The Art of Artwork

The eye

A good photo is a choice. What is in it, and just as much what is not: a line that runs a little crooked, a cable on the floor, a messy corner, a car in the wrong spot. Kevin sees those things before he presses the button. He is patient and precise, and he works with daylight and strong mobile flashes to keep the colours true and let the materials speak.

He even taught me how to straighten a photo the right way: first one strong line in the centre, then the verticals, and only then, if it truly fits, the horizontals. A photo that is almost straight looks worse than one that was never touched. That is the kind of detail nobody notices, until it is wrong.

Dutch skies

With his Leica M11 Kevin works on a project of many years: Dutch skies. No people, no buildings, only sky and a thin strip of land. The clouds do the talking. All that sky, and every cloud is EXACTLY in place!

Space and atmosphere

Kevin grew up, like me, around the interior building company of our father: inspiring interiors and special details from a young age. You can see it in his work. A villa on the water, a former water tower turned into workplaces, a staircase seen straight from above.

Taste

For Eetcafé 't Pakhuis in Amsterdam he shot the dishes, the interior and a homepage reel in one compact session. For a bakery he photographed four shops and their cakes, bread and pastries. You can almost smell it.

Film

Here is a montage of some of Kevin's footage, featuring a shopping centre that gets a new floor, the dunes and meadows of Terschelling, divers at a sluice, the flower auction at night, Eetcafé 't Pakhuis and drones over the morning mist.

Watch the full films here:

Behind every shot is a story. Divers inspecting the walls and gates of a sluice. The flower auction in Aalsmeer. A timelapse of a shopping centre that gets a new floor. And on Terschelling, drone pilots searching the meadows for the nests of vulnerable birds, so they can be protected before the grass is mown. A nest with eggs, hidden in the grass. That is the shot!

The reel and the four colleague films on korverbv.nl are his too, as I wrote in Human Work.

Snake '97

Kevin is also the one who shot the razor-sharp macro photos of the old phones for Snake '97. Those photos are still the game: more than 41 million downloads, and millions of people carry a copy of my old phone in their pocket, photographed by my brother. The whole story is on the making-of page. 41 million downloads, ONE photographer!

AI and craft

I build with AI all day, and I believe it can foster creativity and craftsmanship. It takes the boring work away and leaves more time for what matters. But the eye stays human: knowing what to leave out, waiting for the right light, seeing the odd line before anyone else does.

Kevin keeps social media at a distance, on purpose, and writes about his own work in his updates. Read What do you actually do, Kevin?, or how he built a camera obscura from a cardboard box to watch the solar eclipse. Curiosity is part of the craft.

Conclusion

Pictures are the first thing people see of your work, long before they read a word. Make them count! Looking for photos or film that make your people, your product or your space stand out? Have a look at Kevin's work and give him a call.

VISIT KEVINMIDDELKOOP.NL