Geboortekaartjes "fraude"

In Holland we always send 'birthcards' when a baby is born, announcing the name, weight and often is the first babyphoto (or one of the pregnant belly) also used in the card. Being reportage photographers my husband and I go to people's home to take photos of their newborn baby, then retouch it back at the studio and design a photocard with the best one, to be printed out as real (chemical) photos. (you can also use the digital file to have it printed on paper) Our baby-born cards: MeRy.nl/baby.htm

Now my sister is having her 2nd baby and she again asked me to do the photography of the baby when it's born. She showed me some examples of this website and all of a sudden I was surprised: now I know why we once had a client who thought of their baby's photos as not the best...he expected the baby's photo to be like the commercial photos of a 3 to 6 months old baby, the ones you always see in the magazines, eyes wide open, smiling, first tooth present and with lovely curly hair.

Lovely curly hair??? Smiling?? Newborn babies are the ugliest models there are, they are so beautiful yet horrible to take a glossy photo of. Altho a good photographer will be able to :-) But these websites & magazines show babies laying on their stomage, lifting up the head etc. Believe me: this is impossible! True: it's lovely photography, BUT NOT POSSIBLE with a newborn baby, they are too young to smile or lift up their head when laying on their stomage. These websites show such lovely cards, really commercial, fab and glossy, but reality...is SO very different!

MeRy.nl/baby.htm for more baby & pregnancy photography

Ravin Rachel

While looking at all my harddiscs to gather my 75 teenage mother photos/RAWs for the project & photobook PURE , I stumbled upon these 'ravin' pics of Rachèl. Nikon D100 camera, first time I ever shot digital and in RAW :-) ...Just wanted to share them!




It's so nice to see that our models (Kassandra, Lara) do get inspired after being in our studio and were posing for the first time! Rachèl's album on Hyves and ofcourse we all know Kassandra Schreuder now, who was second @ Holland's Next Top Model end of 2007!

Zeeland was white...

On my way to Sommelsdijk I just had to take some photos with my phone while driving. I just like Zeeland very much, the wide views and the emptyness...such a beautiful part of Holland :)

Zeeland (sort of state, we call it 'provincie') is very flat and lays in the South-West of the Netherlands and was once almost completely flooded 1 February 1953, due to extreme high tide and a severe storm. We call it the watersnoodramp there were 1836 deaths in the Netherlands, 18 in Vlaanderen (Belgium), 307 in UK and 224 at sea. (source: Wikipedia NL)

Ice Ice Baby!

Artstudio23...entrance

last few weeks it was icecold & freezing in Holland!