Yes, I'm still here.

My webserver suffered form a tojan-attack and I had to set um my page fresh. (Note to myself: set up those automated backups for dumbledore's sake!!!)

Also, I didn't take many pictures in the last year, but I'm trying to change that.

Read you soon,

Love,

Jessi

Dear musicians, 

I'm a big music fan and appreciate every opportunity to see a good live-show. I'm taking pictures as a hobby and do not intent do get any cash out of it anytime soon. 

My biggest benefit is to gain experience, make new friends every now and then, and enjoy the pride that a band is sharing one or two of my pictures with their fans. 

Please feel free to do so, as long as you're not printing my pictures on merchandise (posters, stickers, shirts etc.) or even your releases (live-CDs or what ever) that you will SELL. I would sincerely be honored if you want to print something with my photograph on it, but please talk to me about a reasonable reward for my work beforehand. 

(This is, by the way, all summarized by the tag "CC-BY-NC-SA" that I put on all my pictures: CC stands for creative commons and means: you can use, alter and share my work; BY means: please name me / leave my name on the picture; NC means: non commercial use only; and SA means: share alike, under the same conditions.)

As long as your're just sharing my photos online with your friends and fans, I'm totally cool with that. 

But there's one limitation, I feel the need to make: facebook. 

Facebook has it down in their terms of service, that EVERY picture, that is being uploaded on their servers, can be used by facebook in any way, INCLUDING commercial use and RESELLING. That means, if I load a picture on my facebook-wall (which I do every now and then), they have the right to use it to print and sell shirts, posters or whatever with it, without asking me or giving me a penny from the winnings. They can also sell the right to use the photo to anyone they like, so they can make money out of it. By uploading a photo, you automatically claim the rights of the photo to be yours in the first place, and you also waive them to facebook. 

So by uploading MY photos, you violate my copyright on one hand, and hand over my artwork to facebook on the other. Of course, I COULD accuse you for stealing my work and make facebook erase it, but this would be quite a hazard for both of us and I want to avoid that in the first place. 

So here's my simple request to you: 

Please do not upload any of my pictures on facebook without asking me beforehand. 

You can share LINKS to my pictures on facebook as much as you like, as you're not uploading any photo on their servers by doing that. I'm also fine with you loading them onto your own homepage and share them his way. You may alter them in any way, for example to make virtual or printed flyers (I'll even give you the high-res-versions for that). Just respect terms I summarize with CC-BY-NC-SA, and keep them of facebook. 

Thank you! :) 

 Cheers, Jessi

Last night I visited the club "Das Bett" in Frankfurt once again - I seem to get there a lot lately. This time, I heared a different kind of music there, as it was a singer-songwriter-event with four acts: Nadjana, Bender & Schillinger, Sleepwalkers Station and Alessia. 

Despite the fact, that the event was called "Kuscheln im Bett" (Cuddling in Bed), it was very cold all night. I never realized how cold that place can be, maybe that's cous I usually see shows to dance and jump around there. I was properly frozen by the time I got home - tram and train weren't that much warmer - and I hope now that I won't fall ill again :-/

Last night was my first try of shooting a live show in RAW-mode, and I spent quite some time today to develop the pictures. It's a hell of extra work for the post-processing, plus shooting in RAW takes rougthly three times the hard disk space (and as I'm easily taking 5 GB or more worth of pictures at a live-show, three times that size can get a bit bulky). But I start to see why it's worth the trouble - or rather, why it will be worth it one day, once I managed to get some more training and learn the shortcuts. 

Here's a shot from last nights show in two versions: first one on the left has been developed by my camera, that means, thats the file I get when I set the camera to the normal jpg-mode. The second one on the right das been developed by myself.

I won't attempt and tell you, what I did, as I barely know, what I did. I used the options at the Adobe Elemets RAW-Converter till I liked the output, and I'm stunned by the range of possibilities that just opened up to me.

(Yes, I know, my cousin told me more then a year ago that shooting in RAW was great, and: Sorry, I didn't listen! ;) But in my defence, I still had to work out most of the functions on my camera back then.) 

As I've been to the Bett a few times before, and as I shot several sets of pictures there already (see Dog Eat Dog or Fishbone, of example) I already knew the issue of the very red lights there. Red lights make faces look un-flattering and ill, and if the whole scene is dyed in one colour all night, it gets very boring to look at the pictures. It also kills all the colour details on a stage, the clothing and instruments. At Club Stone in Düsseldorf last year, I had the same problem, and back then, I simply decided to shoot monochrome (see the results here.) That defenitly killed ALL the colour details, but at least the muscians didn' all look like ill lobsters. Plus, monochrome has it's own flair, and I really like the outcome. 

So now I could kill the RED but keep the COLOURS! :) I love it!!

Here's another example of the different outcome, this time daylight. Even though the left one isn't bad at all (I really liked it at first glance), but then I played around with the RAW-file, and I now I really LOVE this picture!

So, I got a new thing to dive my head into and LEARN ;) Isn't it great to learn new stuff!?
Only bummer: Regretting all those never-to-return-events that didn't shoot in RAW. 
Ah well.. 

Slanté,
Jessi
(Happy St. Paddys!)

Something was messing up my design on the startpage for a while now, and I sat down today to find the source. 

Turns out, it was the facebook-plugin :( I had to uninstall it.
I'll try to find another way to give visitors a possibility to comment on my pictures soon. 

See ya, 
J

//Update: 

I installed a new component to enable comments again. It's not liked to facebook now, but this way anyone, even without a facebook-account can comment. 

Also, I disabled the multi-language-feature of the page. I'm translating all my posts to german, but anything else will stay english. The feature was way to complicated for what I need here.

//Update #2: 

And here's a new design. I liked the old, plain grey one, but now, I wanted a bit more colours. You like it? :)

Done for today...

Hello and Happy New Year!!
Hope you had a good start of the year? Good!

Hey there! 

On Monday night, I got another proof for how full my head is right now - not, that I needed (another)one! 

It's been a year that a friend introduced me to the music of Fishbone, a band I never heard of before, but loved instantly. In my defense: just like Dog Eat Dog, Fishbone had its popularity peek when I was still far from listening anything else but cassettes for kids. I think I was just born in the wrong decade. But hey, better late than never! So I got to know Fishbone just last year, and I really liked it! I checked online for upcoming tourdates, but the only European dates that were out back then where to far away. I remember checking again early last summer, but nothing was in any reasonable distance to travel there alone. As autumn was coming up and with it my final thesis came due, I banished any idea of far distant shows, as I need every day to write now. 

So, you can imagine my shock when I checked my mails on Monday night. My friend, who got me to know Fishbone in the first place, wrote, that I should report him how the show was, as they were performing in Frankfurt!! I hadn't checked for dates in quite a while, so I was completely ignorant of them playing for 30km from my place that very night!!! I grabbed my camera, jumped to the car and got there just in time to enjoy two very good supportbands (Ngobo Ngobo, and Senior Allstars) and, most important, FISHBONE LIVE!!

Now I'm back in the library, sorting the pictures, and remembering an amazing night! But no time to dwell or write long blog-posts (oops), I gotta get back to my essay. Enjoy the pictures, and if you ever get the chance to see Fishbone live, DO IT! 

Cheers, Jessi

PS: There's a great new documentary about Fishbone, called "Everyday Sunshine - The story of Fishbone"!

I made a few changes on my page:  

...is a combination that I can not recommend! Outsch!

Last night, all hallows eve, I spontaneously joined my friends to see a rock-show at Alexander the Great, 'cause I needed to get OUT and I didn't really care where we went. After beeing stuck at home due to a cold I just needed some social interaction. 

Hi! 

It's been a while since I last posted a news, but I did put up some pictures in the meantime. I've been busy and didn't know what to write about my summer. 

I spent some days on the road with my friends Martijn (www.dogeatdog.nl) and Nathalie (vdvphotos.weebly.com) for a nine days trip round europe to see our friends of Dog Eat Dog rock the clubs in London, Paris and Belgium (Kortenaken, Dessel, Torhout and Sint Niklaas), plus I traveled to Düsseldorf to see the show at the Stone Club. Of course, there was more than just the show on stage to take pictures of ;) I took some ten-thousands of pictures during that trip o.O  and it took me a while to sort them all. Check out my gallerys of London (1, 2, 3 and 4), Camden, Paris, and Antwerpen (yet to come!). 

Well, to be honest, there's still one set missing: The last show of "The End Of The World Tour 2012", in Halle (BE). I'll try to get that one done very soon! 

Last friday, I was out on a show in Frankfurt, I saw Skarface and The Dutch Ska Express at "Das Bett" and - what else? - took some pictures.

Otherwise, I'm burried in work for my graduation and won't be out on shows that much anymore till next spring. There might be some "old" pictures coming up soon, stuff I didn't sort yet and waits to be presented. 

So: Enjoy! :) 

Greetings from Mainz,

Jessi

By the way: This month, my camera had its one-year-aniversary!!! And another reason to celebrate: I took the 50.000th picture with my camera on friday night!! Yippie Yay Yeah!! ;) 

Hey there! :) 

This weekend, I've been on the road once again: at Devilside in Oberhausen, and Zwaarte Cross in Lichtenvoorde, NL. While Devilside offered a lot of metal, the Zwaarte Cross did impress with giant size and a lot of colors! 

What's the benefit of an early stage time? There's definitely enough light! ;) I seized the opportunity to use my 400mm Tele-Lens myde by Sigma for some pictures. I never used it for live-shows before, and I have to say: that thing weighs a TON! But well, one or two nice pics came out of it.

Thanks to a misleading sign, that made us drove 30 km in the wrong direction, plus the unexpected gigantic size of the festival, we arrived only half way through the Dog Eat Dog show. I rather enjoyed the last three songs properly and partied along, then to shoot pictures. Sorry! :( 

Cheers, Jessi