More from Inside the Spooky Crypt!

Another from the crypt beneath the Domkyrkan in Lund. If you are ever in the area it really is worth spending a couple of hours in there with your camera and a tripod.

Getting creative with the white balance slider got me closer to the effect I was really after!

Ghostly Figure in the Crypt.

Taken in the crypt of the Domkyrka in Lund, Southern Sweden.

Spectacular Scandinavian Sunset

With so many people all over the world raving on about African sunsets and how wonderful they are we tend to forget that other parts of the world also have beautiful sunsets. I am currently living in Southern Sweden and in the now almost two years that I have been here I can tell you that even these northern climes produce awesomely beautiful sunsets, maybe just not as regularly. Take the photo below for instance, taken in a small town called Lomma at the river right by the start of the harbour just where the bridge crosses over with some shiny new apartment blocks on the other side. Scandinavian light can be wonderfully soft and pastel like, and lasts for a whole lot longer than the beautiful but abrupt African sunsets from my home country.

Moral of the story is that you don't need to travel all the way to Africa, or some other exotic location, to photograph beautiful sunsets. All you need to do is get out with your camera more regularly and take many more photographs because beauty exists everywhere if you take the time to find it!

DxO FilmPack 3 Essential - Tested

This morning I posted a link to the DxO website where they were offering a free license for DxO FilmPack 3 Essential. Since then I installed it and in use it looks like this:

Screen Shot of DxO FilmPack 3 Essential in use.

It is very easy to use and does what it is advertised to do. It makes digital photographs emulate various types of film, and it does it quickly and with the minimum of fuss. The film purists will no doubt scoff and say that none of these look anything like the results you can get from simply using real film and having it processed the original way. I agree. I also think real film has a look of it's own and the results from programs like this don't quite match up... but then these sort of programs are also simpler, faster, and cheaper than shooting film in our modern world. This topic can lead in a whole other direction very quickly, so I will leave it at that and move quickly on by showing what DxO FilmPack 3 Essential can do.

Free License of DxO FilmPack 3 Essential

I have never used DxO FilmPack 3, but if it's as good as the very excellent DxO Optic Pro which I use every single day then it is probably very good. What makes it even better is that in some kind of deal between Sony and DxO they have made DxO FilmPack 3 Essential available as a free download. Mine is downloading as I type so if you are interested (and lets face it who isn't interested in FREE?) click on the ad below to go directly to the download page.

There is a time limit to this offer, so do not delay, get DxO FilmPack 3 Essential today!

Good Bye Summer!

With the advent of autumn the "lazy hazy crazy days of summer" are finally gone until next year. I will miss the long warm Scandinavian evenings of cycling along the coast and sipping beer on the patio while sunset lingers on seemingly forever.

Now roll on the magical snow filled "winter wonderland" instead!

Life is good!

This "painting" was sold for $43,845,000

I think this is a deeply thought out piece of critique on the social imbalances prevailing in our modern society which lingers between threats of war and a Utopian vision of peace that seems so elusive to us all in the short term.

The skilled strokes of the artist are resplendent in metaphors of righteous indignation steeled by cold hard reality as the faint chant of the disappointed mass of humanity cries for the right to a new and brave world of integrity amongst the political elite whose subversion of basic human rights and mores is anathema to the objectives we all yearn and long for like a fish longs for the cool refreshing waters unpolluted by man!

The uneven shades and streaky brush strokes hail to an incompleteness in every human heart as we bemoan the fact that indeed our own lives are severely lacking in the sort of spiritual completeness that used to define us as a species many years hence. Will we find joy in our meaningless existence once more or are we doomed to a life of increasing frailty, overshadowed by the dark side of our incomplete and unloved psyche?

"How long?", cries the artists voice from the deep empty darkness that defines the world of modern art, "How long before I can cash my cheque?"

Mixed Light Sources - Window Light with Speedlight for a Quick Portrait

Recently I took the above portrait in the lounge of a private home. I used a blank white wall as a plain background, light from the open window provided the strong side light and background light, and a camera mounted sb700 pointed into the corner of the ceiling and wall behind me provided the main light. All in all it worked out quite well for a "high key" type portrait.

I shot this with my now favourite portrait lens, the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G on the D300s.

Three Bottles of Campari on a Seamless White Background

Nikon D300s, Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G, f/11.0, 1/160s, ISO 200, 1x Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2, 2x  Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4, 1x Large Sheet of White Cardstock, 2x Long Narrow Strips of Black Cardstock on each side of product, 1x Sheet of Clear Glass.

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G is my new Favourite Portrait Lens!

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while would have noticed that I really like the Nikon 50mm F1.8D on DX camera as a portrait lens, in fact it was my "go to" lens for several years when I needed to take portrait photos. This portrait was taken with the 50mm. I have not changed my opinion that the "nifty fifty" is a really nice lens for portraits, but the designation of "favourite" has now been reassigned to the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G!

After several months of use I can say with full confidence that I highly recommend it as a head and shoulders portrait lens. The quality of the out of focus areas is sublime, and is only bettered by lenses costing at least two or three times as much. (The 50mm f1.8D is 4x cheaper than this 85mm, so if you are on a tighter budget then it still ranks right up there!)

The pic shown here is taken at f8.0 (on a Nikon D300s) and the background is still pleasingly blurred while beautifully sharp on the subject which isolates the subject from the background very nicely, thank you very much!

If you are from Malmö in Southern Sweden, then I highly recommend you get your own copy from Scandinavian Photo. They have it listed here: Nikon AF 85/1,8G AF-S Please note, I am not employed by or paid by Scandinavian Photo, but when I get great and friendly service from a company then I love to tell my friends about it! Tell them I sent you. :^)

Is the Decline of Camera Sales Good For Photographers?

I have read a lot lately about the declining sales of dslr and mirrorless cameras in favour of phone cameras that have boomed onto the markets in an undeniable fashion. Apparently the major camera manufacturers are scrambling to revise their targets and adjust their production and bottom lines to better reflect the current market trend. I predict that this trend will continue and that we will see a partial return to pre digital camera times when Joe Public carried small, easily portable cameras and the big cameras were left to "pros" and serious amateurs.

The cameras embedded into every smartphone are now good enough to produce nice results for the average person to get acceptable photographs without having to take an expensive course and be able to directly load the results to Facebook, Blogger, etc. Convenience always wins with the consumer public majority!

Could I now also predict a possible upturn for photography as a profession as more people decide that they would rather have a pro with a big camera take their wedding photos than Uncle John with his shiny new camera that has detachable lenses and a big flash simply because Uncle John ditched the inconvenient to carry around and use camera and now only has a Samsung S4 instead?

My theory is that as fewer people have dslr's they will come to rely on someone else, possibly the local high street professional, for their serious photography needs again. I surmise that this transition will take time to become apparent because it takes a while for these things to trickle through, but maybe the pendulum has peaked to the top of it's swing and is about to swing back.

Anybody fancy a quick look into their crystal ball and see if I'm right, or if maybe I'm just a hopeful dreamer? Haha!

Meanwhile back on Planet Earth...
;-)

Downtown Fredensborg - Deserted

Taken at 23:03 at night and totally deserted it's almost eerie, but great for taking photographs. At this time of night there was still enough light in the sky to balance nicely with the street lights and end up with a single shot containing a wide gamut of fairly even exposure. This sort of photography always requires a tripod as we have to deal with longish exposures and hand holding is impossible without getting a blurry and unusable photo. Tripod = sharp and clear. Get a good sturdy tripod, it'll do wonders for your photographs!

Most people shoot until the sun goes down and then they head indoors for dinner. I try to hang around for an hour or two (or more) after sunset to get this sort of light. It can make for long, cold, hungry evenings, but it gets pictures that very few people are willing or able to take simply because they lack the dedication and commitment to suffer a little inconvenience to get the photo they really want. But then maybe I'm a little too obsessive about these things? ;-)

Nikon D300s, Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR, sturdy tripod, remote trigger, f10.0, 13.0s, 18mm, VR off, ISO 200, Auto White Balance, Matrix Metering, Aperture Priority, quick run through Dx0 Optics Pro 8, and then some adjustments in the curves tool of PSP X5.

Using the Sun as part of your Lighting Setup

I like to treat the Sun as an integral part of my outdoor lighting setups to add depth, warmth and ambiance to my subject. In this instance we were shooting some portraits down at the beach in Landskrona and the setting sun was giving a beautifully soft and warm light that was just perfect for portraits!

The light from the Sun is coming from near the horizon to camera right and I also have a Nikon sb700 on a pole shooting through a smallish brolly to camera left and a little above the subject. I had my assistant holding the flash and I let the Sun take care of itself. ;-)

Nikon D300s, Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G, 1/320s, f2.8, ISO 200, flash triggered via Nikons wonderful CLS wireless triggering system, hand held.

Portrait on a Bridge

Nikon sb700 Speedlight on a pole shooting through a smallish Elinchrom shoot through umbrella to camera left and triggered via Nikon's super CLS wireless trigger system. Nikon D90 on manual mode at 1/60s, f7.1, ISO 200, handheld, with the wonderful Nikkor AFS 35mm DX f1.8 lens attached.

Taken on a bridge over the moat at the Landskrona Citadel shortly after sunset.

Portraits are about People!

I know it seems a rather obvious statement, but if you are going to make portrait photography your speciality, then the most important skill is not whether you have mastered the convoluted workings of a modern camera, or if indeed you have a really great "top of the range" piece of high megapixel wizardry, or if your lens can outresolve even the best that aliens on another (more advanced) planet may or may not have. It doesn't even matter if you have the best software that money can buy, or indeed rent, and have taken all the right courses, purchased all the right plugins, and know all the right scripts that a (sometimes dodgy) education can buy. Heck, it doesn't even matter if you can ride a unicycle! What does matter is your people skills!