Levia Erin Schilt

Today our third child Levia Erin is born. She weighs 3200g and is 48cm long, and most important she is healthy. We are very pleased.

Farmhouse November Updates

During the last few month I had quite a busy time, you may have noticed that I did not post any new articles. I had many things to do in business and with setting up our new home. 

As it was planned we moved to our new home in mid July. Not everything was complete when we moved in. We had still some work to do in the staircase, in the garden and some other small things. But we have learned that such a project will never be finished. You have to set the end by yourself at some point. Then later on you can improve these things that bother you.

However the Farmhouse project is a success story of its own and the final result is amazing. We didn't have any major problems, and small issues could be discussed and fixed quickly. The collaboration between us, the architect, the authorities, the contractors and craftsmen was very pleasant and efficient. The house is back in position and looks very nice.

I took some pictures last sunday, it was a great day. The picture on the left was taken from the other side of the street, and for the picture on the right I was standing on the property. On both pictures one sees the facade heading to the south.

  

On the left picture you see the freshly painted staircase which gives access to all three apartements. The picture on the right and the 3 pictures below show the interior of our appartement which is on the first floor. All three apartments have their own charm.

 

   

I shot all these pictures with the Olympus PEN E-PL1 and the Olympus 9-18mm F4.0-5.6 Four Thirds lens. The outdoor shots have been taken freehand and for the indoor shots I used a tripod. I did not use any flashes. I used this lens for the first time on the E-PL1, usually I use the E-3 with this lens since it is a Four Thirds and not a Micro Four Thirds lens. But with the corresponding adapter (Panasonic DMW-MA1) this is a great Duo (or Trio, with the adapter). Because of the contrast Autofocus of the E-PL1 the focusing is not as fast as it is on the E-3, but it is accurate and works very good for this kind of photography. 

Fotoshooting - House for Rent in Thielle/NE

Last week, Laurent Bourqui, a coworker and a very good friend asked me to take some pictures of his house. He aquired an appartement and is now looking for someone who rents his lovely house in Thielle, near Marin/Neuchâtel. We met on 17:30 to get some nice shots from the outside. Unfortunately the weahter situation was not easy for photographing. It was cloudy without any sunshine most of the time. Almost all pictures came out with very little contrast. Then I tried exposure bracketing with 3 shots +/- 1 stop to make an exposure fusion later on with Photomatix. I would say the result is ok.

After maybe half an hour, we changed to the inside of the house. I used my favorite combo for indoor real estate shooting, the Olympus E-3 with the Zuiko Digital 9-18mm/f4-5.6 and two RC enabled Olympus flashes. Compared to my other sessions I had an assistent this time, Laurent supported me with positioning one of the two flashes. And that was very practical. I tried to set up the flashes according to the natural light to avoid artificial light effects. But this was not always easy and I did not succeed all the time. Indoor real estate shooting takes time. There were six rooms plus kitchen, toilets and floors to photograph. I had one hour, since I had an appointment with my wife later on. This makes about 5 minutes per scene, and that kept me very busy. I have set the camera to manual mode, aperture to f5.6, metering to spot and flash control to TTL for most scenes. When entering the room I pointed the camera to the window and set the exposure value to have the window correctly exposed. Then I made several shots with different compositions and flash configurations. If I had to much light even at 1/250s I further stopped down a little bit.

After all I am quite happy with the output, though I could have done better, especially with some more time. Anyway I hope that Laurent Bourqui may use these photos and will find somebody who will rent his nice house very soon. If you are interested, just contact me, I will redirect you to Laurent Bourqui.

Farmhouse May/June Updates

Since last time when I posted an update about the Farmhouse Project I was quite busy. Actually I was on vacation, but instead of lying around on the beach or in a wellness hotel, Marianne, my wife, and I have painted all the walls and ceilings. Fortunately we had some support of friends and family members. Painting the new walls and ceilings was not a big problem, the real challenge were the old existing two rooms with lot of wood walls and built-in cupboards. These two rooms took almost half of the time, which was at least one week for two people. As you may alreay see here, we have decided to paint the kitchen wall in red, one wall in the bath in orange and one wall in bedroom in brown. Our friends on the ground and second floor also decided to use colors, instead of unique white.

  

 

  

Kitchens are installed, and the floorer has already started laying out the parquet, at the end of next week, most things are finished. Then we can start cleaning the site.

Farmhouse April Update

  

The new windows have been installed, floors including heating are basically completed. Now comes the plaster on the walls and ceilings. Then we have to wait some weeks before laying the parquet floor, until the base floor dried out completely. In the meantime we will paint all the walls and ceilings, Marianne, my wife, and I will do that by ourselves. Let me know if you would like to spend some time to help us painting walls :-)