Foto | Indsigt | Synspunkt

Yet again I was hired to do some people portraits for the company detailkarriere.dk in Denmark. It's a basic lighting setup, with two SB-910 through a white umbrella on the left and a white reflector on the right. Exposure settings for both photos are: 1/60 sec, at f/8.0, ISO 100, 0EV, A Equipment: Nikon D800, AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G, Nikon SB-910,  PocketWizard Flex TT5, PocketWizard Mini TT1  and PocketWizard AC3. Highlights are well controlled with the help of the PocketWizards. In post I have added a bit more light to the male model, as I thought this suited him well.  The client and I have agreed that tonality doesn't have to be 100% identical for the six portrait photos I've made for this company. It is more important that the shooting angle, b/w settings and framing to enhance the models personality.

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 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...

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 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 .

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...

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...

I'm finally returning to my blog after a while - nearly 6 month. There are several reasons for this, but let's not focus on trivia around securing an income - let's focus on the exiting process of creating portraits. Today I had the pleasure of photographing my good friend Finn Wichmann Lund , as he needed a straight forward business portrait for Linkedin and other "official" web pages / documents. I call this "Quick Portrait" as the set-up is really fast. I use two Nikon SB-910 attached to a Lastolite Professional A2412 Triflash bracket mounted on a Manfrotto 5001B Tripod. As a diffusor I use a standard shoot through white umbrella. On each Nikon SB-910 speedlight I attach a PocketWizard Flex TT5. On my Nikon D800 with AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 I mount a PocketWizard MiniTT1 and an AC3. To reflect some light back I use a Silver California Sunbouncer. The camera is in Aperture priority mode, ISO 100, f/7.1. I´m shooting against a white wall. The RAW fil...

SOS International is the leading assistance organisation in the Nordic region. From their emergency centres in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, they provide acute personal assistance all over the world. My assignment today was to photograph four employees for an "New Employee Welcome folder" and take some photos from the HQ entrances showing their logo. The time slot was short, so I went for a simple set-up with one Nikon SB-910 powered with an additional Nikon SD-9 battery pack and mounted on a light stand with a white umbrella. The flash was angled 45 degrees to the left of the person. On the opposite side I placed another light stand with a California Sunbouncer mounted. The SB-910 was triggered with my trusted Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 and MiniTT1 . In addition I used a PocketWizard AC3 to control the flash output. I used a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. The client asked me to use a brick wall as back drop, which worked just fine. The s...

I was hired to shoot some portraits and group photos for a recent merger between two law firms. The new company is call ELMANN. One of the group photos included app. 20 staff in a small hallway. It was impossible to position my studio light, so I used two SB-910s and placed one in the window sill to the left and one on a small ledger to the left of the stairs from the main door. Both Speedlight heads was positioned straight up into the ceiling, but still shadows where cast on the white wall behind the group of people. It required some work in CS6 to reduce those shadows. Here is the original photo that was used on the front of the invitation for the reception. Here is a photo of the management team - both in suits and running clothing. Last - but not least - I shot 5 portraits for the web site. Here is one example of partner Peter Mollerup. I used a Nikon D800 with AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 and AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 (for the portraits) lenses. Elinchrom studie light w...

I was hired to photograph two men dressed like knights representing the fight between "good" and "bad". A photo of each knight will be combined to one where they are standing opposite each other in a confronting manner. The final photo will be used on big posters, a website and in various marketing and PR material. It was a great occasion to test my new Elinchrom Portalite soft box and Elinchrom reflector with grid (more directional light). We shot against a black wall and although there were some light spill - it wasn't critical. Here are my post processed versions. I'm not assigned to do the post and have delivered all files as none processed RAW-files to the customer. So I'm exited to see the final outcome. And here is a very short video with just a glims of how we arranged the light and worked with the model.

How difficult can it be was my initial thought when I asked to photograph (I don't want to use the word "shoot") a baby. The mother Malene is a former colleague and I also know her husband Rasmus. It's a lovely family and they live on the country side in a small town just aside a corn field. Lot's of good natural light and a fairly spacious home. The day we had chosen for the event turned out to be one of the hottest days in Denmark ever recorded. And there was no wind. The sun was burning hot and bright from a clear sky, so I had to photograph indoors using my Elinchrom D-Lite lamps and a California Sunbounce. My assistent (my daughter) was a great help. As you can imaging we were all sweating a lot and the little newborn - Emma - was also not comfortable. In addition the D-Lite lamps produced additional heat. My equipment was a Nikon D800 with an AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. In close quarters like this I couldn't use the AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8. I used bot...