This year I was festival photographer for Dranouter aan Zee.
Dranouter is a folkfestival with internation allure, it features some great names from domestic as well as foreign artists. It is the little brother of the original Dranouter festival in... Dranouter.
This year Marianne Faithful chose Dranouter to be the first show of her new European Tour. She was scheduled as the final artist on the last day. But you’ll recognize many others as well: Milo, Flip Kowlier, Gabriel Rios, Luc de Vos,...

Although the festival took place a few months ago I finaly found the time to put the images on my own website.

The gallery features a smaller selection of images and can be found in the varia section, or go directly to Dranouter aan Zee.

Yes!
Another urbex update: visited Steel plant Forges de Clabecq. Half of this factory is now ready for demolition, part of it is already gone as you will notice from some images. This plant was not abandoned that long ago. There is still electricity and running water at some locations!
Update added to the section Urban Exploration Belgium.

Or go directly to the gallery.

During the winter of 2007 I went to some trainspotting if you like. Well not really, it was more a photographic piece on a railway bridge in the neighborhood. It’s an all steel structure bridge and I like the retro look it has with the iron bolds and all.
I returned that week to do some night scenes as well.

I updated the pics in the existing Railway Gallery

Below are some examples:

I took these images on a trip to Duisburg somewhere beginning 2008. Finally I’ve put them online. Forgot I had these lying around.

-> Go to the gallery

Here is a recommendation for a website to visit often if you are interested in history, photography and black and white in particular:
Shorpy. On this site they continuously make hi-res scans of very, very old photographs. Most of them taken at the turn of the last century. So we are talking about images almost 100 years in age!
Here is what I found astonishing:

• apparently these old shoeboxes with coatless glass lenses in front made damn good and sharp pictures.
• some of these images have an immens feel of depth in them... and remember that these ppl did not have photoshop to play with!
• look at the following image for instance... sharp, good contrast etc. AND it dates back to 1921. Think someone will be able to read our DVD within a 100 years? I consider myself lucky if it’s even readable in 5!

Updated the Harbor Antwerp images in the varia section with some Dusk Till Dawn images of the harbor industry.

Go directly to the gallery

I know some have been waiting for this, so appologies for the delay!
I’ve put a selection up which you can find here in the varia section.
If you like to see all images then go to the apropo section of my website and check out the 2008 gallery!

I don’t know the name of this place. We passed by it while visiting the Chateau Heers mentioned below.
It was definitely not empty and there was a dog barking behind the doors of one of the adjacent buildings, a point at which I decided probably not to attempt to go in. Well urbex is all good and well, but breaking and entering is another thing... so just some impressions of the outside of the place which I added to the Heers gallery. [didn’t feel it was enough to warrant it’s own gallery]

the unkown, in use chateau -> images at the back

Some time ago we went to Blankenberge for a weekend. While my wife was attending a congres, I took the time to take some scenery snapshots of the beach very early in the morning. It wasn’t summertime and at 9am there is not much action going on yet.

Here you see an image of the Pier, it’s renovated some years ago. The original construction dates back from 1894 and the idea of came over the canal from GB. In Brittain the art of building piers for fun and leasure had become a real expertise. Before that piers were mainly build to aid in unloading ships that were too big to approach the docks.
The Germans burned it down during the WWOI. In 1933 it was rebuild and all was well until “rot” was discovered in the concrete and the needed renovation started in 1999. The hit from the purple rain prince, hence my choice of colour layering... No not really

Go to the gallery [in the varia section]

Another one I had lying in the closet...
Some months ago I was looking for a castle in decay, it was also aired on TV for the program Jambers a while back. The owners still live there. Sad story actually: about a wealthy family gone bankrupt. Problems started for them back during one [or both] of the WWO’s and the Germans confiscated most of their properties back in Poland.

Found the castle and also met the inhabitants! They were friendly enough to let us in and take some pictures but only in the courtyard. I did take some pictures from inside a hallway but actually they were pretty crappy so I didn’t put them online. Not many pictures then and mostly from the outside. Besides the front port, you can’t get in... Piss ‘em off and they’ll sure call the cops!

Some impressions though [go to the gallery]

After some radio silence, I thought this would be an appropriate update: an empty radio station from the early 1920’s in Holland also known as Radio Kootwijk.
Unfortunately I was not able to take any pictures from the inside, although that probably would be worthwile... The outside however also provided a nice view. Completely located in the middle of nowhere. Not many pictures, but nice ones from the main tower IMO.

Go to the gallery.

Found this site when doodling on the Internet: http://ellisislandghosts.com/
Urbex photography with a professional touch to it... nice.
[it certainly does help when the place you're visiting has this rich and "loaded" history as this one.

I reorganised the nature section completely and threw away some pictures, added some other.
You can find some new additions of a winter scenery shoot here: Nature > Forests and Trees > Winter Mornings
Made during the last winter period in the neighborhood. Everything was covered with thin ice and the lighting was beautiful.

I'm updating the theme on all galleries. Basically they are using the same naming and directory structure so it's possible that depending on browser caching you will still see the old layout and some links won't work.
Just refresh the browser and all will be fine again.

I'm using a new gallery theme for my images now which is more dynamic. It allows you to 'flip' through the images in a gallery by using the scroll wheel or dragging the bottom handlebar. When clicking an image you will enter a lightbox and are then able to use the keyboard left and right arrows to navigate or enable the slideshow from the bottom commands. Escape key or clicking anywhere on the page goes back to flipping images.... It's also more forgiving in using browsers with different window sizes.

I'm upgrading all galleries for using the new theme.

I'm updating a lot of pages on the site.

- New design on several pages: removed some text here and there and created something more visually simple.
- Added a simple guestbook page.
- Some new links were added.
- Experimenting with a new gallery layout which is more dynamic and features scroll wheel and keyboard navigation [you can always give me some feedback on these]
- ...

Finally after a very long wait I have put the pictures of the cemeteries online.

I know the site has not been updated lately. Past year I have been very busy with a lot of other things, including for the biggest part my day job. Therefore one of my new years resolutions is to get more stuff online.
At the moment I have many pictures still lying around on my hdd platters. Time to get them dusted of and put online wouldn't you say?
In the meantime, my best wishes to all who's reading this.