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B/W photos from antique market in Nizza, Italy

A series of b/w photos of old tools from the Nizza Antique Market in Nizza Monferrato.

Why not create a composite photo?

Hmmmm - it's summertime and I'm on vacation in Italy. Plenty of time to experiment with Photoshop. I read an article on LENSCRATCH about the Japanese photographer Michiko Makino and her stunning composite or double exposure photos. This photo is an experiment of mine trying to create something special with a base photo (see previous blog article) and nine identical photos of a another flower subject blended in two different ways. If we don't experiment - we don't learn and evolve as a photographer and artist.

Why not try manual focus?

I've been photographing for over 30 years - and for the past 8 years it has been primarily digital. And with the constant improvement in the AF-system of DSLRs that fit nearly every situation and equipment combination I have not given manual focus a lot of thoughts. Yesterday during the golden hours - while walking in the beautiful surroundings of my home in Italy looking for suitable subjects for nature close-ups (not macro) - I found it difficult to rely on the AF-system of my Nikon D800 for various reasons (light, physical positioning, wind etc.)  I set the AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 lens to manual focus. And from that point on I just kept shooting focusing on getting the right exposure and the best framing rather than making the AF-system lock-in so I could take a photo.  I'm now ready to try manual focus while doing portrait photography.

Old photos from Italy or...

I took those photos in July 2013 while visiting a restaurant nearby our Italian home - Casa Galeazzo. The new Analog Efex Pro 2 has a range of old camera profiles - and among those you find the very interesting "Wet Plate" effect. You have a multitude of control methods to alter the appearance of the wet plate effect, so it is possible to develop your own wet plate style. PetaPixel made a good review of this new addition to the Google Nik Collection.

Nikon Coolpix A - a compact wonder

Nikon Coolpix A is my traveller companion. I don't bring my D800 anymore. Beside the tack sharp files straight out of the camera I'm impressed with its ability to hit the correct white balance each time and the color reproduction. The colors are just spot on - not too saturated our pale. Especially skin colors are realistic. The photo my beautiful wife Vivi is a good example of a "snap shot" I took at a train station. Exposure = 1/125 sec f/4.5, 0 EV, ISO 100. Bang - no sharpening or other correction (except Lens Correction) in Lightroom. If you are shooting D700, D600, D610, D800, D3 or D4. Buy a Nikon Coolpix A as your traveling companion. It is worth every dollar.

Miller Mobley

On the growing list of portrait photographer that I admire - the young an very talented Miller Mobley has just been added. The enclosed portrait og late Philip Seymour Hoffman is a good example of a composition and perfect light technique that emphasizes a unique personality and personal situation.

Mia Blichfeldt - et stort badminton talent

Nogle gange er man bare heldig som fotograf. Jeg tog dette naturlige portræt af Mia Blichfeldt - en meget begavet ung badminton-spiller til en privat fest - bare en måned før hun blev den yngste danske mester i Badminton i senior league - og hun er kun 16! Selvfølgelig kan du finde mange billeder af Mia "i aktion", men kun få, hvor hun bare er selv - uden for badmintonarenaen.

Analog Efex Pro - a new addition to the Nik Collection

It's no secret - I'm a big fan of the Nik Collection  from Google. And recently a new addition to this collection has been made - Analog Efex Pro .  The GUI of all programs in the Nik Collection is simple and very intuitive to use - but once you start playing around with the controls and see just how subtle the small tweaks can be, you realize the true power of this collection.  The GUI of the Analog Efex Pro is no exception. It's fun to select an analog camera preset from the list (Classic Camera, Wet Plate, Toy Camera, Vintage Camera) or select the "Camera Kit" and design your own preset. Create professionally stylized images by picking a preset, then diving in to fine-tune your approach. Adjust bokeh, textures, frames and other elements, then pinpoint the location of your effects with precise on-image controls. And additional cameras, films, bells, and whistles will be added. Below is another example:

Business Portraits for a Lawyer Firm

I love shooting portraits - both the kind where I have creative freedom and those where I have to stick to a certain look and feel. The two photos I will show here today belong to the latter category. Both photos are for online usage - company website, Linkedin profile etc. They needed to radiate seriousness and professionalism. The lighting set-up need to be simple and fast to mount. I was only given 1 hour to set-up, take the photos and dismantle, before they needed the meeting room. My lighting source was a single Elinchrom D-Lite 4 (400W) studio flash with an Elinchrom Portalite Square Soft Box (40 cm) controlled with the EL-Skyport Transmitter mounted in the hot shoe on my D800. Even though I only needed an upper body a head shot I chose to bounce the light into a nearby white wall to soften the light even more. The model was place so, that some natural window light lit them on their right side (left on the photo) and my single light source lit them on the left side.

Product Photography - a New Discipline

Product photography is a new endeavor that I have chosen to explore. A Danish manufacturer of kitchen and food equipment asked me to photograph their full product line for a new e-store soon to be launched. The task also included some stop-motion video's. The lighting set-up was two Nikon SB-910 Speedlights mounted on Manfrotto Nano 5001B light stands. The light modifiers was a standard white umbrella and a Lastolite soft box.  A couple of PocketWizards FlexTT5 was attached to the Speedlights and a PocketWizard MiniTT1 and AC3 was attacked to a Nikon D800.  The items was placed on a white dining table with a non reflective surface. From here on the task was to avoid deep and dark shadows, but still keep a hint of a shadow to preserve a dimensional aspect. The item surface was rubber and metal. You can't imagine how hard it is to keep such surfaces free of dust particles. This becomes very clear when you look at the photos in Lightroom while doing the post proce

Two Silly Fishermen

I'm not a full time professional photographer but take on 2-3 paid jobs per month. It keeps me sharp and I find it rewarding to work with other professionals on a specific task. My latest assignment was to shoot a video for a 20 second commercial, that will run on regional TV in January 2014 (my 2nd TV-commercial). Some stills where also required for printed adds. I won't be doing the final retouching of the raw files, but the photo above is my post processing. The two aspiring models ( Philip Stangebye to the left &  Alexander Behrang Keshtkar to the right)  where really nice to work with. They required nearly no instructions and fell quite naturally into the role as "silly fishermen". Thanks guys! On the technical side I faced a small set-back when setting up the Speedlights.  The PocketWizard Mini TT1 had run out of battery power. So without my trusted PocketWizards for light control, I had to revert back to standard Nikon Commander mode and IR-contro

Photographing in rain has several benefits

1/4 sec at f/6.3, ISO 100, -1/3 EV First are foremost you are alone. For me photographing is a reflective process where I focus on the image and think abstract thoughts - letting my mind flow. While in this state there is nothing more disturbing that other human beings. So when the sky is all grey and its raining softly, then its time to grab your photo gear and head for the forrest, beach or open landscape to escape the every day life. An all grey sky (the lords big soft box) and a bit of rain is perfect conditions for shooting black and white photos. With me today I had the following equipment: Nikon D800 Nikon Coolpix A AF-S Nikkor 28mm f/1.8G Nikon MC-36 remote cord release Velbon GEO N830 tripod and QHD-72Q Ballhead Crumpler backpack Holebrook WP sweater Stetson Herringbone Hatteras The AF-S 28mm f/1.8G lens is a nice and not so heavy lens that fits perfectly on a D800. It is sharp and delivers a soft bokeh wide open. A bit of vignetting, radial distortion and

Photographing Halloween...

Photographing Halloween can be a scary process - not so much because of what you encounter of creatures and ghosts, but because you as a photographer have to shoot with flash in near complete darkness trying to capture fast moving objects. But with a Nikon D800, AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G and a SB-910 I threw myself into the big crowd of halloween participants- app. 4.500 persons, that took part in the 2nd largest Halloween event in Denmark (the master event being held at Tivoli ). Måløv is - with only app. 9.000 inhabitants - not a big town. But a few pertinacious souls have build this Halloween event over many years into an event that encompasses the whole town. Here are a couple of shots from the event.... by the way - the red devil is the town priest :-) You can see all the photos here .

Fog over the Valley.jpg

Fog over the Valley.jpg , originally uploaded by Kirstein . The weather in Piemonte (Italy) with the typical fog banks in the early morning hours. The famous red wine grape - Nebbiolo - that is use in great wines from Barolo and Barbaresco - translate into "fog at the foot of the mountain".

Internet crime has also entered my realm

In Denmark we have for many years used a secure domestic credit card - Dankortet - and all Danes use it more or less for all their purchased based money transactions. In my e-store - nikonphotoexpert.com - we sell Nikon equipment and other photography related articles. You can pay with Dankortet or a Paypal account. October 1st I received an order for a AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens and the payment was done with a Dankort. The delivery address was in Denmark, I could see a phone number, an e-mail address and the IP-number. Their was nothing suspicious with that order - except the customer name - but then again I have many customer with a none Danish name, and they have never given me any worries. The money was transferred to my account and I shipped the lens. Today I received a mail from nets - the largest provider of payment services in the Nordic - informing me, that the owner of the Dankort has made objection to the purchase and denied to have place the order. So they had to t

Identity Plate for on-line photos

I really don't like to superpose a copyright logo or any other text across my photos. And I generally don't like all the different types of frames various software tools let you add to a photo. But I recognize the need to visually protect your work besides adding copyright information into the EXIF data, and at the same time promote your name and portfolio. So I've designed a compromise - adding a standard black frame and my name in RED and url in WHITE separated by a GREY square. I have not added a (C) in front of my name. Adding my name and URL implies that this photo is protected by a copyright (still part of the EXIF-data). What do you think? Does it ruin the photo?

Baby Lola and the happy parents

End August I was asked to photograph a young couple with their newborn girl Lola on the day og her baptism. There was no time for a complicated shoot so I chose a simple set-up with two SB-910 and a white shoot through umbrella on the left and a large silver reflector on the right, to open op the shadows. The flash was remotely controlled with PocketWizards. I shot with a Nikon D800 and AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 and AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/4. The first batch was just short of 200 photos. I reduced this number to 105 photos through a 1st phase editing in Lightroom and uploaded the photos to a folder in Dropbox for them to review. They chose 21 photos and the final 2nd phase editing involving LR, Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex 2, as I made a color and b/w version of each photo. Personally I like the b/w versions best. As you can see - Lola is not all that happy with the situation :-) Here is my favorite from the day...

Self Portrait - Dodge & Burn Look

Retouching a portrait always involve some dodging and burning during post processing. If you want to enhance facial form by the use of light and shadow, the "Dodge & Burn" on a 50% grey layer is very effective. The german photographer and Photoshop master - Calvin Hollywood - has made a tutorial where he demonstrates a fast method to achieve an automatic dodge & burn effect.

Mysterious Nature

You don't have to travel far to find amazing photographic opportunities. Close to where I live (Lyngby near Copenhagen) we have small streams with slow clean water. Time is in a capsule here. I just love to find beauty in the nature that surrounds me. As we don't have mountains and valleys I have to zoom in on the grandness of the ordinary.

"Quick Portrait" shoot on location at the company "Detail Karriere"

UPDATE: Here are the four portraits that the client chose for the home page (www.detailkarriere.dk) and their Facebook company page. The photos will soon show on those locations: Original post: At this job I had to shoot four people while they took a break from work. The set-up is similar to the one described in the previous blog post. The main light is two SB-910 shot through a white umbrella and a silver reflector acted as fill light. We shot against a white wall. I used a Nikon D800 with AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G. Post processing done in Lightroom 5 and Silver Efex Pro2. The total picture count was around 40. The shoot took 1 hour and post processing 2-3 hours. I delivered app. 25 photos for the first review. Four examples are shown here. Only a b/w version was ordered. This is not the final version. As soon as the client has selected the photos they want to use, I will align the tonality profile and format. I still have to improve my Lightroom workflo