suriname360 - Visit Suriname from the comfort of your own home!

After many months of hard work I today finally launched suriname360 - a website that features high resolution 360 degrees panoramas and interactive virtual tours of places in Suriname. I’ve had the idea for this website for a few years now but due to other priorities it wasn’t until March of this year that I could start working on this project. And I did so mostly in my free time while also working on other projects for clients of mine (after all, the bills don’t pay themselves ).

Most of the websites that promote tourism in Suriname focus too much on text and on information. But nothing is capable of attracting people more than nice and interesting visuals. People don’t like to read; they want to see and experience things. People remember 80% of what they see, and only 20% of what they read. So there was a need for a website promoting tourism to Suriname that focuses on strong visuals and the experience of visiting Suriname. And so with suriname360 I’m hoping that I’ve filled a gap and that the website will deliver a significant contribution to the development of the tourism industry in Suriname.

I’ve enjoyed working on this website and I hope you’ll enjoy viewing the content that’s available so far. I’ve invested a lot of time, money and other resources in this website and I’m hoping I’ll be able to continue to further develop this website in the future. There’s a lot more content coming up and I have a lot of very exciting (long term) plans for suriname360 that I hope to be able to share with you soon.

Visit the suriname360 website and take a look. A good place to start is the tour of the City of Paramaribo.

Shiny and Black

I launched a new design for my blog today after launching a re-design of my website weeks ago. Visually the new blog design matches more with my new website. I think this is a nice improvement on the older design while still using a similar layout. As usual I’ll still be doing some tweaking in the background in the coming days. Any feedback you have is very welcome, and if you notice issues or broken links, please let me know.

Timeless Stare

Today I launched my new website after spending almost 3.5 months working on it in my spare time. The previous site was launched in 2007, so a refresh was necessary. Along with some updated information about the services that I offer I have also updated all my portfolios and there’s a lot of new work to see. I’ve also finally written some more about my background and there are some testimonials from people I’ve worked with over the years to give you an idea of what it’s like to work with me. I’ve gotten feedback from clients in the past who mentioned that I had to “sell myself more” and talk more about my work. I could totally understand them, I’m not one to go out and promote myself or boast about my work. I find that very difficult to do, but at the same time I also realize that sometimes I have to act like a salesman in order to sell my services. So instead of me talking about my work, I choose to have some of my clients giving their opinion about their experiences in working with me.

I’m still doing a little tweaking in the background but the site is now essentially complete. In the near future, as time permits, I’ll also be updating my blog to match the design of my new website more closely. Head on over to take a look and if you have any feedback whatsoever, just leave a comment on this blog post.

United Magazine June 2010 Edition

About two months ago I was hired again by Global Publishing to shoot pictures for a feature article in the upcoming edition of United magazine. Global Publishing is the publisher of United magazine.

The article is about three succesfull business women and the editor of the magazine, Edward Lee, was looking for some nice looking portraits of these women to go along with it. He also needed a group shot that could be used to open the article with. In the end the editor was so happy with the results that one of the pictures, the group shot, also ended up being used on the cover of the magazine. So this is my 3rd time on the cover of United Magazine. You can read here on my blog about the first and second times too.

The photoshoot took place at Leader’s Group Conference Room. During the photoshoot I had about 15 minutes per person, and 15 minutes for the group shot. I tried to get as many possible poses and settings with each one of them in the time I had. I also got to know the women a little during the photoshoot and tried to get a feel for their personalities, and in the end I chose a picture for each one of them that I think matched the most with their personalities. And from the feedback I got so far I think the pictures really do go along well with their personalities.

You can see the images that were used below:

United Magazine Group Shot

Portrait of Angela Yang for United Magazine

Portrait of Matchameryll Felter for United Magazine

Portrait of Rishma Ratan for United Magazine

For those of you who are interested in the gear used, I used two Canon EOS 40D bodies with the EF 35mm f/1.4 L and EF 85mm f/1.2 L II lenses from Canon. For the lighting I used a couple of Canon 580 EX II speedlights, sometimes with umbrella’s and mixed with the available light.

In addition to the images above, my images are also featured in ads from two other clients of mine who advertised in United. Below are those two ads:

Double page Ad for Nado Computers in United using one of my images of the Independence Square in Paramaribo, Suriname. One of the cool things about this image is that you can see the clouds forming a hand in the upper left corner. This was really there when the picture was taken and was not digitally added.

Ad for Tropical Gem Tours in United using an image of mine

The picture used in the ad for Tropical Gem Tours above was taken a while ago and if you’re interested you can read about it and see some more images taken during that photoshoot here.

Pamela Mangroelal, Miss India Suriname 2008

I’ve updated my photography and design portfolio yesterday, feel free to take a look. The image above was taken during the photoshoot I did with Pamela Mangroelal for United Magazine.

I noticed that the most recent posts here on my blog are almost all related to photography. Some new visitors of my blog think that this is a photography blog because of this, but it’s not. This is just my personal blog where I write about anything I am interested in. So don’t be surprised when you find many posts on other subjects appearing here in the future. Just take a look at my blog archives if you’re still not convinced.

United Business & Lifestyle Magazine Cover for Jan/June 2009 Edition

The January/June 2009 edition of United Business & Lifestyle magazine is out in Suriname and the Netherlands, and for the second time my photography work is featured on the cover. I wrote about the previous time here.

The picture that was used this time is one from a shoot I did all the way back in August 2007 for Tropical Gem Tours. I had written about that shoot here. To me it’s great that after all this time the image still has enough potential to be selected for the cover of a magazine. And I think the client also appreciates the value they get out of my work even after one and a half year. The whole picture can be seen in my photography portfolio.

United Business & Lifestyle Magazine

In this same edition of United, there’s also an ad for Nado Computers featuring another picture of mine. You can see it in the image above on the right. This picture was taken in 2008 during sky diving practice by a group of Dutch sky divers who were visiting Suriname. A better version of this ad can be seen in my design portfolio.

United Business & Lifestyle Magazine

And finally there’s also an ad for the Vasilda construction company featuring a couple of my pictures. You can see that ad in the picture above on the right.

I recently completed an assignment for one of the directors of Torarica Group of Hotels. He wanted a picture of the building of each of the 3 hotels that they manage to put on one of the walls in his office. The only requirement he had was that the pictures had to be in black and white and I had to deliver them printed and framed at 50cmx70cm. So I went out a couple of days on location to walk around and try to find a creative way to take pictures of each of the 3 buildings in such a way that they could also fit together next to eachother. I took a lot of pictures with about 4 different ideas in my mind in 3 to 4 different sessions. The last session wasn’t planned, that day I just happened to look out the window and notice there was a clear blue sky, and I just went on location immediately to take some more pictures. All pictures were taken with a Canon EOS 40D body and the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 L II lens.

After I reviewed the pictures I sent a small number of them to the client explaining what I had in mind so he could make his own selection. I also offered a selection of my own as an example. He chose to go ahead with my selection of 3 pictures, one for each building:

Torarica

Royal Torarica

Eco Resort Inn

I chose to photograph a small part of each building that was unique and characteristic of that building, so that anyone who knew the buildings would recognize them as soon as they saw the pictures. I also tried to photograph them in the same angle and perspective, so that it would give an interesting effect when hanging them on the wall next to eachother:

This was not an easy assignment for me because it was not easy to come up with ideas that could work for all 3 buildings. Because the pictures would be hanging next to eachother, I also didn’t want them to look too different from eachother, and wanted them to share certain features so that it would be clear that they belong together, even though they’re very different from eachother when you look at the architecture. And in my opinion, they do look quite nice at 50cmx70cm. It’ll be interesting to see what others think in the next few days.

Back in October I did some photography for the next edition of United Business and Lifestyle Magazine. The launch of the 9th edition was last night, and it should be available next week in stores in Suriname and the Netherlands. Edward Lee, who is the editor and art director for the magazine asked me to do a photoshoot for the front cover. He already knew exactly what he wanted, made some concepts, came over to me and said “This is what I want, do it for me.” He wanted a model on the front cover, on a red background, with a James Bond type of pose, but without a gun, balancing a rotating gold coin on his finger.

To be able to get the exact tone of red that he wanted, we decided that we wouldn’t be using a red background, but just shoot on white and replace the background in post processing. In addition, the model would be posing without a coin on his finger, and that would also be added later in post processing. So I set up everything for the shoot, and when the model was ready, started taking shots with slight variations until I decided that I had enough shots that looked like what Edward wanted. That took about 5 minutes. Below are some examples:

If you look carefully, you can even see the duct tape on the background. So after those 5 minutes, I couldn’t believe I was done so quickly. It took about 30 minutes to set up the background and lighting, and it would take another 30 minutes after the shoot to pack everything up again. That was an hour of work for just 5 minutes? I decided to try some other poses as well just in case Edward needed more material. I told the model that I wanted to try another expression on his face, a little fun and mischievous, perhaps even a little arrogant, a feeling of “I’m there, I’ve made it, I’m rich, just look at me!” We tried a couple of variations with slight differences, of which you can see some examples below:

A few days after the shoot I delivered all pictures to Edward, and he started looking at all of them to make a decision on which one would make it to the front cover. With many pictures with slight variations, it wasn’t an easy task, and I was just glad I wasn’t the one having to make a decision. Finally it came down to 2 pictures, one with the original serious James Bond pose, and another one with the fun/mischievous expression. I started doing post processing on those two pictures, added the red background and the gold coin. Edward got the gold coin from the Central Bank of Suriname and I took pictures of it, which I then used as textures to render the rotating coin in 3D Studio Max to make it as realistic as possible. And then it finally came down to the two images below:

And a close-up of the coin:

Then I sat back comfortably in Edward’s office, and enjoyed the insightful discussion he had with his assistants about which one of the two pictures would make it to the front cover of the next United magazine. After a while the decision was made, and you can see a picture of the actual cover at the beginning of this post. The other picture would then be used in other parts of the magazine, of which you can see an example below:

I have more of my photography work in this edition, including the picture below, which I wrote about before:

Below is another article featuring my pictures, one of which is an approximately 200 degree panoramic image:

And then ads I did for Lenovo/NADO Computers and Tropical Gem Tours:

And finally, my own ad

My new website has just been launched at www.kareldonk.com. Feel free to take a look. It contains the latest information about the services I have to offer as well as updated portfolios. I’ve been working on the site in my spare time for about 2 months now, and it was about time I could finally have my own work-related website to direct potential customers to. Until recently, I didn’t even have my own businesscard. This also partly explains the lack of frequent updates on my blog for the last 2 months.

Any feedback that you may have is ofcourse very welcome.

It’s been a while since my last post on my photography adventures and I thought it was time for another update. I’ve postponed this for a few weeks now and today I finally said to myself “If you don’t put up this post today, you’re not allowed to view the rest of the Matrix Trilogy DVDs you still need to see.” And as you can see, that worked. It’s just really overwhelming sometimes. There’s so much I want to do, so much I’m interested in and all of it fights for a little of my time. And there’s still so much I want to do that I can just not find enough time for. When I tell people all of the things I do and mention I don’t have a girlfriend (upon inquiry), they immediately understand.

I’ve had a couple of photography sessions since my last update and below are some examples:

These are from another session:

Apart from some basic color correction these pictures have not (yet) been edited in any way. These pictures were taken with the intention to be used for ads, posters and other promotional material. I usually use a white background which I can later easily replace with another background based on what I want to do. That provides more flexibility.

Another example of a picture where I replaced the background is the following:

Here you see a side-by-side comparison of the original picture and the final version with the background replaced. I probably wouldn’t be able to fool CIA analysts or Jack White with this, but grandma and grandpa will never know it’s fake. And that was my intention. The more realistic you try to make it, the more time goes into it, and obviously that’s limited by the available budget.

Finally, in the Art section of my website you’ll find some examples of how these pictures are used. You can also see them used on this website I did a while ago. And since I’m linking to website examples, here’s another one I did a week ago which is still being worked on (second phase with more options).

Have you ever used a (software) product that just felt and/or looked like it wasn’t finished? That had kindof an unpolished feel to it, rough around the edges and minor or even major issues? One that you knew had great potential because you enjoyed using some of its features and could have been a big winner if not for those shortcomings?

Well that is what life feels like to me.

Before I continue, I’d just like to make it clear that for the rest of this post, I’m going to assume that god exists and that I’m going to look at certain things from the perspective of the bible.

With that out of the way, let me state right away that I think god has got to be a very lousy designer and engineer. I’m not sure how they refer to his occupation in heaven, but I’m going to simply compare it to an engineer to make the comparisons I’m going to make easier.

You see, the way I see it, is that god is like one of those smart arrogant programmers who think they created this incredible program that is a testament to how much of a genius they are. They obviously put a lot of work into it, spent days wrestling with some difficult problems, came up with some very clever solutions and finally managed to make it all work. And although the program works, and works well, it is far from ready from an end-user perspective. It only works as intended when you follow the exact procedures given by the programmer in the exact same conditions the programmer expected it to work in. For example, if you press some buttons in the wrong order, or click some menu options you weren’t supposed to click at a given point (even though they were enabled, leading you to think it was okay to click them), the program explodes, possibly in a very spectacular way and in the worst case bringing the whole operating system down with it in the process.

What is clear from this example is that even though major functionality was already implemented by the programmer, from a usability and end-user point of view it still needed work. And depending on the type of program, that could still mean quite a lot of work. It also has to be tested in various situations, all the features have to be tested when used in various sequences and possible combinations etc. Basically everything an end-user might try to do with it. The program also has to protect the end-user from himself by not allowing (disabling) functionality that should not be used at a given moment, especially when you know it might cause unexpected behavior inside the program and cause a lot of inconvenience to the end-user. The smart arrogant programmers don’t like to work on these kinds of ‘unimportant’ and tedious things. If something breaks, obviously the user didn’t follow the right procedures (even though the program actually allows the user to try all the wrong procedures possible).

So with that in mind, when we look at life, there are so many problems to point out from an end-user point of view, us being the end-users. Reality is just full of problems and unexpected and undesired behavior, or just bugs, if you will. For example, sometimes the weather acts up and produces storms causing a lot of destruction to the work of end-users. This, ofcourse, is not normal behavior as the weather is expected to be nice all the time by the end-user, and the bugs just happen sometimes under certain conditions. The same can be said about floods, tsunamis, earthquakes etc. The end-user expects it to rain, yes, and normally it just rains enough to keep life going, but sometimes, under certain conditions, a bug causes too much rainfall causing floods that destroy the work of end-users. In severe cases it even takes the lives of end-users, which, I think, is the worst possible bug a product can have. Imagine the class-action lawsuits that would have been filed if it was possible to sue god. Ofcourse that’s not possible since he can’t be held accountable, which enables him to keep the arrogant attitude of “you’re just going to have to use it as is, and I’m not fixing anything.” Having a monopoly in life also helps. I mean, if we end-users could go to another provider for life, that’d give god some incentive to improve the life he offers, right? As it is now, we’re pretty much stuck with what he offers us.

But okay, I’m moving too far away from the subject. I was talking about the various bugs in life. You often hear people talk about what kind of genius it would take to design something like the human body for example. And yes, I have to admit, it takes a lot of genius to design and build something like the human body. But once again, it is far from finished. There are numerous bugs and even security vulnerabilities. Sometimes bugs cause women to give birth to disabled children. Bugs cause people to get cancer, suffer and die. Due to security vulnerabilities, viruses, for example, are able to install themselves in the human body and cause all kinds of diseases, disabling major functionality, causing system instability and possibly leading to a complete system failure. Etcetera, etcetera. I’m sure you can name thousands of bugs yourself, all of which shouldn’t be part of the user experience, and only cause inconvenience to the end-user. Had god taken the extra time to do some extensive testing before deploying life, we’d probably not be experiencing all of these problems. And I haven’t even mentioned design issues yet. Have you ever heard the joke that asks, with regards to the human body: “What kind of designer would put a waste dumping area next to a recreational area?” Need I say more?

And like any end-user facing such issues with a product, we’re trying to find solutions and work-arounds to the various bugs, but there are limitations to the things we can do as end-users. For one, we do not have the source code to life. It would sure make things easier if we had that. So we’re stuck having to try and reverse engineer as much as we can of life to see how things work, and try to come up with solutions to the bugs we’re having to deal with everyday. It might be difficult for us end-users to repro such bugs and find actual causes, but I can imagine that god almost certainly is able to debug reality and find what is causing all the issues very easily. Not necessarily because he is smart, but simply because he has the tools and the source code. Ofcourse, being as arrogant as he is, and having a monopoly, we shouldn’t be expecting him to put any effort into it.

You see, what actually happened in god’s case, is the worst thing that can happen to one of those smart but arrogant programmers who don’t like to work on the small ‘unimportant’ and tedious things. God created this really great product, started boasting about how he’s so cool and smart, and how incredible life is going to be, when the product wasn’t even tested yet. In addition, god designed life with the intention to be very scalable, but never actually did any tests to make sure it would scale well to billions of users. What he did was do an initial deployment in a very small environment (Eden) with only two users (Adam and Eve) who just followed the exact operating procedures and used life exactly the way god intended it to be used, at least in the beginning. And as we all know end-users are very unpredictable, and given the possibilities to use a feature or combination of features in a given way that makes sense to them, they’ll do it and expect it to work properly.

So after the initial deployment, things worked well in the beginning, and god was proud of himself, boasted about how big of a genius he was, how he was almighty etc. But then the users got more experienced and didn’t feel like constantly reading the manual anymore. And as we all know at this point, then things started to get more interesting. In addition to that, more users started to use life, and the weaknesses became more evident as the number of users grew. The growing amount of users made it necessary to expand the deployment of life beyond Eden and to the rest of the world, which brought along other problems with it. You see, it’s one thing to do a small deployment of a product on 2 computers for example, but it’s an entirely different story to deploy to an enterprise with thousands of users around the world in various locations. And in god’s case, it was far, far, faaaaar worse, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Imagine the technical support nightmare god created for himself. Just imagine the scale of it. When was the last time you called for support, or prayed, and actually got an answer from god? He doesn’t even have an answering machine! And he’s supposed to be almighty? With billions of people, and who knows what other creatures, calling in for help at any given moment because of the countless issues with their life, it should be easy to imagine why god never answers.

So what can we learn from all of this? Apart from the fact that one can clearly see that I have way too much free time, we can also see that it can sometimes be easy to make mistakes. Sometimes we even knowingly make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are because of our own stupidity. Sometimes we make mistakes, but have too big an ego to admit it and correct it. Everyone makes mistakes, but the important thing is to be able to realize you’re making a mistake as quickly as possible, as early as possible, and have the guts to immediately admit to it, and having done that do everything possible to correct it or minimize the damage done by it.

If god had admitted to himself and all his users that life wasn’t ready for universal deployment, and had he then stopped the deployment to work on fixing issues when it was already clear there were issues during the initial smaller deployment in Eden, we would not have this mess today. Instead, he was arrogant, didn’t want to admit that the problems existed, and went ahead with the deployment. Now it will take a much greater effort on his part to fix the user experience for the billions of users he has today. This is ofcourse assuming he will admit that life as it is now sucks, and that he will listen to his users. A service pack to this version of life is long overdue in my opinion.

But I have to admit that when I look at life, I see great potential. I see a runaway hit. If only god would work on fixing the bugs and polishing it a bit more so we could have a much more improved overall user experience…

A miracle happened today.

People who know me are probably reaching for their phones right now to call an ambulance and send it to my address, suspecting I might have lost it since they know I don’t believe in miracles.

Not usually. But today has to be an exception.

You often hear people talk about how Apple is incredibly good at marketing and design of their products. Well today I’m here to tell you they still have a few things to learn when it comes to design.

I tried to turn on my iPod nano this morning only to find out that it didn’t want to turn on at all. This was quite strange since last night, the battery was 75% full after I was done listening to some music. So I knew it worked fine then. And all I did was pause it after I was done and put it away until this morning.

So at first I thought perhaps it wasn’t paused last night, and it kept playing all night long and the battery was probably totally empty. I connected it to a USB port on my computer and tried to turn it on. Nothing. Then I thought, since the battery might be completely empty perhaps I needed to leave it connected to the USB port for a while to let it charge. There was no indication however that it was charging or that it was detected by Windows on the computer, so I was still a little worried.

After about an hour, I came back and tried turning it on. Nothing.

Now I began to think that it probably, somehow, died. I tried disconnecting it from the computer, pressing the buttons on the iPod randomly, connecting it back to the computer, knocking it on my desk caveman style but it just wouldn’t turn on.

I went to Google and did a search for “ipod nano does not turn on” and found quite a few instances (check it for yourself!) of other people who were most likely having the exact same problem, mentioning that suddenly they could not turn on their iPod nano anymore (some of them thinking it was actually broken). And I couldn?t find an instance where someone had this problem and managed to get it fixed.

I had already decided at this point that I was about 95% convinced that it was broken. And what this usually means is that the device was ready for the final autopsy, performed by yours truly. So I grabbed my MacGyver style Swiss pocket knife and started poking into the gaps next to the hole for the earplugs. At some point I managed to stick the blade of the knife a centimeter into the iPod, and started lifting part of the case up. With some difficulty (okay, a lot) I eventually managed to pry the back part of the case open.

Then I carefully looked at and studied the green circuit board inside like I knew what I was doing. I was about to break open the circuit board to see what was below it when I got this feeling to close it up again and try turning it on one last time before I completely ripped it apart.

So I did, and it wouldn?t turn on. At this point I decided to actually RTFM and see what I could find. I got to the “Using the Controls” section of the manual, and found an entry describing how to reset the iPod nano if it is not responding. As described in the manual, I set the Hold switch to Hold and then back again, and then pressed the Menu and the Center buttons (but not the play/rewind buttons) down at the same time and held them down for about 6 seconds. And in what can only be described as an experience very close to the second coming of Jesus, I could see the Apple logo appear on the iPod nano screen! And to think that just about 2 minutes ago, I was ready to rip it apart completely!

What can we learn from all of this? Apart from the fact that I?m probably not very intelligent, we can also clearly see that the iPod nano has at least some design issues.
As can not only be seen from my experience but from all the other cases found on Google, the problem with the iPod nano not responding and people thinking it?s broken happens, and happens often. Most people might not know that you have to reset it in order for it to work again, since usually, when a device doesn?t turn on it?s most likely broken. For example, when your TV, car, radio, dishwasher, computer etc. don?t turn on when you press the power button, you don?t usually think about resetting it.

In addition, Apple seems to be aware of this problem as well. It appears that when you pause the iPod nano and it turns off automatically after a while, sometimes it might not want to turn back on unless you reset it first. This is just sloppy design and engineering. And I could also add the freezing problem the iPods seem to have to this as well.

Another issue I noticed early on when I got my iPod nano, was that when the battery is completely empty and I connect it to my computer to charge, it turns on automatically and because the battery is low, it only displays the Apple logo, boots to the main menu and then turns off again, only to turn on again immediately in an endless loop. And it keeps doing that until the battery has been charged enough to keep it on. So one starts to wonder, why not simply display a “battery low” message or give the user some indication that the battery is too low for the iPod to work properly and turn off again? The first time this happened, I actually thought my iPod was malfunctioning (at first I didn?t know the battery was too low and I thought that the constant rebooting was a problem). Again, I?ve used a couple of other devices that use batteries, like my cellphone, digital camera etc., and they either don?t turn on at all when the battery is too low and/or clearly display a message that the battery is too low.

So finally, to make sure that for the future, people having these problems with their iPod can find this page (hopefully before they throw it away), I?m going to end with some keywords for search engines: iPod, nano, freeze, does not turn on, fails to turn on, keeps rebooting, does not respond, hot teenage girls, Steve Jobs, bad design.