of that since the dominant subject in this picture is the sky.  I like this photo very much just because of the fight between the sky and the house for dominance.  The house as this seemingly tiny thing against the mighty sky and the sky is pulling out all the colorful stops just to show how beautiful it can be.  The sky obviously wins, but it gives this photo a third and maybe more important subject in my opinion which is humbleness.  Even this big house can be made to feel small when you measure it against nature.  If size matters, nature will always win ;-)

This is not by any means the best shot I've taken of a sunset, nor the best I've taken of a house in the open plains, but I like it because it goes just that little bit deeper than just what shows up visually.

Finally some new photos on the site and this time they are from a shoot I did in Antwerp a couple of weeks ago.  The idea was to shoot the Antwerp justice building at dusk. It was something I wanted to do for a long time since I drive by that building every day and it is, in my opinion, one of the iconic buildings in Antwerp. Another reason for the shoot is the fact that I’m making a series on Antwerp for a photography store that shows different scenes from Antwerp in not the most obvious way. I think the justice building is not only a good subject at dusk, but the hyper-modern face of the building shows of the contrast between the old historic side and the new modern side of Antwerp.



A little “tourist” information about the justice building, "Justitiepaleis" in Dutch. The building was designed Richard Rogers, the man behind designs as Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Millenium Dome in London.  It was opened officially on the 28th of March 2006 and is considered one of the most important architectural highlights in Belgium of the 21st century. 



I love the building but I have to say that it’s a bit of a challenge to get a good shot of it. The most accessible side of the building is on the Bolivar place in front of the building and in this shoot I limited myself to that vantage point.  You can get shots from behind the building, but that’s much more difficult because most of the space behind the building are highways and private grounds.  It won’t be the last time I shoot this building, but I have to say I am happy with the result of this shoot.



You can find the album on my site here. Enjoy and let me know what you think.