Portraits, personality, and punch

Stefan Högberg

A few days ago I photographed Stefan Högberg and Lennart Guldbrandsson. Stefan and Lennart wanted pictures for advertising a presentation on copyright.

Lennart is a writer, his speciality is ghostwriting. Stefan works at the Region Archive in Gothenburg. We shot at the Region Archive, because the environment there relates to the subject matter of the presentation, and to Stefan's and Lennart's jobs.

Lennart Guldbrandsson

To capture a person's personality, you need to get to know them. Lennart and I know each other from before, but I had not met Stefan previously.

Before the shoot, we had a cup of coffee and talked about what we were going to do. We decided to try  a couple of different locations. We ended up shooting at three. It is important to get a variety of photos, so that the client has material to choose from.

For the portraits above I used a fairly wide aperture, f5.6, to blur the background a bit. I used three flashes: Two were set to the left and right, at an angle of about 30-40 degrees. The third flash was put behind the subjects, and used to light the background a bit.

The catchlights in the eyes are important. They make the faces look alive and friendly.

No books were harmed while creating this picture!

We had a fun session, and could not resist getting a bit whimsical. We had not planned to make a levitation photo, but suddenly, it seemed a good idea, and we did.

Planket Photo Exhibition

Planket (The Fence) is a yearly photo exhibition in Gothenburg. We were 130 photographers who exhibited our work along a wooden fence in central Gothenburg.

I'll make a brief presentation of some of the exhibitors here. You will find more photos in the slideshow above.

Cornelia Schmidt showed off some of the artwork from her forthcoming book Just People. Cornelia is doing some stunning work, bringing out character and personality in the people she is photographing. The photos are both respectful and funny, a difficult thing to bring off when everyone is photographed nude.

Kjell Nilsson showed his large scale macro photography.

Tim, my son, was my assistant for the day. He wants to exhibit his own work next year. I have promised to assist.

Lina Wennström setting up her photos. I show more of her work in the slideshow.

Jan Kwarnmark is a street photographer. His work shows a great understanding of composition, and timing.

As for myself, I had picket five candidate pictures for the exhibition. Then I asked my son Tim to pick two of them. He picked the one of me levitating, and the dinosaur.

In all, it was a fun day, I got a lot of photo inspiration, and some ideas about what to do next time.

Butterfly Dreams

I got the idea for the butterfly dreams picture a couple of months ago, in early spring. I knew the perfect location for the shot, less than a hundred meters from where my mother lives. Unfortunately, the trees had no leaves, so I had to wait.

When my son and I visited my mother recently, I got the opportunity I had been waiting for.

My son and I went for a walk. When we got to the right spot, I checked the light and took a series of test pictures. It worked very well.

I needed clothes that matched the light, so I bought a pair of green trousers and a green t-shirt. Shooting at the right time of day was also important. I decided to shoot early in the evening. The sun was still up, but low in the sky. This provided me with the green color I wanted, soft shadows, and ambient light I could control with my camera settings.

I used two remote controlled flashes. Both had green gels to match the light filtered through the tree leaves. I put one of the flashes behind me, on my camera tripod, to provide a glowing edge, separating my body from the background.

The other flash I mounted on a Gorilla pod, a small tripod with flexible legs. I put the Gorilla pod in a tree to the left of the path. I wanted the flash to have the same direction as the sun.

Finally, I mounted the camera on a second Gorilla pod and put it on the ground. By putting the camera close to the ground, I ensured that my feet would be above the ground line. If the camera had been higher, the final picture would have looked as if I was standing on the ground.

After taking the shot of me, I removed all visible equipment, and took a background photo. The Gorilla pod in the tree provided a bit of extra brightness in the foreground.

I wanted a splash of light directly beneath me on the ground, so I took a third shot where I hold a flash and aim it down, towards the ground.

Combining the three images in Pixelmator was easy, just a matter of creating masks and painting out the parts I did not want. The picture above shows the first version of the image. I thought it looked a little bit boring, and there was no clue to why I was screaming and hovering in the air.

Originally I had considered adding a crackling energy field, but looking at the picture, I thought that would not fit very well, so I went for a softer glow and butterflies instead.

To get the glow, I duplicated the layer containing the picture of me, loaded a selection from the mask, disabled the mask, inverted the selection, and erased the background. I the used Pixelmator's Glow effect. I moved the Glow layer behind the layer of me.

I used three butterfly layers, each with butterflies of slightly different color and size. The butterfly is a brush from Pixelmator's built-in Nature set.

Finally, I played with the layer modes, changing the butterfly layers to Screen and Linear Dodge to get the effect I wanted. I also erased a few butterflies that were covering my mouth and eyes.

In all, a fun exercise. I will probably do more variations of this picture, just to try a few ideas out.

Business Networking: One-to-One with Kimmo Hakonen from Responsified

Kimmo Hakonen

I recently had a One-to-One meeting with Kimmo Hakonen from Responsified. Responsified is a web site design company in Gothenburg specializing in responsive design.

Responsive design is the method recommended by Google for building smartphone optimized web sites. The idea is to serve the same content, regardless of the device used for viewing, but use CSS3 style sheets to layout them differently depending on the size of the viewing device. With responsive design text is always viewed at a readable size, and pictures are resized to fit the viewing window.

One of the reasons why responsive design is big, is that Google boosts the rank of web sites that use responsive design. The main reason though, is that more and more people surf the web using smartphones and tablets. According to a TechCrunch blog post, more than 1.3 million Android devices are activated each day. Add to that the iPhones and the iPads.

With browsing habits changing, there is a need for responsive design, and that is where Kimmo and Responsified are focusing their efforts.

Kimmo and I met at Business Network International (BNI) (BNI International, BNI Sweden). Web designers and photographers can help each other out:

Some of my clients need help with web page design, so I can refer clients to a web design company that I trust.

In his work, Kimmo's company sometimes has clients that need photos for their new website. If you start looking at business websites, it is amazing how often the photos on them could do with a bit of extra pizazz. If Kimmo and his partners like my work, and trust me, they can refer clients to me.

You may have noted, it all boils down to mutual trust. This is why Kimmo and I met, not to do business, but to get to know each other, to see if we can be of value to each other, and to each other's clients.

Getting to know each other means more than just understanding each other's business. Kimmo is a painter. He also works with Photoshop, starting with a photo which he turns into an abstract work of art. His work is different from mine, but I appreciate and enjoy it a lot.

Over time, we will continue to meet to explore how we can build a trust based, mutual benefit relationship. At the same time, we will both explore in other directions, with clients, fellow BNI members, and others.

Because we will meet at BNI meetings once a week, building a working business relationship will be much easier than it would otherwise be.

Rock'n Roll Wedding

Tanja and Hasse at Mopperock. As one guest commented, "it's the coolest wedding I've been to, including my own!"

Tanja Vornanen and Hasse Kosonen met five years ago at Mopperock, a Swedish rock festival. It was the last Mopperock festival, until Tanja and Hasse decided to get married.

To celebrate the way they met, they decided to reboot Mopperock. Reboot it they did: 1,200 people came to the coolest wedding party ever.

The moment. 

I met Hasse because he is a member of the rock band Mays Hounds. I was shooting at a Mays Hounds gig recently. When Hasse told me about the wedding plans and asked if I would be the wedding photographer, I was both honored and delighted.

Hasse Kosonen in action.

A very warm Thank You to Tanja and Hasse for allowing me to be their wedding photographer, for giving me permission to blog about their wedding, and for allowing me to add their wedding pictures to my portfolio. (I'll post a link when the portfolio is updated.)

The Photo Duel - Lifestyle Portraiture with Patricia Mellin

I had a photo duel with Patricia Mellin yesterday, got thoroughly trounced, and loved every minute of it! Don't get me wrong, I got some very good shots of Patricia, it is just that she shot a whole series of excellent lifestyle portraits of me. I like them a lot, and I am very happy to show some of her photos off here. I will also do an analysis of each shot, to show why I like them, and what to learn from them.

Patricia is a social media strategist, and owner of Patricia Mellin Consulting. I met her at Business Network International (BNI) meetings a couple of times, but it was when I ran into her at a café that we  started talking.

What I immediately liked about Patricia was that she practices what she teaches. She has built a great social media presence. When she speaks about social media, it is from personal experience. You can get an overview of her social media presence on Xeeme.com. As a photographer, I am of course interested in social media, and Patricia's experience makes her very well worth listening to.

Patricia showed me a couple of shots she had taken at a BNI meeting the very same day. Some of the shots had me in them, and in every one, she had caught me when I had an odd facial expression, or had twisted parts of my body into unlikely positions. I had no idea I looked that weird at business meetings...

I did the natural thing for a photographer: I challenged Patricia to a photo duel. She accepted. Yesterday we went to the Gothenburg Gardening Association to duel with our cameras.

I hold to the Marine Corps motto: If you get into a fair fight, you haven't prepared enough! In this case, I knew that my greatest advantage would be that Patricia is beautiful, whereas I have a face made for radio. As it turned out, it wasn't enough of an advantage. Patricia made me look good in the pictures. Quite a feat for any photographer.

I knew I had considerably more camera gear, but camera gear does not enable you to take better pictures. Camera gear enables you to take different kinds of pictures, which is another thing altogether. Thus, I went lightly armed, with just my camera, couple of flashes, remote controls, small softbox, two lenses... Well, that is a lot less gear than I usually pack when I go out the door.

Patricia used just her pocket camera and camera phone, and got this shot:

This is an excellent lifestyle portrait: Patricia caught me with a big smile on my face. The composition is very good, with my head and my camera as balancing elements. And, she went in close, which makes for a more interesting picture.

The background is also very good: A bit darker than my face, which helps viewers focus on the subject, which happens to be me.

A lifestyle portrait should tell something about what a person is. Patricia told my story, "happy photographer guy", and did it very well, with one click!

If you follow this blog, you may recall that I am working on a photo book. I have been working on a chapter on portrait photography, and how to catch the essence of a person in a photo.

I needed some new portraits for the chapter, and yesterday, while we were dueling, Patricia did the job for me. In the photo above, we see it again: There is great composition, this time with the camera lens creating a leading line to my head. The background is darker than my face, which makes the face stand out clearly. The story is about focus, determination, and dedication.

We finished off by having coffee at a café, and there, Patricia nailed it again: Happy photographer guy!

I love this one: Great composition again, with the camera in the foreground, main subject in the middle ground, and the trees as the backdrop.

Patricia uploaded a set of pictures to Flickr. Go and have a look!

Of course, I did shoot some pictures too. Here is a slideshow for your enjoyment. I think you can see how enjoyable the shoot was.

You can find Patricia on Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, and of course her company website. You might guess that a social media strategist would blog, and you would be right. Patricia does blog.

Patricia and I have decided that this was too much fun to do only once. We will have a rematch. When we do, I am sure we'll have some interesting photos to show you.

High Key Dreaming

High Key is a photographic technique where you create bright, very low contrast images. Usually, the background is white, though any color can be used.

Originally, High Key lighting techniques were developed for early film and television, which could not handle high contrast scenes. Nowadays, High Key is mostly used to create an upbeat or dreamy mood.

For the image above, I used a light box. I lit the back screen with spotlights from behind. The mask was lit by two flashes from the front, as in the lighting diagram.

The original photo, before post processing

As you can see, the original photo, straight out of the camera, is much less enticing than the final result.

To begin with, I cropped the image to remove the space between the chin and the edge of the photo. I then used a Repair brush to remove the eye, nostril, and mouth holes in the white mask.

Then, I reduced contrast, and increased Brightness and Exposure.

Throughout the process, I kept a careful look on a histogram showing me the brightness levels in the picture. My goal was to shift low and mid level parts of the curve to the right, without having the rightmost parts pushed off the right edge. That way, I could create a low contrast image, without overexposing parts of it.