Holiday Greetings

On behalf of my model and son Marcos and my beautiful wife Judith and me we wish you all a fantastic holiday season.

With love V

Beauticiun by Hestiun - car shoot

Had to shoot a car in about an hour on a shitty part of the Marbella beach. (why do photographers always lacking time??). This was for a client of mine who is a highly mobile Beautician making house calls for the whole scala of beauty treatments. She just got the car and needed a photograph for an upcoming wedding fair (the one with the bride I shot some time ago) to show her mobility. The weather was not that good although we had some nice clouds coming in to help creating a nice sunset. Light was pretty flat when we started. I had a medium softbox with 1 SB-800 flash coming just from the left of the car lighting up the makeup-box and a bit of the side of the car. Top of the roof and bonnet is natural light coming from the setting sun. Camera right I aimed another SB-800 with a diffuse dome to light up the front. Flash values were about the same. Obviously it has been post processed quite a bit, with some High Pass at the end. I am pretty pleased with the result and so is the client thankfully.........V

October sunsets

How beautiful the sky is in Andalucia after the summer heat of August. In September it starts already, but October is the best imo. Last week was so clear you could see the Riff mountains in Africa over the Mediterranean from my window....such a nice place to live

Some new stuff

Me and Marta have been working on some new stuff. A bit more conceptional and towards fashion (what I never really did before). All kind of new to me in the sense that I also have to watch fabric and textures. It is really outside of my comfortzone but I found it challenging and that´s something I really have to force upon myself. I used a big window with natural light blasting in through a sheet to make a huge softbox. The kick-light is a nikon sb-800 with a lumiquest softbox III attached. Postprocess went through silver efex.....Anyway hope you like it or would tell me otherwise with some critics. --V

I Wish - Prague 2009

Another try with Silver efex. I really think I will get used to this! some posibilities......I include the original RAW file as well. I used the 'pinhole' preset this time and tweaked it to my liking. Made the silver areas in the blue spectrum. More tests to come.... hope you like them.
--V

NIK Plugin Software

I downloaded the NIK plugin software for photoshop, lightroom and aperture this morning. It consists of sharpen, noise reduction, color, lightcontrol and black and white modules for the above mentioned programs. I played around with the color and the black and white modules a little bit. Having not really done black and white for ages, actually since I abandoned sadly my wet and chemical darkroom, I thought it was good to see if I had lost my printing eye. I really loved printing and was quiet good at it if I may say so myself. Anyway back to the computer...I opened 2 different pics in the module Silver Efex (conveniently opening from Lightroom) and I started playing. Damn this is soooo promising. I know I am not there yet, but I can see where it is heading! Back to the good 'ol B/W!!
I am going to use it for the next 14 days in its trial form. To buy the whole suite comes with a reasonable pricetag: € 299,95 suitable for all 3 programs. Go check it out at http://www.niksoftware.com. Hope you like the pics.
--Take care V.

Marcos 5 months already!

Some private stuff again. I shot these pics about 2 weeks ago around Marcos being 5 months already. all shot with natural light with a nikon d700 and a 50mm 1.8 (very old) prime man focus lens. He really communicates now and I have alot of fun with him. We yell and giggle together. Since about 3 weeks he´s able to sit and he loves it, laughing at the cats and at himself in the mirror. He´s still not sure however about the whole belly thing.... Enjoy

Corporate Portraits

Lately I am getting more and more jobs for corporate portraits. I am very pleased with that cause I love being on location and you get to deal with different environments and people everytime you go out there, I enjoy that so much. Usually there´s not much time available to do these shots. That really put some pressure on your creativity and technical abilities. I try to be able to be there 30-45 mins in advance to scout locations and set up. I travel more or less light; got my ThinkTank rollerback and a stand-bag with 3 stands and a 75cm (30") softbox and a Lowepro trekker with clamps, filters, backdrop, lastolite reflec. panel and the odd piece (that I always seem to use). I shoot everything with my Nikon D700 and 3 sb-800 triggered by my SU-800 commander and sc-29 cord. Its so easy to control all the strobe settings from your camera position (or nearby with the cord) using the Nikon CLS-system. Anyway one of my recent ones is included, hope you like it. Vincent

Alternative weddings

I gave up on doing weddings, just don´t like doing them. Besides considering the competition here on the coast and the outragious price differences, I think that market is corrupt. Anyway, I met a lovely Dutch coming from my hometown owning 2 bridalshops here and is organizing a massive english spoken bridalfair in November in Fuengirola. I decided to help her out with the commercial images for the print campaign and billboards....this kind of wedding photography I like :P

Marcos 4 months

Just a little private update of Marcos.

Marcos

Finallly a bit of an update of Marcos, my son. He´s almost 4 months now. On the photos he´s almost 3months (gotta kick ass to keep it up)

Enjoy V

Diego El Cigala

Finally a new post again, caught up in family life and of course work (still lucky in these times). Thought it was about time to post a new entry. Got many really nice comments on my entry of the birth of my son Marcos, thanks for that, really nice! Planning to upload some newer shots soon.

Thursday I went to a concert of Flamenco singer Diego "El Cigala" here in the Auditorium of Malaga as press, they could not have done me a bigger favour (except for a press card for Madonna of course)
I love Don Diegos music, it´s a fusion of Flamenco and Jazz and I think its a perfect combination. I photographed him at the press conference first and after that the concert. After the first 2 songs they allowed us to hang out at the side and basically I was the only one left enjoying the music and shooting away.
It had the atmosphere of The NorthSea Jazz Festival in The Hague, The Netherlands where I used to go every year. hmmm good memories!
Enjoy V.

Marcos

Last Sunday, early morning the 19th April, something wonderful happened. My first son Marcos got born. After 45 hours of hard labour (my total respect for all the women out there!) He set foot on the world. As good parents we of course find him the most beautiful baby in the world!

More to come!

Meet Marcos

4shared free file sharing

Got a bit sick of sending my high res photos with multiple emails. through my friend Rene at Sotopiaconcepts.com, I found 4shared.com; . I took to start off with the free option. I will upgrade some time later. It works very well, like uploading multiple files in one go. click on the above Icon and check it out

Just went to prague for a travelguide, I will show you some stuff soon

Take it easy

Vincent

The Best of Marbella with Maria Petrak

Yesterday I had the pleasure to meet Maria Petrak, the founder of "The Best of Marbella" website. After a very nice conversation about her product of bringing solid, reliable and quality businesses together, I decided to join her iniative and give her the word on my blog today to promote this fantastic service...........

www.thebestofmarbella.com, is first and foremost a service available to the general public - providing the most comprehensive and authoritative information available about this part of southern Spain. The Best of Marbella website is much more than a passive website:

The Best of Marbella website/blog:
Promotes Marbella's many positive attributes and unique lifestyle, withconstantly updated information and A-Z categories featuring the best of art and culture, shopping, dining, golf, hotels and lifestyle.

The Best of Marbella facts:
* A top quality reference A-Z guide (business and events directory),
* Attracts attention because of the brand name,
* A 'word of mouth' virtual and pro-active support network,
* Businesses are carefully selected and recommended on the basis ofpersonal experience or reference,
* An inter-active blog/website where you can post comments,
* Blog posts are constantly, (daily) updated and highly ranked onGoogle,
* It will become the unique, multi-lingual portal in many languages about Marbella and Costa del Sol,
* It covers the area from Malaga through Estepona and Sotogrande to Gibraltar, with Marbella as the main focal point,
* We are creating the strong supportive network that constantly expands:

thebestofmarbella.blogspot.com/2009/02/associated-partners-best-of-marbella.html

With the Best of Marbella you can:

* Subscribe to events and business newsletters, news, interesting articles and special promotions,
* Promote your events, business, venues, services and products trough an initial database of over 6,000 contacts,
* Connect with other local, highly recommended professionals, clubs and associations,
* Benefit from member-to-member discounts and special offers when you join The Best of Marbella virtual network.

Why The Best of Marbella? ... Because The Best of Marbella offers its readers, members, clients, associates:

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For more information and inquiries, please contact:
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Founder
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Tel: (34) 627 06 0042
info@thebestofmarbella.com
www.thebestofmarbella.com
www.thebestofmarbella.blogspot.com

Flamenco Catwalk

I´ve been at the SIMOF 09, THE Flamenco fashionshow, held in Sevilla together with my dear clients Isabel and Antonio from the magazine BodaNova. They asked me to photograph the catwalk of young Fuengirola designer Melisa Lozano with some cutting edge, rule breaking designs and color patterns. A cool day out, hanging out with them means meeting people, cocktails and of course some great food afterwards.

Melisa invited top-model and ex-Miss España 2006 Elisabeth Reyes and Flamenco singer Diana Navarro amongst the 'regular' models.......damn, I love doing this!



Model & ex Miss España 2006 Elisabeth Reyes







Diana Navarro


Elisabeth Reyes, Melisa Lozano and Diana Navarro