Night portraits

Taken at night during the carnival in my hometown. Thanks for looking.


#1







Cheers,

#2

#2

#3

#3

#4

#4

#5

#5

#6

#6

#7

#7

#8

#8

#9

#9

#10

#10

#11

#11

"' veoel me jong" means I feel young, I am pregnant, a young man fell for me, I was felt?

Asher Kelman said:

"' veoel me jong" means I feel young, I am pregnant, a young man fell for me, I was felt?

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" 'k voel me jong" in Dutch, taken literally, means "I feel young", but in dialect it means "I can feel my child".

Cheers,
Bart

Hi Cem,

Lot's of fun, despite the cold. Thanks for sharing, it made me smile.

Cheers,
Bart

Hi Cem, these are very fun to see, number 9 and 10 are my fav so far. What´s written in those signs in 4 and 8?

I'm with Ruben on #9- surreal and very interesting.

Wendy

Wendy Thurman said:

I'm with Ruben on #9- surreal and very interesting

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Absolutely - Ditto !!!!

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments. I shall provide the translations you've asked for, but it needs an explanation first. The whole situation is based on a yearly motto of carnival and the acts of people revolve around this motto; with a huge tongue in cheek attitude. There are layers and layers everywhere, one has to be a native to get all the jokes.

This year the motto in my town was (it is a different motto for each town) "Da d'ouw doe jong!"; meaning "That keeps you young!". "That" being the immersion of one's self in celebrating the carnival.

#4: "Ouwe jongens krentenbrood" is literally "old (young) guys currant bread". So we see a play of words with young vs old here. The expression means: the camaraderie between old friends. The other word "wie is ier krenterig?" means "who is stingy over here?".

#8: "Ik voel me jong: as Bart wrote this can mean "I feel young" or "I can feel my baby (in my belly)". This is a person behind a mask (as usual) and it is not possible to tell whether she really was pregnant or even a woman. She was rubbing her belly and walking around.

#9: "sLED verlichting" is a word joke based on LED lamps, which are becoming very popular recently. "Sled" sounds like the word in English which I cannot repeat here but it is spelled as s and l plus u and t. So these presumed women were acting as such on a sofa placed on a street corner the whole night long. It was freezing BTW, see the snow against the corners in the background and also in #11.

There were a lot of acts spread throughout the city center and as each year some of them were true gems of ingenuity and humor (not particularly the ones shown above). Alas, next to impossible to translate or to explain without the context and the background.

Lastly, the pictures were taken with a 5DII and a 50mm f1.4 lens: all exposures hand held @ ISO3200 using EV -2 correction, which has helped me shoot in virtual dark and keep the shutter times high enough and also help correct the overexposure of the lights in the frame. I am really very happy that this kind of photography has become possible using the modern cameras. Results (after converting the raw files in DxO) are virtually noise free.

Cheers,

"Lastly, the pictures were taken with a 5DII and a 50mm f1.4 lens: all exposures hand held @ ISO3200 using EV -2 correction, which has helped me shoot in virtual dark and keep the shutter times high enough and also help correct the overexposure of the lights in the frame. I am really very happy that this kind of photography has become possible using the modern cameras. Results (after converting the raw files in DxO) are virtually noise free"



Hi Cem

I've just come back for another look at these now that I have a bit more time.....

I really like this one, great light catching the faces of the people in the foreground, but what do you think about the light to the RHS, are you happy with it as is, or would you consider cropping or cloning it out.....

It's amazing isn't it to think that you can get shots as good as these, hand held in near dark and virtually noise-free, this one, shows nicely saturated colours and a good sharp image, fantastic to think it was hand held in such low light. I know nothing about DxO but am interested to read about it, I may have to pick your brains further about it at some point, is it easy to use?

BTW thank you for the translations, sounds like a fun evening.....

janet Smith said:

Hi Cem

I've just come back for another look at these now that I have a bit more time.....

I really like this one, great light catching the faces of the people in the foreground, but what do you think about the light to the RHS, are you happy with it as is, or would you consider cropping or cloning it out.....

It's amazing isn't it to think that you can get shots as good as these, hand held in near dark and virtually noise-free, this one, shows nicely saturated colours and a good sharp image, fantastic to think it was hand held in such low light. I know nothing about DxO but am interested to read about it, I may have to pick your brains further about it at some point, is it easy to use?

BTW thank you for the translations, sounds like a fun evening.....

Click to expand...

Hi Jan,

Your analysis of this photo is spot on, as I have wrestled with the questions you've posed. I have tried dimming down the bright light, cloned it out and also tried a crop as well. In the end, I have decided to leave it in as such. The reason being; it is a very unusual position for a strong light source like that to be visible in a picture. As such, it makes the looker to rethink their frame of mind and it also provides clues to the unusual situation going on in this scene. And it feels better to me personally, which is no unimportant reason ;-)

As you wrote, it is amazing to have these results using the modern cameras and the raw conversion software. DxO is a very powerful raw converter, which I use as my main converter along with the Capture One for images with potential (or with lens/noise problems, especially when using the 17mm end of the 17-40). For occasional conversions or for the web, I use LR/ACR most of the time. DxO is easy to use, much like LR, but one has to learn to work with it properly to get the best results out of it (like any other application). For example, my harbour photos of Antwerpen were almost HDR like (a huge dynamic range involved) thanks to a creative way of converting single frames using DxO. Also, DxO compensates for the lens softness (if your lenses are supported, but most EF lenses are for the 5DII) using a deconvolution algorithm, which is my main preference for capture sharpening. And denoising algorithms of DxO are very powerful, as can be seen in these images. I have tried converting them using Capture One as well, but the results were nowhere near. Mind you, C1 works miracles for most images and it may provide a somewhat cleaner image than DxO if a sharp lens is used and the exposure of the picture is correct. Please ask away any questions you might have

Cheers,

Cem_Usakligil said:

Hi Jan,

Your analysis of this photo is spot on, as I have wrestled with the questions you've posed. I have tried dimming down the bright light, cloned it out and also tried a crop as well. In the end, I have decided to leave it in as such. The reason being; it is a very unusual position for a strong light source like that to be visible in a picture. As such, it makes the looker to rethink their frame of mind and it also provides clues to the unusual situation going on in this scene. And it feels better to me personally, which is no unimportant reason ;-)

As you wrote, it is amazing to have these results using the modern cameras and the raw conversion software. DxO is a very powerful raw converter, which I use as my main converter along with the Capture One for images with potential (or with lens/noise problems, especially when using the 17mm end of the 17-40). For occasional conversions or for the web, I use LR/ACR most of the time. DxO is easy to use, much like LR, but one has to learn to work with it properly to get the best results out of it (like any other application). For example, my harbour photos of Antwerpen were almost HDR like (a huge dynamic range involved) thanks to a creative way of converting single frames using DxO. Also, DxO compensates for the lens softness (if your lenses are supported, but most EF lenses are for the 5DII) using a deconvolution algorithm, which is my main preference for capture sharpening. And denoising algorithms of DxO are very powerful, as can be seen in these images. I have tried converting them using Capture One as well, but the results were nowhere near. Mind you, C1 works miracles for most images and it may provide a somewhat cleaner image than DxO if a sharp lens is used and the exposure of the picture is correct. Please ask away any questions you might have

Click to expand...

First question:

How do DxO and C1 compare to DPP, do you think they're both better than DPP? The 24 - 105 lens that I have seems to suffer from CA which DPP is quite helpful in correcting.

I'd like to refine my workflow before my next trips to the Hebrides, so now could be a good time to try before I get really busy.....

janet Smith said:

First question:

How do DxO and C1 compare to DPP, do you think they're both better than DPP? The 24 - 105 lens that I have seems to suffer from CA which DPP is quite helpful in correcting.

I'd like to refine my workflow before my next trips to the Hebrides, so now could be a good time to try before I get really busy.....

Click to expand...

Hi Jan,

I have split the technical discussions into a new thread which is located here.

Cheers,

This one was taken during this year's carnival back in March. I really like this one myself. What do you think?

It is a nice picture, the costumes are striking and the composition is powerful in giving the impression of a pack ready to jump on you, but I am afraid that without a translation of the sign a large part of the message will be lost. So, what is the play on words here?

Cem, a fiendish looking carnival sight.

Please tell me that you took the picture and not one of them!!

Fiendish and mystical with devilish connotations is what jumps at me..Not knowing what the banner says,

I apologize if I am out of line due to my ignorance.

Regards.

Jerome Marot said:

It is a nice picture, the costumes are striking and the composition is powerful in giving the impression of a pack ready to jump on you, but I am afraid that without a translation of the sign a large part of the message will be lost. So, what is the play on words here?

Click to expand...

It is very hard to translate these slogans without knowing the cultural context. Let me try nevertheless. One of the historical figures associated with carnival here was a woman called Mie Verbiest aka Mie d'n Os; literally translated as the Mie of the Ox. She had a goat and she would regularly go out for a walk with the goat. One day while strolling, they have encountered a marching military band. The goat was frightened by the sound made by the band and jumped sideways and got stuck in a barbed wire. As a result, a piece of her udder got torn away. This story has been turned into a carnival song and became one of the prominent cultural elements of the carnival. The goat has now her own statue which is visited every year by thousand on the 11th of November, as the starting sign of the coming carnival (which is in February or March in a changing schedule based on the date of Easter). Suffice it to say, Mie d'n Os and her goat are world-famous here in Bergen op Zoom. So many people celebrating the carnival try to relate to them one way or another. Often, this is a combination of words/language and also attributes like in this picture.

Here we see a marching gospel choir called Mie d'n Os Gospel Choir. In Dutch, nouns are combined to form a new one, so the name becomes Mie d'n Osgospelkoor. They then take away a part in the middle to reach Mie d'n (g)ospelkoor. When you read it out loud, you can hear both Mie's name as the gospel choir. They also honor the goat of Mie by wearing the goat masks. The clothes they are wearing are fabricated from used semi transparent/lacy window curtains, which is yet another aspect of the carnival here. All participants must have some piece of an old curtain piece integrated into their attire. After the WW II, when carnival has been restarted, people were very poor to buy or make fancy carnival clothing. As a solution, they have draped themselves with theold curtains they could get hold of and so was another tradition born. The essence of carnival clothing is that it should be something which you make and not something fancy and expensive bought ready-made. You can go out in your daily clothes if you would just drape a curtain piece around your shoulders (like a cape) and also tie a red handkerchief around your neck (as done traditionally by farmers).

This is fascinating stuff and I can continue for hours but this should be enough to explain the context of this picture I hope?

Hi Fahim,

fahim mohammed said:

Cem, a fiendish looking carnival sight.

Please tell me that you took the picture and not one of them!!

Fiendish and mystical with devilish connotations is what jumps at me..Not knowing what the banner says,

I apologize if I am out of line due to my ignorance.

Regards.

Click to expand...

It is indeed fiendish looking which triggered me take the picture. So I was not one of them, lol.
But as I explained in my post to Jerome, the goat has a certain background and there are no devilish implications. The culprit here is the way I took and processed this picture; as I had the intention to make it look even more fiendish and mysterious. It seems that I have succeeded.

Cem_Usakligil said:

This is fascinating stuff and I can continue for hours but this should be enough to explain the context of this picture I hope?

Click to expand...

Yes it is. Thank you.

Jerome Marot said:

Yes it is. Thank you.

Click to expand...

No need to thank, it was my pleasure.

Cem,

If you don't mind me asking, Where does this take place?