Turnhout, city of dreams…

Another photography post to celebrate the coming of “Sinterklaas”.

“Sinterklaas” is something we celebrate in Belgium and the Netherlands and a small piece of Germany, on December 6th. A so called religious feast, designed and promoted by the commercial markets (duh). Because we give our children a lot of toys on this day.

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I live near a small town called Turnhout. You can see a satellite image of the region at the bottom of this post. Not really much to see there, but my next-door neighbour Martinos borrowed me his excellent Canon EOS 5D last week and this was a good location to see what a camera like that can do for me. (Thanks Martinos!)

After a few of hours on the road with my buddy Maxime, these are some of the ‘better’ images. Most of them, again, are suitable of using as a wallpaper.

Enjoy!:

This one was made inside “Het Kasteeltje”. I actually never went there before. Really beautiful yard actually! And the Lomo-effect really did the trick for me!

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Here’s another one of the castle, a fragment of a 66 megapixel panorama you can find at the bottom (reduced size). The lantern below too… What can I say? I fell in love with that 1908-filter/style.

 
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This one I took inside “de Warande”. A local theater/library/performances center. 

And here’s the panorama I told you about.

To wrap things up, as promised: Turnhout on the map. I used Live Maps because the quality of my region is about a hundred times better compared to Google Maps.

fin.

Winter Wonderlands

Last week about 3 inches of snow covered our lawn. We all know this is an excellent time to grab the camera and head out for some shots.

Some of the pictures came out looking rather good considering it was very dark and I lacked a tripod. As you can see I tried to use some new filters and effects to emphasise the spooky atmosphere in the park.

The village

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(or download a brighter edition if you like this more, 2650x1600)

Snowy forest

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Frozen summer

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Icy Road

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Hope you enjoyed these pictures/wallpapers…
Don’t hesitate to tell me what you think.

ps. I have finally created a new blog on Wordpress too. It has so much more design options, storage, statistic data, archiving options… For now I keep the contents perfectly synchronized on both blogs (blogspot and wordpress) so no worries… You can decide for yourself which you site like more.

And of course subscribe to the newsfeed to stay up to date… 
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Bonus widescreen wallpapers from experimenting

Some leftovers from the Minimal wallpaper scene.

• // Shattered Ice Cubes

When I was experimenting with the new rendering techniques from my last wallpaper, this scene also popped out of my brain in collaboration with Bryce 6. I wanted to share it with you. Clean, simple, perfect wallpaper material.

Download in full resolution:

• 1280x800
• 1440x900
• 1680x1050
• 1920x1200
• 2560x1600

And here is another experiment I thought I could share with you.

• // Atomic fractal:

A very clean and sober wallpaper. I wanted to create a fictional molecular structure with fractal allures. Hehe, hope you like it…

Download in full resolution:

• 1280x800
• 1440x900
• 1680x1050
• 1920x1200
• 2560x1600

That’s it for today my friends! Don’t hesitate to tell me what you think ok?

Minimal wallpaper

Some technical information on how I achieved creating this image.

For this widescreen wallpaper I used metaballs in Bryce 6. I (re)discovered the D.O.F. (Depth of field) 3D rendering possibilities in Bryce! I really love the effect you can achieve with setting the right values, but darnit, it kills your computer to render images like this!

Without the D.O.F. settings and blurry reflections… I guess about 2 minutes of rendering time would be acceptable. But as soon as you add these gorgeous effects, which add a huge amount of ‘realism’ in this abstract setting, an hour is your minimum waiting time (on a resolution of 2560x1600 that is).

Download (maximum quality):

• Minimal Wallpaper (2560 x 1600 974KB)
• Minimal Wallpaper (1920 x 1200 556KB)
• Minimal Wallpaper (1680 x 1050 434 KB)
• Minimal Wallpaper (1440 x 900 332 KB)
• Minimal Wallpaper (1280 x 800 297 KB)

Hope you enjoy this brand new wallpaper and feel free to criticize/comment!.

And remember kids: All wallpapers on my site are free to use! But only to as wallpaper. So, if you have other intentions, please ask first.

Summer snapshots.

In my hometown Beerse!

This summer we (re)discovered a very special location in my hometown. Compared to the commercial alternative called “de Lilse Bergen”, this is just paradise. No pay, no douchebags, no children, no nothing, … Just plain old peace and quiet in a beautiful setting. Enjoy.

Random shots:

 

Panoramas (download true size):

4521×1200 pixels – 1260 kB

2560×1300 pixels – 857 kB

Wallpapers (Download all 2560x1600 16:10 resolution):

 

 

New York

Classical Black and Whites added, let me know what you think!

   

 

   

I've got a huge collection of NY photographs since i went on a small journey in December 2007... I want to share all of them, but there are too many, and most of them are just the typical skylines… That's why I'm wallpaper-izing some of the better/special ones (my personal favorites). So there's a lot more where that came from!

*Updated* I added some new pictures I recently “enhanced”. You can download most of them in a massive-wallpaper-sized 2560x1600 resolution! I made the St. Patrick's Cathedral picture a lot smaller because you can’t use it as wallpaper.

It’s coming clear to me what the limitations of my camera are. My Sony DSC-H2 is serving me very well, I still love it (especially the 12x and macro!!) but i believe a DSLR should improve my bowhunting photographs a lot.

Hope u liked the pics. Panoramas may be coming soon, can’t promise.

Atlas Cover

We all have this one at home...

Formerly called the "Wolter's Algemene Atlas", the new edition (2008) will carry my design... Yey!
Funny thing is: I am told this book is (one of?) the most sold book in Belgium! I know the idea isn't great or anything, but this is a mere graphics-thing to me... And I liked this design! (the typo is still up for changes)

Maybe I'll add a wallpaper from the earth later.
Hope you like it, and when it does come in your (Belgian) house, think of me will you?

And for all you people who think this was easy copy- paste- globe- and- we're- finished kinda job; After about 3 other designs and try-outs, it still took me quite the amount of Photoshopping to get everything right! For one thing, the eclipse-diamond wasn'there in the original...

Update 2: The atlas is now officially for sale! "Plantyn Algemene Wereldatlas 2008" can be found in pretty much every bookstore.

To celebrate I made a new high-resolution wallpaper + it is now the finetuned edition like the way it actually went to the presses! Not only does it look way better than last edition, it's also official now!

Download:

• 1280 x 800 wallpaper
• 1680 x 1050 wallpaper
• 1920 x 1200 wallpaper
• 2560 x 1600 wallpaper
  

Dyson vacuum cleaners.

"Come up with an idea for very strong vacuum cleaners."

Was the briefing for this assignment 2 years ago. Dyson claims to have some of the strongest commercial dust-suckers available on the market, and I immediately came up with this (Belgian) idea:

The baseline reads "Even the toughest dust will be removed"

For all you non-Belgian people: The TV celebrities you see on these ads are incredibly boring, old-fashioned and just plain-old dusty. Shown here: Hugo Coveliers, Willy Claes, Bavo Klaas and top of the bill: Queen Fabiola the second. I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say they could all use a thorough vacuum clean!

Bonus! I quickly made a new up-to-date edition from Yves Leterme... Prime minister of our government-less country. And oh boy, is he dusty!