We´ve had the pleasure to ask some questions to Erlend Robaye "Erroba", an artist and programmer who has managed to develope an unique style in painting, carving and photography.
Where did you grow up as a photographer?
I was born in Deurne near Antwerp, I bought my first camera, a Canon 500fn when I was 23 but
I only used it to take pictures when we were on holidays abroad.
Just before I got married in June 2007, I bought myself a Canon 400D and a 60mm macro lens, as
I wanted to be able to take more and better pictures, starting with my honeymoon.
It is only since I discovered HDR, end of November 2007 that I got really excited about photography and have been taking photos on a regular basis.
-Is photography for you a way of living?
Photography surely influences my life a lot, I'm always looking at my surroundings and how the light and weather conditions change the way everything looks. I sometimes look at a certain scene and imagine when it would look best, at which time of day or which period of the year.
I sometimes have a certain location in mind but I can wait months for the best conditions to actually go there and shoot the place. Checking the weather reports and watching through the window at the clouds can help a lot too.
-At your personal website www.erroba.be , we can find some of your artwork: oil paintings, carvings, logo designs and of course, your photographs.
Do you consider yourself an artist more than a photographer?
I guess a good photographer should be an artist, when done well photography is just another form of art, whether or not my photos are art is however not for me to decide.
-Could you please tell us how has oil painting and designing influenced your photography work and vice versa?
I let all these areas cross over, influence each other, I've used aspects that are typical to photography in my oil paintings, like bokeh (lack of depth of field); I even used my programming skills to make images based on math, starting from a normal photo.
As a designer of logos and carvings I have developed a sense of lines and I'm quite sure that this has influenced my photographic compositions.
My love for realistic oil paintings surely made me wander into HDR, since after all the classical masters painted HDR as well.
-You are working now with the Canon EOS 400D and a good bunch of lenses, could you tell us
which piece of photographic equipment you would love to have?
I would love to have a few high quality lenses; I have a medium range 28-85mm and an 80-300mm lens that I inherited from my analogue camera, but they are lacking a bit in quality, especially a 300mm zoom without image stabilization is hard to use. I would like to replace those with the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS USM and the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM for instance, but unfortunately I'm not having that sort of cash right now.
Next thing I'll buy will most likely be some more strobe lights, 1 is just not enough most of the time.
... and sure I would like to own the new Canon 7D ;)
-In which city are you based?
I'm currently based in Mechelen and next year I will move to Sint-Katelijne Waver, which is at the border of Mechelen.
-Do you think you will get tired of taking pictures from the place where you live?
Not really, things can look completely different in different weather conditions or time of day and year.
I'm sure you can take the best pictures in the place where you live, just because you have time to wait for the best moments.
-Could you please tell us a place in your city every photographer should visit?
'De Grote Markt' and the St-Rombouts cathedral.
-From which cities have you taken pictures?
Mechelen
Antwerp
Brussels
Ghent
Leuven
Bruges
Paris
Bodrum
-Could you tell us a place in Brussels every photographer should visit?
'De Grote Markt' is certainly something you wouldn't want to miss, and it's a challenge to get good
pictures because the buildings are tall and there are a lot of tourists making your life difficult.
-Could you tell us a few places you would like to photograph?
I'm dreaming of returning to Scotland.
I also would love to visit New-Zealand, Egypt, Peru, Iceland, Lapland, The Great Barrier Reef, the Himalayas, the moon...
-Do you think someone will see your photographs in 200 years?
Only if I get to the moon, no seriously I think chances are slim, there are a lot of very good photographers out there, techniques are always evolving, people are always looking for new things, but of course only the future will tell.
-Do you need any goal to follow taking pictures constantly?
It's just a passion for something that looks good and being able to create something out of the moment and to try and improve yourself constantly.
-Could you tell us what does inspire you as photographer?
Lines, the beauty and roughness of nature, light !
-Could you please tell us the name of a photographer that you admire?
Names, I'm so bad at names, there are probably a lot that I should mention, one name stuck in my mind because his pictures baffled me: Tim Tadder.
-What is what you love about photography?
I'm a technical guy, because of my job as a programmer and on the other side I am an artist, I like to create things.
In photography, technique and artistry go hand in hand. Photography has many areas in which you can experiment, you can do landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, colour, black & white, panoramas, long exposures, flash photography, macro photography, high speed photography, time lapse, ...
the list seems endless.
That there are so many things to learn and so many technical things to control is just thrilling me, when I get a real nice shot with a new technique I'm experimenting with, it always gives me that 'Yes !' feeling, it gives me great satisfaction when I see something beautiful come out of all the techniques I have learned so far.
-At your website www.erroba.be you share your free software. Obviously you are a
professional programmer, could you tell us if this has given you any advantage at photo
processing?
Having a feeling for computers and how programs work can certainly help you get more control of a program, you see the technical side of it and see more quickly how you can apply tricks using the way a certain program was conceived.
Apart from using existing software, I also have written my own effect generator based on mathematical functions, I like experimenting with that, hopefully I'll find the time some day
to implement all my ideas and bring that program to the market.
-A few of your pictures have been made blending more than one image, could you tell us
something about your multilayer pictures?
There are several ways of blending pictures together, most of these techniques aim at one common goal, to achieve a greater dynamic range than a normal photo. The dynamic range is the amount of colour variations you can capture in one image. In analogue photography, the limitation of a low dynamic range already existed and although many attempts were made to create better films - with higher dynamic range - it wasn't until the arrival of digital cameras that we could actually make the dream come true.
The technique I use is called HDR ( High Dynamic Range ), to make an HDR image, several exposures of the same subject are taken, I normally only take 3 exposures, since that's without too much fiddling the limitation of my camera. I try to open up the dynamic range as much as possible, so I take an underexposed photo at -2EV, a normal exposed photo at 0EV and an overexposed photo at +2EV, of course you need a tripod most of the time to do so.
These exposures are then imported into Photomatix, which creates a real HDR image, having all the dynamic range info for each pixel. The problem is that, currently there exists only 1 device in the world that can actually show that image as it is; a normal lcd display doesn't have that dynamic range either; hence there is a process called tone mapping to bring that image back to a format that can be displayed on classic display devices. This tone mapping is the most important and creative step as you have a good bunch of sliders to control the image output. Good tone mapping is the key to a natural and good looking HDR, bad tone mapped images have flooded the internet and have given HDR a bad name.
-Could you please give any advice to someone who would like to begin taking photos?
Buy a camera that can shoot RAW images ( instead of jpeg ) and practice your composition. If you don’t have a natural feeling for composition, perhaps read some good books on the subject.
Composition is the key to success, after all whether it is landscape, cityscape, flash or not, HDR or not, you still need a good composition.
Looking at a lot of good pictures will also influence you; I'm sure that looking at all those great photographers' work on flickr has influenced me a lot.
-Could you tell us something about your future photo projects?
I'm always spiraling in and out of certain areas, I'm currently trying to get more familiar with off camera strobe photography, I'm planning some high speed photography and real long exposures as well and still having some ideas for digital matte paintings too.
In the end I always let things influence each other; I’ll never know where I will end up, what I will be creating, that's a big part of the fun as well.
