Time-lapse and stop motion video’s

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Arden

Graffiti keuken - Graffiti by Roy Valk / Karski and THYZ

The blogpost published right now should have been about meta descriptions in WordPress, but something more fun came in between: Last week I was invited to shoot a stop motion video with street artist Ives One. I can’t tell you for what or when it’ll be published, but it was loads of fun though! I’ve done some time-lapse and stop motion shooting with street / graffiti artists before and enjoyed it a great deal. I’m not really confident enough to squeeze them in between my portfolio but I’ll gladly share them over here! I hope you’ll enjoy

Mike Giant at Mediamatic – Time-lapse

During my internship at the Mediamatic foundation in Amterdam, Mike Giant flew in to do a mural on one of the walls from the Mediamatic exhibition space. I set-up my tripod, camera and remote and let it be. I was quite happy with the result, especially because it shows the amazing freehand drawing skills of the Giant.

Graffiti Keuken
Together with Roy Valk aka Karski from Mooiemuur.nl and Thyz we’ve been at it a full day to create something Funky. Karski had some amazing ideas on how to bring a painting to live and thanks to his (freaking awesome) spray can control we were finished before we knew it!

CFYE at the Revelry

For the CFYE exhibition ‘CFYE at the Wise men revelry’ in the Sugar Factory, Amsterdam we invited three street / graffiti artists with a link to Brazil: Gais from Rio de Janeiro, SjocoSjon from Amsterdam and Roy Valk / Karski, from amsterdam as well. During their creation of the most amazing mural the Sugar Factory had ever seen, I set up my camera and captured the whole creating of the mural. I might re-edit this one as I feel it might be a tad long.

Mooiemuur – Kids Rights

Once again with Karski /Roy Valk, this time on assignment from the Kids Right foundation.

Snik
UK (street) artist Snik came over to Amsterdam for the annual ‘Paint & Beer’ festival. He brought a 4x2m stencil with 6 layers, something I had to capture. This is actually the first Time-lapse video I created.

Light painting on the frozen canals of Amsterdam

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Arden

Ever since I discovered light painting photographers via CFYE, I’ve been inspired to try out light painting for myself. As temperatures at night have been hitting minus 10 degrees celcius and the canals are frozen solid, unique opportunities arise! Light painting on the frozen over canals of Amsterdam is something you can only do once in about 15 years! Together with a few friends we went out on the ice to create some unique shots! Tim van Vliet aka Reyone handled most of the light tools which we received from Twin Cities brigthest (TCB): Dana Maltby – who deserves the most credits for the amazing job he did on the lights.

Of course, I had to do a few normal long exposure shots as well! By the way, if you like this you might also like the shots I’ve done on the ice earlier this week.

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Ice skating on the canals of Amsterdam

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Arden

Ice skating on the frozen Prinsengracht with the Westertoren, Amsterdam

It’s been freezing in Europe for the last week, and it’s no exception in Amsterdam! The canals are fully frozen, an event that hasn’t occured since 1997. People are ice skating over the Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht and everyone is having major fun with it. For me and hundreds of other photographers, it’s a unique chance to capture the city of Amsterdam for a different angle. Check out all the pictures after the jump.
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Improve your WordPress article titles

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Arden

The title tag can be a powerful weapon in your battle to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For one, all your article titles should be unique or have pagination added to them if there are multiple pages, something that most WordPress themes do by default, but you can do more! Having a descriptive title with relevant keywords can help you a great deal in specifying the search assignments you turn up in. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to add the related keywords that are already there – your category and custom taxonomy titles.

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Real winter in Amsterdam

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Arden

Appearantly there’s a real winter going on outside! The whole of Europe has been suffering / enjoying the winter weather. In Amsterdam people have been ice skating on the canals for the first time in at least a decade. I haven’t had much time to take pictures of Winter Paradise Amsterdam yet, but seeing I live closeby to the ‘Amsterdamse Bos’, I had a walk over the Bosbaan. The bosbaan is a two kilometers long, dead-end canal created for rowing games in the summertime. Right now it’s completely frozen over and perfect for ice skating, or a walk if you prefer.

WordPress Slideshow plugin – Portfolio slideshow pro

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Arden

Recently I told you about Developers custom fields, which is one of my favourite and must-have plugins for every WordPress project. Ttoday I’ll tell you something about one of my other favourite plugins for WordPress - Portfolio slideshow Pro.

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Panorama Alexanderplein

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Arden

Alexanderpein, Amsterdam - Photography by Arden de Raaij

I absolutely love the Alexanderplein in Amsterdam. This small square / crossing in the east part of Amsterdam holds the Muiderpoort (one of the old entrances to the city) at one side, the Artis zoo at the other. Even though it’s in quite a traffic-heavy area, it always seems to be peacefull. I shot this panorama from a bridge looking over the ‘Plantage muidergracht’. See how it looks on Google Maps right here.

Oranje-Nassau

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Arden

Some pretty light in the early morning – Sarphatistraat, Amsterdam

Developers Custom Fields for WordPress

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Arden

Developers custom fields plugin for Wordpress

Custom fields are a very powerful feature within WordPress. Creating custom fields for certain content or as an extra hook can make life a lot easier for your clients and yourself. There are dozens of tutorials and ready-made solutions to create custom fields or even hook them to post-types and taxonomies on the fly. I’m more of a DIY guy though, and decided to scorch the web for a more ‘custom’ solution.

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Why I ‘switched’ from Joomla to WordPress

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Arden

There’s no ‘best’ open-source Content Management system. If we look at the most popular CMS systems; Joomla, WordPress and Drupal, they’ve all got their pros and cons. However, web developers tend to turn into advocates of the CMS they have learned to work with, instead of looking over the fence every once in a while. I say this because I’m just as guilty of this as any other developer.

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