Vacation

As you read on my previous post I've been on vacation at Maspalomas, Canarie islands, Spain. Now we're back since yesterday afternoon. Lightroom is now working hard to import all the photos. I didn't shoot as much as I wanted. But I dedicated about one and a half day for shooting.

On Tuesday after being up at sunrise, well, before sunrise to shoot some pic's when the first sun hits the dunes of Maspalomas me and my fiancee with friends took the car and drove inlands up the mountains. Those serpentine paths isn't to play with. The clouds where very low and the rain was on and of. The mountains are truly beautiful with it's valleys and peaks.

I shot some panoramas over 5 pics so my Mac will have to work hard while stitching them together in Photoshop. I hope there is some gems there. However the first pic i processed was not a panorama but a stunning view.

The techie stuff
Nikon D800, Nikon 24-70 mm 2.8 @ 28 mm and @ f8. 5 exp HDR processed in Photomatix Pro, Color Efex Pro, Viveza, Lightroom.

Stay tuned for next weeks blog where more pics from Gran Canarie will follow.

Have a great weekend

#travel #travelphotograpy #landscape #landscapephotography 

Travel photography Maspalomas

Weiii on Friday we're of to Maspalomas, Grand Canarie, Spain. Me and my fiancée use to take a trip to the Canarie islands once in early spring and once in late autumn. We always vary between Grand Canarie and Tenerife depending on our mood. Tenerife for the dramatic landscape with high mountains and Teide as it's king. Grand Canarie for the beaches and a bit calmer landscape. We haven't been to any of the other islands.

Well this time it's Grand Canarie with it's great desert beach Maspalomas and this time I thought about not only shooting landscapes, vistas, sunrises and sunsets. I'm going to try and dig deeper in to the travel photography genre. Taking some online courses, reading some books so I'm feeling ready and you will see some results after my trip.

Thought I'll end this post with the popular segment "What's in my bag" or rather what gear will I bring to Grand Canarie, so here goes:

Body:
Nikon D800
Nikon D600 as backup

Lenses:
Nikon 14 - 24 mm 2.8, for those sunrise and grand vista shots
Nikon 24 - 70 mm 2.8, my "goto" lens, my all time favorite
Nikon 70 - 200 mm 2.8, mostly for photographing people, I think I'll use this more this time as I'm shooting for more travel type of photo.
Nikon 2.0 converter

Filter:
Lee Big Stopper
Lee hard grad
Lee soft grad
Hoya polarizer

Tripod:
Gitzo and Gitzo ballhead

Camera strap:
Black Rapid

Bag:
Lovepro Flipside 300

Other:
Nikon speedlight 700
Extra batteries
Charger
Memoriecards

The shot below is from a sunrise in Maspalomas 12:th November 2013 very close to one year ago
Wish you all a great weekend and week.

+Maspalomas Costa Canaria  +Spain Guides  +CANARIE +MaspalomasNews.com +Maspalomas +Ving Sverige - Vingresor #nikon +Nikon Shooters +Nikon USA

Autumn

For many photographers autumn is the best time of the year. The color explosions in all the foliage. Nature makes it self ready for winter and everything slows down.

In Sweden this is true from mid September thru October. However November and early December are very grey, dark and gloomy. The days are short, it's dark when you leave for work and dark when you come home. As a photographer and person I mostly wait for the first snow, when everything brightens up. Nature dresses in it's best winter suit.

But for now grey, dark and gloomy will have to do and seriously you can make some great shots this time of the year. Aiming for some moodiness in your pictures isn't that hard. The weather is made for just that.

So the lesson this week is, get out and shoot no matter the season. It's a great time for som moody photos.

I leave you with this shot I took earlier today. I might gone a bit to far with the moodiness but I like it :-)

Have a great weekend all

Edward Scissorhands

Social Media

Now that I've been in to photographing for about 4 years I'm starting to see a growth of interested of my social media page's. Some more then others, at google plus near 12000 people have circled me. +Fredrik Larsson is my google plus page for you who haven't circled me already :-)

On the other hand my photo page on Facebook isn't growing the way that I want it to do. One reason being that I write all in Swedish there. Only about 315 "likes" on my page.

And on Instagram it's like Facebook about 400 followers. My all time low is on twitter, only 45 followers.

Why is this? I mean from 12000 to 45 is quite the drop :-) I guess one of the obvious reasons is the different public. +Guy Kawasaki described it like this:

Twitter = Perception, what happens here and now, for example "Car crash on route 66, 3 injured taken to hospital" Many uses twitter as an update status app, like - "Check out my new blog on shutter speed"

Instagram = Twitter, but with photo's. There is a lake with photo app's for your phone that intergrate with your instagram account. More and more people upload their DSLR pic's to instagram but I still think that phone photos are most common.

Facebook = People, those you want to stay close to, like family members, friends etc. Many update their status based on what they are doing, like "Ahh nothing beats a really hard workout" or "Having a drink on the beach" followed by a photo of a Pina Colada. Another common thing is sharing your baby/pet progress "Look at Steve's first steps" followed by a video. One of the most usual shares, to many annoyance is game invitations to like Candy Crush.

Google Plus = Passion, You have a passion? This is the place for you. For me, my passion is photography and this is made to share beautiful pictures. But also if your not into photographing, it's great. If your passion is dogs, cats, football, soccer, history, gadgets etc there are community's for everyone. With all the integrations with other google apps it can make your social media life online so much easier.

Conclusion :-)
Since my passion is photographing, my go to social media page is google plus, there is where i publish most posts. More posts and interaction = more that take an interest in what you are writing.

Beneath is screenprints on my accounts, if you click the name below the pic you get to that page. Why not "Like, follow or circle?" :-)

Have a great weekend all
Ciao

Instagram

Facebook

Google plus

Twitter

Not a photo-blog, just a little :-)

Party!!

Been in the kitchen all afternoon, the biggest party in my hometown is tonight. It's called "Ride around party" and it's not that easy to explain it, even in swedish :-) 
A lot of couples gets an invitation and get one of three tasks, appetizer, dinner or dessert. Of course we got dinner this year again... 
Then, a couple of days ago we got a letter telling us that we shall be on an adress for appetizers, there we stay for about 1,5 hour then we rush home (two other couples get a new letter at their first stop that they shall be at our home for dinner) we have two couples for dinner. After this we open a letter that says where we and the two other couples shall be for dessert (not the same adress) and at the last place after dessert we open a new letter where it says where the big party is at. About 300 couples does this during the evening (the best evening for the local taxi company) As I said in the beginning it's not that easy to explain this :-)

Well now all preparations are done and I do some processing, sipping a glas of wine for relaxing. So here is the result from the process:

*I follow*
Taken outside of Vetlanda, a nearby town.
HDR - Of Course :-) 5 exp
Photomatix Pro, Viveza 2 and Lightroom
Enjoy

Wish you all a great weekend (you from Europe, don't forget to set the wintertime tonight :-))

Getting better

Well it's been a tad over 4 years since I got my first DSLR and what a journey it has been. First shooting only in "green" mode, jpg, not processing at all and now aperture priority or manual, often manually focusing. Knowing what shutterspeed does to the photo, or dept of field. Using filters, thinking about composition and the "rules" and when to break them :-) Also learning more about post-processing like +Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and plug-ins like +Nik Collection by Google or Photomatix.
Going from showing my fiancee my pic's and she says ahhh great pic, to selling prints on regular basis.

I've literally eaten everything I got my hands on, books, online courses, exhibitions, etc. This has gotten me from the first pic to the second one. I think I'm getting better for every shot I take, always learning. One of the things I truly love about photography is that you never get to the place where you feel like I'm now fully learned.

The latest project is entering +The Arcanum with +Glenn Guy as my mentor hoping to take me to new heights.

Where have your journey taken you?

This is one of my first sunset pic's.

And this is my latest pic of the sunset.

Goals

As I’ve said before I attend the Arcanum a master/cohort type of learning. This is a great learning experience with the master +Glenn Guy  and my fellow apprentices. I’m getting critique and tips on what to do to make it better, then I head out in the field trying the new ideas. Well this can get somewhat overwhelming, much to take in. 

The other day I saw a short film by +Peter Giordano  about some of the new feathers in the Arcanum and one in particular that caught my interest, about setting goals. You can tell your fellow apprentices your goal with a particular photo, like “my goal with this photo is for the viewer to feel a certain feeling” and so on. Or you can make bigger goals, like I want to improve my street photography.

I think it is essential to set goals in what ever you do, that you want to improve. So what do I want to improve? Everything? Yes maybe but that wouldn’t be productive it’s like not seeing the forest because of all the three type of thing. I might want to narrow it down a bit. 

Ok, I would like to be able to take killer black and white shots. Still quite a wide goal, black and white shots of what? People? Architectural? Cityscape? Macro? 

I would like to be able to take killer black and white landscape shots. Ok we’re getting there, but still to big I think. Vistas? Macro? Seascape? Mountain?

I would like to be able to take killer black and white landscape shots with the emphases on “less is more” where the composition is crucial. 

Aaaah nearly there, but if you set a goal how to know when you achieve it? You need to be able to measure it. And how to measure this goal? That depends on your self. I’m going to state the measure “sold at least 5 different fine-art prints”

There you go, my goal for the time being. Of course I keep on shooting HDR, color landscape, macro and so forth, but in the back of my head I have my goal and thinking about it when I’m location scouting.

You all have a great weekend

And lastly I know this isn't a black and white pic, but I like the road going up to "nothingness" with a lot of empty space.