New Life

More new life in Breda: little Mats is born :) Hans (my fellow photographer & husband) made this beautiful birth announcement.

In Holland we often use photos of the baby or pregnant belly to create a fotogeboortekaart as we call them. In between all these busy jobs I am also trying to create my exhitibion in the Melkweg gallery which is one month from now...very exiting and breathtaking, also vert stressfull. E.g. hope I can get the big prints @ the gallery in time, as I will be in London for a job and won't be there that day.

I just love working in UK, am doing several weddings this season and documentary series like these. Last year it started with a UK job for Össur, and now I work in UK more and more, just love it! Am gonna miss the reunion of the Sint Lucas School in Boxtel, where me and my husband met. And yes, after 20 years we are still together and we are working together in our photostudio Artstudio23.com Breda

Since my back problems I rely on him more than before, also he's THE studio photographer. He's very good with models, families, babies and other fashion & glamour portraits. Me, I like to travel and do work 'on the spot' or events, wedding sometimes, but I prefer having a carte blanche and be able to make a series e.g. of architecture 'my style'. I like doing it without the 'old' photo rules in mind, I like to create a different exterior or interior photo.

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