The Goodman’s Blog: Lifelong Learning and Sharing

We visited the new Vermeer Centre in Delft, Holland. We had earlier seen his “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” in the Maurithuis Museum in the Hague. The Centre has a studio which simulated the window light that the Dutch painter used for most of his paintings.

I took the opportunity to pose my wife and tried my version of a Vermeer photograph.

I texturised the photo to simulate canvas and added the frame digitally.

I took these shots of lilies in Keukenhof, Holland, last May.

We arrived in late spring and by that time, most of the tulips had been cut. We were fortunate that in Keukenhof, they were exhibiting other flowers as well, such as lilies, amaryllis, callas and orchids.

This is the first time I have converted my photos into cubes. Other than editing the photos, it took me only 3 minutes to produce these photo cubes. How did I do it? I’ll reveal the secret in due time.

This Rembrandt tulip was taken at Keukenhof last spring. I used a zoom lens, at a focal length of 360 mm (at 35 mm film equivalent). Because it was a bright afternoon, I knew I could use a smaller aperture (f11) and a slower speed to keep the centre of attention sharp. As usual, I mounted my camera on a tripod to minimise camera shake.

I was not quite satisfied with the bare image. So I decided to create a digital frame, taking a colour sample from the dark purple section of the tulip bulb. The white background surrounding the photo made the entire scene look nicer, in my opinion.