Archives

In the past year I worked on two eBooks in my spare time containing stories about the Surinamese (plantation) history. These stories were written in the period between 2003 and 2009 by my father Kenneth R. Donk. The stories were divided into three main themes and each theme is covered in a separate book. Read more ⟶

A few months ago I noticed the new skill assessments feature on LinkedIn and decided to try out the one for C++ to see what it was about. And before I knew it, I spent almost a whole day — without any preparation — behind the computer doing these assessments for all the skills that I had listed on my profile. It was kind of addicting to see the blue checkmark appear behind the skills and I wanted to earn as many of them as possible. Read more ⟶

Today I removed all my photos from licensing at 500px. It has frankly become a scam that’s ripping off photographers worldwide. There used to be a time when 500px was all about doing what’s best for photographers, but ever since they sold out to a Chinese company called Visual China Group (VCG) and started sublicensing through Getty Images, licensing through 500px has become a major rip-off for photographers. Read more ⟶

Here’s another example of why relying on ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) and ‘Cloud Computing’ in general is very dangerous. Adobe is cancelling subscriptions of customers in Venezuela due to the recent ‘executive order’ by the criminal US government: The U.S. Government’s recent Executive Order regarding Venezuela prohibits almost all transactions and services between U.S. Read more ⟶

I just uploaded two posters about the C++ programming language to GitHub. I made them specifically for this year’s CppCon C++ conference but they were not accepted by the CppCon Poster Review Committee. Most of the committee members did appreciate the humor but had other concerns, among which the use of some strong language. Read more ⟶

After a fairly long time I did a photo shoot again two weeks ago with Carol Chen Poun Joe. It was an interesting experience doing such a photo shoot again after 2 years; I found out afterwards that I forgot about small details and made some stupid mistakes. Read more ⟶

The last time I did a portrait photoshoot for myself for social media was back in 2013, so it was time to do another one. I didn’t want to spend (waste) too much time on it so I kept it very simple. It’s also very difficult to do a self-portrait with the equipment that I currently use so there was lots of trial and error involved. Read more ⟶

Harvest One Limited recently announced the new Cactus RQ250 Li-ion battery-powered wireless monolight and currently have a Kickstarter campaign running where you can get one for a reduced price. It’s a really compact flash, roughly as big as a Canon Speedlight 600EXII-RT flash, but has a lot of interesting features and useful accessories. Read more ⟶

Very sad to get the news today that Canon USA’s Chuck Westfall passed away. A great loss for especially Canon photographers worldwide, who could always turn to Westfall not only for expert advice and guidance, but quite often also for personal help. Back in 2007 when I made the decision to invest in Canon photography equipment, Chuck Westfall was practically the face of Canon’s photography division on the Internet. Read more ⟶

A few weeks ago I did a photo shoot involving a very pretty young lady named Zurina Williams. This time the theme was ‘faux freckles’, meaning that freckles were drawn onto the face of the model by the makeup artist, in this case the talented Tanielle Seauw. We did two looks; the first one a ‘natural’ look and then after that a more colorful version with heavier makeup. Read more ⟶

The first camera I ever bought was the Sony Cybershot DSC-F717. That’s when I first had enough money to be able to afford my very own digital camera and really take up photography as a hobby. At a price of around 1000 USD it wasn’t exactly cheap either and it was definitely more of a prosumer camera. Soon after that I upgraded to the newer model, the Sony Cybershot DSC-F828, and after that the Sony Cybershot DSC-R1. Read more ⟶

I did a photo shoot a few weeks ago for a beautiful young lady named Daryola Brandon. For this session we first went for a ‘natural’ look and after that a look with some heavier makeup. The focus was on taking portraits, although towards the end I also quickly took some other types of shots. Read more ⟶

Yesterday I launched a brand new design for my main website at kareldonk.com. It was long overdue considering that the previous design was launched all the way back in May of 2011. Six years is a long time on the Internet, and the old design was technically just not up to today’s standards anymore. I began working on this new website design in early 2015 mostly in my spare time. Read more ⟶

Earlier this year I started to think about alternative options for delivering photos to my clients. As a photographer I also shoot photos of various types of events (including corporate events, birthdays and weddings) and in the past I’ve used CDs and DVDs in custom designed albums and cases to deliver the final photos to my clients. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, CDs and DVDs are getting old very fast now. Read more ⟶

Canon recently announced their new camera in the 5D line — the 5D Mark IV (5D4). My first reaction to the announcement, after having gone through the specs, was a facepalm. And I’m not the only one, as there’s a lot of disappointment to be found everywhere on the Internet, especially when it comes to the video features. I’m more of a stills person myself, so I focused more on the specs in that area. Read more ⟶

Back in August 2010 I shot the official portrait for the president of Suriname. You can read all about it in a previous blog post titled “Photoshoot: President D. D. Bouterse of Suriname”. I used to be proud of this, but not so much anymore. To be sure, it’s usually an honor for any photographer to be chosen to shoot the official portrait of the president of a country. Read more ⟶

I came across a very good article written by Espen Brunborg titled “Is the Internet killing creativity?” Brunborg touches upon a number of interesting subjects, and I especially liked the following bit towards the end: But remember this: machines have no imagination. Robots work to a specific set of rules. They follow the recipe. They can’t create something that’s original and meaningful. They have no imagination. Read more ⟶

People are always on the lookout for bargains. Everyone wants to spend as little money as possible while getting as much as possible in return. After all, the more money you save, the more you can do with the same budget. There’s nothing wrong with this at first glance. However, in practice things often get out of hand when people start to get motivated by greed and when there’s a lack of trust. Read more ⟶

Earlier this week I had a problem when using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Lightroom would freeze every time I went from the Library module into the Develop module, and sometimes when I switched photos in the Develop module. It turns out that this is caused by a bug, either in Lightroom itself or in the videocard drivers from AMD. Read more ⟶

A few months ago I was hired to cover the first TEDx Paramaribo event for women as the main event photographer. The TEDx Women events are TEDx events focusing specifically on topics concerning women. The theme for the first TEDx Paramaribo Women event was “Momentum.” In the gallery below you can view some of the photos I took during this event. Read more ⟶