We have a favorite place with good coffee, good pastries and beatiful nature merged with cool industrial buildings. On the way there is a beatiful countryroad with a line of trees that are bended. Surrounding it is open fields and the sky is often very dramatic.
so every time we drive there I feel that it would be a nice photo spot, and this week I hade time to go there and take some pics. I really like old trees.
A day at the beach is best served with poring rain. Well at least if you want colorless dramatic images. Practically no need to make them black and white but i did it to remove the tint.
Before the rain I got some nice images from the beach and surrounding forest tho. Watched some old couples walked and seemed to have deep conversations.
The old friend
when life gives you a pair of garbage glasses and a can of golden spray paint – make golden garbage glassmonade.
Sometimes Ijust like taking product photos, but I don’t have anything to sell so I just take something. If nothing else they might be used on someone for a cool portrait?
Spent a week on Gotland which is always a magical place and it was terrific this time. We stayed at a place where we got splendid sunsets every night.
One of my favorite image from this week was a fisherman walking out in the sea. Mainly because there was a moment not planned at all. The image itself is not very dramatic – I caught him in the sunset moments later which has a lot more drama but this simple image stuck to me.
The fisherman
One favorite technique was to use a ND filter (10 stops) to smooth out the sea with long exposure times. I have used long exposure time before but ND filter is quite new to me and to be able to use it in brighter light was fun. I did find the hue to go a bit too red when aiming directly to the sun but the effect on reflected sunset where magical.
when travelling I am excited and pumped to explore things, so on a boat or plane I get bored – or at least restless. On a boat at least you can explore a bit.
We recently went to Gotland and there is a 3 hour ferry ride where I tried to find some interesting shots.
I was told that a colony of sand martins (or bank swallow or backsvala in swedish) hade a returning spot near where I live. ”They will return on the 15th”, he said, and who can question such certainty in a matter of which I had not asked about?
Well, maybe I should have, because they didn’t come on the 15th. I asked an ornithologist who said that earliest spotting in our area is the 18th, probably later. Yesterday, the 23th, still not here. So either the colony is tardy or I didn’t understand the exact spot where they would nest. It COULD be they meant the next month.
”They will return on the 15th”
But while checking for the martins I found a new area that I havn’t visited before. It is close to a quarry and in the process of quarrying they have to remove the ground water which is pumped up aside of the dig site. There are now tiny lakes with crystal clear water. The trees standing there have died (because of waterlogging i presume) and it is quite interesting environment and a photo opportunity.
I’m not giving up. To be continued…
Earlier this year I had never heard of Stockholm Fotomaraton but a contest to win tickets to it appeared on my Instagram – and I won. And on august 16 i participated and got hooked. I have already bought a ticket to next year.
So what is it? It is a photo contest where you are given two themes to photo and then at specific times get two more at checkpoints all over Stockholm – after each checkpoint you have about two hours to finish the ones you got. You can stop after 8 themes (or 8 hours) but the hard core participants go on for 24 themes. I chose to be soft core as a first-timer.
You can spend how ever much time you need on a theme but, and it is a big but, you must shoot the photos in order. That part was mentally kind of brutal – if you saw a perfect picture for the next theme you had to shoot the previous before that.
It is a contest – there are prizes – but it felt more like a community. Other participants gladly shared their ideas and experience.
Below are the photos I ended up submitting. Some I felt were desperate attempts but some I really liked. The whole experience really re-triggered my love for photography and the challenge of not being able to edit or crop was a good lesson in thinking things through before pressing the shutter button.
I didn’t win but got top 10 in the theme ”The hustle and bustle” which was my own favorite of my submissions.
Read about the event and book tickets for next year: https://www.stockholmfotomaraton.se/
asked people on Instagram to provide themes to shoot. I’m preparing for an event where you are given aome themes and have 1 hour per theme to complete. So this was a training. In the event no editing is allowed after the images are taken.
I have always been drawn to macro photography. It is fascinating with details of bugs and plants AND you can find a plethora of interesting things to shoot just around your house.
My previous camera had a really good dedicated macro on the lens – and that is probably the only thing I miss about that camera. But I found some extension rings that make a cheap alternative.
I read an blog post where five really good macro photographers gave there tips and it was interesting how little they stessed anything technical – they all seemed to have a DIY approach to it. The most common tip from these five was to shoot early in the morning – bugs are not as active or resting, and they often are covered in dew drops.
Another thing was the flash – to get a diffused light – and they talked about tube shaped diffusers. I googled “macro photo flash diffuser” and found some shapes that I wanted to try to DIY.
I tried all combinations of the extension rings and quickly found that the 21 mm will be the one I use the most – it has a clear effect on how close the lens can be to the subject but not too close, approximately 4 cm. The full length (47 mm) gets to approximately 1 cm distanse to the object which, under right conditions, are cool but would probably need a tripod and subjects that are not moving.
With all rings there is a possibility for great detail but it requires planned conditions. The wasp was dead so I could pose it and take my time – there are some shots where the structure in the eye is wisible.
