My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

View from the window

Although we do fly a lot, the views you “can” get from the airplane window stay magical.
Today a few shots we (Annewiek and I) did from the window of the airplane on the way back from LA to Amsterdam. All shot with the Fuji X-pro 1 with the 35mm lens. I absolutely love that camera.

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Get your kicks on Route 66

Ever since I was a young boy I dreamt of going to America.
Somehow the country had an enormous draw on me, I loved the 50-60’s, R&R, the muscle cars (even owned a 1970 Pontiac Firebird Formule 400 for a few years) and of course the legendary Route66. Every chance I get I will try to see documentaries about this amazing travel from one side of the states to the other, the mother road.

The first time we visited Los Angeles we tried to find some of this road, but we were not that lucky, due to time stress and simply put lack of information we had to do with just a few landmarks but nothing spectacular, and the second time we visited LA it was also not doable due to again time stress, but I still wanted to do some of the route… so when we booked our flight to PhotoshopWorld Las Vegas this time we decided to fly into LAX and drive to Vegas. And I mean not the 3-4 hour drive… no we planned on doing the 7-9 hour drive (including stops etc.) In this blogpost some images from that drive and some behind the scenes stories.

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Maria Bertrand

As you probably already know we’re back from PhotoShopWorld (later more on this).
PSW switches between Orlando and Las Vegas (and sometimes other places), and this time it was Las Vegas.
Because we travelled with my mom we decided to not fly in to Vegas directly but to fly to LA and stay a few days there, and drive to Vegas after that, a short vacation so to speak. However vacation or not…. when you’re in LA (lala land) you must of course also shoot an actor or actress 😀

Via a good friend of mine (and great fitness shooter) Ian L. Sitren www.secondfocus.com I got in contact with Maria Bertrand, a professional actress and fitness model in LA. Now some people are just cool, and some people are incredibly nice and cool, Maria is one of the last category. Originally she would only be joining us for diner, but let’s be honest when you have the change to shoot such a beautiful lady you can’t resist, so we decided to do a quick impromptu shoot.

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Styling by Nadine

Sometimes as a photographer (or any other creative profession) you find people that are just plain awesome, they help you develop as a creative person and push you forward to get better results. A few years ago a model named Nadine started modeling for me and at one point we really felt that connection you sometimes have. A few years later she made me a promise “Frank, every shoot from now on I will improve and surprise you”, well she already did before that so I wondered how long she would keep this up..
And if you have been reading this blog for some time you already know the answer…. she is still keeping it up, in fact Nadine is growing into a (in my opinion) great stylist. So it’s no real surprise that today she is joining the blog as a guest blogger about…. styling.
Why styling?
Styling can make or break a shoot. A model can be absolutely stunning, which makes every shot successful, even if it’s styled pretty basic. But if the model has guts and the styling is top-knotch then everyone can be a model. Even if you’re one of those absolutely stunning models, after 5000 photo’s it does get boring.
Of course you will always have enough photographers that will demand a perfectly beautiful model, especially for glamour and lingerie work. In that case you usually won’t need and extreme styling effort. But if we’re talking about modelphotography in general then you (as a photographer) would usually want to see a form of creativity, something that sticks, something with a story.