Eline van der Laan

Welcome to my website! My name's Eline and I'm from a little village near Zwolle in The Netherlands. I love taking pictures of my favourite band: the Dutch metal band Epica. I like sharing pictures with other fans and sharing my experiences.I also like meeting new cultures, architecture, nature and animals. Other bands I love besides Epica are Kamelot, Stream of Passion, Amaranthe, Leaves' Eyes, ReVamp etc. If there's anything you want to ask me, please contact me below. If you've got any advices I would love to hear them!

30-01: Major update

Dear all,

It's been a while since I last updated my website. I've been quite busy lately, so my apologies for that. I have got some new updates in my concert agenda and I also uploaded the interviews I had with Marco Hietala and Kontrust. Due to my exams, I decided to cancel the interview with Sonata Arctica. The first upcoming gig will be Epica at the Mezz in Breda. Stay tuned! :)

With love,
Eline.

23-10: A lot of EPICA excitement :)

Good evening all!

Since I haven't been writing a blog since 10 days I decided to write a new one. First of all, I'd love to thank you all for your massive viewing, I never expected so many views to my site and pictures, so: thank you!
Today, I've been packing to go off to Belgium tomorrow to see EPICA at the Metal Female Voices Fest VIII in Wieze (near Brussels). First, I wasn't planning to go at all but when EPICA announced it was going to be a 'The Phantom Agony' show, I just had to go. Now, speaking of EPICA, I would like to thank them and the The Fantom Agony crew for the amazing evening in De Schakel, Reuver! You both did an amazing job, and I'm sure that I'm speaking behalf of all the visitors that you gave your hearts and souls.
During the fanclubday in Reuver I bought myself a copy of This is the Time, the new single of EPICA. Once you buy this single, all the provids will go to the WWF, so get your copy on www.nuclearblast.de > shop. :)
Stay tuned for the pictures of the Metal Female Voices Fest, they will be up late Monday or Tuesday!

With love,
Eline.

13-10: New page: interviews

Hi there!

As you might have noticed (or probably not :-)) I added a new page to my website: Interviews. Besides photography, I'm going to do interviews together with my friend Lisette from liz-pics.com. We are very happy and proud to announce that we are going to have interviews with Marco Hietala (Tarot, Nightwish), Sonata Arctica and Kontrust. We are busy with arranging more interviews with other artists, stay tuned for that!
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS YOU WANT ME TO ASK THOSE ARTISTS, PLEASE CONTACT ME BY E-MAIL. *
Send me an e-mail at the contact page.
Unfortunately, I can't go to the Anneke van Giersbergen gig anymore because of the interview with Marco. I hope to recover that a.s.a.p! The dates of interviews will be shown in my Agenda as well, underneath the gigs. :)

With love,
Eline.

* = Questions to Marco Hietala must be Tarot related, or about his own career, no Nightwish, please.

12-10: Home sweet home!

Hi dear visitor,

It's been a long time since I updated my website and blog, but there's an upcoming update with a lot of beautiful pictures of Tarja in the 013 club, UnSun&Tristania pictures, etc! As you might know, I had a very blaster weekend: Tristania, Within Temptation and Tarja in a row. I'm totally exhausted at the moment. Though, I'd like to tell you that I'm currently busy with picking which pictures to upload, editiing, etc.
 My weekend began with Tristania from Norway. The support acts were UnSun from Poland and the Dutch Asrai. Since UnSun's new album is totally stunning (thumbs up!), I enjoyed their performance. Though, the sound wasn't that good and the lights were horrible. Asrai did a good job during their performance. The lights were still bad but the sound was way better than UnSun's. They played quite a long set (10 songs) and the audience seemed to like their performance too.
 After two performances the audience was already warmed-up a bit, but the cream of the evening was yet to come. Tristania made all expectations come true: the new singer, Mariangela, did a great job and has shown the audience how great her vocal abilities are.
The Within Temptation fanclubday was a bit disappointing. The planning was messy and there were a lot of breaks during the program. The program itself was also disappointing: Femkes flashback were just pics from the official website of the fanclub in a power point and only a few people could join the quiz. The lottery was fun though! When the band finally started performing they had to due with a technical issue and there was a delay of half an hour, but the performance itself was good, but (to me) the fanclubday wasn't worth driving three hours.
 The final and the best gig was of the Finnish pride Tarja Turunen (better known from her earlier years together with the symphonic power metal band Nightwish) in the 013 club in Tilburg. I ended up in the front on the right. I loved every minute of Tarja's stunning performance: this woman knows how to entertain and touch people with her classical trained voice. She's getting better year after year and I'm very grateful for her to come to The Netherlands. In my humble opinion, she is better now than with Nightwish. She played new songs from her new masterpiece What Lies Beneath, her former album My Winter Storm and a few songs from Nightwish
(including End of All Hope!). The harmonic variety of classical and metal songs was perfect. Well done, Tarja.

I will upload the pics as soon as possible!
With love,
Eline.

16-09: Lovely autumn

Good evening all,
It's been a great summer and now we're heading off to lovely autumn again, which means buying new clothes, shoes, etc. But also that October is getting near! To me, October is one of the months which is always worth looking forward to, it has the greatest concerts of the year.
Enough about the seasons, who cares anyway. :) I'm turning one year older this Sunday and I'll be off to London this Monday for five days. I'm really looking forward visiting England after years of loving its language and local habits. As soon as I get back I'll post pictures!
The last thing I wanted to tell you guys, is that I updated my agenda. I'm attending the releaseparty of MaYaN in Paradiso upcoming May & their gig in Eindhoven.

Enjoy your week!
Eline.

13-08: Concert updates & Epica
Good morning!
Today's a very special day: I'm finally going to see Epica again! They're performing at the Huntenpop festival in Ulft. First, I'll be off to a little village called Vroomshoop to buy some CDs. This day can't be any better. :)
I also have some concert updates for this fall and one for 2011:
24-10: Epica, Leaves' Eyes @ Metal Female Voices Fest VIII, Wieze (Belgium)
06-11: Anneke van Giersbergen @ Burgerweeshuis, Deventer
17-12: ReVamp @ Gigant, Apeldoorn
06-03: Within Temptation @ Oosterpoort, Groningen
And I found out that Ex-Libris will be the support of Epica again (not that this makes me happy) in the new venue in Hilversum called De Vorstin.
That's it for today, Epica pictures will be uploaded tomorrow! I wasn't able to bring my camera with me so I'm taking my compact camera, may God bless me for having good pictures. :)

With love,

08-08: Hello dear visitor :)
Today's the day that I finally decided to make a website! From here I'll keep you updated and right now I'm busy uploading pics from my trip to Austria.
I visited Austria from July 27th 'till August 7th. We had an apartment in a little village called Scheffau, in Tirol. The scenery was very pretty, the cows were cute and the food was good. :) I visited the St. Jakob church in Innsbruck and the Hofkirche, bought make-up and nailpolish in a great shop called 'Bipa' and enjoyed the sun ofcourse! I'm going to upload the pics now, they can be found at photos > nature & trips. (Don't click on 'photos', mouse over to view!)

With love,

Please don't remove the copyright from my pictures without my permission