Thought I would try out producing a handheld HDR. This is the result after post processing in Photomatix and Photoshop. Bracketed seven images, with a 0.7 EV difference and threw away image 2, 4 and 6. Images 1, 3, 5 and 7 went into Photomatix and the final result was adjusted in Photoshop which came out as a 615 MB TIFF file. Can't do too many of those before the hard drive is full.
Visited the local amusement park to catch high speed face expressions. It takes maaaaaany photos to get the expressions you want. Amusement parks are great to do people photography. No one can really stop you from taking these shots and most people don't even know... :-).
Right before sunset when light was fading away I was trying out a teqnique I have been thinking about to create surealistic dream photos. I popped up the on camera flash. Grabbed the zoom ring on my Tamron 17-50 mm f/2.8 lens. Started turning the camera slowly and pressed the shutter release. Not only did I twist the photo by turning the camera I also zoomed at the same time. The flash frooze the object partly. I used shutter speed priority to ensure a shutter speed of 0.2 - 0.5 sec. The photo exposure, contrast and saturation were enhanced a bit in Lightroom to increase the zoom and twist feeling. Try it - it is so much fun. Please share your results in the comments to this post to encourage others to try.
Went to the botanical garden in Gothenburg (Botaniska) to catch the spring colors before they leave completely.
Late March i attended a studio photography class, just to push myself outside my comfort zone. Studio photography has been something I have been interesting in doing for a long time, but never got around to do it. I've had some basic equipment for off camera flash photography, but always found excuses not to use it.
I recently bought a SB-900 flash, a stand and an umbrella, to further develop my skills. I'm also hoping to attend a upcoming class using off camera flash and learn how to set the light myself.
This blog post includes images from different occasions - kind of a summary of my spring photos. With a few exceptions the photos from these sessions have been taken during early morning or late night. It's getting difficult to get the early golden hours here during spring because it is sooooo early in the morning, sunrise right now is at 4:33 am. On the other hand, sun sets at 10:45 pm so it is plenty of time to do evening shots. I bought a new flash, the SB-900, which I have been playing with outdoors and indoors. Making outdoor late night phots with flash is fun. Playing with the balance between the flash and the ambient light is a challange, but very fun one you get the idea and how to take advantage of the manual camera and flash mode.
Here is an example of a late evening image where I decided to more or less let the background go completely dark. It was actually pretty light outside even though it was late (8:45 pm). With a short exposure time 1/125s, a fairly large apperture f/4.5 and ISO 400 the background turned dark and the object was correctly exposured.
The apple, however, is not a Photoshop product, but a nature mutant. It might be the result of the Tjernobyl disaster many yeas ago. As a curiosa you might also want to know that I finally got good usage of the government pension funds, at least the orange envelop that the statement came in, which I used as a background for this shot. Right now, I don't think the fund is worth much more then the envelope to be honest.
The theme for this post became Drama. This was one of those photography occasions when you don't know what to do with the images. The lunch shoot session was pleasant but I wasn't sure what to expect when reviewing the images in Lightroom. All I was trying to do when shooting was to find some interesting angles and add to the drama with contrasting colors, mainly blue and orange. So, I just let the sliders in Lightroom play and let the post processing make it's own way.
For this post I decided on a theme - boats. Some of the boats where captured in winter landscape and some in spring landscape. It's just that time of the year when you really don't know what season you will end up in. You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment on the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - happy shooting.
