My 2025 in review
The most busiest of years, but you hardly saw me.
2025.
The most busiest of years, and you hardly saw me
Let's dive in! For me 2025 was.. something that just happened? A lot happened actually, and much of it outside the scope of this site. Good things, bad things, part-of-life things. Work became intense. Good stuff too, many cool projects on the horizon and many things happening there that I am actually proud of. LARP wise: oof so many! Did I mention we had lasers, fire and smoke? Probably didn't since I never clicked send on that newsletter.
More on that later. For this end of year review I want to focus on photography, and my continuing journey there!
So, what did I do, photography wise?
- I stopped worrying about social media until it fixes itself. Which might be never.
- I started a newsletter! And then forgot about it somewhere this year.
- I dumped my old light stash! And replaced it with something new.
- I re-learned how to light. And am still learning!
Even though you might not have sesen much, I did not forget about photography. Rather the reverse - in this time where everything can be AI generated, and complex backgrounds can be generated with a near-zero-effort single clicking by people that now consider themselves true wizards of conceptual freedom, I am doing the opposite and am diving back into blender and am following several courses on 3D visualization. Generating scenes the hard way, with effort. This is fun! I'm learning new things, and having a blast with all new options this will give me in future!
And I fell into a new beautiful rabbit hole: gaffers talking about properly lighting at film sets! And how that works from a technical perspective! Love it to bits, and am deep diving fast!
So, about social media
In 2024 I was already done with social media. So much done! Nothing I saw on there myself was from people I loved, and posting felt like adding more junk to a pile that wouldn't be seen anyway.
My 2025 newsletter helped me a lot! It felt great just showing to people again, and I happily wrote them every month. This was fun! Lots of good feedback! People started discussing topics they read in there with me the next time they saw me.. love! Then the second half of the year hit and I.. stopped? Ooh I wrote all of them, every month! I just never clicked on send. Apparently, that's a hurdle I need to fix in me. Interesting, and worth figuring out why I block myself on this.
Maybe I just need a media manager who helps me post cool stuff.
I am happy about the recent EU mandated change to instagram though. It now shows me you again! Without all the crap inbetween. That's so.. much.. more.. relaxing! I am slowly finding it fun again to open that app. To all companies that think they are doing the right thing: you are not. If you rely on add money and shareholders and optimize for that, you will enshitify the world.
So, about re-learning lights
When I started with photography, I sort of went the full strobist route. That is: taking small flashes, take them off camera, and light up stuff with gels. I loved it! This was amazing! I could re-light models in any way I wanted, I could have lights more powerful than the sun itself! Amazing journey! This happened between 2007 and 2011.
Eventually, that switched out to bigger studio strobes, my own studio, and properly using big reflectors to get smooth light. This was an amazing journey of lighting, running to my lights, gaffering gels in various colors and crafting! Roughly 2010 till 2022.
Then in 2022 I flipped again, now to the first gen of LED lights. I captured my initial steps in a post about continuous light. I loved it! My old flashes slowly became unused, then boxed, then packed in the back of a case and left in the back of my mind.
Then, this year, I started wondering. What if I can do more? This first gen was amazing, but I was starting to find limits. For instance: most LED lights don't have full spectrum light sources, but cleverly mix red, green and blue tints to get to all colors. That's fine for most cases, but is limiting when you need to get natural whites. Or when you don't want to overdo it. Research!
Secondly, control. Everything is about control! I was hapily mixing all types of brands together, and each had their own app to control them. At some point I had a page-full of different apps I all needed to work at the same time to get my studio to do.. anything! Oops! Backtrack.
Control.. but wait! I know that! I'm doing that all the time at LARP events, DMX lighting! Surely, the world of photography or videography must have a standard somewhere for this right? Turns out hey do: DMX! Also DMX. Cool.. I know that protocol by heart. I patched linux kernel drives for them at one point in my life. I should be able to rework this!
So, I started again. This year. And you can see this transition in my photos below. Which is why I include this bit in this end-of-year recap. At a later moment I'm sure I'll write out the details and specs, and how I now control everything. But for now, find a subset of what I crafted in 2025. Hope you enjoy!
Thank you for reading, love you all!
--Ork
First shoot of 2025! With c3lestial_cosplay at Laurier Design! Note, I'll not add links to each and every picture on this page (update: I did anyway.. update update: no I didn't), but you can for sure read more about each shoot in earlier newsletters or check the shoots page.
Then Julia and I vibed on creating odd stuff and trying things out in the studio! Such as a cube full of smoke! Or in this case something with shiny chainmail!
I also crafted promo shots for the soon-to-run "Sins of our Creators" LARP. I loved hearing our models actually got questions on how the LARP was. Yay! Means our promo images worked well to convey the atmosphere we wanted!
And then, finally, the first outdoor shoot of the year! Still cold, but let's go anyway. Early daylight, capturing the sun! Good walks!
And as we loved the previous shoot that much, we did it again the next day. And subsequently failed in getting what we aimed for due to clouds and even colder temperatures. Still got some good photos out of it!
Ethereal magic with Rosie! I absolutely loved crafting this set, and want to craft more! This moody dark atmosphere will always be one of my faves. Given what I now have learned of light, I'm eager to redo similar things, because it would be different.
And then some vampire with Ruby! For valentines day! Because!
Chainmail! Armor! Wants more! I think it's the way metal (and oil, let's be fair) bounces light that keeps me interested - and this style is definitely in the top of things I keep wanting to do more of. Thanks Satiella for never not failing to deliver amazing stuff!
This image sort of started a switch in my mind where I started to include more and more natural light next to having fancy colored lights everywhere. And aim to get that perfect low fog in the studio, with all the shade and mood it can deliver. I quite like! Thanks Shannon for always helping me try things out!
I barely visited forests in 2025. They are definitely the type of shoots I did not do enough. I remember years where every weekend seemed to contain at least one forest shoot of some kind. Luckily, I squeezed a few in, like this one with Alannaria!
This was captured during a studio day organized by Dreamscape, and me still in the mood for more forest-style shoots. Also, this is a good memory - I do love working with groups! Learning and teaching. Creating amazing stuff together. More plx!
This is an area in our neighborhood that screams "cul-de-sac" to me. And since Flora and I were both in a bit of a Magnus Archives craze at that point in time, we had to see if we could capture this as a way to visualize our thoughts.
Captured at Museumpark Orientalis! Huuge place! Lots of good models, and having fun. Did I mention I love these kinds of group outings?
Kiet and Seann have been frequenting my studio this year (or I have been stalking them, one of both) and we've crafted quite the bunch of odd things! This is one of them!
Metaalkathedraal. 2 hours. 14 models. Huge set to build and light. This was a good challenge! Loved it! And it became the album cover for Idleyes! Please do check this set, I'm quite proud of it!
Burlesque with Mew! Love crafting an actual set in my studio. Adding drapes and in-scene lights, trying to capture the mood I need to grasp. I also see this series as a turning point - the type of colors I loved to use until (and including) now seem to have lost my interest, and this became the starting point to learn new things again.
And them some cosplay! While I'm definitely doing this less in 2025, I still very much love it! So glad Satiella and I found the time to craft a few beautiful things this year. For this shot, I'm experimenting with slowly switching out the type of light to warmer natural lights, and trying things out with background shapes and projections.
We also went outside, to capture some Alleria Windrunner! Yay forests!
Part of my light journey this year was also about ensuring each light is there for a reason -- it needs to be part of the story: where does the light come from -- why is it there? Obviously, the quick solve is to have it in-scene, then it makes sense for everyone. So here I'm playing with that, and added lights inside the shots. For this series Shannon and I added a bunch of steel and tried things out, cyberpunk style!
Flora and I jumped into a day of odd concepts! Good fun! This image is of a series we are crafting in homage for Magnus Archives. If you know it, do ping me with what you think we captured!
Masks! All of them! For reasons! Actually, for creating a video clip, but I couldn't resist also capturing photos. This series was lit with vertical tube lights to enhance the reflections in the latex. Fun experiments!
Satiella! Galadriel! And also the most beautiful horse in the perfect woods! And I found tea there that I liked! Another good moment to have.
Of course if you do one horse shoot on one day, why not do a second one on the same day! Here's a bit of a more lewd one. I do really love how it turned out!
There was this blood moon! And Laura and I had to capture it! Though.. no that's not true. We were just inspired by the idea of that, and captured this in the week before. This is just photoshop and studio work. I do really love this one though!
Bigger project! And wow did I love this! Candymakeupartist makes absolutely mesmerizing designs, and together with somethingabout.olive and defotograafsanne we managed to capture an amazing series. I still need to publish it on my own site, so more to follow! For now, here's a single shot I took I really love.
If any shoot, then this shoot really marked the start of my re-learning lights phase. I'm currently learning more about color than I ever did before, and have been slowly replacing my old (sometimes very old) light stash with new solutions.
As part of that learning phase, I also started to play more with patterns and combining with other light sources. Here I attempted adding uplights. That failed, but was still cool!
While learning, why not also try out new smoke! In this case smoke bubbles!
In between all the learning, I captured some dominatrixy vibes with Adia! Painting with light also does wonders for latex, need to experiment more in 2026 for sure!
Mew dropped by again. More burlesque! This time though, I am armed with new lights! New options! So let's try painting the light where I need it! Learning! Having fun!
Random shoots are the best! In this case, a random Annicke dropped by and we started experimenting with painting light from shadows. Every shoot like this helps me learn do more things!
And here's the last shoot of the year. With Laura. And while the shoot itself hasn't even moved to the selection phase, I couldn't resist showing this result here, now. Painting with light. I wonder what 2026 will bring!