Time to go up the majestic marble stairway at the Val-Duchesse castle, and explore the first floor.
From the landing, a small salon leads on to a large and bright hall in Louis XVI style – the Baron room – complete with mirrors and chandeliers.
At the other side, the apartment of former owner Charles Dietrich now has become the ‘Presidential suite’.
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8, 17-35/2.8
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Whenever I visit a building – especially historic places with a grandiose architecture or abundant decoration – I will make sure to have a good look upwards. More often than not that will result in pictures of domes, ceilings and other ornaments.
Some friends that regularly accompany me on photo explorations by now have quite a collection of shots showing me lying flat on my back, camera pointed all the way up.
A wide angle lens of course is the default glass choice, and many times my fisheye will end up on camera. Sometimes I will use the distorted picture ‘as is’, other times I will de-fish (using PTLens, or more recently through Lightroom’s built-in lens correction). All depends on the original lines and curves of the construction.
Equally often, I will take a few bracketed shots and combine them with Photomatix Pro’s Exposure Fusion feature, to deal with the extreme dynamic range (sunlit windows through deep shadows).
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8D, 24/2.8, 17-35/2.8D
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Getting immersed into the spectacular architecture of the Liège-Guillemins railway station, I could not – of course! – resist the urge to slap my fish-eye lens on the camera and go for the wild views. Things rapidly start moving into a different ‘perspective’, and spaces and shapes take on new dimension.
A fish-eye lens also invites you to try out unusual camera positions that introduce all kinds of visual effects and references:
The previous picture was shot lying flat on the ground, close to one of the glass elevator ‘towers’ on the platforms, aiming straight up towards the station’s glass-and-concrete dome. Transparency and reflection were lining up perfectly resulting in an abstract composition.
To close, an outside shot where the fish-eye’s distortion of the ground echoes the curves of the station’s canopy roof.
Now there’s a kind of lens that I could hardly live without…
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8D
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The new year came to me with a free dose of flu, hence a few days of extra ‘holiday break’… No new recent shots, so I am turning once again to the archives…
Antwerp’s Central Station has become an endless source of visual exploration to me. In this episode: some more fisheye captures of its ever impressive architecture.
The last two images were taken from vantage points that require special access permission. Enjoy!
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8
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Antwerp’s Central railway station is a well-known great source for photographic inspiration. It combines the lush grandeur of old times with modern architecture through renovations an additions. The result is a pleasing and above all functional environment for the countless travelers coming by every day.
This blog has taken you to the Central Station before. Just last weekend some 80 Belgiumdigital shooters were given access to some exclusive vantage points high above. A unique opportunity to discover and document the place from an unusual perspective!
To be continued!
Gear notes: D700, 24-120/4 VR, 16/2,8
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If you are a regular visitor of this blog, you already know that I like exploring exaggerated fish-eye effects. Here’s a couple of square-cut ones, collected during the recent Antwerp session of Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk.
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8
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One the most anticipated new features in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.0 is the Lens Correction capability. I am reasonably impressed by what we got so far. Not all that many lens profiles are available at this time, but the ease of use of a built-in facility alone will be more than enough reason to make this a ‘standard’ step in my workflow. So much for my trusted PTLens plug-in…
While waiting for more of my favorite lenses to be covered, I decided to do some tests with fish-eye corrections. Most of the time I will go to that lens for its specific distortion: when applied carefully I consider it a valuable creative element. But how good would Lightroom be at turning a fish-eye into an ultra wide angle?
Not too bad, it turns out. The de-fishing doesn’t always work as well as one could hope: even software cannot perform miracles all the time. But with a proper subject, like landscapes, the outcome is surprisingly acceptable.
Next: architecture. That’s where manual corrections beyond the lens profile come into play, for perspective compensation. Things do get a little tricky of course when starting with such an extreme distortion at the start, but nevertheless… Other than the expected loss of sharpness in the corners, the results are not bad at all. Judge for yourself!
There’s one PTLens feature I miss here, one that will make me turn occasionally to the ‘external’ option: the ability to move the corrected image left/right and up/down within the frame for more control over the parts that will have to be cropped. But other than that – and certainly for non-fishy shots – LR3’s Lens Correction is a straight winner!
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8D – D300, 10.5/2.8G
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Going out to the coast for an afternoon of shooting with photo-buddies: can you think of a better destination to throw a fisheye lens into your camera bag?
I like – from time to time – to experiment with the special look at the world through a fisheye lens. When handled with care, these lenses may open unexpected pockets of creativity. But you have to keep trying for new angles, rather than just blowing things up. Let’s have a go at a few examples.
P.S. Yes, I know: there are no images from the sea or coastline here. I guess I got my taste of fish before I reached the water…
Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8D
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Scott Kelby's second Worldwide Photo Walk took place last Saturday. More than 32,000 photographers participated to over 900 group shootings organized worldwide. I was one of the 50 'walkers' in Antwerp. We had a fun afternoon, strolling through the downtown area and - as always - discovering some nice new locations. Funny that an event like this brings you to places you passed by so many times, without noticing the photo opportunities!
Weather was very, very windy but dry and with enough sunshine for a good sky now and then. On such an occasion, making new friends is as important as making great shots. Nevertheless, I was able to put a fair little album together. I will put up some of the better pictures on this blog in the coming days, with a few short comments.
Of course we didn't part at the end of the walk without the obligatory 'terraske' along the busy streets of this wonderful town...!
Back in August 2007, I had a chance to visit the ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark. This is one of the largest art museums in northern Europe: its 10 floors offer a total of 17,000 m² exhibition space. It houses a broad collection of paintings, sculptures and installations, art videos, drawings, photos and graphics.
That fish-eye lens also allowed me to capture the imposing presence by some of the museum's monumental art, here for example Ron Mueck's gigantic Boy now owned by ARoS. 
And sometimes architecture becomes art all by itself... This detail from the museum's curved galleries was captured by my wife, using a simple compact, no more... Gear notes: D200, 18-200VR, 10.5/2.8; Lumix TZ1
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Planning from the start to take the HDR route, I shot five consecutive frames from the back of the church at 1EV exposure increments (handheld, as I did not bring a tripod, the "middle" one at 1/30s f/4) and combined them later using Photomatix Pro's exposure blend mode. Another quick 5-frame burst to cover the grandiose main altar, and I got back on my way...
Gear notes: D300, 10.5/2.8 fish-eye
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