Side street in Malmö Sweden

A small side street in Malmö Sweden. The old parts of the city are just beautiful, and a treat to explore!

Taken with the cheapest Nikon point and shoot camera we could find last year, the Nikon Coolpix L21. Not bad considering it only cost about US$50! That's less than taking my family to eat out at a cheap restaurant... ;-)

Church in Mellösa Sweden

Some things are just better in black and white, it's like an unveiling of the heart and soul to lay bare the essentials of our emotions and reveal what lies within.

It is especially effective when photographing spiritual things like people and churches.

African Carving of Giraffes

 

Same setup as used here: Simple Product Photography Set-Up

Mor Mor

My Danish mother-in-law, a real lady!

Nikon D90, Nikkor 35mm f1.8DX, hand held, ISO400, f3.5, 1/250s, natural light from a window, edited for contrast and cropped in Corel Paint Shop Pro X4. Did I mention that the 35mm f1.8DX is a really great lens? ;-)

The Fredensborg Palace in Denmark

The Danish Queens spring and autumn residence in Fredensborg, Denmark. Nice little place, no?

Nikon D90, Nikkor 35mm f1.8DX, hand held, ISO400, f2.8, 1/30s. Just love this lens as a light walkabout on the D90!

It's in the Details! 2

It's in the Details!

There is always something to photograph. Sometimes we just have to look a little closer.

Close Encounters of the Scary Kind!

Coochy, coochy, coochy coo!

SNAP!

CAUTION!

CAUTION!
Photographer at play! ...er, work. I meant to say work... Drat, caught out...

Looking down onto Paradise

The previous photo was taken from the bend in the river that you can see on the left of this photograph of the Vaal river.

I had to wait for a while for a break in the clouds to let some sunlight through onto "Paradise".

This is Paradise!

After working hard all of December at the mall taking photos of kids with Santa (and it really was tiring!) I finally had a break and went on holiday to the Vaal river here in South Africa. No internet or cell phone connection, sheer bliss, Paradise indeed!

My Santa Set-up

Since the 5th of December I have been taking the typical Santa in the mall pics that we see every year! It's actually quite fun, but a lot of work as it has been crazy busy. While I have been there a lot of "pros" and amateurs alike have expressed an interest in my lighting set-up, how I do it, and why! It seems that the "strobist" concept hasn't caught on in South Africa the same way it has elsewhere in the world. So here is a short explanation and a few sample pics.

My basic setup is a couple of Nikon sb flashes, one sb700 and one sb600. I bounce both of these into umbrellas in order to diffuse the light and get a nice even lighting over the entire set. I use a shoot through umbrella and a black backed bounce umbrella, and the reason these two? Because it's what I have of course! If I used studio lights it would become much more complicated and require cables running electricity around for people to fall over, it wouldn't be as easy to unpack and pack, etc. Here is a pull back pic of the entire set-up:

There is a very large skylight directly above the area where we are located and the light coming in is constantly changing because of the sun moving, clouds, rain, etc. so in order to keep the light and colour consistant I totaly underexpose the scene by setting my camera to manual at 1/200s and f11. Without flash it looks like this:

My flashes are set to TTL and they automatically bring the exposure back up to normal. I fire them wirelessly via Nikons very cool CLS system. The final result looks like this:

Perfectly exposed, sharp, and with very consistant colour! I don't have time to download these to a computer, tweak them and then print them, so I shoot jpg and make sure that all my settings are correct in camera to achieve the fastest workflow and print them directly from my SD cards at the lab in the mall. The resultant prints are just great!

So if you want to put that nice shiny new dslr to good use and actually make some money to justify the expense then you now know how to do Santa pics for Christmas 2012! Whoohoo!

Todays Coffee!

At the end of a long hot day shooting kids with Santa in Mall@Reds, it just makes the day a little better, one of lifes pleasures! A "Serious Cappucino" from Mugg and Bean.

Nikon D90, Aperture Priority, Nikon 40mm f2.8 Micro, 1/250s, f3.0, ISO200, hand held.

Oooohhhh, FORK!

Yeah, that's what I thought! Why? Dunno...

It's Christmas Season Again!

Which means it's time for Christmas photos at the mall again!

This year my very talented wife painted some backdrops for me and I am taking photos at the Mall@Reds in Pretoria from the 5th until the 24th of December. She also sewed all the costumes for the kiddies to dress in that you can see on the table in the photo below.

Here is a basic setup shot:

And what the final result looks like:

There is also a "Fantasy Forest" backdrop and a typical Christmas Manger scene.

Merry Christmas everybody!