Eagle flying over, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

Deze wilde ik even delen, omdat ik 'm erg mooi vind!

Eergisteren kwam een adelaar even 'model' spelen voor me, en stond toe dat ik een aantal foto's van 'm kon maken. Normaal is dat wat pittig omdat ze hoog in bomen uitkijken en zoeken naar hun volgende prooi, maar deze stond gewoon op de rotsen nog geen 3 meter bij me vandaan. Leuk!

(Meer foto's staan hier tussen, ergens onderaan)

Look it's my suitcase!, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

... and of course my suitcase has gone missing again ;)

Something about Murphy's law I guess, since this is the third time in a row this happened to me. Hah! Official story from the airline is that the tag must have been ripped of somewhere in the baggage sorting center (a.k.a "the belly of the beast").. we shall see what happens :)

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. It'll show up soon enough. The most important thing in my suitcase, besides all my clothes, was the adaptor for my laptop, but luckily my mother has almost the same adaptor, though slightly less powerful, and it seems to work fine when I do not recharge the battery.

For now, vacation! Relaxation! This week we're going to aim for zero pressure let's-just-do-nothing-for-a-change nothingness! That be good! Oh, and if you want to know more about Canada, I'm going to try to regularly update this set with fresh pictures :)

There is a zombie in my basement!, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

Today I had the chance to shoot some zombies in my basement!

Let's rewrite that. Today fyrane  and I found some time in between our too hectic lives to do a zombie photoshoot. Wow! Exellent relaxation, and muchos fun too, even though we hit some minor snags during the day.

First off we couldn't find any fake blood. Second, and very annoying, the location where we were planning to do the shoot - an old abandoned factory - wasn't reachable due to a worker crew deciding that this day would be a good day to redo some roadwork, and they set up their coffee shack exactly in front of the Secret Entrance. Even though we tried finding an alternate entrance it seems that it's closed down for good. Too bad, it is a nice location for shoots. Oh and, lastly, we missed some of our props which we were planning to use for the shoot.

Luckily, I haz basement! And that basement already looks like zombies ought to be living in there, so that problem was easily solved, some blood was found in Zaandam, and my dear old teddy was sacrificed as a prop for this shoot. I think that worked out brilliantly.. it yielded really creepy little sister-like shots! And besides that, I think the basement worked out perfectly too, looking through the pictures I had multiple OMGWTFBBQ-DID-I-TAKE-THAT-PICTURE-moments.. wow, fyrane  I think we rocked today! It just looks surrealistic in a very creepy sort of way! :)

Next step: post production! This probably is going to take some time, because there is also this regular work thing that needs to happen, but I couldn't resist putting up some teasers for everyone. They're here :)

Ah, an optical death ray!, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

Ah, nice! I just build My First Optical Death Ray. At least, that's probably what it feels like when you would be in front of this minor monstrosity.

This was just a minor test, but it seems to work nicely! Real world examples are sure to follow.. soonish...

Thanks achterwaards for the spare equipment! The Braun flash, as depicted here, is already quite useful! And I'm sure the rest is going to be put it into good use too, gheh gheh >:-)

• 1 camera met 4 lenzen en 2 flitsers
• 1 filmcamera
• 1 statief
• 1 versterker
• 4 boxen + snoer
• 4 laptops + voedingen
• 3 haspels
• 2 DIN-3 kabels van 10 meter
• 2 PAR-56 RGB spots
• 1 SIS-PM computergestuurd stopcontact
• 1 zwaailicht
• 1 DMX USB interface
• 1 ethernet switch
• 1 wireless modem
• 1 ipod touch
• 2 groene lasers
• 2 portos
• 1 berg customized software
• 1 zaklamp
• 1 gereedschapskist
• 3 ethernet kabels van verschillende lengtes
• 1 The usual stuff (slaapspull etc..)

Things I Hate part 1: Escalators, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

A couple of weeks ago we started Project 52!

Together with Tineke, Nieske, Jojo and a couple of good friends from Amsterdam we (try to) make photos matching the theme of the week. And I like this a lot! It's a brilliant way to force me to re-think even the most common things, and learn a lot about photography in the mean time.
Last week we had our first IRL P52 photo meet and inpromptu workshop, where we put little girls in big boxes, shot cows and defied gravity! It was a lot of fun!

But, about re-thinking stuff, that brings me to the theme of this week: Things I hate.

I hereby proclaim: I hate escalators!

Hmm, maybe not just escalators. Escalators by themselves are fine, but I particularly dislike this one! It's an escalator in Washington at Dupont circle, Washinton, DC, USA. It is slow! It stutters! It shocks! It seems to stop for no apparent reason. And it is loooong! For me, having a slight fear of heights, this is not a fun escalator. I find it weird that they allow this abomination of an escalator in a country where coffee isn't even sold hot, so you cannot accidentally burn yourself drinking it...

Since my travel budget unfortunately didn't cover going to Washington just to make this shot I choose this (otherwise fine and perfect) escalator in Amsterdam instead. :)

Besides escalators I find that I don't hate much.. oh well, maybe the for-ever-wait of a certain computer OS, even at the most simplest of operations.. and the fact that they seem to find it necessary to constantly seek stuff on my hard drives when I'm not doing anything on my computer.. I expect a conspiracy between that certain OS and hard drive vendors, that churning must lower hard drive lifetimes somehow, right?

Also I don't particularly like blue cheese, and I dislike it when I see that I'm out of coffee...

but all of these things I don't hate, it is fixable. Fixable things you don't have to hate. Real hate, or at least strong dislike, comes from things you cannot avoid, and will happen. Like filling out tax forms? Hmm, I'm not certain that that's it.

So, I was wondering.. what do you hate?

Symbols 9: Breach, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

was awesome for me! Both as a photographer and as an NPC. Even though I wasn't able to really get into my bigger NPC roles, probably something to do with the lack of sleep which I had for the entire last week, I did like playing the many small ones very much! To Rinie, who coached us through the breach, and to the rest of the NPC team: you rock!

The only snag (at the moment, besides being very, very, very, tired) is that I accidentally left the robe I borrowed from Sna for my Yannis the Alchemist character in the monsterkot, but hopefully we can fix that soon!

Photography wise, pffew! The breach of Runewall! Beautiful to see, but very difficult to get nice pictures of, so I took plenty just to be safe, and I think that worked out. The pictures of the blue cave and the wedding also look pretty nice, plus a multitude of other scenes and events, and I have some beautiful character shots of those of you who posed. Some stats: I took 1478 pictures, which means I have 15.1GB of files to browse through! Yay :)

More details will undoubtedly follow soon!

Lightning in Zaandam, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

Meh, it seems somewhat stormy outside...

Reinstalling my PC @ work, finally!, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

And now the deadlines are over, I finally get to do Important Stuff!

Like allowing the ICT department to reinstall my PC, which means an upgrade from Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 8... and also from a 32 bit OS to a to 64 bit OS, which probably implies that those pesky remote users will finally cease to use matlab on my machine remotely :P

We shall see! :)

Ork

To the nice person that did this..., originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

I see you were trying to attempt to maybe clean it up, and then probably thought, hey, this is not my backyard, let's just leave it like this and quickly go do something else...

Foei!
Don't do it again!

grmbl...

Vuurdoorn in het bos, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

In this altered picture I've placed Vuurdoorn in our local park, and crossed about 4 different Siberian tigers together to replace the cat she was holding in her arms.

Still work in progress, since the lighting of the forest does not yet work for me, but it's a nice experiment :)

Annet, het melkmeisje van Vermeer, originally uploaded by Ork de Rooij.

And here is the first result from my post of yesterday! :)

It's Annet, as originally (might have been) painted by Vermeer.

Ork