I decided to change the gallery layouts to a new format. It is still flash based to my regret because the gallery software skin I use is only available with flash. I’m hoping an HTML5 version will become available soon so iPad experience can also be included.

What are the advantages to you with the new gallery layout?
- for starters you have the ability to go full screen which I would absolutely recommend
- you have much larger images to view, boosted the resolution up to 1024 per image.
- easier navigation between folders in a gallery
- easier navigation between the images themselves

Check it out!

Please indulge me writing down some thoughts here... I think it is important to elaborate a bit about pixel peeping, it's one of those new verbs brought to us by the digital photography revolution, and it has a profound impact on photography these days.

According to online dictionaries pixel peeping is the act of examination of digital imaging with maximum scrutiny often down to the very individual pixel level.

A benign statement in itself, but as I hinted in the title I think it has a profound impact on how a new generation of digital photographers now looks at their images. And also how a whole industry is actually taking advantage of it to their economic benefit! Let me explain:

In the old days the only way images were seen was on the paper they were printed on, or on the wall where the dia positive was projected, this was the case at least for most amateur photographers. So you ended up in fact with a complete overview of the picture and as such the images were also judged.
Digital photography in combination with computers and software changed all that. Now it is possible to zoom in to the individual pixel of the 24 million that are present in the file from a high-end camera. It has changed the way we view and judge images now profoundly: when examining a photograph I have not encountered a single person who does not use the magnifying glass, at least to zoom in to 100%. 
There is a whole group of "technophobe-photo-enthusiasts" out there populating the Internet photo community sites and fora who love testing and comparing different equipment by the technical quality of the images made with it at the pixel level, in the process the actual image itself is not that important anymore. Things like chromatic aberration, noise artifacts, pixel sharpness etc has become so important at these pixel levels, while viewing the picture as a whole they are completely unimportant. When browsing these fora, you get the feeling it's not about photography itself at all anymore, it's about technology.

It's also a great way for manufacturers to sell more camera's and other equipment! How do they do this? Simple: by playing along with the technology hypes in a handy way. Take a look at how many different camera models they now produce, the differences between subsequent models are mostly not that earth shattering. But they feed on the eagerness of those who lust after the best equipment they can get. Pixel peeping plays an extremely important role in this: by having the ability to examine at 100% you can see the improvements at the pixel level from the newer vs the older camera. In all fairness though when you take 2 identical pictures and look at them as a whole there is in most cases no difference at all to be seen. You have to go into zoom mode to start detecting differences... and thus the craving for the newer machine becomes a reality. So it has become much easier for the manufacturers to introduce new equipment multiple times a year, each time with marginal [sometimes bigger] improvements and continue to... sell and sell.
If the only way to look at our images would be the paper print from the olden days, there would be no compelling reason to buy new equipment, the images would still look practically the same using the 6-year old camera. Put the image on a 24-30 inch monitor though and you get a whole different story: whip out that wallet and buy the latest and greatest because look at these differences!!!

Now for the manufacturers it's also a double edged sword. Remember the case when Canon introduced the new 5DMarkII and on all those pixel peeping forums 100% crop images popped up showing what looked like a defect in the rendering of the image next to very bright spots -> you got a black spot... This is a 21Mpixel camera, so when viewing the image in it's own this hardly showed, if it did at all [and also only in certain circumstances] but that was it, the message was out and the fora and bulletin boards were full of it and more and more examples cropped up. I bet Canon would have cursed those pixel peeping Tom's at that moment

The whole pixel peeping tendency is also fueled by the magazines of course [online and in print] by their frequent "battle of the camera" articles where they put different manufacturers head to head. Of course documented with the imperative 100% crops from all contenders... look at how these pixels differ from camera to camera. Of course it would be pointless to show the complete image in print because there would not be much comparing to do. 

I personally welcome the extremely high granularity in which we can alter and fine tune our images now using the digital darkroom techniques. But at the same time I grew to dislike the "push" in the market for getting newer equipment all the time, something that only became possible at this level now that everyone is looking with a giant digital magnifying glass at their [and each other's] images.

A few months ago we organized a trip to South-East Germany to shoot some Urbex locations during a long weekend. We had several sites planned and because of the total distance we needed to keep more or less a tight schedule. It's not the ideal circumstance for a shoot IMO, I'm rather not bound by timing limits and rather see how it goes on the spot. But in this case we needed to make some compromise.

Our first stop was the Zeche Hugo, an abandoned mine which attracted me because it has a special Locker room system where the mine workers hoisted their clothes and shoes up to the ceiling inside small metal cages. Until now I had not had the opportunity to photograph such contraptions so off we went. Because of the timing constraints we just shot the locker and went off to the next location. From what I could gather from the rest of the building, there was not much interesting stuff anyway that I hadn't already seen in other mines and factories.

Next we went to Panacolor studio's, which is the name it is known by in the Urbex community. However right after entrance we were greeted by another 'party-of-5' of Dutch photographers. The studio is not that huge with small corridors and little editing rooms. So it was immediately way too crowded for my taste, sometimes having to wait in ones footsteps not to ruin the other guys shot. The 'abandoned' aspect was also a little lost, something I like in order to shoot in a different way. So to cut it short, it was a bit of a bummer but some nice keepers emerged anyway. We went back out pretty quickly because we needed to go to the next stop while the light was still good.

Arrival at Villa Victoria-Stift. Don't ask me where the name comes from, I have no clue. Tried to find some back ground on the place via my pall google, but didn't find much. I did manage to digg up an image from the time when it was used as a Sanatorium for children. Took mostly some HDR images which turned out pretty nice I think. Upon exit we were welcomed by a short and heavy rain-storm, good test for the camera bags. Not for us, we were all dressed in t-shirt :-p

After that straight to the hotel, already in the neighborhood for the next stop: a fun family day-out in Volklinger Hutte, a former [huge] steel factory, now converted to publicly accessible industrial museum. Not much "find the entrance" stuff here but I care about the picures and Volklingen Hutte certainly has much to offer here. It was a bright and sunny day, turned quite hot as well. So I left most of the heavy equipment like the Manfrotto tripod in the car and caried only my new belt bag without the top part. If you take your time to look carefully around for nice shots you might spend a whole day and more at this place, it is that huge. It is even safe to bring the kids along, give them a taste of what other places I go out shooting but which are way too dangerous for them to join!

So all in all we had a fun trip, good food and drinks along the way! Also check out the snapsshots in "urbex in action". They're one of the last images.

Didn’t have time to enter the main building so made some quick snaps from the outside, there weren’t that many photo’s and I had forgotten about them. That’s why I post them this late.

Mini-gallery of Fort 7

Yes, I [finally] put my galleries online of train graveyards. There are more train graveyards around then you would think, with people being able to fly easily with sites like Fly.com, there is becoming less use for some old train lines. Trains and trainstations still have that little bit of romantic nostalgia about them from the old days, think steam trains, Orient Express etc...
I visited two trainyards for the moment:

Trainyard Hombourg


Trainyard Baasrode

I made a revisit to Cheratte, a place took photographs of many years ago. The buildings haven’t changed but it’s not the same anymore. Cheratte must be one of those “landmark” urbex places that everyone “needs to have visited”. Surely I think thousands have been there by now. I still remember the very first time I entered the building in 2003. Not much graphitti or any other indication of recent visitors other than the people who last shut the door when they closed down the mine.
The contrast with today could not be bigger: many have left their markings on the walls, many artifacts I remember were gone and during the 4 hours we spent on site, we encountered 2 German photography groups, a Dutch photographer with 2 models, A bunch of kids with camera’s shooting in the mid tower and last but not least: about 15-20 fully combat dressed guys who were playing a wargame! It’s not the serene place to shoot pictures it once was
In a way this is a pity, but I still enjoyed the time spent there, although I realise for me it will be the last visit.

Because of the revisit, I decided the just redo the old gallery as well, removed some images and added the new ones.

revisited gallery of Cheratte Hasard:

Yes, this is the original factory where they made the famous cristals from Val Saint Lambert. This old part is abandoned, but the rest of the plant is still in operation.

see the images of Val Saint Lambert

This place has served several purposes. It was a sanatorium for children back in the days and also served as sort of a big atelier for several artists. An old firetruck is parked in front. I have seldom seen so much crap dumped in a building. I didn’t take any pictures of it, it was a waste of megapixels

see the gallery of Preventorium Dolhain

Hugo is much like many other mines from that period. What interested me in particular in this place though was the locker rooms where workers used to hang their clothes on metal cages that were hoisted to the ceiling. One can only image the smell
I didn’t visit the rest of the site besides this locker because it photographically wasn’t much different from most ordinary abandoned factories [and we were also on a schedule...]

Check out the Hugo locker room

This place seemed to be a sanatorium at a certain stage, but I don’t know much else about it. Much of the large villa is ceiled off and in the surrounding buildings there is not much to see anymore.

see to the Victoria Stift gallery

Panacolor studio’s [as it is generally known] was a very sophisticated sound synchronisation studio build right after the second world war. The studio was also used for the voice-overs in German language of foreign films. It was abandoned in the late 90’s and to this day most of the equipment is still there!
Unfortunately when we arrived, there was already a “posse” of 5 people inside taking pictures. It was much too crowded for my taste so I didn’t get to shoot the pictures I was looking after. We cleared the area after about a bit more than 2 hours. I heard the other photographers stayed there all day.

see the Panacolor gallery

A few years ago during the winter period I visited Volklinger Hutte. This former mamoth steel factory was build in the second half of the 19th century and I believe it must have been one of the biggest of its kind. The biggest part of the site is reconverted for public access and is now part of the industrial heritage. During the first visit we only shot the inside of the Boiler Room. During the second visit now we walked around public parts in the factory. Well only part of it actually, because the site is in fact too big to visit in detail in one day.

Galleries: 1st shoot - 2nd shoot

Went on a 2-day trip to Paris with my wife a few months ago during the winter period. Paris is too big to try and see in a mere 2 days so upfront we decided only to visit a few landmarks and interesting sites, not too much at all, guess what: we still did only half! Another trip’s begging, maybe now during the summer period... would be nice to have some contrast. For food and drinks Paris is cheap compared to where I live!!

Paris Trip 2008

On a trip trough the Liege area, we came across this abandoned castle. We saw the towers through the treeline from the distance and it looked really promising. But unfortunately it had been in decay for quite some time. Add the odd fire now and then...

Chateau de Seraing

I put some images online from a visit to Abbaye-de-Villers. An old abbey in the south of Belgium. I put it in the varia gallery:

Abbaye-de-Villers gallery

I visited the Centrale Thermique building at the Terre Rouge site during last winter. It was a great site, the pipe structures on the inside are really special, it resembles a giant metallic spagetti sometimes. In a certain way it was quite an urbex photographer’s heaven so I put quite some images online:

Go directly to the gallery

I also was a festival photographer for the Dranouter folk festival. A lot of nice groups and a great athmospere. I took a lot of foto’s that weekend but put only a small selection of them online.
Unfortunately the weather Gods were not that friendly and the last day it was raining so hard that a lot of us got stuck in the mud while trying to get home from the farmer fields that they turned into temporary press parkings. Not a fun 45 minutes...

Go directly to the gallery

Placed some images online from the Cemetery in Maastricht, Netherlands.

Go directly to the gallery

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.