Not much to tell about these images, except that this was where the man in the previous post was looking at.

Compared to yesterday's post this image is closer to technical perfection. It also is transporting a moment of emotions and feelings.

...who cares about technical perfection? Photography sometimes is nothing more as transporting a moment of emotions and feelings.

I was not 100% sure about showing this one, the distortion is a bit disturbing but after all it has some magic feeling I think...

Syria - Deir Samaan (Monastery of Simeon) - May 2009

We arrived in Sittwe in the west of Burma late afternoon. During the daytime there was an solar eclipse and the street was full of emotions and excitement. I took an incredible number of images of the people in the street, this girl has been following me and definitively wanted to pose as well.

This portrait definitively is more soft and less intense as the previous one.

The girl wears traditional Thanaka face paint which is worn as decoration and sun block.

.. one year ago in Aleppo, another moment, another street.

Enjoy!

Another decisive moment or 3 and a half.....

A decisive moment from Aleppo (Syria).

There still are images from Syria in the pipeline, this one is just a preview from the trip to Burma earlier this year.

I met this homeless boy on the fish market in Sittwe, it seems he was not really welcome there... He was shy, afraid of the adults, isolated. It took me some time to convince him to pose for a portrait at this unfriendly place. He was standing there with some dignity, showing a difficult life. Besides some friendliness he got some money, at least that morning he must have had a good start in the day.

I worked hard on my b&w technique, my target was to not have such a clean digital image with just good tones. The final image has some (digital) grain, toning and I am happy about the sharpening result.

Normally I am not the one to talk about technique but I found some great hints last days:

- The sharpening workflow is described at Earthbound Light.

- The (digital) grain was taken from Nikos Kantarakias.

- The concept for toning I found in the blog of George Barr.

Grain was applied after the sharpening, I think grain should not be sharpened.

Thanks for the inspiration!

During the Syria trip I visited a small village with Beehive houses (one on the background of the building), it was empty and nobody seems to be at home. Then the girl showed up and waved to come in for a tea.

maybe I am going to make a series of the "men at work"... at least I am going to post a bit more in the blog.

I am back home now from our last trip to Burma. The images are stored on hard disk and look promising. Before showing work from Burma I first am going to continue with images from Syria.

Last days some work from Syria, we are leaving now for next trip. Today we're leaving for Myanmar.

unconventional composition in this photo...

Syria was different from Cuba and other places I visited before. In Mali I started with portraits, in Cuba besides the portraits street photography became the subject. In Syria for me the streets where too full, too crowded. When I look at first work from Syria I see more portraits, less decisive moments.

Today a first portrait from the Syria trip:

Two more portraits of the price winning photograph:

1st price in photo competition by UNICEF Netherlands:

Let me take the chance to compensate the visitors of the blog that where missing postings last weeks. Today another slide show!

After years of maintenance quite a lot of things still are working in Cuba, Trains however today are not a good way to travel; they either are delayed or canceled. We tried to book a ticket but everybody told us to take the bus.. I took this photograph and we went for a bus to leave La Habana.

...it's a matter of seeing and pressing the button on the decisive moment (and of course to be there at the right time)

These days I am lazy and do not find too much time to work on the huge amount of material I have from Cuba. To give a sign of life today a streetshot from Habana.

In my portraits you normally have the chance to look at a person, this man however also seems to look at you.

Last days... weeks I was busy processing all the material from Cuba. I had so much photo's to process. Now I am more or less done and will become more active posting results in the blog.

This man we met in La Habana, he was selling puppies with his friend. The paper in his hand was the certificate that business was allowed.

This is the only post this month, sure I do have a lot more to show from Cuba. Other activities prevented me to be more productive and we are leaving for our next trip to Syria.

Yesterday I showed some photographs which I took while mixing in a crowd. To do that there was a barrier of hesitation to be taken. During our stay in Santiago de Cuba I saw this crowd of musicians, the way they where playing was extremely emotional. A strong moment to mix again with a crowd.

Yesterday I mentioned that besides chess in Cuba Domino is an elementary part in Cuban life. Besides this baseball as a "real" sport is very popular. In Habana we saw men talking about baseball very intensively in a square. I mixed between them and could take some wonderful portraits. Normally for portraits I ask permission, in this case asking was not possible. They saw me and they accepted me taking some wonderful portraits.

Usually I show just one photograph a day, this series needs to be shown together and as an exception to the rule today 3 more.

Besides chess the national board-game in Cuba is Domino. Look at all the expressions of the men playing, watching and commenting.