Owner: BrownNoisePhotos URL:http://brownnoisephotos.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:58:57 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Personal photoblog with pictures from trips, holidays, travel, daily life with some backgroundinformation and depending on the subject links to more detailed online information, average updates once a week Site statistics:Click here
Short notification 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Just a short message to let you know that I´ll post some new pics a.s.a.p.But right now I have a very bad and horrible cold, so I´m off to bed early.See you later! Read more:Short
My newest acquisition 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A Nikon Coolscan V ED Desktop filmscanner. Those dark winterdays may come now. Besides all the new photos that I will shoot with the digital camera I don't have to be afraid that I'll quickly run out of material. I guess I will post golden oldie material soon on a regular basis. My first project will be digitalizing the old slidecollection of my parents. After that I'll have lots of APS-films and 35mm films waiting to be digitalized.
Exhibition 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Didn't made much pictures lately and after all this is a photo weblog, so I didn't had much to post about. The main reason is that I'm quite busy at the moment with some legal stuff. Don't need to go into all the details, but that's basically the reason why I didn't post much the past weeks.Anyway, Thursdayafternoon I went together with Noriko to an opening of an exhibition in our hometown Utrecht of my friend, artist, sculptor and former roommate Gerard van den Berg. For those who can read Dutch you can find his resume here.Of course I can keep a pretentious story about arts in general and Gerard's work in particular, but I'm not going to bother you with that. Also because I don't have much theoratical knowledge about arts, especially sculpture. I have some knowledge about art history, but I'm not an expert.Art, regardless if it's the visual or the performing arts, is something you must see, read or listen to. That's why I prefer not too talk too much about it. For me art Read more:Exhibition
Normally this isn't a political blog 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This is mainly a photoblog about photography with pics from my daily life, trips and other trivial stuff.Normally
I don't post much about politics, but today I make an exception.On my brother's weblog Dutchblog Israel I saw a post with a link to the weblog of Lisa Goldman. In one of her posts she reports about Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, an Egyptian weblogger who and several others were detained by the police while demonstrating peacefully in support of the independence of the judiciary in Egypt.Alaa and his wife Manal are famous in the Egyptian weblogcommunity for their democracy activism.Bloggers started a campaign to get Alaa free and after checking some background information at some of the links at Lisa Goldman's post I feel a lot of sympathy for this campaign, so that's why I make an exception and pay attention to this matter in this post. I also will put a banner on the right site and if people see this post, please check some of the links and sign the petition. It only takes Read more:political
Finally some new pics 1970-01-01 00:59:59 PC-problems are still not completely solved yet. Because I was busy I haven't been able to take proper care of the PC-trouble. But I can post now, so I better should use this opportunity.My mate Andy from the UK visited me for a week and went back last Wednesday. We didn't do as much as we planned, but we had a nice time anyway. We made some trips within a one hour reach of my hometown. And the rest of the time we spend in and around my hometown.Here are a few pics from our visit to Deventer next to the river IJssel, a nice town with a historic centre and a member of the historical Hanseatic League and still call themselve a Hanse city.A lot of scenes from the famous 1977 war movie (WW 2) "A Bridge Too Far" from Richard Attenbourough was shot around Deventer.I'll try to post some more pics later on. Read more:Finally
Advertising other websites/blogs 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I didn't took much new pictures the past weeks and I also didn't scan much slides or negatives. So this time I would like to make some advertisement for two weblogs. I also added their URL's on the sidebar on the right.The first one is a cartoonweblog made by my partner and future wife Noriko. I copied three images from her cartoonweblog. The rest of her cartoonweblog can be checked here. The story based on the daily life in Utrecht is in Japanese right now, but maybe there will be an English version in the near future.The style of the comic is known as Manga, the Japanese word for comics or print cartoons.This is just an example of three images of the cartoon. the rest of the cartoon can be seen here.The second weblog is a photoweblog run by my mother in law in Tokyo.I copied a few images to here but there are loads of pictures overthere, so if these copied pictures here made you curious, you can check the rest here.There are some really nice pictures on my mother in law's photowe Read more:Advertising
Some maintenance and Blogger trouble 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The past three, four days I had trouble logging in at Blogger
. This is pretty annoying. The past weeks I hardly had time to post and now I have time I can't log in to post. I'll keep it short for now. You never know how long this will be working.I did some maintenance on the template. I removed a banner on the right side, which was slowing down the loading time of the weblog very much. Instead of this banner I add banners from Neo counter and Neo earth. These banners show the flags of the countries of your visitors and the Neo Earth banner shows a map with the location of the city of your visitors. You have some flexibility to change the lay out of the banners. I think they look pretty nice.To all my viewers/visitors I wish everybody a merry X-mas and for later of course a Happy, Healthy and prosperous New Year.See you later! Update: The problems still remain. I had to post from a different computer. Have no idea what the bottleneck is which cause this problem. Anti-virus/firewall so
My first scans - Hiroshima (1) - B/W-pics 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I haven't figure out all the possibilities of my new Nikon Fimscanner, but the first results are promising. In this post I will show some black and white pics that I shot in 2000 in Japan at the city of Hiroshima, known as the first city in history that had the unfortunate and horrible honour to be bombed with an atomic bomb on August 6th 1945.The pictures in this post are scans from a black and white APS-film shot with a Minolta Vectis S-1.Most of the pics were shot in and around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park where you find most of the monuments related to the victims of the A-bomb and also the Peace Memorial Museum. A visit to this museum won't leave nobody untouched, unless you are a cold-hearted insensitive brainless idiot. It sure is worthwhile to visit, but be prepared that it can ruin your day.But despite it's horrible and tragic history Hiroshima is also a fun city to visit. It has an excellent nightlife, good food (speciality Okonomiyaki) and some good sightseeingplaces
Iriomote Island (Okinawa) - Shichi Festival 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Here are the photos I promised in my previous post from Iriomote Island
, one of the islands of Okinawa
. The photos date back to September 2002 and were taken during the Shichi Festival
.We spend about 10 days at Okinawa and we visit a total of six islands. First we flew from Tokyo to Naha on the main island of Okinawa (Okinawa-hontoo). We only spend the first night there and the night before we flew back to Tokyo. The other islands we visited were Zamami-jima, Ishigaki, Taketomi, Iriomote and Hateruma, the most southern inhabited island of Japan and much closer to Taiwan than to mainland Japan.It was an excellent holiday, with nice sightseeing, nice food and drinking, interesting culture etc..., a nice mix of activities and relaxing. We also liked the people. Way less stressed and much more relaxed than on mainland Japan. They know how to party and they like drinking. We liked the Orion beer and the local drink Awomori, the notorious strong liquor of Okinawa that can contain between 30
Quick Post 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It has been two weeks since my last post. It's not that I didn't had anything to post about. I made quite some pictures the past few weeks, but I simply was too busy with other things.We were in England from December 28th till January 3rd were we visited a friend around New Year. I haven't sort out all the pictures yet, but here are two pics for now to keep my visitors happy :-).I will post more pictures soon, I promise.Bye for now.This is a pic from the tower of the Parish church of St. Mary Magdalene in TauntonAnd this one was taken near my friend's parent's place in Devon, a county in South-West England. Read more:Quick
Just removed some stuff 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Welcome and a happy New Year to all my visitors!I just removed
the Neo Counter- and the Neo Earth- banners. I knew when I signed in I could try the paid version for two weeks and after that it would change to the free version. But I didn't expect that the free version would look that crappy, so I just removed the banners. Although the paid version looked nice, there is no way I'm going to pay 30 Dollars ( a year) for some nice banners. Read more:stuff
PC-Troubles 1970-01-01 00:59:59 After posting for the last time more than two weeks ago I thought it was about time to post some new pics, but unfortunately there are some problems with my photosoftware. Also having some hardware problems with the computer. My PC probably need a good clean-up and replacing some hardware (probably one of the harddisks and powersupply) and a reinstall of Windows. Hope things will be solved soon, so please have a bit of patience. I'll try to add new pics as soon as possible.This time I'll post a link to a photowebsite with photos made by Robert Knoth, a Dutch photographer from Rotterdam. It's called Nuclear Nightmares: 20 years after Chernobyl. I ran into this website a few weeks ago. This week there was some item on the news about the disaster 20 years ago on the night of April 26th 1986. It's not a very cheerful subject but the photos and the short descriptions of the people behind the photos makes it a shocking, but also a powerful and very impressive statement.You can check at:N Read more:Troubles
Introducing new search engine 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Since last Thursday I add a new search engine to my weblog in the right frame just below my profile and webstats. There used to be one of Technorati, but after I tried to find something in my archives and not getting the result that I expected I decided to look out on the internet and see if there was a good alternative. It took some time to find what I wanted, but finally I ended up with a service from Google, called Google Free Way. On this page you can find some HTML-code which can be copied into your website/weblog template. You can choose from three options, depending what you want. But on this page they also offered a fourth option.In this fourth option you can customize the HTML-code through some wizard and give the Google website/weblog search-box the look of your own website/weblog. Also the searchresults will be presented in the look and feel of your own website/weblog. This fourth option can be found here. It cost me some time and some trial and error with the HTML code (lon Read more:Introducing
Colorado (6) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This probably will be my last post with pics from my trip to Colorado
. The pics that will be shown here are from the "Garden of the Gods" a collection of red sandstone rock formations which were formed through 300 million years of erosion. During the ride through the park we saw some spectacular shapes. Unfortunately I don't have pics of those. The pics below were taken from the parking place near the visitor's centre and from the viewpoint at the visitor centre. Another amazing thing for me was how quickly light conditions can change. If you take a look at pic 2 and 3 it's hard to believe that there is just a few minutes difference between the two pics when they were taken. I found it rather amazing that suddenly the sky changed from a bit blur light to a more red coloured sky. If you want to see some more online pics from the "Garden of the Gods" to get an impression of all the different and spectacular shapes you could check this . It was getting a bit dusky when the last two pic
Our last weekend's trip (1) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Last weekend Noriko and I went on a daytrip to the cities Middelburg and Vlissingen in the province of Zeeland, located on the coast in the South-West of Holland. We could travel for free by train, because of some national promotionweek for the book. Normally you don't go to this part of the country so quickly, but this was a good opportunity to explore this part of the country. Both Middelburg and Vlissingen have small but scenic and historical centres. Some of the history of Middelburg can be found here, here and here.Well, You'll have to do it with one pic for now. Uploading pictures is extremely slow right now on Blogger and often even fails. It took about 10 minutes before I manage to add one picture to this post and because I have about 12 to 14 pics to post I decided to leave it to this one pic for today. I'll try to post the rest of the pics tomorrow. By the way this is the gorgeous 16th century town hall of Middelburg.For those who can't wait till tomorrow for the rest of
More Crete pics (6) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This probably will be my last post from Holland for the next two weeks. If I can find some time I might post a few more pics tomorrow, but I can't promise. Tuesday I'm leaving Holland for two weeks to visit my very good friend Julie in the USA. I'll take my laptop and camera with me, so I probably will be able to post from there. Don't know yet, but I think this also will be the last posting with Crete
pics. If I want to show more pics from Crete I probably will post them on my online photo-album at Photobucket .Anyway here are the pics and this time some pics from people. Sometimes they are aware of the camera and pose and sometimes they are unaware of the camera.Noriko has a cute smile, doesn't she?This handicapted guy looked tiredBut it gave me a good photo opportunity. Because it was at the beginning of the evening and it already started to get dark and I didn't want to disturb the older guy with my flash I had to overexpose the picture a bit.I'm quite satisfied with the res
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Since Thursdaynight I spend a lot of time at the International
Film FestivalRotterdam
(IFFR). The IFFR wil finish on Sunday February 4th. This year I will set a record by watching 33 movies(!!!). When my mother heard that I was going to see 33 movies she said yuck. Actually she said something else, but this is a proper and decent weblog (wink).I saw 2 movies on Thursday, 5 on Friday and 5 today (Saturday). So 12 down, 21 to go. Here you can check the festivalprogramme. The festival has a wide range of different movies from all over the world. My main focus is Asian cinema, so the most movies I normally watch at the IFFR are from China, Japan and South Korea and sometimes from Taiwan, Malasia, Thailand (this year a lot from Hong Kong) depending on the supply. That doesn't mean that I try to watch all. It also depends on the subject/story of the movie. The IFFR always has a wide and interesting range of movies from the Asian region. But I also watch movies from other countries if I fin
Some delayed pictures 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Here are some more pictures from our last visit to England around New Year, as I promised.Meet Noodles, my friend's cat, a bit of a chicken-cat, but cute and funny.And this is Sushi, a less chicken than Noodles and very playful.A part of the church belonging to the tower from my former post.And a detail from one of the sides of the towerThis was our New Year's Eve dinner, sobe noodles, very yummy.Compared to Holland the fireworks was minimal, but there was some nearby. I manage to shoot this picture without a tripod. The first time my friend from England experienced the fireworks in Holland at midnight, he thought that World War 3 broke out.For some reason I always have to think of Mr. Bean when I see a MiniThis picture and the next three were taken at my friend's parent's place, a small countryside village in Devonshire, which name I forgotOn our last night we went to a nice Indian restaurant in my friend's hometown Weston Super Mare. Read more:delayed
It's my party and I cry if I want to.... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I wanted to post this pictures earlier this week, but since last Tuesdaynight I was suffering from a nasty flu/heavy cold. Now I'm feeling much better compared to last Wednesday and Thursday.Thursday February 9th I turned 40 (yeah, yeah I know) and during the weekend of the 11th I had a small birthdayparty with some good friends. Noriko spend a lot of time preparing lots of sushi. She did an excellent job and created some gorgeous and very tasty sushi. She made 7 plates with more than 100 pieces of sushi. First she was afraid she made too much, but at the end of the night all sushi was gone. It was a great success. The sushimaster herself was not satisfied with the picture I took from her with some of her creations, so you have to do it with just some of the sushi pics and a pic from the birthdayboy. Although the title of this post and the t-shirt below might give you a different idea, 40 ain't that bad. Had more trouble with it when I turned 30.It looks gorgeous, doesn't it?The bir
Dolphins, birds, cats and dogs 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This time some scanned animal pics that I shot in the past 5 years on several occasions. The first two pics were shot during a trip that Noriko and I made somewhere at the end of April or beginning of May 2000 to Miyakejima, an island south-east from Tokyo and belonging to the Izu-islands, known for it's vulcano, birdwatching and also dolphinwatching. Short after our visit the vulcano Mount Oyama became active again in July 2000 and by September that year the whole population was evacuated. After a little more than four years of activity and vulcanic emmissions, the population of the islands was allowed to return permanently in February 2005 (!!!).The actual swimming with the wild dolphins and the dolphinwatching we did from the island Mikurajima, a small nearby island with only 300 residents. This was a very memorable and impressive experience which I won't easily forget. The curiosity of the dolphins, the possibility to get real close and touch them, it was very, very awesome.The d Read more:Dolphins
Scanning pictures 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I've tried to re-install my flatbedscanner under XP, because I wanted to scan some pics from my huge photocollection that I shot since I started with photography (that was in 1991 during my first trip to Israel). There seem to be a hardwareproblem, which I haven't been able to solve yet. Yesterday I installed an all in one scanner/copier/printerer/fax at my sister's place, so I used it to scan a few of my pics, so I could post a few here.Finally I want to scan my complete negative archive (35 mm and APS-film). With my current flatbedscanner I could scan 35 mm films and slides, but that would be very time consuming, because it takes about 4 to 5 minutes to get a high resolution and high quality scan of each picture. Imagine how much time that would cost if I want to scan around 15.000 photos. With the flatbedscanner I also can't scan APS-film. So later this year I'm planning to buy a filmscanner. This is the one I have in mind. Besides my 35 mm and APS-film I also could scan my par Read more:Scanning
Scanner works (finally) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It took some time and some trial and error but I finally manage to get my flatbedscanner working. I have started to scan some pics and I'll have plenty material to post the coming two or three weeks.I'll kick off with some pics shot at Christmas 2001 from the Tokyo Rainbow Bridge. Noriko and I stayed that Christmas at a nice and quite luxurious hotel (forgot the name). We spend our hotel gift certificates that we got from some friends during our houseparty before (or after, I can't remember exactly) our Japanese wedding ceremony a year earlier in May 2000. Here (post August 27th) and here (post September 2nd) you can see pics from our wedding day.The pics from the bridge were shot from the hotelbalcony. It were not the first pics that were shot from the Tokyo Rainbow Bridge. If you look here you can see at the first post (September 25th) on top of the page a pic that was shot three and a half years earlier with a Samsung ECX 1.The first pic is a panoramashot from the bridge. The oth Read more:Scanner
All quiet on the picture front 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Short after my birthdayparty I had a nasty flu and cold. Took me a little more than one week to recover. Since my recovery I hardly shot any pics that were worthwhile sharing. So for today you have to do it with some pics that Noriko shot today in our hometown Utrecht. Although it was a bit chilly it was quite clear weather. The first shot is from the Dom tower, the highest church tower of Holland.The second pic is not so sharp, but it was a funny sight. Noriko shot the pics in a furnitureshop in the same shoppingstreet were the pic of the Dom tower was shot. I knew the owner had a bulldog who was sleeping in front of the shop most of the time. But this time Noriko saw a total of five bulldogs and some of them were sleeping on the couch. Of course it's very funny to watch, but I'm not sure if I wanted to buy furniture here, knowing that the bulldogs are sleeping on the couches. It was not second hand stuff. All furniture is new.This pic I took after meeting Noriko in a pub/restaurant
More scanned pics 1970-01-01 00:59:59 In addition to the two pics I post last Tuesday (Title post: Scanning pictures) in the category People/Portraits I'll post a few more in the same category.The first one was taken by my good friend Andy from England when we visited the Apenheul in Apeldoorn, Holland. I don't know the exact date, but it must have been about 5, 6 years ago. This is a pretty unique primate zoo where some of the primates walk/climb around freely, like the monkey on my shoulder. It's only open in the Spring- and Summertime, but if you nearby it's worth a visit.The next picture was taken at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, March 2001. This young couple was sitting in front of us on the other side of the sidewalk. They just finished their McDonalds menu, and he is taking a nap while she is drinking her milkshake/drink.The following pic was taken during a daytrip into the Japanese Alps in September 2002 when we visited one of Noriko's uncles. When the old man saw me taking pictures he invited m
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) (3) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The International
Filmfestival Rotterdam
(IFFR) is finished. My task is accomplished. I watched 33 films in ten days. I know it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. It was a good festival. Most of the movies I watched were worthwhile. Today after I slept in I slowly had to adjust to my regular daily life. I had square eyes after seeing all these movies and I had withdrawal symptoms. But I'm doing okay now. I guess I probably won't see any movie this week. But although some people might see this as a punishment to watch 33 movies in 10 days, it wasn't a big burden for me. I've enjoyed it and saw some nice, gorgeous, funny and interesting movies.Thursday my girlfriend and I stayed in a hotel for one night, because we had two movies on Thursdaynight and Fridaymorning we also had two movies together and the first one was starting at 9:45 A.M. So to avoid the early train during rush hour we decided to check for a hotel on the internet. We went to Rotterdam in the afternoon to ch Read more:Festival
My latest aquisition 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It's been awhile since my last post, so I thought I better post something. I haven't any pictures to share yet. Maybe I'll scan some older pictures later this weekend.Anyway I want to show you my latest aquisition. I was planning to get a digital SLR-camera for quite some time, but I was waiting for a good offer. In December Nikon had an interesting offer. If you bought a Nikon D200 you would get a booklet with vouchers which gave you discount on many accessories, like lenses, software, flashlights etc.. The total discount that I would get on the accessories (that I already planned to purchase) was more than I would get if I waited if the D200 body maybe would drop a 50 to 100 Euro. So I decided to purchase the camera. I also bought a AF-S VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED lens and I have the AF-S VR 105 f/2.8G IF-ED in order at my local photoshop.An important reason to get the D200 was that I already had some Nikon lenses which were given to me a few years ago by my mother in law from Ja
Update: Normally this isn't a political blog 1970-01-01 00:59:59 On May 11th I posted about the Egyptian Weblogger Alaa who was arrested for demonstrating peacefully in support of the independence of the judiciary in Egypt. Today I heard through an e-mail from my brother that Alaa was released last Friday. This is great news and a good reason to remove the Free Alaa badge in my right sidebar.. Here is an update with some more background information. Read more:Update
, Normally
, political
Update on my IFFR-post (2) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 In my International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) (2)-post about 4 weeks ago I gave a short comment on the movie "Das Leben der Anderen". In my short comment I said that in my opinion this movie would make a good chance on an Oscar for best foreign movie. Obviously my judgement was right, because last night "Das Leben der Anderen" (English title: "The Lives of Others") won the Oscar for best foreign film. Well done! My congratulations to the director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the excellent cast (among others Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck) and the crew. Read more:Update
The end of an era 2007-02-27 21:12:00 Last Saturday we went for the last time to our favorite pancake- and poffertjes (tiny pancakes) shop in our hometown Utrecht. The place was called Victor Consael and was a well known local place. Due to a new restructuring plan around their location and because they didn't want to fight (again) with the local authorities about a new location, they decided to quit. The stand and the houdehold furniture have been sold. They will start a new place, but unfortunately it will be outside Utrecht. I wish them well and hope their new business will succeed.This is too bad. Little by little the city is taken over by property developers turning characteristic city centres into the same looking boring shopping centres with the same store chains you find in lots of other cities.I also feel disappointed because of nostalgic reasons. Victor Consael is already existing since 1850 (!!). They use to have a mobile stand traveling from fair to fair. Since 1974 they have a stationary stand in the city cen
Busy 2005-12-31 10:11:00 It has been two busy weeks. Didn't have much time to post, although I have some new pics to share. Today I'm busy too, but maybe I have some time later today to post some pics. But in case I don't have time I wish everybody a happy, healthy and prosperous 2006 now.
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