Graduated!

I am finally graduated as a photographer! I did my graduation-work in September due to circumstances, and I graduated with honor after spending three full months this summer working very hard on my project. My first idea was to make a documentary about the rainbow-family, some kind of hippy-community who comes together in peace and harmony with each other and nature. So I visited some of these gatherings in spring, which was very interesting to do, but it was a lot more difficult then I thought to make a good documentary. First of all, I’m not so experienced in documentary, and also, the rainbow-family tries to live without electric equipment, and so my digital camera was not always very welcome. So the project failed a little bit, sadly enough. I’m not giving up on the project, but it just was not for now. So I did something totally different, something I know I could do before I did it, something I was more experienced in. So I did a big conceptual fantasy shoot. It was a lot of work, but I knew that I could pull it off. So I’ve spend the whole summer looking for good models, the right clothes and places, make-up-artists etc… I got a lot of support too, especially from Menno, who helped me with the concept, my talented hairstylist Chistophe and my great assistant Joris. I would like to show you the project yet, but I’m going to give an exhibition first, before I put the pictures on the internet. I’ve bought really nice and expensive prints, so it’s better to show these first. But they will come later.

So now, graduated and free, and not really knowing what to do… I don’t want to really start working already, because I’m finally free of all responsabilities and I want to enjoy this feeling a little bit 🙂 I also want to travel some more. In three days I leave to the Canary Islands, where I’ll meet a belgian friend. I didn’t buy a return ticket, so I can stay as long as I want to. Maybe there I can practise my documentary-skills some more.

The last weeks I did some small photography-tasks, like a wedding and a dress-collection for a website of a talented girl, so I’m happy that I could earn a little bit of money already, but I feel a little worried sometimes who to earn a living as a beginning photographer. Probably I will do some other jobs too the first year(s). We’ll see what happens. It makes the job interesting, not knowing what you will do in some months, or years…

I will go back to bed now (I woke up, because I couldn’t sleep, and I saw yesterday on tv that the best thing to do if you can’t sleep is waking up and do something else for a little while, so I decided to write something :)), but first I’ll show you some portraits I made on the shoot for the designer I knew. I hope you like them!

Smile!

Today I would like to share this funny picture I took of my boyfriend (and one of us). It makes me laugh (it reminds me of ET, don’t you think so?), so I hope this brings also a smile on your faces 🙂 It’s by the way a great place to make funny pictures, in a “spiegelpaleis” (I don’t know the name in english, but a place with funny mirrors :))

Today I feel dreamy

Exhibition – Antartik

Some months ago they asked us at school if we wanted to take part in an exhibition. It’s a project from different schools from Antwerp, and they want to show creative work made by students. It’s called Antartik, and this is the website-adress: http://www.antartik.be/#/antARTik

I will show 5 pictures, from the series ‘Clowns and dolls’. It’s about identity and wearing masks. Everyone is welcome to come and take a look! (It’s not new work unfortunately, so people who now my work a little bit, will probably seen most of it already)

Here is a picture from the series.

Finally another fashion-shoot

After four weeks of internship at a fashion-magazine, I got the chance to do a fashion-shoot. All the other shoots were clothes, shoes, bars or beauty-products. So I was very happy, although we didn’t have a lot of time to find a good concept: we were just asked to do something with a car that was standing inside a (very nice) shop. But it was nice to do, the model was very enthusiastic, there were so many great clothes in the shop we could use, and I could be creative with finding good light and positions. But in the afternoon, our boss came, and we just had to do the things she said, so it wasn’t that fun anymore.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took before noon, I like them best 🙂 Model was Sigrid Segers, make-up-artist was Elle Yana, my assistant and stylist was Aline Boonen and car and clothes are from Hospital.

Because it’s my sisters birthday: a picture of her!

The title says it all. My sweetest sister became 20years old today, so it’s a good day to post a picture of her. This picture I took on a shooting for a political campaign picture. I like it because the light is so soft at the sea, umbrella’s always look good on pictures  and my sister is so naturally smiling and authentic. I hope you like it too!

Just a funny picture

I’m very busy at my internship at the moment. (for Stitch & Pill magazine)  I have to say, in the two-three weeks I’m there now, I didn’t make anything that I would like to share here. I thought we would get a lot of time to create very big fashion projects, but it’s not really what I’ve expected. Most pictures I had to take already were pictures of restaurants, bars, products and shoes. But that’s how it is. If you look at a fashion magazine, you only see the fashion pictures, but in a magazine there are so many other pictures too. But hopefully it will be possible to do one great fashion-shoot during my internship. I just hope I’ll get enough time to do it good.

So because I can’t show anything from my internship, I just show a funny picture. I made it a while ago near my home in Ghent. There was some activity with a lot of dressed-up people, so it was nice to see it and make some pictures.

Angry

I’m just back from school. Today was my last photo-jury (before my real graduation-project). It was very bad. They couldn’t say one good word about my work. I was proud of my pictures and I worked very hard to get them all ready for today (because I did the social-module, and I had to show a whole weddingbook with more than 80 pictures, a family reception and a documentary of a compagny, and this week we also have exams), so I felt very angry and sad, hearing all their bad comments.

Ok, I know I’m quite sensitive, and you can learn a lot by getting advice. But I thought they were so unrespectfull and for my opinion, their comments were really based on nothing but bad taste. They don’t look at the soul of the picture, just at the technical aspects. I felt quite bad already because of this Dendermonde-situation, and another personal thing, so I couldn’t defend myself too.

Here I show you some pictures of my reception, the series they disliked the most. There wasn’t a lot of light there, but I wanted to give them more atmosphere by not using flash. I prefer pictures without flash but with a little grain, not totally ‘clean’ colors and some movement, instead of a clean, technical perfect picture without any atmosphere of feeling. The teachers didn’t understand this… What do you all think? Would you use flash in a situation like this?

My city is mourning

Something uncredibly terrible has happened in my city last week. A young man, 20 years old, has killed two babies and an adult in a day care center, without any reason (or at least, he doesn’t tell anything to the police..). So yesterday, we all came together (with more than 8000 people) in a quiet march from the church to the day care center, to pay tribute, show our pain, grief and sympathy. A lot of people (also children) came to lay flowers and teddybears next to the day care center.

I made some pictures of the march, which was pretty impressive for me, because of all the people who came, the silence, and the pain you could almost feel in the air.

Blame it on exams

Very busy times here.

I just had my last schooldays (ever! At least, if I pass this year), and now I’m working hard to get my work ready for the jury.

My head feels like exploding of all the thoughts in my mind, especially about my graduation project. I can’t choose between doing something about the rainbowgatherings, or about the ‘walk about love’-festival in Israël…

After concentrating so hard, and days of not many sleep, I felt like doing something silly, so here is the result 🙂 (yes, it’s me, but with a lot of liquifying :))