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.

Results from the Cosplay workshop

/in /by

I absolutely love teaching the workshop Cosplay.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all workshops, but Cosplay is one of the most creative ones where I can literally almost do everything we think off plus work with some amazing costumes.

Today in the blog the results from the workshop Cosplay with Jamila

With set number 2 we actually used exactly the same base setup, just changed the role of the blue strobe.
In the first image the blue strobe is aimed at the wall and we actually needed an extra strobe aimed at the ceiling to fill in shadows. In the second shot I aimed the blue strobe towards the camera and removed the fill in flash. As you can see a totally different look and in my opinion a lot more moody.

After this amazing dress it was time for some more SF looks.
I’ve let these in the order I build it up.
As you can see I not only changed the angles but also the expression of the model and usage of the lens compression/distortion.
It’s all in essence the same setup.

And of course we also did some other cool looks.

and as always our workshops are very intense with information, but…. also always a lot of fun 😀

Saving and earning money

/in , /by

This blogpost is something I’ve never talked about before, mainly because I was a bit suspicious about it, but also because I like to keep the blog photography related. However during the lockdowns I’ve been overthinking a lot of things and this was one of them, so I decided it was time to write this blogpost and share my 100% personal experience and how I think this can help absolutely everyone by earning/saving some money but also get a lot of extra benefits..

Travel and shopping
When the world returns back to semi normal we will of course start to travel again and visit more stores. Now as you know over time our cash money will disappear and we will start to work more and more with debit/credit cards and our smartphones and watches. This all sounds great, but for me it never really worked on my Garmin watch, and also online you have to create several payment methods, add to this loyalty cards which needs another app again and you can probably see that like the older MacBooks needed dongles we need some apps and different cards to make it work. But what if you don’t want this?

Enter the topic of todays blogpost.
The Curve
Now believe me, up until a few months ago I never heard about curve but while using it I became so enthusiastic about it I decided to for once write a piece that had no direct connection to photography.

As mentioned before we use different apps, cards etc.
This also means that keeping track of everything can be a mix and match and sometimes we pay something with the business card that was supposed to be private etc. Now wouldn’t it be nice to have solution that would make all of this easier?

Well that’s Curve
You can get Curve for free online and right from the start you can install the app and use the virtual card for online shopping and using it for your phone and watch, the real card will arrive a few days later and can be used in shops etc.

So what’s all the fuzz about.
Well, Curve itself is not really a card, yes you have a balance on the card, but the main thing about Curve is that you can connect most of your other Visa and Mastercard cards and give them the right names and select which card to use. Indeed you read that right, if you have 3 cards you just connect them all to Curve in the app and you pay in the shop/online with the Curve card and it will deduct if from the card you selected for the payment. And the cool thing… if by accident you paid with the business card, you can easily just change the card later in the app. And if you hit a limit on a card… no problem there is the anti embarrassing mode which will automatically switch to a card that does work.

During the month you get a really overview of your spendings per card and you can label each purchase with labels which makes it super easy to track your spending and see where most money is going (sorry guys)

But there is more.
You can also add your loyalty cards and use the app to show them in the store, you can use ATM machines and also abroad there are some nice benefits making life easier. And this is all for the FREE card.

We personally only use the free version, but when you select one of the paid options you can get a 1% cashback from 3-6 stores, insurance for your phone and valuables, travel insurance and access to airport lounges. As mentioned we use the free version at the moment but the moment we start travelling again we will immediately start using the subscription option.

Conclusion
The Curve card is a must have for everyone that runs a business and has to juggle with different accounts and doesn’t want the hassle of figuring out what was what and when. Add to this a 1% cashback, insurance and airport lounges for the paid version and Curve is something I think really everyone should get, at least the free version.

The free version made it for me finally possible to use my Garmin watch now with Garmin pay, and there is more…. but let me first conclude this review.

You can get the Curve card via this link.
https://www.curve.com/join#DGR3YY9E

If you follow the link you will get 10 euros and 1 month 1% cashback on every purchase, after a month the card keeps all it’s perks of course except the 1% cashback.

 

 

 

As mentioned there is more.
Since the pandemic I also started to work with crypto, and please don’t stop reading, don’t worry I’m not going to push the next memecoin, I’m 100% not into that and for sure don’t want it on my blog, however the real reason for Curve was exactly this.

Earning passive income
You’ve heard the term, and to be honest I’m getting sick and tired of it, unrealistic promises, blah blah, overnight millionaire etc. yes sure. I’m more of a realistic kind of guy, but the whole crypto thing did intrigue me. But I decided to do it slightly differently. Instead of going into the crazy world of trading I decided to start working with a so called crypto card. Let me explain.

We all use cards to pay stuff in stores and online right?
And I think we all see that life is getting more and more expensive right?
So wouldn’t it be nice if you get some discounts on 99% if your expenses?

Well this is how our journey started that ended up with Curve.
I will make this one really short, and for more information I will give a website link.

After a tip from a website we ended up with a Crypto debit card from Crypto.com, al very large player in this market which I’m pretty sure will not be gone in the foreseeable future. Now putting a lot of your own money in Crypto is not something I would advise, but I can’t deny that there is a lot of profit to be made, but also to be lost. So I would love to do it but not with money that I worked for… sounds bizar right, but read on.

With the Crypto.com card you get a debit card which you can top up with your credit card or via the bank for free. This is a VISA card so everywhere where they accept visa you can pay (also online of course). So far so good if you don’t do anything else with it.. well that’s it, you just top up and spend and top up and spend. No crypto is mentioned or used. But behind the scenes something cool happens.

When you start using the card you did create an account at crypto.com which is a so called exchange. So you could by and sell crypto there, they actually have some really cool things like supercharger and earn programs but as mentioned I won’t go into the details, just how we use it for our business/life.

Now if you opted for the free card, 99% of the purchases you make you immediately get a 1% cashback in CRO (the native token from crypto.com) you don’t have to do anything for that, and my advise is in fact… don’t touch it, we’ve been using the card since a few months and the CRO token has risen over 80% in that time, this is 100% passive income, you don’t spend money on the card itself or subscriptions, you just top up and live your life like you normally do, now look back in a year and you have a great piggybank filled with CRO tokens.

Now if that sounds great I would HIGHLY recommend looking at the Ruby Red or Green versions. They give you 2-3% cashbacks on every purchase PLUS free Spotify and Netflix, which you pay like you normally do but get back in Cashbacks in CRO tokes, which again add to your piggy bank.

Again this sounds like the many “get rich soon” commercials but I really want to stress this is not meant that way, in fact I’ve been talking with friends and attendees of the workshops about this for quite some time and most are just over the moon with the ease of Curve and the cashbacks. It’s no where near a get rich soon thing, you “only” get a few % cashback, but it’s actually shocking how fast it all adds up, we bought an Apple MacBook Pro and that was a discount of 90 euros, something Apple doesn’t give you and as mentioned the CRO token has rissen quite a bit so that 90 euros is now 125…. you won’t hear me complain if it goes down by the way, for us it’s a piggy bank, we don’t touch it for at least 4-5 years and I think by than it will be a nice vintage guitar 😀

Now you probably also get the idea of Curve.We are using the Crypto.com card (we upgraded to the green one in fact) for literally everything so it was pretty frustrating that the card didn’t work in most stores we visit, now with the Curve (which the Crypto.com card is connected to) we can pay in almost every store.

Use my referral link https://crypto.com/app/b54fav37nk to sign up for Crypto.com and we both get $25 USD 🙂

Overall conclusion
The world is changing and will probably never go back to what it was, how much we want it to. A fact of life is that we all have to pay for the costs of the pandemic, and this means inflation, by using free cards and getting 1% cashbacks on ALL your spending is a way to earn some of that inflation back. If you can spare to stake 350 or 3500 euros for 6 months I would HIGHLY recommend taking a look at the RED and GREEN cards from Crypto.com

Although this has nothing to do with photography, it has everything to do with making sure we at least get some passive income by just living our lives and getting a whole lot of benefits in ease of use from the Curve.

I hope you guys appreciated this little sidestep.
I’m always willing to talk about Crypto or these solutions online or via Email but for the blog this was a one time deal, it was just too good not to share.

 

Best accessories for your new MacBookPro

/in , /by

After working with the new MBP for a little while now I can say that it’s here to stay, it’s still not as smooth sailing as I wished for and a lot of things are still missing that will make the experience even better, but that all said it’s an awesome machine and lighting fast…. so for today let’s take a look at the accessories I would advise you to buy with your brand-new MBP.

Now if I would have written this article 10 years ago I would probably just advise some laptop accessories, but now a days the new MBP is so insanely fast I would (without any doubt) just replace my desktop PC/Mac and use the MBP on location and in the office/studio, so just be aware of that when you read the rest of the article. Some accessories are only meant for fixed locations and some are for on the road.

The MacBookPro…
Let’s first take a look at the MacBookPro itself.
I actually bought the 10/10 version with 16GB and 1TB drive.
I’ve seen a load of reviews from the “old” M1 laptops and the conclusion could be made that for 99% of us the M1 is already more than enough so the M1 pro with 16GB should probably be overkill for almost everything we do, unless you’re really into heavy lifting stuff I would advise this machine to give a great balance between price and performance.

The 13″ I never really liked, but the 14″ is actually a home run for me. Awesome size for travelling and working on your lap but still more than enough screen real estate so personally I would opt for the 14″ and the 16″ only when you really need the extra space.

And let’s kick off with the accessory I use the most.


LaCie SSD
This super small and super fast SSD has been in use almost daily.
I actually use some Velcro on the back of the drive and have the same patch on my laptop and iPad Pro, with a small USB-C cable I connect the drive to both devices (depending on which I use of course), this essentially gives me a super fast extra harddrive without adding too much weight plus due to it’s form factor it’s really securely attached with the velcro. I really can’t say enough good things about these drives.

BenQ Adobe RGB monitor
I didn’t mention a certain type for the simple reason the choice for an external monitor is very personal, but it’s a huge improvement and also one of the reasons I bought the 14″ which is the perfect size for travelling and working on my lap, but when connected to the external screen you can have a much larger workspace. The choice for BenQ I made a few years ago and I still strongly believe they have the best monitors out there for the best pricing, PLUS they support hardware calibration and are mostly delivered with a sunshade cover.

And let’s be honest an external monitor is a must have with a laptop when using it in a fixed location.

OWC Thunderbolt docks
I’ve tried different convertors and in essence they all work but never gave me the complete line up of ports I need. When we take a look at the OWC docks they are not cheap but they are very complete, my version (the Thunderbolt 3 version) has all the ports I need including network and display port, add to that a fast charging port for USB-c and card readers and a great design with the ports you switch between the most and card reader on the front and the rest in the back it will also keep your desk nice and clean.

Power cable for the powersupply
I really don’t understand why Apple doesn’t include this in the box, well I probably do understand because Apple earns another 25.00 bucks by you ordering this cable. Maybe you don’t need it when you sit next to the outlet but let’s be honest, most of the times you need a little bit more range so the extra cable is a must in my opinion, even if you don’t use it constantly.

LaCie rugged drives
Oh man I can’t say enough good things about these drives.
First I love the orange covers (being Dutch) but most of all the drives can take a beating, are fast enough for photo and video editing and they are available in different sizes of course, whatever you need, they will have something for you.

LaCie big dock
For the desk this is an amazing solution, also here you can get them in different sizes ranging from loads of space to insane amounts of space, so whatever you need…. they have one 😀
The main reason for me to chose for systems like this is that there is an extra layer of protection for your data by using drives in a RAID setup (or mirroring), and it just works a lot better than just some external USB-C drives. So if you care about your data you hopefully will invest in a good and solid backup solution also. In essence I would always advise to backup your data on at least two locations (plus in the cloud for the really important things)

Synology NAS
Not really something you probably buy when you think about a laptop but I still include it to just give you a little bit of warning that data is never safe if you only use an external hard drive (not even when it’s in RAID), so using a NAS is a very good solution. For years I’ve been using Synology and they are a really good choice for photographers seeing they are very active with new solutions like the recently released Synology photos which is an awesome solution to backup your images on the road to make sure they are safe when you are home.

However we also use our NAS for external access for our clients, my portfolio and for downloads that are too big (expensive) to store online, in essence a NAS that you use the right way will earn it’s investment back in a few years, and when you ever experience a crash of your hard disk you will agree with me they are worth every cent.

I do have to add that Annewiek and I ran a PC store for over 20 years and almost daily we had customers with dataloss in one or another way, again… a good NAS is a great backup, but so much more… and that’s why I highly recommend Synology there is a lot more possible than just making backups.

XP-Pen 12″
Man I love this little tablet.
You do need a power connection when working with it in screen mode but it’s an awesome way to do retouching on your images and the integration with Photoshop/Lightroom etc. is flawless, no parallax errors you sometimes see with other brands and they have a great customer support department, plus…. well you can safe a boatload of money the XP-Pen series are a great value for money.

I personally use the 12″ for on the road and the 24″ in the studio. Both are totally different devices but both are great value for money, and being Dutch (just kidding) this is always important of course.

Logic Keyboard
A few years ago I got into contact with Logic keyboards during a tradeshow.
Maybe you know them from the past when they were pretty big with skins you could place over your Apple keyboard with shortcuts. In all honesty I did own one and it worked, but it was never 100% comfortable. However time goes on of course and they now have a great line top with keyboards with different shortcuts including one for most of the Creative Cloud. I love how they type (a real sturdy keyboard with great travel) but also that they all have proper backlighting, and seeing I mostly work in a darker environment this is a real big plus.

You can also use two extra USB ports on the keyboard itself even with more power-hungry devices so although the keyboard takes up two USB ports, you also get two ports back, win win 😀

Apple Magic Trackpad/Logitech MX master
Still in doubt which one I love the most.
With the way Apple uses gestures and especially the almost flawless way they work on the Magic Trackpad it’s almost a no brainer, however sometimes I also think a mouse just works better and faster and over the years I’ve tried several mice but I still feel the Logitech MX master series is a very solid contender for the “perfect” mouse, especially due to the “thumb roller” which you can setup for swipe left and right and makes working under MacOS really a lot easier, especially when browsing.

Calibrite Colorchecker Display Pro
The screen from the new MBP is absolutely awesome but it still needs to be calibrated if you want to see the colours the way they are intended (or the way YOU want them). For years Calibrite products have been the cutting edge in the calibration scene and the Colochecker display pro is also compatible with the BenQ palette software so you can calibrate both the laptop screen and your fixed screen with the same analyzer.

Native instruments M32
Yes I know it’s a bit geeky but I just love making music and with Logic Pro X it’s now possible to have the whole power of a professional recording studio in your laptop with a boat load of free instruments, and to play them it’s of course easier to use a keyboard. I personally love the Native Instruments M32 because it’s nice and small but still the keys feel very nice and although they are not full size it’s a lot better than most small keyboards, plus there are a bit more range on the keyboard. Add to this a lot of free software and awesome sounding plugins and the asking price is almost ridiculously low.

Case…
Well can’t say anything yet because I’m not able to find a case yet, but I always highly recommend using a case to protect your investment.

 

Now let’s take a look at something else…..

iPad Pro and Apple pencil
Ok now this sounds a bit weird, why mention an iPad Pro with pencil in an article about accessories for the new MacBookPro… well there is a thought behind this. With Monterey Apple promises a really awesome integration between the iPad and the MBP making it possible to drag and drop files and use mouse and keyboard on both simultaneous making it a seamless integration. At least that’s what they promise and the demos Apple showed during the keynote where triggering my mind with all the possibilities.

Think about this:
Download your card and rename the images in MacOS.
Import everything in Lightroom CC so they are synced over the cloud.
Now retouch what you need on each machine.
This works like a charm but you need Lightroom CC and the cloud making it much harder to execute when the internet speed is slow.

Now think about this:
Do everything you want on your iPad (my preferred workflow) but if you need the full blown Photoshop… just drag and drop the file to the desktop and use the iPad Pro as input device for Photoshop and when done drag the file back… sounds like a dream and I wonder if working with the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro this way will really work, or if it’s more aimed at office solutions. But Apple is of course a company that was/is aimed at creatives and with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil they have one of the best solutions for retouching/painting/drawing so it doesn’t sound like a long stretched if Apple would make it possible to use the iPad Pro with pencil as a real input device for Photoshop…..

 

Now of course all accessories are very personal and have to be tailor made for your workflow but I hope that with this overview I might have given you some ideas for the upcoming holiday season…..

If there is enough interest I can also make a software version.

Back to Mac…. or not

/in , /by

A few years ago I was totally disappointed by Apple.
Not just because their lack of support for the iPad Pro but mostly because they literally destroyed my favourite work beast, the MacBook Pro. For years it was my companion during travelling, demos, workshops and of course private use, it was almost always with me.

However… Apple decided it was time for “progress” and killed the MacBookPro to make it a FashionBookNO.
So I switched to a Dell XPS which gave me exactly what I wanted, except…. well it was running Windows, but that was no real issue seeing in the studio I already replaced my MacPro with a windows PC because… well the same reason… Apple killed the MacPro by actually making my laptop render video faster than the MacPro itself….

I however always said that I would love to turn back, but only when Apple was releasing a workhorse again and not a Fashion statement.

2021 What have they done….
Well let’s be honest, if you didn’t get goosebumps during the presentation there must be something wrong (just kidding), that low voice “What have we done….” followed by “what can you do with it”…

Well what have they done. To be fair a lot.
To be even more fair, they shouldn’t have taken it out at the first place.

Magsafe : can’t tell you how often it saved my MBP
Cardreader : what were they thinking by removing a card reader from a creators laptop
HDMI : also something that is so stupid to take out of laptops that are used for presentations constantly
Keyboard : man that new keyboard was bad in a whole new league

And… it’s all back and how.

The new MBP is a beast.
Running the new M1 pro chipset does make me wonder what Apple is planning because when you get the fastest version… I can’t imagine when you would run into performance issues with one of those, and because I’m more real (and have to pay for it myself) I opted for the 14” 10/10/16GB and 1TB of storage which we got in yesterday, so let’s give you a small headsup.

Problems, problems, problems
The first M1 MacBook we got had some serious issues and was send back immediately, but the new one….
It’s not as bad as the first one, although we still have some serious issues, but for now I’ve decided to keep it.

Let’s start with the good
The display is GORGOUS, just like the iPad Pro it’s bright, colourful and the blacks are amazing.
The sound is insane for a laptop, I’ve never heard such sound quality from any laptop or mobile device (I can’t imagine how the 16″ would sound).
The keyboard is finally back to good, it’s not stellar (yet) but it’s miles ahead of the recent series, in fact it’s even better than my Dell keyboard, but I still feel the older MacBook Pros were a bit better, that being said, it’s a great keyboard.
The whole machine flies like crazy, startup is insanely fast, working with apps and dragging windows is super fast.

So far everything is installing fine, but that’s also the problem area.
The M1 pro chipset is NOT ready for everyone.
Loads of gear will not work, especially older hard/software can be a real problem if you need it, so please make sure you check it out before buying, for us it means I have to invest quite a bit of money to get my music setup running again because whatever I try the Yamaha 01v96v2 is not working, but this is almost vintage gear so I’m not really complaining. However also some Line6 gear has serious issue and also Native Instruments has several solutions that are not working.

Overall however it’s ok and we have to do it one day, and I really feel the new MBP is worth the switch, luckily they did solve the external monitor issue (now you can run 2 external screens or 3 on the Max version).

There is however one thing I still can’t get to work and I hope some of you can help me out with this….
For 3 things we really need Windows, and for now I’m running a trial version of Parallels DESIGNED for the M1 and Windows 11, so one would expect that if you follow their guides it would work right? well that’s not true. Yes I can install Windows 11, yes I can run my software that I need, but…. whatever I try I can’t get USB to work reliable, the startmenu sometimes works but 99% of the cases not, same with almost everything in the menubar, also when browsing the web it’s a weird experience, start the browser and it seems nothing works (checked the DNS etc) I almost gave up when I decided to open a second tab and to my surprise it worked, so every time I have to go online I just open the browser and immediately a new tab and from there it works. Now I don’t need Windows a lot but I really hope they solve this because this looks more like a hack someone does at school to impress the teacher than a professional company selling the software. But I guess it’s because the MBP is hardly on the market yet so I’ll wait patiently for the updates (unless someone still can get me a Windows 10 ARM version I can install (yes I have all the licenses).

Some things that caught my eyes and ears
One of the things that frustrated the heck out of me with the Dell was the constant whining and noise in the speakers, connect the power and it was almost impossible to record music without that annoying tone (remember something that’s really soft will add up to an ear piercing noise when adding tracks together), the MBP is…. silent, very… silent, no whining through the speakers, no noise (even on full blast without any sound it’s quiet through the studio monitors, WOW).

Also the headphone jack is amazing for on the road when working with music.

Another cool thing is without a doubt of course the way that Apple is integrating the iPad Pro (they promised, it’s not yet there), and I think that’s actually the part that pushed me over the edge, being able to shoot tethered to the MBP and just drop the files to the iPad Pro for retouching and back again to the MBP without using airdrop would be absolutely a game changer, can’t wait for that to be released and finally making that workflow seamless (it’s already very good now).

The future
Both Windows and MacOs are great, I can’t understand people that still claim that Windows is buggy or crashes all the time. In all those years I hardly ever had Windows crash on me (unless I asked for it), same with the Mac by the way, where I have to add, IF there is a problem with Windows it’s much easier to solve than under MacOs due to the closed operating system, so I’m 100% 50/50 in my preference. But I have to add the new MacOs looks dropdead gorgeous.

Overall conclusion
with the M1 chip Apple made something cool, awesome and fricking fast.
The M1pro and Max are in my opinion just insane for a laptop and opens up so many possibilities my head just spins, we are already planning something with a 360 tour through the studio for example, and also the new Digital Classroom streams will all be done via the MBP which I hope won’t top out at 90% anymore (Dell i9).

The 14″ form factor is a TOTAL hit for me.
I never really liked the 13″ and the 16″ is just too big to travel with (in my opinion) the 14″ however is absolutely great for form and weight, I would almost dare to say it’s the perfect size for someone like me, and I think most content creators will chose the 14″, especially when normally you are using an external monitor. There is still a lot I have to test and experiment with but so far I’m deeply impressed with the 2021 MBP and I think that Apple is finally back where it’s best at, giving us creators machines that can handle everything we throw at it and boosting a great battery life combined with insane speeds (even without being connected to the wall) add to this the new display and you can imagine that I’m very enthusiastic about the new MBP.

If you want me to test something just let me know.

UPDATE

Read this if you have USB problems on the new MacOs or M1 mac’s.

I’ve been pulling my hair out why some of our hubs including a fully certified #owc dock was not working.

It seems that if you change your security settings (necessary for some software like paragon and certain USB devices) my docks where not working at all or “stuttering” making typing and live streaming totally impossible.

After a few frustrating hours I think I figured it out. Everytime I change the security settings back to “apple security” it all works flawlessly as soon as I switch it back to “also other manufacturers” I run into variable problems. Ranging from “seems ok but sometimes freezes” to “not working at all (not even an apple keyboard with USB)”

Please share and retweet (or whatever) because you see a lot of people struggling with this and it might be the solution especially if you changed that setting months ago and forgot about it.

Let me know if it solves your issues?