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.

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 ;-)

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.

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.

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.