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While driving to the supermarket, I came across this little pond with water lilies. This posed the perfect opportunity to give my new Sony Cyber-shot a proper baptism. After a tiny bit of tweaking on the brightness and contrast in Lightroom, the picture came out quite nice I think.

As I mentioned in the previous post, last Sunday was my 32nd birthday; but I don't celebrate it. This obviously also means I don't get many presents for my birthday. My parents gave me some clothing stuff and Daniel gave me a very cool light stand and shoot-through umbrella for my flashgun; but that's about it. But the best gift came from someone that I deeply admire and respect: myself!

About a year ago I bought the Kodak Zx1 pocket camera that records 720p video's on SD cards. While the camera works fine and is water resistant; it has some limitations that really got on my nerve, and so I decided to look for a replacement. The thing that mostly annoyed me was the fixed focus. While fixed focus is fine for most outdoor situations, it does get annoying if you want to get a slightly closer look at something and it just ends up as one big blurry blob on your photo or video.

My criteria were clear to me, and I started to look for a compact camera with autofocus and 720p video recording ability. My eye finally fell on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W350. It's a tiny and very cute little point and shoot camera with a ton of features. It's about the size of a credit card, and it's only 16.7mm thick.

It has a 14.1 megapixel sensor and with the 35mm equivalent of a 26-105mm f/2.7-5.7 lens it gives quite decent image quality. Aside from decent pictures, it can also record 720p video with autofocus and even zoom ability. Especially the zoom is quite nice, because that is a feature that most compact point and shoot camera's don't have. The last feature I'd like to mention is that you can make panorama photos on this camera by just sweeping it from one side to the other. While the quality of the panorama photo is not the best, it's good enough for some funny pictures for websites.

I'm really happy with this little camera. Because it's so light and small, I can bring it with me at all times. So from now on my videos and "on the road" photo's will be much, much higher quality. Stay tuned for more of those

July 11th, you know what that means. Yep... it's my 32nd birthday (hurray! ), and boy do I feel like an old fart!

One of the things that happens when you have your birthday, is that you receive a truckload of emails from websites and forums where you registered at some point in time, that wish you a happy birthday. The funny part is that half of these websites I can't even remember signing up on, and the other half I haven't visited in 5 or 6 years. But I'm still honored that they still remember me. Thanks guys! Whom ever you might be...

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a large rock to hide under from relatives and neighbors that want to come over and congratulate me and pretend to enjoy my company...

One of the things that I have in common with my mother, is that we both like donkeys a lot. So when my mom read in the newspaper that there was open house at a donkey shelter in the town of Baarle-Hertog, she immediately told me about it. I teamed up with my parents to check it out.

The shelter currently houses 29 donkeys that were either neglected, abused or just very, very old. I think it's good that there are places like these that help the animals that were hurt by the beasts (read: humans).

Even though my kit was more-or-less complete, it still felt like something was missing; and I don't like that. While making photo's in dark places it always bothered me that I had to use LED based flashlights to light up stuff, which gives horrible color casting. I wanted something better, and so I decided to get a flashgun.

A bit of searching and reading reviews later I ran across a "Strobist" beginner set for a nice price. "Strobist" basically means that the flash is not mounted on the camera itself, but is handheld or on a light stand. The kit includes a Yongnuo YN460-II flashgun and a Cactus v4 wireless flash trigger.The wireless flash trigger allows you to put the flash up to 100m from the camera, and it still fires on the exact moment that it needs to; really cool.

All in all it looks like a pretty decent kit, and the flashgun sure is bright enough! The cool (or bad) part is that I have to learn how to make photo's with a flashgun now, which seems like a fun challenge. I've seen some real nice photos that were made with off-camera flashguns, and I can't wait to make some of my own.

A while back I caught word about an abandoned restaurant or bar that was themed like a haunted mansion. I teamed up with Fresia to check it out, and was amazed at how cool this place really is!

After we were done with the "horror cafe", we decided to check out another place nearby. Unfortunately, this location was nothing more than an empty carcass waiting for the roof to collapse; so we didn't make any photos there. As we were driving off again, Fresia suddenly noticed a tiny farm with broken windows. We stopped to take a peek and found a cute little farmhouse with some stables attached to it.

It was a fun day on the road; and the poor lightning conditions on both locations made a fun challenge. Can't wait to see more locations like these.

Being unemployed sucks, but it also has some nice benefits. For example, I can take nice hikes through the woods and the nature reserves now. The sun was shining, I was bored.. time to shoot some photos!

Near the town of Oisterwijk, The Netherlands, I found a small pond of about 30 meters in diameter with at least 100 - 150 frogs in it that were having some kind of wild orgy. Ye gods, those guys were noisy!

Another day, another bore... time to go explore! (Hey, that rhymes! ). This time Xariana and myself visited an abandoned farmhouse in the South-West of The Netherlands.

The house had a huge barn behind it where cattle and horses were kept. I was amazed at the amount of spider webs and how unscathed this place was. Usually abandoned houses are trashed by copper thieves and vandalizing youth quite fast, but this place was (relatively speaking) in pristine condition.

All over the house there were some sort of 3d marking stickers, that are probably used by demolition crews to indicate the weak spots of the building. Of course they could also be used by construction companies to indicate spots in the concrete that need extra work when they renovate the place.

We will go back to this place in a few months to see if it's been demolished or refurbished.

The only thing missing in my photography kit, was a decent zoom lens to make wildlife photos and maybe shoot some close-up photos of artists at festivals. At first I was thinking of getting an 18-200mm lens, which would then replace the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my camera. After reading some reviews, and giving it some thought I dismissed that idea, because all the reviews mentioned that the image quality wasn't all-that, and well... I've gotten fond of the 18-55mm kit lens; it's extremely light, and it performs pretty good.

While browsing the web I noticed that the Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM was on sale at a store in Barendrecht. I decided to read some reviews, and generally liked what I read and saw. Today, Xariana and myself were in the area anyway, and I decided to make a little detour and pick one up.

It's big, it's heavy and it makes my camera look badass; I love it Oh and more importantly, it makes some very, very nice pictures too! My kit is more-or-less complete now; Maybe I will get a nice macro lens someday, but that's more a long-term idea.

It was a boring day, and so Xariana and myself decided to go explore an abandoned monastery somewhere in the East of The Netherlands.

It was built in 1910 by German Jesuits who fled Germany as a consequence of the Kulturkampf. In 1937, the Jesuits handed the monastery over to a community of "white monks" that followed Charles Lavigerie, who later handed the monastery over to a group of Salesians of Don Bosco; who used the building as a seminary till 1971.

In 1974, the building was converted to a public art and exhibition center where amateur artists could explore, utilize and display their creativity. The center featured amongst others a planetarium and a large artificial cave system with an exhibition about evolution. The building was also used for various paranormal events and symposiums. In 1999, the building was abandoned.

In 2007, a company bought the monastery to convert it into a community center; a project that was started in 2009. The top floors of the building have been partially stripped, but the planetarium and cave-man exhibition are practically untouched.