I can tell you a dozen secrets or maybe even a hunderd secrets to great photography. I can tell you about light, composition, the rule of thirds, manual mode, the lens you use, jpg or raw. I can show you the effect of actions and beg you to start using the 5D mark II because it is truly the secret to great photography but you know that none of this is the answer.

The one secret to great photography is.....emotion. Any image that shows you emotion is a great image. Even if the light is off or the composition is not according to the rules or it might not be tack sharp. It does not matter because you can feel it when an image contains laughter, tears, sadness, anger, joy and is in my opinion the secret to great phtography.

I was browsing through my files when I came across this images. It was taken last year at the wedding of Estrella & Martin. I had just crossed the street when I saw this man coming. I turned around and took the shot.

It makes me happy, seeing the smiles on everybodies face. I can even detect a smile on the cyclist face or am I just imagining things? Doesn't matter this is a shot that makes me happy.

If you are curious how you can create a profile photo you can be proud of, read on because this blogpost will show you how a one light set up can do the trick.

A couple of weeks ago when I was in the middle of the website upgrade I realised we needed some profile photo's for the new Meet Us section of the site. As we had learned so much in the In-Camera lighting workshop of Zach and Jody Gray we decided to put this to good use and create our protraits using a studio strobe. So I assembled one softbox (90cmx60m) and installed it on the lightstand. We choose the glamour lighting setup (bottom of the softbox on shoulder length and softbox face on) and installed the camera.

The upstairs hallway is not that big (2,5 meters long by 1 meter wide) but it gave us the look we wanted. As I didn't have a light meter we needed a couple of test shots we had the setting right but then we could get started. We had a great time playing around with some poses looking into the camera and away from the camera looking at each other etc and I think it shows in the shots.

So here the set up of a profile photo you can be proud of.

Here you can see the set up of us and the softbox which was approx. 2,5 meter away from us and the camera on a tripod. I used my 50mm lens and the camera settings were ISO 100, F4, 1/100sec. This all resulted in shots like this.

You can see the remote in my hand (set to the 2sec delay) and that for some shots it took some effort to get the camera to trigger. But a remote is great when no one is there to actually shoot the image and you do not want to activate the self timer every time.

But we were both very happy with these shots!

How many images do you shoot on the wedding day? A great question. In the days of film with rolls of 72 images I shot differently, calculated more to be certain I had enough film for the big moments. Result, if I shot 5 rolls in one day it was a lot. In that sense life has done a 180 when digital was introduced. Because even though the memory cards were not that big in the beginning, the amount of images that could be stored on it was significant more than on film.

Now the sky seems the limit. Disks can contain up to 128gb of images. If I can capture about 500 images on a 16gb card this means I can store up to 5200 images on a 128gb card. This is unbelievable. But there is also a risk factor with cards this size. One card to capture the whole day. If something fails than: Houston, we have a problem. So I use a collection of Sandisk cards from 4gb and 8gb. I start with an 8gb and switch to 4 gb's during the ceremony and the photoshoot to go end with a 8gb for the party. I format them before every shoot and backup straight after every shoot.

I do not shoot 5200 images per wedding but between 800-1600 images. An average of about 150 images per hour. Off course this dependents of the amount of time we shoot during the wedding day and the particular moments in the day. The ceremony will average have more images than the family formals. But it remains unbelievable amounts of images.

Hi this is Antoinette on the blog. I decided to take over for one day because I got something nice to share. This past December I saw an advert in lifestyle magazine IN Magazine for lunchroom Sugarless. They serve only dishes that are from organic produce, fresh and only contain natural sugars. So no artificial colors, and flavors added. Further they only use pure and natural ingredients that are manufactured fairtrade.

I had a nice high tea with friends of mine and we could really taste the natural flavors, it tasted great.

Have a look.

There are days on end that I can eat the same breakfast or have the same for lunch. I can style the living room and not change it for years. You can say that I am not a big fan of change when it comes to certain things but when it comes to my business I like to keep it fresh. I like to take a look at it from different perspectives and make it better.

So after almost a year with the current theme on the website I thought it was good to have it freshened up. To let see if I could make it more in line with my style and the message I want to convey. With the blog you could already get an idea of what it is going to look like but seeing the end result I am really proud.

Thanks to Ronald who as always helped me making my ideas come to life and my sister to make sure our new store front is, what fits us best. So without further a due may I present to you Admiron Photography 2.0. Take a look because I am curious what you think!

Happy Friday.

When I was a child I wanted to become an electrician, a little later a police woman, hearing the Everly Brothers I wanted to be a gitarist, seeing Boris Becker become Wimbledon champion I wanted to be a tennis player and after seeing Top Gun I wanted to be an F16 aviator or at least a chopper pilot. I would have been to small in any standard but who cared, no dream was big enough for me. I could become anything. Until I had to decide what I wanted to study, which school I wanted to go to. Choose wisely my child, a smart girl is prepared for the future and so I choose subjects in school with which I would never go wrong.

But is that was makes us happy, make me happy? To choose wisely. Why not choose what you do best, for which you have a passion? If you are passionate about something you will make it work but instead we choose wisely. So I have defined a goal after the Zach and Jody workshop and follow their advise. Dream big. No bounderies, no limits, anything is possible and see where it might lead.

So tell me what is your biggest dream?