Worldwide PhotoWalk

Today I attended the Worldwide PhotoWalk like about 8,000 other photographers world wide. We walked along the north shore of the channel running through Gothenburg, Sweden. Arranging the photo walk in Gothenburg was Erik, a 16 year old promising photographer. Pretty amazing work, I must say, but a 16 year old. Kudos to you Erik!!

Botanical Garden, Flickr Photowalk

Today, I went on a photo walk again with the local Flickr group, this time gathering David, Leo, Eva and Rudi. Like the previous walk, it was great fun, even though it was raining cats and dogs. Because of the weather conditions we opted for the indoor experience at the Botanical Garden, spending a few hours in the Garden House, which holds tons of plants to shoot. Most of my shots were made with a fill in flash to get the details of the plants. I used both the 17-35 f/2.8 and the 70-300 f/4.5-5.6. A macro lens and a tripod would have been great. I need to email Santa Claus. The photo walk was completed by a traditional fika at the garden resturant. Thanks guys, see you next time.

To view the complete set of photos, press F11 and click here, for the best possible experience.

Kungsportsavenyn - Flickr Photowalk

This was the first real photo walk with the newly founded Flickr group Gothenburg Photo Walks. I went with David, Eva and Leo. The theme for this photo walk was to capture the monuments found on Gothenburg's main street Kungsportsavenyn in a way they are not seen on the typical postcard. We had a lot of fun and shot away like crazy on the first object, seen in the image above. To find out more about the owner of foot click here. Press F11 in your browser for the best possible experience. Drop me an email if you want to join to Flickr group.

Eriksberg Documentary

Everyone in Gothenburg knowns about the exclusive and newly built water front appartment complexes at Eriksberg, the north shore of the river running through the city. The old shipping industry area, extremely successful during 100 years until the late 1960s, is now turning into something totally different. These images reflects on the other side of the coin, the back streets and some old remains from the successful era.

As usual, press F11 and then click here to view the complete set of images. Enjoy!

Ötjärn

I was hunting a good spot to create images of the sun setting in the a lake close to where I live. There were too many private properties blocking the places I was hoping to access, so I settled for Ötjärn, a small lake near by. I need to scout better before I go out next time. Most images was shot on ISO 800 to compensate for the low light in the late our. I brought my D300 body with the Nikon 70-300 mm VR lens and the D70 body with the Tamron 17-50 mm. Bringing both bodies made it very easy to get the focus length I needed, but a bit of weigth to carry.

Click here to view the complete set of images.

Rainy Garden

A couple of grab shots from our back yard during and between showers. Not much else to say I guess. Press F11 and then click here to view the complete set of photos.

San Diego Floorball

While cleaning up my photo archive I found photos from my floorball adventures in San Diego, that I've fortgot to publish. Floorball is a typical Scandinavian sport, introduced in San Diego by the Scandinavian community.I guess this post is my way of saying "Thanks for all those years of fun and see you guys next time we're in San Diego". Also, thanks for letting Eric play with you guys. Click here to see the complete set of photos. Press F11 to maximize the experience.

Delsjön and Kvarnbyn

OK, I'm now back in Sweden after a few crazy weeks in San Diego wrapping up all our stuff over there. This Sunday I decided to do a photo outing to get away from all the crazy moving activities. I went to a nearby lake, Delsjön, and the old mill at Kvarnbyn, also close to where we live. I thought this photo would represent summer and relaxation. :-)
Lake Delsjön is a beautiful recreation area for all kind of activities, including photography. There are endless possibilities, which of course varies over the seasons. Look out for photos from future outings there.
At Kvarnbyn you will find an old mill, currently hosting a number of companies in various industries. You will also find a pretty good restaurant and some shops. It's a really nice area.
If you want to view the complete set of photos click here.

Fireworks, 4th of July

Watched the 4th of July fireworks in Santee, CA. Most photos shot at ISO 400, 1/15 sec, f/2.8 in manual mode, some at 2/3 or -2/3 EV to compensate for to weak or strong light from the fireworks.
Enjoy all 89 photos by clicking here.

Coronado island, CA

Did a photo walk last night with my two photo friends Delphine and Phil. The goal was to capture the San Diego skyline by night. We decide to shoot the sky line from the Coronado Ferry Landing. We also took the opprtunity to shoot the Coronado bridge in daylight and some night photography close to the famous Coronado Hotel. We were also lucky to see the fireworks from Harbour island. There will be much more impressive fireworks today on 4th of July.
We played a lot with the white balance settings to get a nice color of the sky. We had different views of which color of the sky that was the "correct" one, so it will be fun to see how they set their cameras and what the outcome was. I used both my 70-300 mm and my 17-50 mm lenses. I used various ISO settings, from 200 to 1000 depending on the current light and my expected outcome. To view the complete set of photos click here. Oncce I have the links to Delphine's and Phil's photos I will ad them to this post.

Bye-bye Gothenburg - for a little while

I did a short photo walk today through a couple of places in central Gothenburg, which I haven't visited since I came back. Tomorrow, I'm leaving for a quick trip back to San Diego, so I thought I should do a nostalgia photo walk before I leave.
This hot dog place is really classic, it's been there as long as I can remember and they have the best mashed potatoes anywhere. Of course, I had to try a hot dog with mashed potatoes and it was just like I remember it. Yummie! I also snapped a few photos of other places nearby. They are all within a couple of hundred meters so it was a really short photo walk, but very nice. Click here to view the comlete set of photos. My next blog post will be from San Diego.

Abstract on Sweden's National Day

June 6 is the Swedish national day, three years ago established as a national holiday. We never had a national day before. How wear is that, I guess the contry is too old to care about something like that.
I thought a couple of abstract yellow and blue photos would be nice to match the color os the Swedish flag. There is also some green in this photo set, click here to view it.

Photo Walks

An email from a friend in San Diego reminded me that I haven't posted in a while so I gathered a few photos from a couple of quick photo walks I've done over the last couple of weeks. I haven't done much shooting lately, only a few family events. I did those photo walks after work to capture the soft evening light.
Thanks for reminding me Delphine! I'll try to shape up and do more photo walks, even though I don't really have anyone to shoot with over here. I need to join a local photo club once the summer is over and they're getting active again. In a week I will return to San Diego for a few weeks, so I hope to get together with my Californian photo friends again. If you want to see the complete set from the photo walks click here.

Gunnebo Castle

I spent Sunday afternoon shooting at the local castle Gunnebo, even though the weather wasn't that good. The overcast gave me very soft light though. All shots in manual mode using both my Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 and my Nikon 70-300 VR f/4.5 on my Nikon D300. I was playing a lot with details of the castle.

For the complete set of photos click here.

Lake Gröen in different modes

One early morning on my way to the airport heading for a business trip, my current favorite lake Gröen was covered by a mysterious looking mist. Even though I was late for the flight I stopped to make a few quick shots. I shot in manual mode at ISO 200, 50 mm, 1/2000, f/2.8, with my Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 on my D300. I made it in time for my flight. :-)
Almost ten days later on my way home from the airport, returning from another business trip, the sun was almost setting so I stopped at the same lake. Having more time at hand then earlier I spent some time trying to find nice compositions of the green and blue colors, as well as color patterns in the trees. With the camera set to Vivid mode the colors exploded. I just love that mode when the right scene appears infront of me and this was one of those scenes. I used both my 17-50 mm and my 70-300 zooms, and at various ISOs. The light was changing rapidly so I had to adjust the ISO several times.
It's amaazing when you consider these two images being from the same scene, only at different times of the day. The light really makes a difference. For a slideshow of the complete photo set click here.

Stockholm City Hall

I took the opportunity to do a photo walk to the Stockholm City Hall from my nearby hotel, while being in the city on a business trip. Bringing my camera on business trips makes for a nice change to aircrafts, hotels and conference rooms. Even though it was only early May the weather was like a warm and sunny summer day. Most photos where shot using the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. It's a great lens to capture the surrondning, but buildings of course get pretty distorted at low focal lengths. Long distance closeups where shot using the Nikon 70-300 f/4.5 VR. The VR really helps in the 300 mm range.
The photo above shows the inside of the City Hall pillars. I was "fighting" with another photographer, doing a model shot, to get a good angle of the pillars. To view the complete set of photos click here.

Stockholm by Night

I'm currently on business travel in Stockholm, Sweden, so I took the opportunity last night to do some night photography. The photos are taken between 9 and 10 pm so the days are really getting long now.
It's amazing how you can see people kayaing and fishing in the heart of the city, you can even eat the fish you catch. To view the complete photo set click here.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my wife Monica's Birthday!
Have a nice birthday Monica! I love you!
This is at our house in Sweden.

Gothenburg Harbour Sunset

On my way home the other day I saw the sun setting so I drove to a place where I know I would find water for my image foreground. The few minutes before and after sunset just makes for great shots. Don't miss that opportunity.
View all the photos from my sunset shoot by clicking here. As usual, feel free to comment in my blog below.

Walk around the Finnsjön lake

The other day I decided to explore the Swedish nature which I for obvious reasons haven't done in years and really never done as a photographer. Our hose here in Sweden is about 20 minutes walking distance from the beautiful lake Finnsjön where we use to go swimming. I've never really been around the lake so this was an excellent opportunity to do just that.
It's amazing how many different green colors there is in nature at this time of the year. In just a few weeks all those green colors turn darker and changes the landscape quite a bit. So, now is the time to do it. Enjoy the photos from my walk around the lake by clicking here and feel free to add comments in my blog below. If you want to turn on my Flickr photo comments click the "i" in the photo.

Råda Preserve in the early morning

I vistited the Råda Preserve about a week ago shooting the beautiful spring flowers. A few days later I saw that the Anemone Nemorosa (what I believe is the correct translation of the Swedish"Vitsippa") was bloming even more than earlier so I decided to go back. When I woke up far too early the other day and the light was really beautiful I decided to back to the Preserve. I went out the door about 6 am just as the sun started to break through the tree bransches.
The light in the Preserve was just amazing. After more than an hour of shooting and scaring the heck out of people passing by on their way to work seeing me on my knees in the forrest, I went to work and felt that I have had a great start of the day. Click here to view the complete set of photos.

Photos from Gothenburg

OK, it's time to get back to the camera again after relocating and doing a few business trips with my new employer. The spring is just beautiful right now. The weather has been great my first two weeks in Sweden, so there is an explosion of colors going on right now. I took the opportunity to shoot from the top of the building where I work in heart of Gothenburg.On my may way home I stopped by a park close to where we live. This is also where you find the church where I married my wife a "few" years ago. Every spring the hills get all white from the flowers.
Click here to view the complete set of photos.

Relocated ! !

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been busy and off line for some time. As you might know we've decided to relocate back to Sweden. I moved here mid April and the rest of the family will join early August. I will return to San Diego for a few weeks during June to wrap things up and have vacation. The photo below pretty much summarize my life moving into our very empty house. The first dinner was a pizza in our office which was the only table and chair available. By now, I've found mor furniture and stuff in the addict and the storage rooms. Click here to view more photos from this set.

Birch Aquarium & La Jolla Walk

I went to Birch Aquarium (click for slide show) with my photo buddy Walter who was kind enough to bring me as his guest. We shot at Shutter priority set to 1/125s and ISO 2000 (yapp two thousand). Still, it is very hard to capture sharp images.After the aquarium we did a La Jolla walk from the Cove to the Children's pool and back. It's a really nice walk with a lot of thngs to photograph.

PQ Canyon goes Vivid

I did a hike in the Canyon close to where we live to try out my new camera backpack, the Lowpro Slingshot 300 AW. I've been looking for a camera bag or backpack for a long time. Yesterday, I decided to buy the Slingshot and it worked really well and holds all my equipment. It is very easy to switch to a lens that is in the backpack without even taking the backpack off. The various storage places are well designed.

I also decided to try out the Vivid setting in my Nikon D300. All the photos are in Vivid mode and uploaded without any post processing (click for slide show). I know, some of you might say that the photos look really too saturated, but is actually closer to reality than what the camera captures in Normal mode and I think it looks cool.

I passed a milestone with my D300 today. Since I got it 12 days ago I've now shot over 7,000 images. That includes a number of test sessions, photo outings at various places and an event. Of course, the images with any decent quality represents only a fraction of the total number of images. Nevertheless, it is a joy shooting with the D300 so all those images where shot with no major effort.

Quail Gardens - again

I visited Quail Gardens in Encinitas (click for slideshow) with a friend to show her the Gardens and get her out shooting. Even though I visited the Gardens only a few days ago, it was a great outing with a lot of fun and nice shooting. One reason it was a pleasure was of course trying out my new D300 and the lenses. Both the Nikon 70-300 VR and the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 are great lenses. I guess the main subject for this shooting was the big frogs in the pond at the Gardens. Cool guys making a lot of noise and fighting about who's the boss.
I played a bit with the WB settings in the post processing in the waterfall shots that I think made them look interesting. I've said it before and I say it again, it's almost as fun doing the post processing as the actual shooting, especially when using Lightroom. I've recently began using Capture NX, which came with my D300. I must say that it is a very strong competitor to Photoshop. Easy and fun to work with. I'm also looking forward to trying the Lightroom 2.0 Beta that is out now. It has some really cool features, similar to the Capture NX local changes in an image.

Catching up on blogging

I have done quite a bit of shooting lately, but not so much blogging. So, here are a few catch-up posts. One of the reasons I've been busy shooting is my new D300 and a couple of new lenses. What can I say, it's like early, or late, Christmas. Another reason I've been shooting a lot is to document as much as possible of San Diego, as we're in the process of leaving San Diego and moving to Sweden. Expect different type of nature photos in the future. With the spring coming I'm really looking forward to explore the nature in Sweden with my camera.

First Nikon D300 shots

Finally, my new Nikon D300 and a couple of lenses arrived. I took the opportunity to shoot in the neighborhood (click for slideshow) to try it out. IMPRESSIVE!! Image quality good enough straight out of the camera for web publishing (see below, only minor editing like cropping), user interface is amazing and the ergonomics are just great. Sooooo fun shooting. There is no going back to my D70. I only hope that the kids will pick it up and start exploring photography. The D70 will most likely also be used as a second body when needed.

San Diego Harbour

Took the opportunity to take photos from the Coronado bridge overlooking the San Diego Harbour (click for slideshow) while Eric was practicing driving.

Nature Tour

I took a day off exploring nature in North County as the poppies where in bloom. The poppies makes the nature look like the hill sides are on fire. The areas north of Lake Hodges (click for slideshow) was just beautiful.


I also spent a few hours at Quail Gardens, where is this little fellow lives in a pond. There are more Quail garden photos to come - soon.

The Spanish Village

A little while ago I visited Balboa Park with other photo enthusiasts and spent parts of the day at the Spanish Village. The other day I was on my way home through San Diego and decided to visit the Spanish Village again, as I didn't have much time or energy left last time. So, here (click for slideshow) are is another set of colorful photos from the Spanish Village. If you like me like colors and different light conditions make sure to visit the village.

California Sunset

Well, how can you NOT stop whatever you are doing when you see this view and shoot such a beautiful sunset. On my way to this months meeting with the San Diego Photo Club I saw the sun setting behind the hills of Ocean Beach here in San Diego. I needed a better view so I drove a couple of streets off my route, got the shot I was looking for and then what... Where the heck was I. I couldn't find my way back to my route so I randomly drove around until I found my way to the meeting. Sigh...

Anyhow, this photo was made with the Canon SD850 IS point and shoot, all automatic, except that I pushed the colors with the Vivid mode and stepped down 1/3 of a stop, which makes great shots with this camera in most cases.

Colors

Yesterday I found a path of marching ants in our kitchen. The path lead to our ginger bread house that is still going strong. Well, the reason why it survived is actually because the ginger bread tastes really bad. On the bright side, it made a pretty colorful photo that I thought share with you. So, here you go. Looks pretty yummie, right?

On the topic of colors I think this photo will match the ginger bread photo pretty good, so I'll share that too. It's from the Spanish Village in Balboa Park, a colorful place that is really good for photography. I know that photo workshops often are held there because of it's colors.

San Diego Zoo

One of the local Meetup.com photography groups went to the San Diego Zoo last Thursday. We had no ambition spending the day covering the complete Zoo, but rather seeing the most exciting animals that was most active during early morning before it became to hot and they would just hang out in the shade.

The tigers were first on the list and the tiger did not make us disappointed. The breakfast bone was thoroughly taken care of. Yummie! At first the tiger was in a shadier area which made it difficult to shoot with my Nikon D70 (low ISO capabilities) and may fairly slow lenses. Most photos came out pretty blurry. Did anyone say Nikon D300 and a couple of fast lenses? later the tiger moved to the sun in an area which allowed us to get closer. Well trained performer.

The monkies are always a lot of fun to shoot. Just make sure you got plenty of memory cards,it's easy to spend too many shots.

There were a lot of colorful animals to shoot, these are just a few of them.














Watch my complete set of photos from the Zoo here. Thanks for visiting.

PhotoSharePodcast photo of the week

Yippee!! My photo of the rattle snake became the photo of the week at the PhotoSharePodcast.com See post below. Here is the proof (click). Thanks everyone that voted for my photo! I'm sorry I scared the heck out of some of the voters with my photos, some asked me o include a warning sign next time I post photos of a snake.

Spring colors

The canyon we live next to has absolutely exploded in various green colors. Therefore I took the opportunity to capture the beautiful scenes before they are gone. We've had a lot of rain lately and as the days become warmer mother nature wakes up slowly. Soon enough everything will dry up and the green colors are replaced by less photo interesting colors like gray and brown.


For most of the images in this set both contrast and colors are pushed in Lightroom. However, that is actually what I saw during my hike, so I don't consider the outcome being only a reflection of vivid colors and unreal light scenes in my dreams, but a reflection of reality.


This image doesn't include much of the spring colors, but I couldn't resist the obvious potential of a black and white conversion for this scene.

Thanks for visiting my blog, see you next time.

Photo contest

One of my photos has been nominated for the PhotoSharePodcast.com weekly photo contests on the Dangerous theme. Check out this cool photo podcast, and make sure you vote for this week’s photo.

Go to: PhotoSharePodcast.com

… scroll to PSP Poll (left column)

… and vote for Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake by Carpe Lumen (that’s me in the Flickr world). I assume you can't vote for any of the other photos. :-)


I really hope I identified the snake correctly. Thanks for voting and Happy Shooting!

Velodrome

Click photos for a larger view or check out all the photos from the event here.

Went to the San Diego Velodrome to try out some high speed motion photography. It was difficult to capture the bikers in focus and make the background as I was panning. I soon realize how important it was to find a suitable background, both to color and pattern. I scouted out a couple of spots around the Velodrome that would capture the bikers in full action. It was difficult to understand how the race worked, as the bikers suddenly were speeding like crazy then just pedaled like they were on vacation. I therefore concentrated on capturing some action filled photos rather than how the actual competition went.

Towards the end they did relays, which was easier to understand and more fun to watch. If you want to practice high-speed motion photography and I recommend a few hours at the Velodrome. If you are shooting raw in continuous mode I recommend a lot of memory cards. I shot over 800 images in a couple of hours.... and how did I do this photo?

Balboa park

Spent most part of Saturday at one of San Diegos most famous attractions, the Balboa Park. Anyone visiting should absolutely spend at least a day at the park, which also includes the San Diego Zoo requiring a day by itself. The botanical house, pictured below, is most likely one of the most photographed objects in San Diego and well worth a visit. Make sure you don't forget your camera. This was the first time I attended a Meetup.com activity, ut absolutely not the last time. I came home with about 700 images that took me about an hour to edit in Lightroom and a few more hours to make the necessary improvements. Thanks to Adobe Lightroom you can shoot as much as you want without be buried in images after a day with your camera. There are tons of colorful views, historical buildings and interesting people to shot in Balboa park (click for slide show).