The train tracks in Nuenen
The day I took this photo was kind of frustrating for me because I left the hotel without my spare camera batteries and instead of just going out to dinner, we went on a little tour of Nuenen. Of course right then my battery decided to die quickly and so I missed the first windmill I saw in Holland and a few other juicy items. So when we got back, I ran inside, grabbed my stuff, a fresh battery and basically stormed back out, annoyed at myself and determined to get a shot before the sun went down. I had [...]
Downtown Eindhoven during the World Cup Finals
I rarely, if ever, have done an HDR shot involving more than one person and usually that’s because they ended up in the picture on accident. It’s just not something I think always looks the best and comes across in a very good way. But I figured I wanted to try it on this one to see how it worked out, so that people could get more of an idea of the depth in this scene. I shot this last Sunday night when we went to downtown Eindhoven to watch the World Cup Finals with the natives. If you recall [...]
Insane thunderstorm over Nuenen
So at the facility we’re working at today, I asked this crazy, funny, Dutch guy around noon, “So what, no rain today? Looks pretty nice out!” He responds, “Oh no, bad storm coming, will be here between 5-6pm.” Alright, we’ll see! Photo above taken at 5:42pm. Umm, wow, this was probably the coolest looking storm I’ve ever seen. Well, maybe I’m just excited, but as you can see from the photo, there was some serious nastiness headed right for me. The clouds were churning, I saw a small funnel up high in the clouds (probably just a “cold air funnel”, [...]
Boiling storm over Nuenen
This is another shot of the storm from behind my hotel a few nights ago. You can see some brightness to the right which was a wall of rain coming that I ended up having to outrun since I stood there shooting until it was almost too late. This is a black and white, HDR photo from three handheld brackets. It’s got a looooot of grain. I kind of like it that way and it’s mainly why I decided to go with the B&W styling, but once I removed the color, I liked the scene even more. Getting rid of [...]
De Collse Watermolen
The taxi drivers in Holland are absolutely insane. They drive 60mph down two-lane highways the size of a one-lane highway with bike riders only inches away from losing their lives. Somehow, someway, I spotted the water mill in the photo as we flew past it Sunday night on our way to Eindhoven to watch the big soccer match. Last night was beautiful after two separate rain storms, so we took a nice walk, passed some cool old houses, horses, cornfields and of course, found the mill. This is the “Collse Watermolen”, a thirteenth century mill that was used for oil [...]
Storms over the Strawberry Fields
Go figure. I get slightly jealous about Phoenix having an amazing chance of storms last weekend and ME having to go to Holland. Okay, I wasn’t TOO upset, but part of me wished I was there enjoying the first big storms of the year. But it turns out it wasn’t a bad thing to be over here. They definitely didn’t materialize in Phoenix, but I sure got a dose of them here in Nuenen, Netherlands. First night I was here I was woken up by a thunderstorm, and then today we had two big storms roll through and drop a [...]
The Mercedes Benz of Amsterdam
I loved this old Mercedes Benz as I was walking the streets of Amsterdam and just had to take a few pictures of it. I have another view that contrasts the bike, but this one is something a little different than my normal HDR processing. I processed the photo as a normal black and white, and then did a single-image HDR out of the color version of the RAW photo and then masked that into the B&W to come up with something a little more interesting to me personally. I’m calling it an HDR Blend and would like to think [...]
Welcome to Amsterdam
I was walking through what appeared to be a craft sale/art show/garage sale in the middle of Amsterdam when I stopped, looked right and saw these lovely ladies laughing at me. Then I noticed one of them wasn’t entirely decent. Immediately upon seeing these girls, I thought “Welcome to Amsterdam, Mike!” Hope you enjoy *grin* (more photos from Holland by clicking on this link: Holland Trip)
Clouds over New York City
Sometimes taking photos from a plane just doesn’t amount to much afterwards. You really have to find a sky or a scene in front of you that is so unique that capturing it from a plane makes it amazing. I don’t think this is close to that kind of photo, but what I do love is the angle I was able to get with the plane turning to the right as we headed to JFK in New York. The clouds were beautiful and up on the horizon they were moving left to right and forming storms as they made their [...]
Amsterdam – Bikes and Bikes
One thing about Amsterdam (and maybe a lot of other places in Europe, I can’t honestly speak truthfully since this is my first time overseas) is that there are a ton of people riding bikes. And even more than that are the number of bikes just chained up all over the city. Chained here, chained there, chained everywhere. This is a little alleyway between two other “larger” roads going through Amsterdam Centraal. I almost passed it, then looked at all the bikes and knew I needed a picture. A few other photogs I follow would probably have loved to use [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.