Lithiumstate

Winter came quick and hard in December 2009 for us Dutch people. They say that we’ve never seen as much snow for the past 35 years- woah ! And alot of snow it was indeed. I don’t mind snow myself you know, or the cold; I’ve always been resistant to the cold to a great degree but what i absolutely hate – is when trodden snow becomes ice on the streets and then the slippery slidey journey to and from work starts. I simply hate it, no longer can i sleep till the last second to make a run for the bus as i’d fall on my feet if I didn’t move like a snail. Going out drunk is a definite no-no and it’s just a complete hassle to move around in, especially when you carry a lot of (expensive) daily gear you definitly don’t wanna fall with.
Quite to the contrast with cars, cars are fine. Our roads are salted daily in the winters so usually you don’t see a spec of white on our roads and cars can cruise about their usual speed; whilst the poor pedestrians like me have to slide left and right with fear of falling down. Why the hell can’t they salt the pedestrian roads too , just hte main ones offcourse. It shouldn’t be that hard a task really as the main pedestrian roads are neatly lined up next to the car roads here.

The last few days it hasn’t snowed anymore, and thank god for that. I’ve already reached my breaking point last week when both public and regular transport were frozen to a standstill, and I was forced to walk 2 hours home trough a snow blizzard; needless to say I was sick the next morning.  Oh well, at least i’ve taken a few winter snaps last weekend; that’ll be the last of the winter snaps you`ll see from me for quite a while – this guy is staying inside this winter and giving his console gaming some much needed love haha !

Everybody around me, either friends or people whose blog and/or Twitter streams i’m following seems to be putting together a “best or favorite photos of 2009″ post. I have to admit I haven’t tought about doing it before but it’s such a great idea that creates perspective to your photography. Actually it wasn’t more than a week ago that I’ve gone trough all of my 150.000 images (!) to clear them out of duplicates (40.000 !) and sorting them in appropriate folders that I’ve come across the first photo’s I took with my trusty Nikon D50. For most part, the shots were all bland, not cause of the quality, the D50 after all is a DSLR from 2005, but more the choice of how I framed the shot seemed just like *ANY* other “point & shoot” style camera shot that you see everywhere. The thing with DSLR’s is you can create fantastic photo’s but in order to do so you have to go beyond the simple concept of “taking a snap” and try to think more in the sense of “How can I convey the most words and/or emotions with one single shot” each and every time. As such I’m also conforming to the popular saying of ” a photo is more than a 1000 words” – it’s true. Especially since I have dabbled alot into video editing in 2009, a properly shot picture can tell more than a 1 minute video.

My Nikon D50 has served me well, it’s been an excellent teacher being my first DSLR. I couldn’t have wished for a different Nikon model to teach me how to get into DSLR. Reason for this is mostly because the D50 doesn’t come pre-loaded with automatic scenes, live-view, custom (color) profiles and a plethora of other things that simply get in the way of taking a picture; that’s all you want to do in the first place anyway. Learning to do things “the hard” way so to speak, has made me a better photographer than a superior “easy to use” camera would have allowed me to be, and that I can say for sure having experienced working around different photographers during events and concerts; they all seemed to lack what I believe to be common sense ! Oh well i’m not the world’s best photographer either, nor do I pretend to be. With a 4 1/2 year old camera body, 2 prime lenses, one non-pro zoomlens and the SB-900 speed flash I can’t say that I’ve spent as much money as most people that call photography their hobby. I am however upgrading to a new camera. I have my mind set on the Nikon D700; which is a full-frame sensor enabled pro DSLR. It allows me to be more creative, and also to work more effeciently and faster. However, recently Nikon introduced the D300 S , an upgrade to their popular D300 pro camera.
It’s still a DX format sensor (i.e cropped) but it features the ability to record video at HD resolutions and includes the option to attach an external mic for proper audio; having been into video alot – and craving for better quality than my Flip mino HD offered i can certainly say that the choice between the D700 and D300 S is a very hard one to make.

Ultimativly; I think the D700 will suit me better, as aside from my trips to Japan, I don’t think there’s anything in particular I would like to put the effort of producing videos off in Holland.

Without further boring you to death; click on the jump to see some of my favorite/best photos of 2009.

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Man, i’m seriously considering my own mortality with how quick the years pass me by.
I was stunned at 2008’s new year’s eve how quick things had gone by, but 2009 seemed like a blur; not a year !
At the very least alot of fun stuff have been done, gone to alot of parties with my Kool Kids brethern, met up lots of interesting people that travel to and from Amsterdam, and been to Japan again so at least 2008’s new year’s resolution of “Go to Japan at least once a year” has come true haha ! Offcourse with good times there comes bad times; 2009 was a bumpy road, having switched jobs three times !  Don’t look at me like that ! I wasn’t my fault; there’s some strange politics that go down when the world (thinks) that it’s in a financial crisis so layoff after layoff’ untill I finally settled down at the ING.

As usual, there’s the new year’s resolutions for this year too ! I’m cheating, cause I’m picking something that i’ll be doing anyway and that’s further improve my mastery over the Japanese language, and since I’ve been toying with the idea of living in Tokyo for a short-term period (i’d never permanantly live in Japan; long story why) it’s become even more important than being to ask for things when on a vacation. A requirement to gain a long-term visa (i.e not the vacation 90 day one) is to be proviciant in Japanese up to a certain level. For this they’ve invented the “Japanese Language Proviciancy Test” or JLPT for short; which is a world-wide standard to gauge one’s mastery over Japanese.
So my goal is to achieve levels 4 (basic) and 3 (intermediate)

Well, here’s hoping that 2010 will be a less bumpier road than 2009 was, and filled with many more wonderfull people and experiences !