Selected Excellence: Wouter Brandsma

(Courtesy and copyright of Wouter Brandsma. Taken with GX200)

Wouter Brandsma is no stranger among Ricoh camera users. His works are highly regarded by fellow "Ricohans". Located in Holland, Wouter has published many intruguing photos and useful articles on his GX100 and 200. We are in the process of translating one of his articles in Chinese, as a way to better introduce him to the Chinese speaking community. This photo caught Nevin's eye because of the emotional charge in it. The man in a beret is a war veteran having taken part in the real battle. It was also because of the feeling of action, rendered in an emotional way by a typical upper-left-to-lower-right diagonal pattern.

By Wouter Brandsma: The photograph was made at the 64th commemoration of operation Market Garden. See the full story with more photographs here. The RAW file was processed in Adobe Lightroom and converted to B&W.

I really like to use a compact camera since one can easily can blend in with the public. These cameras are very silent, especially in combination with the snap mode or manual focussing. The wide angle lens is superb of the GX200 and I almost never use 50mm or above.

(For further reading on Operation Market Garden, read this)

Comments

A Real Hero

(Grip On Reality: This photo was taken on my way to work. I was walking past trucks parking on a cul-de-sac when the ropes caught my attention. The light was right, the colour was right and the criss-crossing pattern was perfect and I held up my GX200. People passing by checked me out and wondered what could be made out of such a boring scene. To me, the fun in photography is that the photographer makes something interesting out of what is not obvious to most at the scene. The ropes tied in knots somehow reminded people I know who are in the grip of the recession) You must have also known a friend or two, or even yourself, being baffled by the spiral downturn of the economy. Bank went bankrupt and the rich was faced with a shrinking wealth. A friend of mine has just had his salary cut by over 10% and some of his colleagues started to be shed. But, wait. Was this done really for the sake of continuing the business? Or is there a factor or greed in it? I wonder whether the

New Low Prices

The window shopping some hours ago has almost provoked my AgIDS illness. Just in case you’re in Hong Kong or are coming here, and have the money to burn (All in HK$/ body only): GX200 = $3,280 GRD2 = $3,380 LX3 = $3,180 G10 = $3,280 Prices are available form a gear shop on the 1st floor of the Mongkok Computer Centre. Besides these new low prices, I found that Wing Shing Photo (55-57Sai Yeung Choi St., MK Tel: 2396 6886/ 91-95 Fa Yuen St., MK Tel: 2396 6885) is offering a Sony A700 + Carl Zeiss Lens package for HK$9,980 (hopefully, a bargain will make it some hundreds cheaper).

Eye Contact

(Leica D-lux 5) The digital era may make it easier to end up with fave shots. Even lousy photos may be turned likable after a few clicks in the post-processing workflow. But if digital advancement or amendments have any bearing on the cultivation of personal style, no photographers will need to discover his or her own photographer’s eye. Undoutedly, this is out of the question. Only with a trained photographer’s eye can we give a thinking gaze and capture an eternal moment, in our unique style. Style is the soul of a great photo. A few posts have been written in GXG to touch on the topic of photographer’s eye. Instead of finding an answer, which would require academic discussions, the posts are intended to give my general reflections and spark interests in moving towards further exploration of the topic. The posts can be viewed after the links: 1) Photographer's Eye: Storytelling 2) Photographer's Eye: Little Show of Observing 3) Photographer's Eye: Sight-Worthy 4

GX GARNERINGS

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