photoblog golden hours

The summer weather has been very changing the past few weeks, at the moment it is very warm here again and the last summer evenings of this year are sunny and golden.

In a very short amount of time I did a couple of photoshoots and I really would love to share my favorite ones with you. 

Some of the pictures absolutely make me feel as if these moments are too beautiful to be true!

This week I also went through the forest to reach the blooming heather which is only growing in this month and the next, but that will be for another blog.

Here now the photo's I took during the few lovely golden sunsets this week.

During one of the shoots there were so many mosquitoes unfotunately! So we had to leave the fields a little bit soon (I still have so many bites though still.. But oh well, everything for a good picture right?)

Ps. You can now book photo sessions now via my new website! + view my portfolio there. 

Have a lovely week!

Sasja

new announcements!

The reason why I haven't had time to write blogs for a while is because I have been quite busy with some new things the past few weeks!
First of all, a week ago I did my first maternity shoot ever, with Rosanne and her husband Joan. They are expecting twins and I captured the last phase of Rosanne's pregnancy.
This blog won't be about the maternity photoshoot - I will write an individual blog about that photoshoot very soon and I will share all my favorite photo's with you.

The day after the maternity shoot I had to set my alarm for 5.15 in the morning since I was going to travel all the way to Apeldoorn by train, around 7.15 I was on my first train.
I had my first photoshoot for a magazine coming out very soon! It is a magazine where knitted and crocheted clothes will be showed off, there will be crochet & knit patterns inside of the magazine.
The magazine is from the shop Hobbygigant in Apeldoorn.
I won't be showing pictures of the photoshoot until the release of the magazine, but that won't take so long anymore.

Thirdly..
Some of you may know, some of you even shared it! (thank you), but I made another instagram account where I will share the kind of pictures I take for photoshoots and where you can send me a message to book a photoshoot. A maternity, family, friend, loveshoot... etc.
The instagram URL is instagram.com/schilderachtigmooi feel free to follow or send me a message!
I am still working on my portfolio and soon I will be publishing my website.

my lovely sister during sunset yesterday!

Have a lovely day,
Sasja

photoblog countryside picnic

Jolien, a friend of mine, who I met in highschool, is one of the happiest people I have ever met in my entire life. I love taking pictures of her because she's always very open and comfortable when I'm shooting pictures  and that is perfect for a photographer.

We had a lovely picnic under the shadow of a big tree, on one of the typical dikes you can find on the Dutch countryside. 

sadly I found out I got a really bad sunburn, I didn't recognize the sun shining so much because the wind was blowing very hard which made it seem very cool outside. 

I was glad I could take some pictures of her under the shadow of the tree and Jolien also took a few pictures with me on it.

I hope you will enjoy them.

Have a lovely day,

Sasja

visiting France

I went to France last week. It was only for one day (two days if you include all the driving 8 hours so that makes 16 back and forth), but it was really worth it. 

As some of you may know I design crochet patterns for the French company Fonty, a wool company who produce and sell 100 percent sustainable and natural yarns. 

We visisted their factory to see how all the yarn is made. 

The last time I went to France was twelve years ago, in the summer of 2007. I was really enjoying the views, the golden sunlight, the white cows resting in the warm sun, the hills, the meadows and the serene silence. 

My favorite thing were probably the quiet French villages and the lovely architecture, I would so much love to live in a French house!

We also ate in a France restaurant for lunch (ouch, we didn't know it was a daily menu and not a la carte so we almost got meat on our plates before we told the waitress that we actually don't eat meat... we got something else luckily hihi). And oh my... no one ever told me that it's normal to eat a four course lunch in France. But apparently it is ha, so that's what we got. A lot of food, I can tell.

A really nice thing I noticed is, that the villages are very quiet and there aren't many people walking outside. But still there are a few shops or restaurants in every village (which is unusual here), and surprisingly every restaurant or shop has it's customers, even in the evening hours. 

Now I will show you a few of the many pictures I took in France. We went to Rougnat by the way.

next to our hotel. can you see the waterwell? I love those.

a lovely little house with so so many flowers! we stopped the car to take a picture of  this...
then the lady of the house came outside to see what we were doing hihi. she said
bonjour though and she smiled so she didn't mind. 

the treehouse, the laundry...

beautiful French landscapes

Have a lovely week ahead,

Sasja

writing, writing, writing...

Do you write?

And with writing I mean any form of writing - from novels to poetry to journal entries.

I love to write, and yet I barely write.

I already started writing and reading on a very young age, I always used these little notebooks to write my stories in. It was always dramatic - I never liked writing romantic stories. And still don't like to write or read cliché romantic stories.

I only managed to finish one of my stories, only one time in my entire life. 

I was ill, at home, I was about twelve years old. I was feeling bored. At that time I didn't have a smartphone nor internet yet, so I had to think of something that was more creative than that. 

In two old notebooks I started to write a story about a girl who lost her mother to an illness, and the entire story is about the mourning process.

A year later I decided to send it to this simple children's publisher and they printed it. It's still for sale in their online shop here, but I never really told anyone about this during my later teenage years because it's kind of not-so-professional. It's just a little embarassing because well, I was twelve you know.

I also have a journal. The journal you can see in the pictures. I got this one in 2016, and it's not even completed for fifty percent which is dissapointing.
In some way, the older I become the less free I am with writing. Which is sad I think. When I was younger, maybe nine years old, I used to keep a diary very regularly. I wrote simple stuff in there - how school went, what we would have for dinner and which classmate was bothering me.
It was simple but less is more, right?
And now I'm suffering of this diary-and-novel-writers block for ages already. Because yes, it is still a dream of mine to write a novel someday. And no, I have no idea what it should be about. Sometimes I have small ideas but they are definitely not good or big enough to write a complete novel about.
Can someone please give me advice, how to overcome a writer's block, how to get more inspiration and how to even start writing a proper story again?

The diary writing is going alright so far. The past few weeks I have written a few journal entries, not that long or special but it's at least the small start of something I hope.
I have about three empty lovely pretty notebooks in my room somewhere and I hope to fill all of them with new memories and handwritten words someday.

So.. if there's anyone to advice me on writing a novel, I would be thankful if you could help me out.
By the way...
I will be blogging about a very exciting trip soon, that I will be making tomorrow night.

Have a lovely day,
Sasja

why i cut off my hair short

Yes, it happened, finally. 

Most of my hair was chopped of today.

Some of you may wonder why I did this, why I didn't keep my long hair. It's not because my hair was damaged or dead, it was very healthy, but I just wanted something new and different. 

In my entire life no one really told my to cut my hair off but to grow it long, extremely long, until it would reach my waist. Well I can tell you: that is completely impossible with my hair. My hair is very dry, fluffy and also very fuzzy. It hurts to brush it when it's getting longer and it really annoyed me when the temperatures were warm because of the curls around my head. 

I also didn't feel confident while wearing my hair loose, I wasn't feeling comfortable at those moments. that's also why I was wearing a bun on top of my head almost ninty percent of the time!

I actually didn't tell anyone really (except a few), that I was getting a haircut because I didn't want to feel discouraged if someone would say I shouldn't do it. It already happened now so... ;) Not much there can be changed anymore.

It was scary to make this decision  but mostly very exciting too! I already told a few people around the age of 16 that I would want a haircut like this, but I never felt confident enough to do so.

Now I'm not in school anymore I decided to just give it a try! And it'll grow back eventually.

So that's why it's a short pixie cut now, I can definitely recommend getting your hair cut short if you want to do it, it's really not that big of a deal and it can look very artistic and pretty!

Have a lovely day all,

Sasja

wildflower photo session

As the moments, days, weeks and months are passing by... we already arrived in July. which is already over fifty percent of this year. Seasons come and go and the time is flying by extremely fast. I don't really mind it, it makes times bearable when life is not easy and it makes exciting times come by more quickly.
In the days before and after the weekend of next week a few exciting things will happen which I will write later about.

But to stay on topic: yesterday evening it was sunny and warm and I asked my sister to drive us to a poppy field I saw earlier that day when I was mountainbiking on the farm roads.
It was very pretty there - the flowers were white, purple and pink and next to the field there was a small meadow with a horse mother and her foal.
But, for some reason the picture I wanted to take didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be, so we drove to another place even closre to our home. It was at the roadside, by an organic field and many blue wildflowers were growing there. As blue wildflowers are my favorite I got very happy to see them and asked my sister to stop the car.
I took some pictures of the most beautiful flowers in the evening sun and also one of my sister (with the pretty hat I gifted her), and she also took a few photo's of me. After that we collected a bouquet of the prettiest flowers to press in some old books.
I hope you will like them.

Have a lovely weekend,
Sasja