Ronny Gabriels Photography

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.