Tagged: photoshop

Een virtueel relief waarin de vlaggen van de 28 EU-lidstaten zijn verwerkt

8. June 2015

The Colors of the Union: 304888344611713860501504000000 Ways to Make a Flag

In 2002, my former employer Rem Koolhaas designed a European flag. His idea: a kind of bar code with the colors of the flags of the member states of the European Union, arranged from east to west. One of the places where the design was used is the Museumpark in Rotterdam. A brilliant idea, in my opinion: it symbolizes variety and unity and it is immediately recognizable. The flag may only be a bit hard to draw without errors, but that’s true for many flags. (How are the American stars arranged? And did we start with a red or a… Read More

Spherical panorama Bourtange, The Netherlands

Digital art

27. April 2015

The Link between Bourtange and Rotterdam (and between a Pentagon and a Sphere)

A few weeks ago I was in Bourtange, the well-preserved fortified village in the Dutch province of Groningen. At least, I’ve always thought that Bourtange was a nicely preserved piece of history. But that’s not entirely correct. For more than a century, the fortress was completely gone and Bourtange was a boring farming village. In the nineteenth century, the fortifications were demolished and the canals were closed, which happened in many places in those days. Reconstruction Not until the sixties of the twentieth century came the idea to rebuild the fortress. In the seventies and eighties that idea was carried… Read More

Paintified image of former cruiseship SS Rotterdam, with the neighbourhood of Katendrecht in the foreground and Waalhaven industrial area in the background

Digital art

28. February 2015

Markthal, Katendrecht and other Rotterdam Paintifications

Rotterdam, as you may know, is packed with tall buildings. But unfortunately most of those buildings are not accessible if you don’t live or work there. And that’s a pity because the city is at its most beautiful and surprising when viewing it from a higher point of view. Higher ground Fortunately, in every year there are those days when you suddenly can get to places that are otherwise off-limits: Architecture Day, Construction Day, Heritage Day. Over the years, I ‘ve been able to look at my city from above many times. The photographs I made on those occasions now… Read More

NASA's indestructible Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, still going strong after two hundred years, driving around on the terraformed former Red Planet

Space art / Visualisation

23. February 2015

Opportunity’s Bicentennial

More than eleven years ago, on January 25, 2004, Opportunity, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, landed in Meridiani Planum. An identical rover, Spirit, landed three weeks earlier, on the other side of Mars. Both vehicles were expected to remain active for 90 Martian days, more or less equal to three months on Earth. The Martian climate would claim its toll, or so the mission planners feared. Although on Mars the sun shines more than six hundred days a year, the dust storms and large daily temperature differences would surely leave their mark. Indestructible Oppy But the rovers appeared to be more… Read More

Photorealistic HDR image of the sunset over the Rotterdam skyline and Lake Kralingen

Photography

5. December 2014

HDR Photography, an Exercise in Self-Control

I have been doing a lot of HDR photography lately. In case you didn’t know: that acronym stands for High Dynamic Range. On an HDR photo it’s possible to show details in both the bright and dark portions of an image that would get lost on a “normal” photo. The human eye is in fact still superior to a camera sensor when it comes to the detection of differences in brightness. In HDR photography, you merge different shots to create an image that is more consistent with how we see a scene with our own eyes. My workflow There are… Read More

Buispanorama van Het Park, Rotterdam, met twee nijlganzen en de Euromast, gemaakt op een zonnige dag in de herfst

Digital art / Photography

14. November 2014

All Year Round Spherical Panoramas

I’ve been making a lot of spherical panorama’s lately, often referred to as “little planets”. But of course I have not invented the concept myself. I’m certainly not the only one who makes them; anyone with a camera and a recent version of Photoshop can produce them quite easily. And of course I do want my panoramas to add something, to stand out among the many other small spheres that are being made. Wet asphalt One of the ways I try to do that is by showing the influence of the weather and the seasons. The panorama below, for example,… Read More

Fragment of the double street map of Rotterdam which compares the streets, blocks and harbours of the city in 1939 and 2014

Cartography

27. October 2014

Rotterdam: a Tale of Two Cities

Anyone who studies a street map of Rotterdam before 1940 gets confused. Rotterdammers today would have a hard time finding their way in that pre-war city. Not only the buildings are different, also the street plan has changed beyond recognition. There are in fact two different cities. Those two cities share the same location but are separated by time. With a breaking point at the day of the bombing: May 14, 1940. Of course, other cities have also changed enormously since, say, the 1930s. But nowhere are the differences as dramatic as in Rotterdam. The destruction of the street plan Not… Read More

Spherical panorama of Gelderseplein in Rotterdam, featuring the White House, the reconstructed Wijnhavenhouses, the Old Harbour with the Cube dwellings and more

Digital art / Photography

26. September 2014

Gelderseplein Rotterdam: Another Spherical Panorama

Gelderseplein (Gelderland Square) is a new square in the center of Rotterdam. It’s on a site that lay vacant for years after the construction of the railway tunnel. Around it we find a diverse catalog of architectural styles. Most prominent is the White House, which was the tallest skyscraper in Europe after completion in 1898. At that time it was criticized by many as “too American”. The building survived the 1940 bombing but was nearly demolished in the seventies for the construction of a huge roundabout that fortunately never came. Next to the White House there’s a row of eighteenth… Read More

Spherical panorama, composed from 24 photographs, stitched together and mapped to a sphere in Photoshop, of the market square and town hall in Gouda, the Netherlands

Digital art / Photography

28. August 2014

Spherical Panoramas: How to Make a Little Planet

Spherical panoramas: you see them quite often nowadays. Little planets, they are sometimes called. Photos, apparently made with a huge wide-angle lens, on which the Earth seems to have shrunk so much that there’s room for only oa few buildings.Only eight months ago I made my first spherical panorama, of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam. These days I even make them in commission. Time for a little tutorial. The Big Picture The great thing about spherical panoramas is that they give an overall view. They show a place in one single glance, unlike tradional widescreen panoramas where you have to pan… Read More

Computer generated sketch of an ear of corn on a woodstrip floor

Digital art / Various

28. July 2014

Ear of Corn on a Woodstrip Floor

The past two weeks I was in Orsennes, France, to do volunteerwork at Sadhaka, a small organization that offers yoga and creative holidays in and around a converted watermill. It was good to be away from internet, phone and other things that make life pleasant but sometimes also rather complicated. Besides working in the kitchen, the garden and the henhouse there was also time to take pencil, marker pen, brush or pastel and to be inspired by the abundance of flowers and plants around the Moulin: Photoshop But no matter how fun and useful it is to work with traditional… Read More