Sunday 4 October 2015

Lübeck a town to fall in love with

The weekend in Lübeck is about to end and I have to say I love Lübeck with all it's old buildings and great history as a Hanseatic town. The Hanseatic League was founded to protect the transport routs in the Baltic ocean.
The closed townscape of medieval brickstone buildings is the reason for Lübeck's attractiveness of today and its place on the UNESCO list as World Heritage Site of Mankind.
There are many places well worthy a visit such as St. Mary's Church, Holstentor, Heiligen-Geist-Hospital and the City hall with its marketplace on the square in front of it.
The food was great, from fine cuisine at The Wullenwever with a star at the Guide Michelin, to more rustic food like bratwurst on the town square in front of City hall.
Lübeck is well worth a visit.
The photo is from an early morning opposite the water surrounding the town centre. The towers are from St. Mary's church. 



Friday 10 April 2015

Passion

Lately I've hardly been photographing anything, lacking of inspiration is what I blame, or laziness. Not caring about sunsets, sunrises, nature, vistas etc.

Two weeks ago I was on vacation at Tenerife, Spain. I've been there several times before, it holds the highest peek in Spain, Teide and it's always a pure joy tho shoot this vulcano. This time what did I do? Just layed by the pool sipping a beer and enjoyed life. When I came home I had skot 15 photos of the pool and my fiancee, usually I shoot about 1000 shots on a vacation. Hrmm LAZY and lacking motivation.

I haven't been out shooting landscape for over a month, until a couple of days ago when I said to myself that this isn't sustainable. I pulled myself up and went out into the woods nearby my hometown.

This was the result.


Sitting in the nature, enjoying a beautiful sunset, it hit me why I do this. It's so simple, just beeing out enjoying the present, trying to dokument something as beautiful as it was when I sat there on the hill watching this beautiful sunset. Trying to capture the feeling/mood. And at the same time knowing that it's impossible to capture nature in all it's beautiful vesture as I saw it this evening but atleast try to get as close as possible.

I wish you all a great weekend
/Fredrik

Friday 6 February 2015

Processing tutorial or "Don't throw anything away before a quick fiddle in Lightroom"

Last week I decided to try some night photo in moonlight or some other ambient light. My goal was to shoot a line of trees and light paint the first one with a flashlight (note to self, buy a bigger flashlight). When the setup was done and I was pleased with my composition, i used the flashlight to help the autofocus. After the familiar autofokus beep I looked at the settings, I was i aperture priority, 20 s at f 8. Turning of autofokus and diled in manual mode and scrolled it to the right numbers and took a shoot. The one below is this shoot, straight ot of camera.



Well a tad dark I would say, wondering why this was. Not mentioning the blue color, (I fix it in LR as I always shoot in RAW) Did the whole procedure over again but with the same result. Then it hit me, can take some time when it's 10 degrees celsius below zero and I was freezing. Maybe, just maybe the settings I diled in was from when the flashlight was on the tree and while I was exposing the flashlight only was on the tree about half that time :-) Ahaa there we go, that was the problem and a much lighter picture showed up on the LCD screen on the back of my camera. However now the lightpainting was lost as I had a bit to small flashlight. So I ended up with trying to process the pic above always picturing me it in black and white. But I can's just turn this in to a B&W picture, it would be way to dark. I pushed some of the sliders, exposure, highlight, white, shadows. What makes a black and white pic feel good? I went for the contrast slider in LR and to top it of some blacks and the result you see below. From here you could just drag the saturation slider all the way to the left and you would have a decent B&W photo.



However, my go to software doing B&W conversion is Silver Efex Pro from Nik because of it's diversity.



So there you go, from a photo that is very near the trashcan to a quite nice photo, if I may say it my self.

Right now I have a BIG sale at my webpage http://www.larssonsphoto.com/Gallery/ use the couponcode "FREDRIK20" at the checkout for a total of 20% off on all my prints.

And on that note I wish you all a great weekend

Friday 30 January 2015

Where do you get the inspiration?

Lately I've been lacking inspiration. I haven't taken any photos for over 10 days. My thoughts on this post is to list some of what I do to get inspiration and hope to get some comments on your thoughts and tips on reclaiming inspiration.

One of the first things I do is to browse the web, just looking for some beautiful pictures.
On one hand this could be somewhat counterproductive if you both lack inspiration and at the same time is a bit depressed because of this. Then thoughts like "Wow what a beautiful picture - I can never achieve something nearly as good" But on other hand you can think "Wow what a beautiful picture - I wonder how he/she achieved that. How can I achieve that with my equipment? Right now I've been watching some of von Wong's youtube channel and I have to say, he is a great source for inspiration.

Sometimes it's a good thing to go on a walk in nature not thinking about angles, composition, what would be a great picture, gear, camera settings etc. Just go out and enjoy nature and all it's beauty. I've still not seen any photo that trump nature.

If you don't have to consider money, go out, buy some new equipment like a new camera, a new lens, filter or something else. Or take a photo workshop in a foreign country.

If you are like me and don't have limitless amount of money, choose gear that limit your shooting. Like only bring a 50 mm lens. Or a even more challenge choose a fisheye or a 400mm lens.

Join a community with specific topic, perhaps a topic that is outside your comfort zone. Like if you mostly shoot landscape, join a beauty shoot community or the other way around.

I've joined +The Arcanum and I'm in +Glenn Guy cohort. There I get a lot of inspiration, mostly from my fellow cohortians but also from other people in The Arcanum both masters and people in other cohorts. And this hangout thing on Google, what a great thing. I can sit up here in the north of Europe having a video call with people from all around the world, talking about photo and everything there around.

There you have some of my source to inspiration. Now, please enter some of your idea's in the comment field.

Please visit my page www.larssonsphoto.com to see my photos and buy prints.

Wish you all a great weekend
Fredrik



Friday 2 January 2015

HDR

You who have followed me know my love for HDR. It's when you take several different exposures on the same objekt from to dark to light and then putting it together via software like Photomatix and you get an image that covers more light range then only one exposure could do. This is especially good when you are shooting indoors but have light from a window lighten up part of the picture.

This is true in the picture bellow, it's indoors an old stone church in northern Öland, Sweden. If I had exposed for the dark parts the windows and the lighter parts would have been blown out, totally white. If I on other hand had exposed for the lighter areas the darker parts would have been completely black. This is a 5 exposure HDR, processed in Photomatix, Lightroom, and Viveza.


The church is an old stone church about 750 years old called Källa old church. I have some more photos from this location and will show them in a later post where I also will do a bit more detailed post on my process.

Be sure not to miss any of my posts by entering your e-mailadress to the left and click "submit"

If you want to se some more of my photos head over to:

Wish you all a great weekend

Sunday 4 October 2015

Lübeck a town to fall in love with

The weekend in Lübeck is about to end and I have to say I love Lübeck with all it's old buildings and great history as a Hanseatic town. The Hanseatic League was founded to protect the transport routs in the Baltic ocean.
The closed townscape of medieval brickstone buildings is the reason for Lübeck's attractiveness of today and its place on the UNESCO list as World Heritage Site of Mankind.
There are many places well worthy a visit such as St. Mary's Church, Holstentor, Heiligen-Geist-Hospital and the City hall with its marketplace on the square in front of it.
The food was great, from fine cuisine at The Wullenwever with a star at the Guide Michelin, to more rustic food like bratwurst on the town square in front of City hall.
Lübeck is well worth a visit.
The photo is from an early morning opposite the water surrounding the town centre. The towers are from St. Mary's church. 



Friday 10 April 2015

Passion

Lately I've hardly been photographing anything, lacking of inspiration is what I blame, or laziness. Not caring about sunsets, sunrises, nature, vistas etc.

Two weeks ago I was on vacation at Tenerife, Spain. I've been there several times before, it holds the highest peek in Spain, Teide and it's always a pure joy tho shoot this vulcano. This time what did I do? Just layed by the pool sipping a beer and enjoyed life. When I came home I had skot 15 photos of the pool and my fiancee, usually I shoot about 1000 shots on a vacation. Hrmm LAZY and lacking motivation.

I haven't been out shooting landscape for over a month, until a couple of days ago when I said to myself that this isn't sustainable. I pulled myself up and went out into the woods nearby my hometown.

This was the result.


Sitting in the nature, enjoying a beautiful sunset, it hit me why I do this. It's so simple, just beeing out enjoying the present, trying to dokument something as beautiful as it was when I sat there on the hill watching this beautiful sunset. Trying to capture the feeling/mood. And at the same time knowing that it's impossible to capture nature in all it's beautiful vesture as I saw it this evening but atleast try to get as close as possible.

I wish you all a great weekend
/Fredrik

Friday 6 February 2015

Processing tutorial or "Don't throw anything away before a quick fiddle in Lightroom"

Last week I decided to try some night photo in moonlight or some other ambient light. My goal was to shoot a line of trees and light paint the first one with a flashlight (note to self, buy a bigger flashlight). When the setup was done and I was pleased with my composition, i used the flashlight to help the autofocus. After the familiar autofokus beep I looked at the settings, I was i aperture priority, 20 s at f 8. Turning of autofokus and diled in manual mode and scrolled it to the right numbers and took a shoot. The one below is this shoot, straight ot of camera.



Well a tad dark I would say, wondering why this was. Not mentioning the blue color, (I fix it in LR as I always shoot in RAW) Did the whole procedure over again but with the same result. Then it hit me, can take some time when it's 10 degrees celsius below zero and I was freezing. Maybe, just maybe the settings I diled in was from when the flashlight was on the tree and while I was exposing the flashlight only was on the tree about half that time :-) Ahaa there we go, that was the problem and a much lighter picture showed up on the LCD screen on the back of my camera. However now the lightpainting was lost as I had a bit to small flashlight. So I ended up with trying to process the pic above always picturing me it in black and white. But I can's just turn this in to a B&W picture, it would be way to dark. I pushed some of the sliders, exposure, highlight, white, shadows. What makes a black and white pic feel good? I went for the contrast slider in LR and to top it of some blacks and the result you see below. From here you could just drag the saturation slider all the way to the left and you would have a decent B&W photo.



However, my go to software doing B&W conversion is Silver Efex Pro from Nik because of it's diversity.



So there you go, from a photo that is very near the trashcan to a quite nice photo, if I may say it my self.

Right now I have a BIG sale at my webpage http://www.larssonsphoto.com/Gallery/ use the couponcode "FREDRIK20" at the checkout for a total of 20% off on all my prints.

And on that note I wish you all a great weekend

Friday 30 January 2015

Where do you get the inspiration?

Lately I've been lacking inspiration. I haven't taken any photos for over 10 days. My thoughts on this post is to list some of what I do to get inspiration and hope to get some comments on your thoughts and tips on reclaiming inspiration.

One of the first things I do is to browse the web, just looking for some beautiful pictures.
On one hand this could be somewhat counterproductive if you both lack inspiration and at the same time is a bit depressed because of this. Then thoughts like "Wow what a beautiful picture - I can never achieve something nearly as good" But on other hand you can think "Wow what a beautiful picture - I wonder how he/she achieved that. How can I achieve that with my equipment? Right now I've been watching some of von Wong's youtube channel and I have to say, he is a great source for inspiration.

Sometimes it's a good thing to go on a walk in nature not thinking about angles, composition, what would be a great picture, gear, camera settings etc. Just go out and enjoy nature and all it's beauty. I've still not seen any photo that trump nature.

If you don't have to consider money, go out, buy some new equipment like a new camera, a new lens, filter or something else. Or take a photo workshop in a foreign country.

If you are like me and don't have limitless amount of money, choose gear that limit your shooting. Like only bring a 50 mm lens. Or a even more challenge choose a fisheye or a 400mm lens.

Join a community with specific topic, perhaps a topic that is outside your comfort zone. Like if you mostly shoot landscape, join a beauty shoot community or the other way around.

I've joined +The Arcanum and I'm in +Glenn Guy cohort. There I get a lot of inspiration, mostly from my fellow cohortians but also from other people in The Arcanum both masters and people in other cohorts. And this hangout thing on Google, what a great thing. I can sit up here in the north of Europe having a video call with people from all around the world, talking about photo and everything there around.

There you have some of my source to inspiration. Now, please enter some of your idea's in the comment field.

Please visit my page www.larssonsphoto.com to see my photos and buy prints.

Wish you all a great weekend
Fredrik



Friday 2 January 2015

HDR

You who have followed me know my love for HDR. It's when you take several different exposures on the same objekt from to dark to light and then putting it together via software like Photomatix and you get an image that covers more light range then only one exposure could do. This is especially good when you are shooting indoors but have light from a window lighten up part of the picture.

This is true in the picture bellow, it's indoors an old stone church in northern Öland, Sweden. If I had exposed for the dark parts the windows and the lighter parts would have been blown out, totally white. If I on other hand had exposed for the lighter areas the darker parts would have been completely black. This is a 5 exposure HDR, processed in Photomatix, Lightroom, and Viveza.


The church is an old stone church about 750 years old called Källa old church. I have some more photos from this location and will show them in a later post where I also will do a bit more detailed post on my process.

Be sure not to miss any of my posts by entering your e-mailadress to the left and click "submit"

If you want to se some more of my photos head over to:

Wish you all a great weekend