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The Nikon D800 is an amazing camera. Coupled with the equal as amazing AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G and  a travel tripod Velbon UT-43Q I took this early evening shot from a balcony from our ski apartment in the beautiful ski resort city Bad Gastein . Equipment: Nikon D800 with AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G Exposure: 30 sec at f/13, 0 EV, ISO 100, 24mm - (file size: 39MB)

It has been a while since my last post. The reason is that I have started as CEO at Danimex Communication A/S in the wonderful city Sønderborg (where I was born). Last week a small delegation from our company visited the Italian city Sorrento to participate in a "Executive Partner Conference" by Motorola. Visiting Sorrento was a first for me and unfortunately there was not time during our 3 day stay to conduct a photo walk. More or less the only photo I managed was this shot from my hotel balcony, where I had a direct view across the Bay of Naples to the Mount Vesuvius . Equipment: Nikon D3200 with AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED Exposure: 1/400 sec at f/7.1, 0 EV, ISO 100, 80mm - (file size: 15MB)

My wife and daughter read their fair share of magazines and hence are exposed to many commercial featuring beautiful women and men promoting stuff that we need to buy to become happy. As my daughter is setting her sight on becoming a professional photographer we often discuss the commercials from a photographic perspective. The models are an illusion created to please our brain an create a stop effect. In real life they are still beautiful people, but in the adds they have undergone a transformation towards the unattainable ideal of a human being. You won't believe what can be done on the photo retouching process. Sometimes it is gentle and subtle changes underlining the already existing beauty. But sometimes it is deep and transformative changes, that creates another person. I'm not a fan of the latter, but can accept minor retouching to enhance what is already there. Let me give an example. In January I had the pleasure of working together with an new model with a very ...

Twitter is a fabulous social media giving me access to a wast amount of interesting people and topics related to photography. Lately though I've been unsubscribing a lot to focus on a selected few twitters who doesn't spam their twitter feed and who distributes interesting insight and knowledge through links or own work. @thomashawk posted a twit with the following head line "Husband takes bird's-eye view photos of his naked wife" and a link to a New Zealand based photographer by the name John Crawford . Of course this headline caught my attention :-) - but it also lead me to a great photographer, who has been around for many years.  The set Arial Photos  was made in the good old analogue days, and the sheer effort it must have taken to orchestrate one photo is impressive by all standards.  John Crawford states that his aim is to capture images that have a high degree of interest and contrast,don’t look too technical, and are easy to look at an...

Fantastic TED talk by author Elizabeth Gilbert about the spiritual source of creativity shaping a genius.

After 10 months pondering about the effect of the global recession on the domestic job market, I'm finally back in the game. January 2nd 2013 I'll start as CEO at Danimex Communication A/S in the wonderful city of Sønderborg (where I'm born). I'm really exited about this challenge. Danimex has tapped into a market with a huge global growth potential - whether it revolves around delivering a single satellite phone for an arctic expedition oran entire wireless infrastructure for a developing country. While walking with my dog Lucca I passed this lonely leaf coming to life as the early morning sunlight radiates through it. I feel the same way.

I'm still a novice within portrait photography but I just loves making unique portraits of all kind of people. Working with young female models like Celine demands a completely different approach than working with male models. This was not supposed to be a dramatic portrait, so I chose to work with soft shadows and an Elinchrom Minisoft-44 beauty dish as main light and a Elicnhrom silver reflector 18 cm with grid from above right as a kicker to add highlight to the hair. I just love the light coming from a beauty dish. Look at her eyes. They just sparkle. All post processing was conducted in LR4. Nikon D800 with Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 1/100 sec at f/9.0, 0EV, ISO 100, 170mm

Yesterday was a busy day with three portrait shoots. It was a fantastic experience and we all had a blast doing what we love. My clients wanted a more traditional facial photo for their CV and online presence and my daughters  client wanted us to be creative with light and various posing expressions. I also had a chance to test a V-Flat proto type, that I'm developing with a partner. More information on this product will soon be available. We used a white seamless back drop and two Elinchrom studio lights (D-Lite 2/4). Five Elinchrom light shapers was in action: a square soft box, a strip soft box, a beauty dish, a silver reflector with grid and a silver reflector. Here are three photos from the session with Peter Johannesen. Do you need a new portrait photo for a CV or your on-line presence, then give me a call at +4540528090 or mail me at lars.kirstein 'at' me.com.

This is a digital representation of the analogue film Ilford Delta Pro 400 . Thanks to Nic Silver Efex Pro 2 it is possible to emulate old film types. Old tree's have a fantastic surface when its bark gets old, broken and weathered - perfect for b/w interpretation. In this photo I chose to underexpose a few stops to emphasize the structure and the triangular shape.

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...

Portrait photography is a very rewarding discipline - especially when you succeed in capturing the personality of the model and can enhance it further in the post processing. Malene has very classic facial features and can look straight into the camera without seeing the camera. For this portrait I chose a "film noir" post processing style (using Nik Efex Pro). Camera: Nikon D800 with AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G. Light: Two Elinchrom D-Lite-it studio flash

Viggo Rivad is one of the most significant Danish photographers and this summer he turned 90. My daughter and I visited the "Nivaagårds Malerisamling" museum, where a special exhibition of Viggo Rivad's photographs are on display until Januar 2013. Black and white film has always been Viggo Rivad's preferred platform and one of his many life long themes was documenting the life on the bottom of the society. But among the exhibited themes you will also find photographs from his many trips and portraits of artists like Viggo - true masters of their craft.

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 feel like this tree for the moment. But love the simplicity in such a photograph. Architecture and nature in a form of strict harmony....

Yet another of my former colleagues has asked me to create a couple of portraits to be used to update a Linkedin profile and other on-line existence. 

Your Linkedin profile need to be up-to-data and tailored towards "opening doors" for new opportunities. This also include your profile photo. The visual first impression is an extremely important element when your Linkedin profile are being viewed. My former colleague Peter Bausager - who is looking for a new job - decided that he needed a new portrait photo to be used on Linkedin, other on-line platforms and in his CV. If a portrait has to function well on platforms like Linkedin, the face has to fill the major part of the frame. I like to work with natural light and a fill flash, which enables me to work fast and still create some interesting shadows and a catch light. The back drop can be neutral or "busy" but need to be out of focus so it helps frame the face. I'm a fan of the 4:3 format and compose according to the "rule of third". Here is some examples from the shoot with Peter Bausager. If you are living in Denmark and would like me to sho...

Part of a facade with triangular terraces. Imaging everybody sitting on their terraces on a sunny day. So much for privacy.....

Photographing architecture is one of focus areas. And Copenhagen do have many fantastic architectural buildings representing modern city architecture. Here is three photos of the building called "KILEN" (The Wedge) that is part of Copenhagen Business School . The architects are LUNDGAARD & TRANBERG and you can read about the project here .

One of my photographic passions are the edgy portrait. I'm still experimenting and far from ready to display my work in large scale (I also need more models). But from time to time I meet a person that is comfortable in from of a camera and then it is possible to capture something useful.  For this photo we were sitting a big a large meeting room where an abundance of natural light was radiating through the windows. But instead of using the natural light as the main light source I used it as a heavy back light source. I had no flash with me so to prevent Jan's face to become completely dark I increased the ISO to 12.500 and shot at 1/250 sec at f/8.0. Even with ISO 12.500 the digital noise was low (D800 rocks) and I used a vintage preset from NIC Silver Efe Pro 2 to twist the portrait in the edgy direction. My current photographic projet is capturing graffiti art on metal surfaces and combining then to a 3 x Triptych (Nine photos in total). Here is two candidates ...

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.