Blog category: Portrait
Lalibela – Ethiopia
Medicine woman
More than 1000 words
A picture sometimes tells more than 1000 words. I don’t have to tell a lot about this picture, it is all up to your imagination.
Mechanics at the Babati busstation
There are arriving just a few buses at the busstation in Babati (Tanzania). The state of the buses is far from what we are used to, they however almost always make it to the busstation where I met these two young mechanics responsible for small maintenance.
More decent colors vs Black & White [Updated July 3rd 2019]
In the original post I showed the portrait in color. There was some feedback that in Black&White the background probably is less distracting. Bellow both versions… I agree with the people that commented, this one works better in Black & White.
Decent colors
When it comes to photography I’m a “Black and White man” but, sometimes I decide to leave out the B&W conversion step. The main rule for me in color is to have decent and only a few colors.
Smile…
Orthodox priest in Bahir Dar (Ethiopia)
Ethiopia
Mama’s Gun
Inspiring person
Normally I make my portraits when I’m travelling. It somehow takes me some time to disconnect from the daily life and really see the interesting people.
This is Mr. Bomanza, I met him in the French village where I live, he was around often had long hair and was elegantly dressed. He just inspired me, so I asked him if I could make some portrait, he agreed and some days later I gave him some prints. His answer was to invite him home for a drink. He told that before he became retired he used to work in restaurants in Basel (Switzerland) and he has family in Bordeaux.
Since then I, when I saw him we always said hello. At some point he disappeared, I never met him again and I missed him. Probably he moved to his family in Bordeaux at least that is what I would like to believe.
Square-ed
Revolutionary
Ethiopian family life
I have been working on my Black and White conversion skills a bit. I used the PiXimperfect auto dodge and burn action for Photoshop and manipulated the masks where needed.
Back to school
Looking…
The power of the square format
In portraits it all is about the person and expression shown. Some portraits clearly benefit from the square format, they get more powerful.
By choosing the square format the features of the face get more attention and the character of the person becomes more relevant. This portrait has been made in a house entrance, the background almost is pure black and helps to put even more focus on the man shown.
More portraits can be found in the portraits section of the galleries section on this website.
Déjà Vu – Mali vs. Senegal
Color: I start to like it!
In another post I explained why I started publishing color photos. Today I took one from the Ethiopia trip and let the colors play. The colors in the original RAW file where too poppy for my taste, I carefully reduced them and this is what could make out of it.
For my taste this is the kind of color I am looking for in my photos. One of the visitors of this blog (Stefan) took his time to look closer to the photo and gave some valuable feedback.
The image slider on the right shows the original and new version (slider left). In the new photo the background has been blurred and color is a bit more desaturated.
I invite everybody to make critical comments to my posts, a bit more than beautiful, wonderful is highly appreciated!
What comes after the G.A.S.?
G.A.S. what the hell is that??? Well let me explain, it is the so-called Gear Acquisition Syndrome, a problem a lot of people who want to take (great) photos suffer from. Mostly it are men but, some women also might be affected. I had it as well; bought too much far too expensive stuff to take photo’s with. At some point it was enough, this point was reached when back in 2007, I planned a trip to Mali. During the preparations I learned that there’s a lot of dust in Mali. Too dangerous for all my “expensive equipment”. At the end of the day, I got a Panasonic FZ-50, my new tool survived sand and dust and I took my first portrait shown here.
Not bad for a start, I almost got healed. But then I bought a Canon 5D with L-Glass. Far too heavy and expensive and in 2015 I ended at Fujifilm X Pro: the end of my G.A.S. What comes after G.A.S.? First of all there is the widely unknown, P.B.A.S. (Photo Book Acquisition Syndrome). I am still suffering from this but this syndrome is more constructive, it is a source of inspiration. Maybe at some point I start to blog about all those books I have on my bookshelf. I currently suffer from the W.D.S. (Website Design Syndrome) and try to find an escape. For the previous website (photo-vinc.com) I spend far too much time on design of the site itself. Early 2018 I found my old website (Photo-Vinc.com) needed a successor, I decided to stay with WordPress as framework, got a nice theme and some promising plugins. The idea was to use everything without modification. This did not work out, I made a child theme to solve problems I saw, CSS to make things look consistent. It took me over 10 months of time to finalize this website. Far too much, to less time to work on the material I had from various trips. My advice? If you want to focus on images and present them, try something like SquareSpace. This will be much quicker als looks (almost) as good as your own design. And if you don´t follow my advice and want to know what I use then check the about section of this site where, at the end I explain which theme and plugins I used for this website. Can I help you? To keep it short: No, might be able to see some symptoms but I’m not able to heal you. You have to find your own way.
Portraits not in the galleries
In the galleries section of this website I show portraits of people that look directly to me. In some portraits this is not the case but they are still worth to share here. Here a portrait of my brother Marcel at home in Holland.
Amhara Nikisat
The Amhara people also known as Abyssinians, are an ethnic group from the northern and central Ethiopian highlands.
The neck and facial tattoos called Nikisat are standing out against the traditional white clothing and elaborate jewelry. Lines of tiny crosses along jaws and traditional Ethiopian shaped crosses on foreheads prove the intensive dedication to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
A YouTube video/slide-show about the celebration of Timkat in Gondar (Ethiopia) can be found here.
The Arbore tribe in the Omo Valley
Earlier this year I visited Ethiopia a country with an incredible variation of people. These 3 portraits are from the beginning of a visit to the Omo Valley in the delta of the Limo River (sometimes called Weyto or Dullay. The Arbore tribe with a total population of 6850 is living in 4 villages: Gandareb, Kulaama, Murale, and Eegude.  Their economy of subsistence depends largely on the periodical floods of the river. Visiting the village was a smooth experience and I took some first portraits of young woman, at first there was some shyness but after a while, they where looking directly to me. This is the kind of portraits I like, for me direct eye contact is a main element in my photography.
Why color?
Till recently, I showed my work only as black and white. While processing the images sometimes I start to think about color. For me this was a difficult decision, it took me months to take the step to color. Finally I published two photos in Color on my old Photo-Vinc website.
On this website I now will bring more color. I am trying to find my style, not too much colors, decent slightly de-saturated.
Bellow some samples:
More colorful work in the portraits section here on this website.
Portraits
In the portrait section of this website I show portraits of people looking directly at me. No candid portraits; I always ask for permission even when I do not speak the language of the people I do manage this.
