Ronny Gabriels Photography

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)