Just a few more weeks to enter!

Ah… weekend! Finally some time for myself. I am still very busy with studying, but I decided to post a little update to make you guys sure I’m still alive.

I haven’t had a lot of time the past few weeks, but I did do some brainstorming on the traveling camera. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, let me explain.

I am going to send a little analogue plastic camera all over the world. As a lot of you have requested, the camera will be called NIK. Nik will be send to 30 bloggers from 30 different countries. Each blogger will be making one picture and then send it to the next blogger. The pictures will all have a common theme. The last blogger will send the camera back to me and I will develop your pictures and make a pretty book. Each blogger whose picture is in the book will get one free. Copies for others who want one can buy one.

The bloggers get their picture published whit a small story about  it, the location of the picture, name,  and blog website featured. Which means free advertisement for your blog!

Update:

I have been looking at how many people have signed in already. Its amazing! I’ve got people from:

1. South Africa
2. England
3. Australia
4. Czech Republic
5. USA
6. Singapore
7. Turkey
8. Canada

Thank you for signing in! I’m so so happy!

I still need a few people to sign up for the project. Would you like to participate or do you know someone who would? Go check out the site on which you can enter! You’ll also find some more information.

http://www.enquetemaken.be/toonenquete.php?id=143637

I also got a lot of votes on the name and theme of the book! I’m super excited so many people voted for this name! For now, the title with the most votes is:

Niks Travels

- Around the world in thirty bloggers-

The theme of the book will be:

-What a tourist doesn’t see-

 

Ideas and sketches:

so I have been working on the look of the book. It will probably be a hardcover book.

The cover of the book will have the title, and then a sketch of the camera or a picture of the camera, I am still working on it, but its going  to look something like this:

The size of the book will be like a normal piece of paper (A4). Something like this:

The text and layout will be like the following pictures. These pictures are made from another book, which I thought would be the perfect example of the look and feel I think our book needs to have.

On the left page, you will find a small text, made by the blogger, explaining what the title and story behind the picture is. The title will be the title you give to your picture.

At the bottom of the story, your name and website will be featured. Its not on the following picture, but imagine it standing about a cm above the page number.

Then on the right page you will see the picture. The only text next to the picture will be:

• Title picture
• Date
• Time
• Location

Don’t know the order of those yet…

Over all, it will look like this:

At the beginning of the book I will write a small text about the book and of course, there will be a list of your blog on there too!

Let me know what you think!

OH! And do you guys want black and white pictures, or color?

Let me know by commenting!

follow me on twitter or Facebook for more updates.

Have a nice weekend!

X.

After the rain

Reblogged from The Dutch Story:

Took a walk around the garden after the rain. It had not rained for days, so there was this fresh smell pulling me outside. I posted a few pictures of the garden in my photography page, go have a look. http://thedutchstory.wordpress.com/photography/

Camera Review–The anonymous camera: 100+ years old

I was digging trough my camera collection a few days ago, trying to dig up a new one to review when I stumbled upon this amazing thing! I totally forgot about this beautiful camera cause I had stuffed it away in a leather pouch in my cabinet for months.

I got it for my 18th birthday in October last year. My granddad had pulled it out of a container somewhere. Who would put this in a container?! Never throw away a foldable leather camera! NEVER (if you don’t want it, send it to me)!

It looked pretty awful. I have to admit. The whole back of the camera was gone (see pictures). But as long as you can make the shutter speed and aperture work, you can fix it! the leather and the lens where in pretty good shape.

Because of the fact that the camera did not have a back, I couldn’t find what brand it is (it probably was stamped on the back).

I went looking for the shutter though, and I found some pretty cool stuff!

The history of the anonymous camera

First of all, I started looking for stuff on the internet. Where I found something about the lens, which gives me an indication on how old the camera is.

As you can see it’s an “Original Gauthier”, so I started looking up who this mister Gauthier was.

So I found that mister Alfred Gauthier was a mechanician in Germany. He started a company named after his last name in 1902 in Calmbach, Germany. The company made shutters for cameras. The most popular shutters where the Ibsor, Vario, Pronto and Prontor. Gauthier’s first shutter was the Koilos, a three-leaf shutter with leather brake, introduced in 1904. On this shutter, he inspired his logo, which you can see on the picture above. It’s the circle whit the three-leaf shutter. It has the letters AGC, which stands for Alfred Gauthier Calmbach.

As you can see on the picture this camera is the pronto so I started searching on that. The Pronto was made in 1912. Later on, in 1929, the shutter was modified. For example, the camera had the a brand name of the camera itself on the lens. Which you can see here (Agfa): (took this picture from camerapedia)

That makes my camera from the first production in 1912. My shutter does not have a brand name on there. Which makes my camera a 101 years old!

I’m going to repair this camera, and I WILL be back with a post about the pictures I made with it!

That’s it! Couldn’t find anything more.

OH! I did find a picture of mister Gauthier. Nice mustache/beard!

Have A nice week!

X.

Analogue camera review–The Kodak pocket B-1

I got this beauty at the flea market a few days ago and I’m in love with it!

This is the Kodak pocket B-1.

This camera was produced between 1979 and 1980, which is really short. I did not expect it to be that short because this camera is absolutely adorable. It may look as an ugly plastic camera. But you need to get it in your hands. It is so tiny! It’s almost a doll camera. It definitely does it’s name justice, it really is a ‘pocket camera’.

Just to show you guys how small it is I put a normal size pencil next to it.

Small huh?

This camera has only one shutter speed of 1/50 and one aperture of F11 so its really basic. A great simple camera to bring everywhere and take pictures of things that inspire you.

I actually got it with this super handy casing which you can leave on when you want to take a picture. Because of this casing, there is no scratch to be found on the camera. YAY!

It uses 110 mm format film. Which you can buy at the Lomography store. I actually bought myself a 110mm cartridge, so I thought it would be cool to show you what it looks like. I bought black and white film, there is color and redscale too!

If you get the film out of the package, you’ll see a plastic wrap. Inside the plastic is your cartridge.

Which looks like this:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any more info on this one’. Bit I’ll blog when my pictures are from development and we’ll see what we get!

Have a nice day!

X

It’s flea market season – Take a tour with me!

I was super excited for today. FINALLY! Its flea market season again and that means I HAVE to open the season with one of my favorite flea markets close to home. This is the annual flea market in Vreeland. I have been going here every year since I was about 15. It’s so awesome because there are a lot of collectors at the market. You’ll find a lot of vintage and antique!

Yes, even spoon collections!

Its really amazing what people collect, look at this amazing vintage and antique toy car and train collection. Its crazy!

Another thing I like to do is get a little bit of history from  the things people sell. This woman had been collecting for 40 years. Her mother past away and left her daughter 72 years of collecting these  awesome toys. Some of the cars where over a hundred years old and looked as new. That is amazing!

I always make a round through the place before buying (except when I find something really cheap and it has a chance of being sold before I come back).

That way you’ll never buy something you can buy cheaper at the other side of the market.

I was looking for a vintage  suitcase to use for vacations. Wouldn’t it be awesome to put your clothes in a case that has had a whole life of traveling already? I was especially looking for one with the name of the owner in it, a list with countries it had been or stickers and stamps from the airports. Didn’t find one unfortunately.

And then, of course, the digging and scanning trough the mess. Trying to find an analogue camera. That’s kind of a ‘where is wally’ project sometimes.

BUT… Then I found a box of analogue cameras…  There where 7 camera’s in there. One in particular was a vintage Agfa. The value of the camera about 5 euro’s. With a little bit of arguing with the man trying to sell it, I got the WHOLE BOX for 3 euro’s! It’s my lucky day! I cleaned em up and look at what I got!

Just 3 euros! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I also bought 3 boxes to put my records in. I’ve got about 200 of them and my storage cabinet was so full I couldn’t close the little door anymore AND I needed to fill another cabinet to get all of them stored. Now one cambinet is empty and I got this really nice vintage storage boxes being pretty in my room.

So that was what I did today! What do you look for at the flea market? Do you ever go to flea markets? (No? Did I convince you to go now?)

Have a nice day!

X

And the winner is…

Someone won this pocket spy camera… But who….?

I have been reading all your comments on where you would take this little camera. You guys have a lot of great ideas! This camera is going to have so much fun! Where? Oh, this camera is going to travel all the way to New York!

Congratulations Maria! You won the camera! I will send you an email with more information and I’ll send the camera to you soon. Have fun snapping away with it and maybe blog about the pictures you made. I’m curious what you’ll see in New York!

If you haven’t won, don’t be sad. I will do more giveaways, next one at 300 followers (on glipho) or at 50 followers (at wordpress) So which one will be first? glipho or wordpress? I’ll let you know!

If you want to win next time, make sure to follow me!

Have a nice weekend!

X

DIY – Scented jar

My final exams are in a month. In five weeks, I will be done with school. Finally graduating, after six years. Six years, that’s a long time. I have to tell you, I really am glad to be done. Another year would kill me. I’m finally going to do something I like. Which is studying photography.

Today I had some time to do something fun. I decided to do little DIY post. This cute and decorative jar has the best scent ever! I love it!

Go make one yourself, it’s about 20 minutes of work!

What you’ll need

• A few dried roses. Just take a few roses from a bouquet and put them in a vase without water for about 1-2 weeks and you’re good to go. You can also use other flowers, but since my scent is lavender-rose I used roses.

• I used some little dried flowers, You don’t need those, but they look cute with the roses. I took them out of the garden.

• A jar. You can use any jar you want. As long as the cap is thin enough to put some little holes in it.
• Dried scrub. You can buy that in about every shop. Its for the scent, but you can use sand if you want and only add the oil (which comes next)

• Oil. I used lavender oil. *sniff ahhhh You can use any oil you like. You can make this any scent you want. You can mix and match with the scrub and/or oil.

How it’s made

• Cut of the stems of the roses so they fit in your jar.
• Fill the jar with the scrub to about 3 cm.
• put in the roses and the little flowers on top.
• Put a few drops of the oil in the jar.
• Punch a few holes in the cap.

Now put the cap on your jar and you’re done! That’s simple right!?

Have fun making your own!

X.

Ps,

If you’re a blogger, please go check out my blogger challenge and get featured in my  (our) book!

Just click the link below

http://thedutchstory.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/to-all-bloggers-who-like-a-challenge/

I’m also hosting a giveaway (on glipho)! you can win a camera!

http://glipho.com/dutch-story/200-followers-giveaway