Stills with Reflection

I got a new living room table a few weeks ago, a quite large one with glass surface. I thought it could make a nice studio effect with reflections. And so last night I got myself as far as trying out ideas. I found a couple o smooth white stones I've picked on a beach ages ago, two pieces of spectrolite stone, fethers, coloring pens and onions to start with. Equipments I used: EOS 5D Mark 2, EF 100 f2,8 Macro, a tripod, remote control, a reflector and a flash light. I had one light towards the sealing in the corner, otherwise the room was dark. To play with light, I used the silver surface of the refelctor to cool of the yellowish flashlight light. Using an f-stop between 9 and 14, I got time to play with directing the light from different angles. The exposure times are between 20" to 30".

The biggest problem is dust and a cat in the house. First the cat thought I was being really good to her, placing the stones to play with. Just when I was about to shoot, she jumped up on the table and my setup was gone. And the dust, no matter how I wiped and cleaned there it was. Luckily Lightroom 5 has an easy spot removal tool to solve the problem.

Playing with Post-Crop Vingetting

Sometimes I find it just fun to play with post editing. When the pictures I've got are nice but somehow lacking the "wow" element for different reasons but still holding a potential for something more. Yesterday morning was kind of gray, the night had been cold enough for frost crystals form but the light was not dramatic enough to bring out the beauty. We had about an hour and a half to spend on photography and so we did, regardless the uninspiring light. At first when I looked at the pictures on my computer, I felt like tossing them all in the bin but today, after a second look in Lightroom...and using post-crop vingetting to bring out the drama...some turned out pretty cool.

More Fall in B&W

I love fall, the smell and the silent drama of endings. To me it somehow feels so rich, like if there was gratitude for all that was. Life in a slow withdrawal, full of promises of a sweet return. Today I had the EOS M with the 22mm M lens with me, it is really convenient to carry around just in case.

Fall in B&W

Colors of Fall are interesting to shoot in B&W as the color of the leaves can vary from green to yellow and red in between and each comes out a little different in B&W

 

 Here we have mostly dark orange leaves and some still green, doesn't make much of a difference to how summer green leaves comes out in B&W. 

In these two pictures the trees are mostly bright yellow as the sun falls on them and the water and stones are in the shadow with a shade of blue. If the leaves were deep green as in summer time, they wouldn't come out this light.

Guess what colors we have here?

Details of October with a Tele Zoom Lens

October came with all the beautiful colors of fall. The weather was finally gorgeous today after days of clouds and rain, the sunny weather brought out the brightness of yellows and red. Usually I gear up with a macro lens for details but today I decided to try the Tele-Zoom, EF 70-200 f4 L to see how that works.

 This lend gives quite a nice bokeh but to work it for details is very different compared to a macro lens with the closest focus distance of 31cm. The tele zoom needs 1,2m. The magic is to find object you can shoot at that distance and get enough space behind it to make the object stand out. For these pictures I used fstopes between 4 and 5.6, played a little more with the ISO speed to make sure I get a shutter speed fast enough to fight the wind playing with my objects.

 All in all I'm pleased with the results I could get, like the two images below. 

Morning Dew

What I like about the end of summer is that the night get chilly and still the days are warm. A very good weather condition for taking the camera out for a walk in the morning, there are dew drops everywhere. The choice of gear is easy, a macro lens on any camera body is fine. I waited all week to get the time and not having to rush out for work or other business and the weather was gentle, no wind and a clear sky. 

EF 100 f2,8 Macro, 1/250  f-stop 4 ISO 800

 When I shoot Macro in nature I turn of the Auto-focus, to get the focus right where I want it. In the image above and the two below I used a somewhat shallow f-stop so that the back ground would not become too busy but show something of the nature of the plant. I tend to use an ISO between 400 and 800 to be able to use a faster shutter speed when shooting macro freehand.

 For the last two pictures I used an f-5 to get a little more depth of field. I shoot in RAW, so I can choose in post processing if I want to go B&W or use some other presets. Today was a B&W day, and I can always go back to the RAW file for color.

Girl Power - Sarca

The other day I did my first promotion shoot for a girl band. I was really excited about the opportunity to discover my ability to capture the girl power and bring it into my work. The band Sarca is from a small town Hyvinkää in Southern Finland. The girls have played together for many years and they've had some radio time already. We had agreed on a location for the shoot, Hyvinkään Wanha Villatehdas, a beautiful old factory surrounding with gorgeous red brick walls and other details. The time of day was going to be just right, the light is already much softer at 4PM in August here in Finland. Then it was just to hope for good weather, as we were going to shoot outdoors.

Before the session, I did some back ground work. I listened to their music and watched a few of their YouTube videos, to get a sense of the energy I needed to connect with. And when the girls showed up, I just had the feeling we'll work well together, some really nice girl power, an interesting mix of opposites coming together in harmony, soft and firm, tough and gentle, wild and contained and with a feeling of mysterious depths, like if they shared a secret place together.

 First we looked around the old factory to decide were to start. And then it was just to shoot away as long as the light was good. It didn't take too many pictures for the girls to get warm and more relaxed. And while we got going with the posing and camera clicking, the girls manager Minna went to get a beautiful old chair to use in the setting. The chair really made the set up perfect, and the girls played well together, matching each others expression and poses.   

 With many thanks to the lovely ladies of Sarca and Minna, for the fun time we had!