Fashion & Portraits

A week ago a placed a order to Nikon Nordic and today the UPS deliverd. Mind you that the there is not everything in the pic. Couple of bodies and lenses ….

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Jeah right. just kidding. Kotkas Photographic center arranged a Nikon demo day. A spokesman from Nikon Nordic held a quick presentation about their lineup and D300s and D3s in detail. Afterwards there was loads of gear to fidle with. Thanks.. My D200 is in a decompose condition but I don’t have enough money for a new body.

Too funny not to blog this!

We walked around the town today and a older lady was walking her puppy. Cute bugger gave me a dirty harry look..

Now ask yourself, do you feel lucky? Punk!

(More photos from the shootfest coming tomorrow..)

The shot is way too funny not to show. We were at the a bar after Boys danceclass months ago and I was talking to Joonas about.. something. I have no idea what Im talking about, but it must be “funny..”  Notice the D200 on the table..  Im thinking of making pocket flask out its battery grip when it dies. It would be so cool to shoot a pic and take a shot out of the camera.

Thanks to maiju for the photo..

Thank god for autofocus.. I pulled this out of the camera..

After the weekend on 13-14th of Feb my head was full of thoughts related to photography. And I have to write about one question in particular. Whats my image? Whats my style? This came up after shooting few frames at the studio and shooting along with Janne at the sprint rally event.

Its being said that photography is the easiest artform to learn but the hardest  to delevope your own unique style. I do not have my own style yet, but its getting there.

Two things I have to mention that should go without saying. One: Lack of skill is not a style! One does not have a style if one does not know how to shoot differently or does not have a clue what to do in the first place. Two: Copying others is not a style. I can not shoot like DaveHill and say ‘well, thats my style too.’ Its not, its just lame and in Daves case its almost a copyright offense.

I started to think of the style when looking at the images shot in  the studio. They did not feel or look like mine. I knew how I did them and I could  easily repeat them if asked (with similar gear I might ad.) I just shot with Mikas studio lights and made few adjustments to his setup. The pics did not feel right.

In the rally event I shamelessly took a almost indentical pic with Janne. Needles to say I will not show it here just like I woun’t showthe studio pic. I looked what he was doing and repeated it knowing what he was after. Ironicly my D200 literaly froze and I did not get the movement nor the one wheel up in the air like he. The point remains. The image has nothing to do with me, its a copy of someone elses photo.

The gear plays a funny part when building or trying to find your own personal style. The gear is here for us to use, not to define us. Do I prefer small softboxes and location shoots because I do not have a big octa and a studio? No, I do not think so. I’d have a beatydish and strip lights at the studio anyways. Im not going to buy the gear that I know I do not need for the images I want to create.  Still right now my gear is too limited for me to claim ‘I have my own style!’ How can I say that ring flash fill is not a part of my style if I’ve never tested one properly? And no, I do have to test every single peace of a equipment out there. But ringflash is very intresting and could suite me fine as a very low power and cotrolable fill.

As a conjuction to the money for the photographs post the style issue has its own twist. As I said, a lack of skill is not a style. I can’t go to a client with a underexposed b&w images and say ’my style,period’, when the client wants a colorfull highkey images.  Same goes for the gear. Client does not care if you only have a ezybox and they want images  have to be lit with 6ft octa. ‘My style…’ right, and the client goes to another photog who can deliver.

So whats my style?

I don’t have one yet but I know what I don’t want it to be. I’m on my way..

Couple of days ago I was reading newspaper in the morning and came across a the article of teenager regretting the images they post online.

(The arcile was in Helsingin Sanomat the biggest newspaper in Finland. Im a huge fan of old fashion newspapers and seldomly read online papers.)

It was a small peace about some kids taking pics of each other with a idiotic text on their tops. The images went online and it proved to be almost impossible to get them offline. There was also a small survey about the issue and it stated that 25% (figure might be wrong here) of the teenagers have the same problem.  They have images online that they wish would not be there.

The news did not suprise me at all. Hapens to thirthy something people also. A fellow showed a pic that he had taken of some frozen plant that looked like a dick, even put his ©-sign under  it. He was upset when the image found its way to a third party site and demanded through several emails that they take off the site because its copyrighed! Yeah, right. I could not help laughing. I understood why he shot the pic and even why he posted online, but why on earth did he put his name under it?! Man, it looks like dick, thats why shot it, its funny so its not a big deal if it ends up on a comedy site, unless it had your name under it…

I digress. But the point being that why is it so diffucult for folks to moderate the stuff they put online?!

It should not come as  a suprise to anyone born at the 70’s and after that ‘what you put on the internet, stays on the internet!’

Does this has anything to do with me? No. Im very carefull of what I post online. They might be crappy photos – and more about that later – but they are not harmfull to anyone.

I do not ask a permission to post the pics online during the photoshoot. I think its very clear that I will do it unless the model spesificly says no. There is one exception. Kids! I do not post pictures of kids on my blog without the parents consent. Even if I shoot the portrait from their request I still ask the premision seperetly to post the pics on my blog.

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Well thats enough of that, moral lecture of sorts.. Its too clear that I haven’t shot anything in a while now…