Well, luckily the Hajraa Tournament isn’t just about watching soccer. Actually, it’s a volleyball tournament on grass with two great parties - more tumult in the tent! Friday night I shot pictures of the band Dexter, a good local coverband with a decent performance and a playlist that got the crowd wanting more… Opening party: check!

On Saturday night it was Bag on Wheels‘ turn to help us celebrate we made it to the 8th finals in South Africa and to forget it was actually a terrible match to see. Happy to say that, as far as I’m concerned, they definitely did the job! Although seemingly less experienced than their Friday predecessors (founded 2005 versus 2001) I felt their stage performance was actually even a bit more energetic than Dexter’s.

Head to this album here to see my ‘party report’ of the tournament with in chronological order Dexter at Friday Night, watching the World Cup and Bag on Wheels at Saturday night.

“Hey, wasn’t this a volleyball tournament?” - well, uh, yes it is! Then where are the sports pics?? Eh, well, it appears I do better at night with a beer than during the day after. And aside: I had to play some volleyball myself. I did in fact shoot some volleyball pictures on Saturday, but these will only be published on the tournament’s website.

Just to proof that this is actually a volleyball tournament instead of a festival, here’s a shot from the playing fields:

While the Hajraa Outdoor Tournament is in fact a volleyball tournament, soccer still precedes if there’s a World Championship at stake. So, with the match unfortunately being early Saturday afternoon, the tournament schedule will be adjusted to watch the match against Japan on one big screen. Just as in 2008!

I’m looking forward to shoot pictures at this event again, expect a selection of shots on this website soon! The question remaining is…

What will it be…??

Will we score?

Or will we miss??

So, you get family and friends over to enjoy a nice cup of coffee on forehand and -even better- to have a toast afterwards on the now official happiness! In between that coffee and the toast is the part where you actually get married, furnished with some entertaining anecdotes about the bride and groom. All in all, a whole day’s worth of fun! Good for me as photographer, because such a day of happiness offers plenty of nice photo opportunities.

For the second time I have been lucky enough to get an opportunity to capture one couple’s special day! On August 28th 2009, Jasper van Veghel and Sandra Cools got married in the attractive town hall of Waalre.

Still cleaning up my back-log, I just published my photographic story of this wedding. Click here to visit the album!

Well, what do these antique pics show? Let’s see… lot’s of weird people, weirdly dressed, drinking and partying ’till they drop. Oh well, just the casual camping madness at Nature One!

I’ve split the pictures from 2009 in two albums, one for the carnival camping raid and one for our camping party Thursday night.

Really, it’s the same as all the other past years at Nature One, with our group called “Neetjur Wan”. That’s not to say though that it’s getting any bit boring - no way!

I’ve again had a blast at this brilliant techno festival. So for me, these pictures not only bring back good memories from last year, they also provide some warming up for the coming edition!
I can’t wait…

As I never experienced any wedding up close, let alone photographing one, I had no idea what to expect. Well, I knew about that “Yes, I do”-part and such. But if I hadn’t got the day schedule up front, I would be lost in the dark! As it turned out, a select group got together at the bride’s mom’s house to welcome the groom when he came to pick her up. A short drive got us to municipal wedding location ‘De Burgh’ in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Over there the special civil servant did an introductory story with anecdotes of the couple and then they got married by doing that “Yes, I do” thing right. A few formal signatures and congratulations of the direct family later, out they went to be celebrated as newly weds by the rest of the guests.

All that time, I was just simply moving around the room-sidewalk-room-road-room-park (in that order) to shoot pictures of everything that was going on. Easy as that! I guess what I like best about wedding photography after this first try, is that the genuine emotion of all the people make for a such a rewarding ‘target’.

Curious about the results? I published a selection of 16 pictures here.

Well, fact is, we didn’t know up front, so we gave our own twist to this yellow theme: they must mean beer! Of course: when at a festival the right thing to do is take a beer the minute you wake up! Oh and wait, that would naturally be the logical result of being burned out of your tent just before that which makes it all logical again. Damn, this theme is brilliant! LOL

In fact, the entire visit to Nature One was brilliant, once again. It’s been my 5th year there, but it just seems to get better each year, or to say the least: it’s not boring me yet. And apparently I’m not the only one, this year’s edition had a record-breaking 58.000 visitors. Wow! Talking about ‘big fun’…

As usual I was one of four organizers of the Dutch ‘Neetjur Wan’ group. We build our own stage on the camp site again and partied all day long. Not only at our own stage, but with our soon-to-be-famous carnival parade we also went party-crashing at other stages nearby. I think everyone enjoyed, at least we did.

Thanks to an enlargement of the festival area it really wasn’t too crowded in my opinion, despite the 58.000 visitors. I spent quite some time at the main stage, but also visited some other stages like Reverze (for 15 minutes, then I decided to save my ears from the ridiculously loud sound), Cocoon, Thunderdome, USB and the Classics Terminal where I saw the sun come up on Sunday morning… in one word: magical!

By that time I already put my camera aside to enjoy the music, but I still can offer you a set of pictures from the camping and the festival. It’s impossible to catch the true experience in just a set of images, but I hope it offers an glimpse thereof!

I’m particularly happy with the picture below, as it more or less represents my image when I think of Nature One… a bit fuzzy but with lot’s of atmosphere! If you like, you can click this picture for a desktop wallpaper version (1280×1024 pixels).

So, sadly enough, the only option I had left to still visit this event I’ve come to like so much was… holiday! Boy, what a punishment. Plan B consisted of hanging out with one of my best friends for a week, sleeping at a camp site at the Adriatic coast, going to the beach before visiting one or two matches, then ‘rushing of’ to our favorite pizzeria so we could be ‘just in time’ for the party each night. Well, maybe not having the responsibility of being the official photographer wasn’t so bad at all. I got to miss the opening and closing ceremony with all the great speeches of important people but being first at the bar kinda made up for that I guess.

Enough with the sarcasm, the EUC Volleyball has been a great experience once again! I’ve had great fun meeting up with old friends from former years again as well as meeting new good people from all over Europe. Besides the social aspects, I also got to watch some high level volleyball! As far as I know, the level of volleyball was never as high as this year - and this was my 4th EUC Volleyball. The overall victory was for the Russians: they took first place both at the men’s and women’s competition! The “Russian State University of Physical Education, Sports and Tourism” must have few classes in ‘tourism’ I guess.

Next year the EUC Volleyball will be held in Hamburg, Germany. The climate may not be as sunny as in Italy, but chances are I’ll be there!

I’ve uploaded an album with 36 of my pictures from Camerino, check ‘em out here!

Also pretty colored was the crowd at Friday evening… orange, orange and some more orange! I guess this has something to do with the European Championship match between Holland and France. Can you imagine the party when WE won with an unbelievable score of 4 to 1?!? I’m not much of a soccer fan, but this kind of victory in an European Championship even sparks my enthusiasm! And if that didn’t do it, the great picture opportunities it offers with the strong emotion some fans show, makes it a feast for every photographer!

After the match it was up to the band ‘STORM Live’ to keep the party going, with DJ’s Maximzrz in between their sets. In my opinion they did very well, playing some great ’sing along’ party music. Although a small bit of criticism: I feel their stage performance is a little behind their musical qualities (which are great by the way).

I didn’t catch much of saturday, my few pictures of the volleyball matches won’t make it to the albums. So I’ll skip trough to the next performance… by Groovesum. It’s not a band and it’s not a DJ, it’s -uhh- a bit of both. You know what? I’ll simply copy-paste their own description of the act:

“Groovesum represents a broad and diverse music style that goes from Funky Jazz till firm Latin House. The concept para-soul is a musical combination of a DJ, percussionist and saxophonist. By means of improvising there will exists an original and unique podium performance; a perfect combination in which happy, summer Latin house is completed with rhythmic jazz and soul instruments.”

Anyhow, they always get the crowd asking for more! After Groovesum, it was Little Sister’s turn to rock the party. It was their second time at Hajraa and again, if you ask me, they didn’t disappoint a single bit! I enjoyed their performance as well as their songs. I got a few nice shots of their act before I retired to ‘occupy’ myself at the bar. The volleyball pictures from Sunday won’t make it to the albums either…

Check the album with all of the above here!

I offered to bring my camera, figuring this would be a great opportunity to try out my new flash gun. I just posted the resulting pictures in this album. The album is like a ‘walk trough’, with the first 9 of 18 photo’s being from ‘la salle neige’ (the white room) and the last 9 from ‘le bar noir’ which is situated one level higher in the ship. On top is the Open-air deck, which unfortunately wasn’t that ‘open’ because of the rainy weather.

According to their website, Supperclub started some 15 years ago in Amsterdam. Initiated by “a group of artists, libertines and other creative souls” it’s not so much of a surprise the parties at Supperclub were better than the bookkeeping. In 1999 the club was taken over and turned into the success it is today. The Supperclub Cruise I went to, opened back in 2003 and in 2005 Supperclub spread it’s wings and landed in San Fransisco.

The concept behind Supperclub is to combine dinner with music and entertainment, all in a trendy and creative setting. They also strive to set their food experience apart by offering bites other than the usual. From my own, albeit limited, experience I can tell you it’s indeed nothing like your ordinary ’sit-down-at-table-and-order-a-menu’ restaurant! Comparing Supperclub to other clubs would be mostly guessing on my part, I’ll leave that for when I’ve been around more trendy clubs… For the sake of thorough investigation, I’m open to all invitations in this matter.

Have a look at the pictures and see if you can get yourself a sense of the atmosphere at Supperclub Cruise!

So, this time I took a bit more trouble. First I got up to a meeting room with a view on the court from just under the ceiling, which was already a big improvement to me. Then I climbed even higher, onto the ceiling which has big holes trough which I could take pictures from right above the court. Just too bad I didn’t take a picture of my position there… Can you imagine a first day of snow, with a fresh layer of, say, 5 cm (2 inches)? Now change that snow for dust and you get an idea of how I was looking when I got back down. But, up on the ceiling I got my best photo’s of this shoot! So I think it was worth the expedition… what do you think?

>> Check the album!