Author: Ilse

Family matters.

Wout and Stijn

Imagine for a second the worst thing that could happen to you or your loved ones.

Nope, I don’t want to bring bad luck or turn you into a pessimist. And it’s not to make you feel better that the worst thing didn’t happen.
Truth is, it sometimes does.

When we see someone we love in so much pain, we try everything we can to help. Sometimes there isn’t much we can do, but find the things that keep them (and you) going. Like the love for my nephews…that is what keeps my family going.  It is such a hard and stressful time. But at the same time I have never seen them this strong before.

After 2 short weeks in Belgium to visit them, I am back in Sydney now.  Didn’t have much time for photography, but took the portraits of my nephews while we were playing in the garden.  Miss them already.

Shake it baby

Bram and I were absolutely knackered near the end of our trip in Japan. Too tired to spell E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D. Yet, on our last day we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5am, so we could go and visit the Tsukiji fish market.  We managed to stroll around for a couple of hours, only to plonk ourselves into a sushi place at the end for breakfast – truly the freshest fish ever, fatty tuna otoro sushi, yumyum!
Anyway, we still had to pack our bags and get to Tokyo station.  Because we had a couple of hours to spare, we decided to go see (read: crawl to) the imperial palace.  I asked Bram if I could take a picture of him – figured I’d need some for the folks back home since I’d mostly been taking pictures of temples and stuff. Plus the palace isn’t that royal or imperial, not much of a subject.
I asked Bram “do something, just don’t show that you’re tired”.  LOL,  Bram being typical Bram he did this for a couple of minutes…

Haha,  I could hardly take pictures I was laughing so hard!!! Obviously, I wasn’t the only one amused by this: Bram busting his moves attracted someone else who wanted to have their picture taken with him…

 

Our Japan trip in a book, using BookSmart and Blurb

Yay, our book has finally arrived!
After Bram and I came back from Japan I set out to gather our photos into a book as soon as possible. In fact we always plan to do this, but never get around to it. So I promised myself this time would be different and I thought using Blurb might help.

First some stats:
– Made 2838 photos in only 2 weeks. Crazy, but loved it!
– Selected 658 of those to process. This includes Bram’s groovy moves, promise I’ll show those off in another post later.
– And 472 of those made it into the book. I know, a LOT.

This makes for a total of 150 pages. Photos only, no text. Seems I need to sharpen my editing skills a bit more. It is almost impossible to sift through your own pictures and stay objective. Kind of like having gangrene and the doctor makes you choose which limb to chop off. Kind of, sorta.

Book Preview

Here is a preview of the final result. My thoughts on Blurb below.

Continue reading Our Japan trip in a book, using BookSmart and Blurb