Fashion & Portraits

Caught in the middle of choises. Any thoughts, opinions or suggestions? The picture is from the photo shoot I did with Hanna yesterday. A Big thanks to Olli for being “vals” (voice activated light stand)

Quick behind the scenes snapshot. This was when I told Olli to go on the other side and without taking a single frame told him to go back! He just loved it.

Its around one thirty in the morning and I’m watching Zack Arias’ critique videos. (Episode 5 going on. This is my fourth time around these videos.)  At the same time I am thinking about ways to improve my self as a photographer. What am I doing wrong here? I shouldn’t need to take 100 exposures for one keepper after a five years of shootting and reading endless hours of strobist.com, wacthing pictres of the masters…

So what do I do?

First and for most! I have to think more about the light. Stupid as it seems I thought: hey, I’ll give myself assingments which will force me to do so. Watching these screencasts from Arias I saw few of  ‘black on black’ and ‘white on white’ “school assingments.” Thus I have to shoot them! For me and to make me think more about the light!

Two: For my pictures to be something else than they are now, they need to have a story behind them. I have some ideas for these kind of shoots, but .. I have’t shot them. Why? Because the first one went to shit.  Film noire set was almost this kind of a project but enough. Thus, I have to think of stories to shoot and to think about the light to underline the statement! Light, not photoshop.

Three: down shift! I love digital for its speed and flexibility, but at the same time it has made me to rush. Slow food is IN right now, so whats the hurry with the pictures? I had a quick  shoot today with Hanna. Usualy I would have  the first three images gone through the postproduction pipeline before the midnight  but not today.

I flipped through those 173 images very carefully and tried to find every single little error I made. And there were plenty! After that I started editing, slowly and widely. Usualy I just quickly pick the best image and I take it through the “pipeline.” Now there are double the amount of images with a basic editing on them. They are waiting for the next round.

It feels amazing to have someone on this globe to appreciate what you do. I have that, double actualy!

Not so long ago I showed my bank account total. Panu and Antti were gracious enough to help the artist in need.

For translation, both of them put 0,17 euros on my account. Thank you, fellows!

I tried t o write something about this magazine, but I ended being speachless! A fantastic photography magazine available on pdf.

If you don’t read this, you should! And its FREE! ..dumbasses.. this could sell for billions!

http://blog.bulb-magazine.com/

I do not shoot gigs too often. Once a year by accident so I don’t really know shit about it. But I do recognise a bad music picture and there are plenty of those around. Fill flash ought to be forbidden at 99% of the shows. If you want to look at great images from the live shows I’d advice you to go to Kalle Björklids site.

Sometimes I get lucky when I shoot the only gig of the year ..and I don’t mean “lucky in a good way” . No, I get one pic by accident rather than.. This happend when I stumbeld to a bar, I was loaded and a finnish rapper called Elastinen was there for a performance. I cant remember the show, but I have been lookking at this pic afterwards, not bad..