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!