Seattle

There's something about this city, which has been calling my name for a very long time.

Pic taken by Daniel Seidman

And I feel like we have a connection. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that both in this city and in my city, it's raining 9 months a year. Very wet. Yuck. BUT, during rainy periods, you can make very beautiful pictures...haha. Right? Yes.


Golden oldie.
Pic taken by me.


Picture taken in Seattle, by David Long

So, could rain be the (only) connection-element between me and Seattle? No I don't think so.

For years, Seattle's nickname was Queen City until my year of birth. How odd. And then it changed to 'Emerald City'. Emerald City is the fictional capital city of the Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This movie was released in the states for the first time in...my birthyear.

So, there is indeed a connection between me and Seattle since the day I was born.

Hmmmm......

Sleepless in Seattle happens to be my favorite romance movie (ever). Also, I LOVED, LOVED...and still LOVE Frasier (I still watch the reruns at night on television). Best tune ever if you ask me. I also LOVE Grey's Anatomy. Yes I do! All are Seattle-based television shows.
When I was young and very much into Basketball, my favorite NBA-star was Shawn 'The Reign Man' Kemp. Power forward of the Seattle Supersonics. :) We both wore number 40. This could be no coincidence...or perhaps it just was.

I know for sure something is going to happen to me, once I set foot in Seattle.

Another Seattle coincidence I read about, earlier this week...a man woke up in Seattle's 'Discovery Park', with no memories and not knowing how the hell he end up there.

Some cool facts about Seattle.

And the signs don't stop(!): I went searching for Seattle pictures for this blogpost, and the first pictured I really liked was taken by a guy named Daniel...-SIGH-


Pic taken byDaniel Seidman
Seattle's Space Needle


Seattle Central Library. Picture taken by Viv

Has anyone been to Seattle? Or, are any of you readers from Seattle??? Seattle!! Battle Seattle!

Seattle, I hear ya already...please stop giving me signs! I will come visit you one day!! Just be patient...


Picture taken in Seattle by Jon Madison

Garance Doré posing for Mr. J.

that rhymes!!

As promised:

Miss Doré posing for ME in FOAM.

Check out the blog of the girl, standing on the left holding the red notebook. :)
It's supercool!

So, for those of you who haven't seen the Fashion Blog expo yet....go see it! Keep in mind, the expo's final day is this sunday (23rd of august)!
Go with discount. :)

Old babies

I became a proud father of three new (old) babies.

Lately, I've been into film photography. It all started with the interest in buying a Rolleiflex earlier this year. Unfortunately, those vintage camera's are now highly sought after and the prices are ridiculously, extreeemely, enooormously high: depending on the type of model and their condition (mint condition or almost falling apart-condition), prices range from around $100,- on ebay to...$6,699 dollars when buying a new (remake) one! If you're really really lucky, you can get the original one on markets, second hand (electronic) shops (somewhere on this planet) for a very cheap price.
I've been studying different type of analogue camera's...and there are way too many great ones. As you already know, I have an old (dated from 1957) Yashica-B camera and last week, I've bought another film camera on ebay:

Rollei 35s (1976?)


Rollei 35s; the smallest ever 135 film, full frame (35mm) camera ever built. And it's fully mechanical, which means that you don't need a battery to take a picture. :)
(Perhaps this one needs to get checked because there's something about the shutter speed.....just some extra info for all you camera-geeks out there.)

I was looking for an old Olympus Pen EE after reading a lot of good reviews on the net. Also, many magazines (on- and offline) are talking about the latest camera hype Olympus E-P1. So, I wanted to know about the history of the PEN-series. And that's how I got to know about this classic one:

Olympus Pen EE


What I like about this camera, is the fact it's a half frame camera. You can make diptych pictures with it. Click on the lovely word to see some examples of it. :) It's just two pictures in one. (I have to find out which year this one was built. Probably around 1960's.)

Olympus Trip 35

(Gotta decode the serial number to find out in which year this one was built!)

Yesterday, I've bought some film for this baby, right here. This one is almost fully automatic, which I don't really like because I like to have control over the whole process of taking pictures. It's a 'point and shoot' camera. The only settings you have to do are ASA (iso of filmroll) and choose focus range of four positions (1 person, 2 people, 3 people, mountain, which equates to 1m, 1.5m, 3m and infinity (persons and mountain aren't shown in this picture...hehehe)) When shooting flash, it's possible to adjust aperture from f/2.8 'till f/22.
Got it off marktplaats.nl. It's like ebay.

Some Olympus Trip 35 examples. Click it!!!


Check out this funny commercial advert starring photographer David Bailey

Massimo Vitali @ FOAM

Hello, hello!

There are two (actually, there are more expo's at the moment!) very interesting expositions at FOAM museum in Amsterdam. One is, of course, the Garance Doré Fashion Blog expo (will post a picture of her posing for me, very soon! ish.). And the other one is the expo of Italian photographer Massimo Vitali oh my, oh my! With his Deardorff 11 inch x 14 inch camera he shoots in public places like beaches and touristic destinations with large groups of people. The photo's are being scaled to a larger size so that you can see the details of what's occuring during that particular moment.

If you click on the link, you can hear the sound of the beach.....so peaceful. Just put it on while you're laying on bed...so nice.
Or just go to his portfolio...and check out the 3rd picture in particular...you can check out that picture in an extremely larger scale!!
I don't have many readers from Amsterdam. But when you're in the city...you should go to FOAM!
(FOAM should pay me because of this promotional post.)

Here are my personal beach pics which I've taken a few weeks ago in Bloemendaal. :)


Massimo Vitali WANNABE pic.


I gotcha! This birdie knew I wanted to take a pic and tried to escape from being caught on camera...but I got him on time. Ha-ha.

T from T.

Meet T., a very talented illustrator from Toronto, Canada, who was a student at the AMFI (Fashion Institute in Amsterdam). Unfortunately, she moved back to Canada...(sob, sob, sniff, sniff).

This photo was taken ( again with my Yashica. :) ) in Westerpark, Amsterdam, during Amsterdam International Fashion Week. We were just chilling under this tree in the park, looking at all the wannabe's, models and big name fashionscene players.


Dashel. Click, click, click! Also here. Hahaha.

Stockholm syndrome

For one moment, I could capture this lady up and close with my Yashica. It's hard to take pictures with this camera as there's no lightmeter...but I'm happy the picture came out pretty well.
It's also important to own a good scanner. Unfortunately, my scanner doesn't scan the real colors so the picture came out with too much contrast- and sharpness effect. Anyhow, I wanted to share this lil moment with y'all.



Check out her blog to see her point of view.

Closing Party...uhm. SWEAT Party.

Dear Miriam had to go back to Sverige...too early!

Miriam...

...this is what you've missed!!








Sweaty...


You better take off your clothes. There was one guy who passed out...the poor dude!






Even DJ Mr Wix took off his t-shirt!

Björn Borg - Spread the Spirit

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........,


I met Miriam from Björn Borg, Stockholm. :)

She came to Amsterdam for business (just hanging out with her colleagues and get payed for it...) and invited me to the fashionshow of BB's SS 2010 collection which was held in the Westerunie.
To be honest, I just wanted to go to the afterparty and have a dance with Miriam and all the other models, wannabe's and other bloggers whom I recommended Miriam to invite to this party. Unfortunately I didn't see one of 'em. Too bad because, despite the fashionshow was 'so and so' (in Holland we say: 'Mwah'), the party was quite fun. Free booze.

Here's the low quality amateur-ish promotional video of the party with Dutch model Doutzen Kroes. (I don't think it's an official promo-video though...hehehe. It's in Dutch by the way!)

Some shots of the night!

Waiting 'till the fashionshow starts


This was not the runway! Dancers standing one floor up, entertaining the people during the short breaks.


Fotografen


I didn't take any pics of the models during the fashionshow because I was standing too far away from the stage. At the end, I sneaked a little closer, accidentally stepped on someone's shoe, apologized and took this pic.

I did take a pic of Doutzen Kroes when she was walking the runway at the end. But it only shows her bum (I was too late...). If I would get at least a 100 comments of people (probably guys) who wanna see the pic, I'll then post it up.


And then it was time to parrrty. Free booze.


My dates for the night: living doll T. (please, click on the T!!) and lovely L.