Oh wow! Vinita and I enjoyed a fabulous evening with the winners of our Helping Hearts for Haiti romantic photo session. With beautiful Spring weather we spent the evening walking through the couple’s favourite streets in The Hague whilst listening to anecdotes of their lives together.

Love was definitely in the air…

The Hague provides some wonderful backdrops for portrait sessions. Love the architecture in this particular street!

We had so many favourite images from this session, it was almost impossible to choose just a small few for the sneak peek… here’s a couple more…

And the perfect end to a romantic photo session… mmm bubbles! :-)

Thank you so much for a wonderful session, and of course, for helping us help the victims of Haiti’s earthquake.

Don’t forget to check Vinita’s blog for a sneak peek of her images!!! ;-)

Wow, first of all I would just like to say a huge THANK YOU! :-)

I have been a member of the Women’s Business Initiative International (WBII) since I first started my business, back in March 2008 (Yes, Tigs Creations turns 2 later this month!!) Each year they host an Annual Dinner on International Women’s Day, March 8.

This year’s event was held at the Bel Air Hotel in The Hague, with women and men of diverse nationalities and professional sectors all celebrating ‘Women and Opportunity’. It was an inspiring evening with a captivating keynote speech by H.E. Mrs Mary Whelan, Ambassador of Ireland to the Netherlands.

Three entrepreneurial awards were also presented on the night, one for Ambition, one for Social Innovation, and one for Networker of the Year…

When the winner of the Social Innovation Award 2010 was revealed, my jaw hit the floor! I watched the big screens with everyone else for the name, and then I read mine: Natalie Carstens, Tigs Creations Photography. What?! Really?! I was so shocked I was shaking.

I’m so proud to receive this award, which was largely due to the work I do for the Littlest Heroes Project, Helping Hearts for Haiti and zoocrew.eu

I am passionate about giving back and making a difference, let me tell you a little about these three projects…

The Littlest Heroes Project

I could not hold back the tears the first time I visited this website. The stories and the images of these brave children tugged at my heart strings and I knew instantly I wanted to be a part of this very special project. The Littlest Heroes Project provides our littlest heroes (children who suffer from any type of serious illness or life altering disability) and their family with a complimentary photo session and selection of photos. This is an extra special gift for these families that are dealing with hectic schedules as their child battles disease and sickness.

Helping Hearts for Haiti

After the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, I teamed up with another photographer and we wasted no time in joining the Helping Hearts initiative. Blog readers were invited to make a donation to the Dutch National Giro 555 in order to be entered into a raffle to win a romantic portrait session. We have a winner, so look out for the session sneak peek appearing on my blog in April! ;-)

zoocrew.eu – help us save our wildlife

I think everyone that knows me, knows I love wildlife. Who doesn’t know my favourite animal is the tiger? Come on, hands up! ;-) Together with my husband, Heiko, who is also passionate about wildlife, we launched a new website for wildlife conservation in January 2008: www.zoocrew.eu

Our aim is to raise awareness for wildlife conservation by promoting the conservation projects and breeding programmes that are supported by various zoos. We regularly update the site with zoo news and conservation updates, and frequently feature different conservation organisations ‘In the Spotlight‘.

As well as having our own personal wildlife adoptions, we’re encouraging others to adopt as well. This is a great way to give back and support these organisations. One of our recent adoptions is Maalim, a black rhino, born prematurely and abandoned by his mother he was rescued by DSWT. We loved his ‘Maalim and the Mattress‘ update :-)

We also make regular donations to Painted Dog Conservation.

Thank you WBII, and Congratulations to Arjanneke and Tina!

Many thanks to Suzy Ogé and Lisa Rouissi at the WBII for hosting a fabulous event on Monday. Thank you SO much for the award. Congratulations also to Arjanneke Teeuw, founder of Healthy People, who won the Ambition Award. (Thank you for sharing your story, and yum – your chilled juice is delicious, I’m adding it to my Albert Heijn shopping list!) And last but not least, congratulations to Tina Evans, Managing Director of Blue Lynx Group who won the Networker of the Year Award.

For highlights of the event (and photos) go visit the ‘International Women’s Day Dinner 2010 Highlights‘ article over on the WBII website.

With your donations you give the people of Haiti hope for the future. Giro555.nl announced on Thursday that the Netherlands has raised 100.6 Million Euros – that’s incredible! And the donations still continue…

For Haiti, we’re hoping for another Kobe miracle. It’s been 15 years since the Kobe earthquake, in which Vinita’s family were part of. We’d like to share with you a video entitled “Dear 15-year-old. You’re the reason we worked so hard to rebuild our city.” This short video symbolises hope. It’s a commercial clip from an electric company addressing the youth – 15 year olds in particular – with the message that the city has been rebuilt for them. Vinita has seen this happen with her own eyes. This is why our appeal for Haiti is so dear to our hearts.

Seen on Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s blog post: Kobe, 15 years after the quake

We are so very grateful to you all for supporting Helping Hearts for Haiti.

And the winner is…

Many congratulations to Ms Suzy Ogé and her sweetheart for winning the romantic photo session with Vinita and I! :-)

Thank you again for your kind generosity and support.

Have a great week everyone – and Suzy, we’ll see you soon!

On 13 January, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 hit Haiti; the devastation is unimaginable. The death toll has risen above 150,000 people in the Port-au-Prince area alone. 1.5 million people have been left without a home, and more than 750,000 children have been left without parents. The numbers are growing. It brings tears to my eyes, I want to help.

I’m teaming up with my dear friend, Vinita Salomé of Vinita Salomé Photography, and together, we’ve joined the Helping Hearts initiative to try to do something to help. But, we need you, too! Please help us help the victims of Haiti’s earthquake.

Here’s how:

You and your sweetheart could win a romantic photo session on-location in the heart of Den Haag, Gouda or Utrecht!

• This session will be photographed by myself AND Vinita and will be held in the late-afternoon/evening of Saturday 17th April 2010. This gives you plenty of time to shop and find a babysitter, if need be ;-)
• Session is for up to 2 adults and will last between 1-2 hours.
• Winner will also receive 25 fully processed, high resolution images on CD. Print to your heart’s content!

How to win:

• Make a MINIMUM donation of €25 to Giro555. Please do this online via e-cumlaude so that you receive a receipt for your donation.
• If you pay by iDeal, be sure to check the box for “Stuur de betaalbevestiging naar mijn e-mailadres” and enter your email address to ensure you receive a receipt for your payment. Then, forward a copy of your receipt to haiti@tigscreations.com.
• All entries must be RECEIVED by midnight (GMT+1) on 31st January 2010.
• Winner will be drawn at random and announced on Monday 1st February 2010.
• You can enter as many times as you’d like, but each entry must be the minimum €25 donation.

Other details:

• Session participants must sign a model release.
• Session must be held in Den Haag, Gouda or Utrecht on 17 April 2010.
• If the winner does not claim his/her prize by Wednesday 3rd February 2010 or cannot claim the prize, then another winner will be drawn.
• This program is not sponsored or promoted by Giro555.nl and we are not receiving anything in return for this effort.

Are you a photographer and want to help?

This fabulous initiative is thanks to two inspiring photographers, Michele of Pinkletoes Photography and Lyndsay of Life in Motion Photography. If you are a photographer and would like to hold your own Helping Hearts event to help Haiti, please contact Helping Hearts ASAP so they can send you everything you need to get started!

But wait! There’s more!

PLEASE blog, Tweet or share the link to this blog post on Facebook! You can also follow Helping Hearts on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Together we can help those in need.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

With love and best wishes,
Natalie :)

Yay! Published in the October-November issue of Family Matters magazine: the definitive guide to family life in The Netherlands – did you see it?

Here’s a copy of the article for those that didn’t :-)

CLICK! Ten tips for photographing your children

All parents take photographs of their children, and treasure them all; except perhaps the ones that just didn’t turn out very well! But wouldn’t you like to know how to take beautiful portraits instead of just so-so snapshots? Professional photographer, Natalie Carstens, shares the secrets to taking great photographs of your children. Here are some helpful tips to remember next time you take out the camera.

1. Practise focusing
Eyes connect the viewer to the image. So, focus on your child’s eyes, lock the focus (usually by half-pressing the shutter), recompose the image if you need to, then slowly press the shutter button to prevent camera shake. Children are rarely still, so getting the focus right takes practice, but practice makes perfect.

2. Get closer and fill the frame
Don’t be afraid to cut off the top of your child’s head, it makes the photograph more intimate and draws attention to the eyes.  Move closer with your feet, or zoom in with your lens. This eliminates background clutter and other distractions.

3. Photograph in soft light
Learn to see the best light; you want to have soft shadows in your portraits. Soft shadows allow children to widen their eyes. If you are outside, avoid the harsh midday sun and look for open shade – under trees or near a building. The light on an overcast day is perfect for portraits; get in close and avoid including the sky. When photographing your children indoors, north-facing windows give a bright, indirect light that works like an overcast sky.

4. Turn the flash off
A built-in camera flash is great for snapshots but not so good for portraits. Instead, opt for open shade or window light and turn the flash off.

5. Be creative with your composition
Instead of placing your child in the middle of the photograph, place him off to one side. When photographing outdoors, watch out for trees or buildings growing out of his head; sometimes you need to step a little to one side. Add a little variety to your photographs by changing the orientation of your camera to shoot in portrait as well as landscape format.

6. Change your perspective
Get down low and photograph your children at their eye-level. For babies and infants, you might even want to lie on the floor!

7. Capture different expressions
Children have fascinating expressions; they can be serious and thoughtful. Try to capture these expressions. Make it fun for your children by giving them something to do – a book or a toy. Conversation is another good way to capture your child’s different expressions. Ask younger children to tell you a story.

8. Follow your child
Be ready for action by watching your child through the viewfinder. With a little patience, when you follow them you’ll be ready to capture that perfect moment.

9. Get everyone closer together
When photographing multiple children together, ask them to put their arms around each other, hold hands or touch their heads together.

10. Keep pressing the shutter button
Luck can play a big role in successful portraits. Keep taking photographs, with practice you’ll get luckier and increase the odds of getting that one beautiful portrait. With digital cameras there’s no excuse not to take more photographs.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Carstens of Tigs Creations Photography specialises in pregnancy, newborn, children and family portraiture. Her style is modern and fresh; with each portrait she aims to capture the real essence of her subjects in a fun and relaxed way. For more information and to view additional photographs, visit her website and follow her blog at www.tigscreations.com.

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Download a PDF copy of the article here.
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I have some exciting news to share! Some of you will know that my husband, Heiko, and I are very passionate about wildlife and in an effort to raise awareness for wildlife conservation we set up a website: www.zoocrew.eu Please do stop by to check it out, you’ll find zoo news/reviews, conservation articles, forums and photo galleries. We also have a Facebook fan page and you can follow us on Twitter too :-) But before you go off exploring, let’s first get back to my exciting news, it starts with a short story…

In August 2008, Heiko and I visited the Painted Dog Conservation project in Zimbabwe. Their efforts to educate the local community and involve them in the protection of Africa’s Painted Dogs is just brilliant. We were impressed!

There are very few Painted Dogs (also known as Wild Dogs) remaining in the wild. Being nomadic, they travel great distances, only staying in the same location when they have pups. So when we came across a pack of 24 dogs during our trip to Tanzania in February 2009, it was incredible; we could not believe our eyes. It was one of the highlights of our trip! I’ve blogged about our sighting in a previous post and you can see some of my photos here.

In March 2009 after we returned home, we visited Beekse Bergen Safaripark to attend a talk given by Greg Rasmussen and Peter Blinston from the Painted Dog Conservation project and it was great to see how the project was progressing. We also learned that a lot of the support for the project comes from the Netherlands, there is a foundation here: Stichting Painted Dog Conservation.

We wrote an article about the talk on our website (here’s the link) and not long after, we received an email from the Chairman of Stichting PDC and our support of the Painted Dogs snowballed, as did their support of zoocrew.eu.

When it came time to design the Painted Dog Conservation 2010 Calendar, Stichting PDC asked if they could use the photos we had taken in Tanzania and we sent off several high resolution images to their designer/printer.

Last week I went to visit the Chairman to collect several of the calendars for our own distribution. We weren’t sure what to expect but we knew that one of our images had been selected. I assumed it would be a standard wall calendar with 12 images, one for each month. What I discovered was a 100×70cm poster-size wall calendar, with only one image: mine! And the image credit is for zoocrew.eu! So exciting!

I know some of you have been waiting to see what it looks like, and it’s so hard to give a sense of scale in a photo… but here you go, here’s a peek:

Yay, image credit for zoocrew.eu :-)

And here’s the whole poster:

Awesome! Thank you Stichting PDC!

If you see this poster in your local zoo, or anywhere – the distribution is big! Let me know, or send me a pic, I’d love to see! :-)

Did you visit the International Culture & Leisure in Holland 2009/2010 Fair on Sunday? Thank you to everyone that stopped by my stand to say Hi – it was great to meet you! Here’s a peek at my stand in case you missed it ;)

And if you are wondering about the special offer that I teased you with in this post…

Ta-dah… ;-)

Are you, or someone you know, expecting twins or triplets? I’m offering a discounted creative fee for newborn sessions booked before 31 October 2009! If you’re expecting twins, pay only 1/2 the creative fee, and if you’re expecting triplets, you only pay 1/3! Please contact me for more information, I’d love to hear from you :-)

Tigs Creations Photography will be taking part in the International Culture & Leisure in Holland 2009/2010 Fair this coming Sunday 20th September, which takes place from 11.00 till 17.00 in the Atrium of the City Hall of The Hague.

Come and say Hi..! :-)

* Visitors will also be the first to hear about a very special offer for new parents…!! *

I’m very much looking forward to meeting you :-)

psssssssst! head over here to buy your tickets!

Did you notice a change to my website???? ;-)

I’ve been working with Erika Jessop, a fabulous artist and designer, and she created the PERFECT new logo for me……… I love it!

:-))))))