Marcel Wanders

Recently I had the opportunity to "shoot" Marcel Wanders.

Marcel Wanders is a famous Dutch designer,
well known for his awesome products, all over the world .

 

Just have a look at his beautiful website: Marcel Wanders

 

I was able to use his own studio which is located just in the middle of Amsterdam at the third floor.
We were extremely lucky finding a parking place just in front of the building.
As you already might know my car is fully loaded will stuff which I need
to make just a single picture. So it took us some time to lug everything up....
That's the only downside of wet plate photography.

Setting up everything always takes me about 1 hour (including making a test plate).

Normally with these kind of shoots we are very limited in time but Marcel loved the process
and he was very willing to pose and was in no hurry.
 

We were able to make 3 plates and as always the last one was the best... :)

26,5 x 26.5 cm Tintype
Exposure time 6 seconds

Dallmeyer 3a at f4

 

Digital pictures made by Ferry v.d. Vliet

The making of.....

Wow, just noticed I wrote my last blog more than half a year ago....
sorry for that. I promise you, you will see some more blogs very soon!

A lot of things happened in the meantime. Like an exhibition during Photo Shanghai, several publications in magazines, some new pictures made for the storytelling series, new BIG studio and a lot more. So I have been quite busy in the past half year.

For now I want to share the making of a picture (actually two pictures).
I had this picture in my mind for already a long time and wanted to include it in the storytelling series. click here for the series
But I was asked to make an exhibition picture for a very talented Dutch photographer who uses tulips for making his art. just have a look at his work: www.basmeeuws.com
So this time we used the same setting for making 2 almost identical pictures.
One for the exhibition of Bas Meeus and one for my storytelling series.

It always fascinates me how colours do change while using the wet plate process.
The umbrella was black, and the Tulips did have all kinds of colours.

Many thanks to Bas Meeuws for posing (and sorry for the wet clothes.... :) )
To Oogenlust for hosting their garden again.
To Paul Jongerius for helping me with the Tulips.
And to Ferry vd Vliet for being the model in this picture and the digital picture he made during the shoot

 

The making of "Swan lake"

The idea for making this plate was in my mind for months already.

The problem was finding the perfect location for making it.
We needed to find a shallow pond and had to make a
sturdy platform for the ballet dancer to stand on.

As the both the dress and swan were white we also needed cloudy weather
to have a bit more control over the exposure.

I bought 5 umbrella stands (4 for the platform and one for the swann)
and placed wooden sticks into them.
That made it possible to adjust both the platform and swan in height.
That was a must as they both should be able to "dance" on the water surface.

Despite the cloudy weather is was extremely difficult to nail the exposure.

So making this plate took us about 5 hours and the very final plate came out just great.

Many thanks to the whole team:
Heather May (model) and her husband Jan,
Ferry van de Vliet (assistant and photographer)
and Patrice Lesueur (Lightinabox) video.

Click here for : The making of video

 

"Swan Lake...."
26.5 x 26.5 cm tintype
Dallmeyer 5d petzval at f7
exposure time 1 second

 
 

 

"The Kite Runner"

The making of "The Kite Runner" again took us 2 days...

Placing and adjusting the kites into the tree took us more than 1 1/2 hour during the first day.

The day started cloudy (which I prefer) but as soon as we were ready the sun "exploded".

As I prefer to use my petzvals wide open there was just to much light for decent exposures.

Taking of the cap and putting it on again within 1/4 of a second is simply impossible to do.

I gave it several tries but as expected it just didn't work

So we had to take down everything and did the same thing the next day.
Cloudy day, almost no wind so perfect.

Again it took us some plates. It's Always for adjusting the final details.

And just before it started to rain we made the final plate.

 

 

Some random pictures of these 2 days copied from the video files.