Lighting up the winter

  I'm on little vacation from nature photography it seems. Of course I'm already eagerly waiting the herp season 2017 to get off, but it will take a while until we are there. So what to do while waiting? Days are getting shorter and that means less light. Good time for some portraiture with some artificial lighting. You don't need to fancy equipment. One flash light may be enough, just as I wrote in my previous post. The rest is up to you. A model and some props. As a model for this shoot was chosen my lovely wife. She was the MUA as well. Clothes from her wardrobe. Some props hanging around were chosen as well... grandpas old alarm clock, a small hat hanging on the wall as a decoration, one free running cat, a snifter and some cheap brandy ( the idea was to use some red wine, but some moron drank it all.). Oh, and a fabric that's waiting to become a dress some day was used as a backdrop. Simple, right? Afterwards some PP. Tried to achieve some kind of a steampunk western look with the filters I used. For an half an hour shoot I'm pretty satisfied with results.

     

How many do you need?

  Obviously the essential form shaper in photography is light. We have the ambient light and then there is the artificial light. So often we tend to love the first, and to fear the second. It feels so safe to rely on the surrounding light. Just choose your aperture and shutter speed and go. But how about when the light surrounding us is not good or there just is too little of it? Of course we could always pump up our ISOs or use a slower shutter, but all this could introduce some other problems, like noise or unsharp subject. That's when the artificial light comes in handy. There's lots of options available, but my favorite is manual speedlights. They are cheap and easy to haul around where ever you go. So, how many lights do you really need for a shoot? I own a couple speedlight units. I carry them with me almost always and everywhere, and then I usually found my self using only one single. We are pretty satisfied with only one sun, so why wouldn't one speedlight do just as well? The only thing to remember is, get that thing off camera. No matter if you use a cable, optical or radio trigger... Get it off your camera! And learn to work with one light first, later it's easy to ad some more lights if you feel or have to. Here's a few portraits made with only on single off camera flash...

         

Sauna shoot

  Shooting interiors is really not my favorite, but I couldn't resist when I was offered a chance to make a couple of photos of a recently renovated sauna in Helsinki, Finland. The real challenge in interior photography is the lines. When I made my first interior shots few years ago I tried to shoot from strange perspectives, and as you can guess the images looked distorted and strange. Later I learned that the best way to shoot is to try to keep the lines straight. Just try to avoid tilting your camera, unless you use a tilt shift lens. The good thing with architecture, buildings, rooms, etc. is that they tend to be very static subjects, so you don't need to hurry too much. Place the camera on a tripod, use long shutter speeds, try different variations in shutter speeds, apertures and composition. just take your time. Use ambient light, turn on the lights, ad some flash light.

Learning is fun

  Finished today my course for wedding photography at the Shaw academy. It's always a fun experience to learn, even if I already knew quite a lot of the things thought. What I really appreciated in this course was the pre-wedding part in the second lesson and what to consider when getting in contact with the client, some really useful stuff for me personally. Image analysis was good too. From time to time, when making portraits or group shots, I'm struggling with the posing or getting the group arranged, so some of the material in the course was really helpful. Here's a few B&W portraits from past weddings...

   
  

Archipelago

  If there's one place on this planet where I could spend more time, that would be the archipelago of Finland. Lots of things to photograph, but mostly the relaxing environment. It doesn't matter if the winds are blowing or the sea is dead calm, it's always a most relaxing thing to be there and just enjoy the surroundings, the nature, the creation. Almost missed the whole experience for this year. If you ever visit Finland, do not miss the fantastic archipelago. Here's a few pics from my last visit...

Sunflower field

  Yesterday evening we had promised to a friend of ours to drive her to water her garden plot just a little outside of the town. Just a perfect place for a little photo shoot, so I asked my wife if she could wear something else than the regular shorts and neon red sports t-shirt. Grabbed my gear and so we hit the road. While our friend was taking care of here vegetables, we moved a little further the road and found this tiny small crossroad kind of a place, from were a sunflower field started. At this point of the summer the sunflowers have seen their best days, but with the setting sun, and a few clouds they just made the perfect backdrop. Placed my lighting, made a few test shots and so we started. I wish we could have continued for a little longer, but due to an attack of some strange tiny and stingy insects I just decided to quit the shoot. Thanks to my models patience we still managed to make quite a few images. Here's a few...

Trouble shooting

  On Saturday I attended a convention. The venue was an ice rink. When on my way to the bathroom, which were downstairs, I ended up to this almost abandoned looking small ice rink. Not really sure if they are still using it, but the place looked so abandoned. What a lovely place for a photo. Made a couple of clicks with my phone and left the place. What really bothered me was that it was really a perfect spot for a portrait. The next day I asked if my lovely wife would come with me downstairs for a small photo shoot, and she agreed. There we were in the middle of all that dust and probably some asbestos too, but the light at 8:25 am. was just perfect. Placed my model in a natural spotlight flooding in from a window and got ready for a shot. I was shooting on aperture priority mode, but somehow I just didn't nail the exposure. Gave a little compensation, -1... -2... and finally I was at -3, and still I got some heavily over exposed images. Of all the images I made, I managed to save one. Of course this bothered me a bit, I just wasn't sure why my camera was over exposing the images. Maybe it was a malfunction in my gear, but no. Then finally yesterday evening I realized what my problem was. A simple solution for a simple problem. I meter almost exclusively in spot metering mode. Usually when I lock the focus by pressing the shutter release button halfway, it also locks the exposure. In the camera menu you can choose what happens when you press the shutter release, will it lock the focus only or if it will lock both focus and exposure. Because of some strange reason I don't have a clue about, the shutter release only locked the focus and when I recomposed the image my exposure got wrong. One click in the menu, and now my exposure stays as I want it to be. Here's the one image I managed to save...