Geek Pride 2016 - A Photo Comic

Gateway!

Gateway! (Model: Malin Wennlund, Photographer: Henrik Mårtensson)

The picture above is a composite made of three different photos.

The first picture is the photo of the model Malin Wennlund. Malin is a Steampunk enthusiast, and made the dress herself.

It was easy to mask Malin out in Pixelmator.

The background is a sunset shot from Partille, just outside Gothenburg.

I shot the wall and gate in Halmstad. As you can see, the shot is very bright. I did take a couple of photos at different exposures, but in the end, this was the best to use. 

It looks pretty horrible, but it was pretty easy to darken the whole thing. The initial step was to just reduce the exposure. Then I copied the image, and changed the blend mode of the top image to Hard Light. That gave me the late afternoon, saturated look I wanted.

The Witch!

The Witch!

I am sticking with the Fantasy and magic theme I began to explore with Sword, Rose, and Hexagram.

This photo is from a photo shoot shoot with Malin Wennlund. I enjoy collaborations, where everyone contributes ideas. Malin knows her Fantasy and Science-Fiction very well, so working with her is very, very fun.

Sword, Rose, and Hexagram – A Quick Deconstruction

Model: Anita Pecaver, Photographer: Henrik Mårtensson

I shot the model in the picture above, Anita Pecaver, some time ago during a photo meetup in Photo Meetup in Gothenburg. I had arranged an Angels & Demons themed photo & coffee meetup.

There is a distinct shortage of castle ruins and scorched plains in the Gothenburg area, so I had to do a composite. I'll walk you through the parts.

The model: Anita, with a sword and rose

Anita Pecaver

I shot Anita in a café, during a photography event with about 30 people, and chaos everywhere.

These events are fun, but also cramped and chaotic, so the shots are rarely studio quality. The idea is to have fun, meet people, and learn things, not to take perfect photos.

However, we often manage to create quite interesting pictures during these events. The chaos forces everyone to be creative, and to use a minimum of resources in new and unexpected ways.

It was Anita herself, and another model, Peter Markusson, who asked me to take a shot of Anita with a rose and a sword.

Note the angel wings. I removed them from the final picture, because they did not quite fit. I considered replacing them with a much larger set of wings in post, but I'll save that for another day, and another photo.

The Ground: Scorched earth, and a hexagram

The lawn in the photo above is the basic ground in the picture. I masked out the buildings and the sky, and removed the trees and other things.

The ground looked a bit boring. I wanted to make both the color and the texture more interesting, so I added...

A photo of one of my notebooks. I like the color, and also the fake leathery texture.

I removed the pattern, except for the hexagram in the middle. When I composited the images, I changed the perspective, and used various blending techniques to bring out the color and texture.

The Castle: A Ruin Most Sinister

I didn't have a real castle handy, so I went out and bought one! To save a bit of petty cash, I made do with a model. I bought it in a pet shop.

The Mountains of Madness: Hellboy Would Feel Right at Home

I shot the mountains from the third floor of an apartment building in Partille. This shot looks utterly uninspiring, but I did not shoot what it actually looks like. I shot the picture I had in my mind.

Actually, the picture in my mind wasn't exactly crystal clear at this time, but I knew I wanted something in the background, to help me transition from the flat plain, to the sky.

The Sky: Now You See It, but Mostly You don't!

The sky sucks where I live! Most of the time, it is a uniform, grey, 100% cloud cover. It is like living inside a giant softbox! Not only does the sky look boring, it also kills all shadows, because the clouds spread the light. It also mutes the light.

A couple of years ago, when I bought my DSLR, I thought it was broken at first, because the light was so bad. Now, I have learned to live with it, and to always, always, bring a couple of flashes with me.

On the rare occasions when there is a break in the cloud cover, I shoot anything even remotely interesting, just in case I will need it later.

Compositing: Just Do It!

When I had the pieces, I composited them with Pixelmator while sitting in a cafeteria at a local Laserdome. My son was invited to a birthday party, and I decided to bring my own fun.

I finished the picture later the same evening.

One useful little trick:

I match the light in the composite photos by adding a white layer on top of everything, and setting the blend mode to Saturation. This turns the picture black and white.

I can then change the light in each individual part, to roughly match the other parts.

Then, I match colors in a separate step, and add shadows where necessary.

Angel

This photo is practice for an angels and demons themed photo meetup I am hosting on the 13th of February in Gothenburg.

The model is Therese Ekblad.

I shot feathers and down, and put the wings together in Pixelmator. I plan to create at least two more wing designs for the photo shoot.

Skull Mountain

Just an idea I had in my head... It is winter, and the landscape in Partille, Sweden, looks quite otherworldly at times.

Not quite this otherworldly though. I made the mountain a bit higher, and added the skull. The skull is really an aquarium prop I bought awhile ago. It is nearly full size, and looks quite realistic.

Adding snow, trees, and ice to the skull was easy in Pixelmator.

Write and Sell! – How to write and publish a book in 14 days

This blog is supposed to be about photography, but from time to time, my other interests creep in. I recently released a brand new book, Skriv och sälj!: Skriv och sälj en bok på 14 dagar  (Write and Sell!: Write and sell a book in 14 days). The book is out on Adlibris , Bokus Dito , and Bokon.

Writing a book usually takes 6-12 months. How do you write it, and start selling it, in just 14 days? Can it be done?
Yes, it is unusual, but not unprecedented. For example, Michael Moorcock, one of my favourite authors, used to write his books in the Eternal Champion cycle in about a week. He wrote more than 50 of them.

You might think writing and publishing a book in 14 days means you have to work very hard, but it does not. As you might know, I work with process improvement. Have a look at this computer simulation of two projects:

Notice how, at the start stage, the blue and the yellow project works at exactly the same speed. At each stage, the speed is exactly the same in the two projects. And yet, if you look at the other end, where the work is finished, the blue project finishes twice as fast as the yellow project. (Yes, I wrote the simulation, several years ago.)
The reason why the blue project finishes faster, is that it uses something called load balancing. You can load balance almost any process, including writing and publishing books.
As it turns out, with writing and publishing, load balancing works great! Writing, and publishing, a book in two weeks is entirely feasible, and you actually work less than a writer trying to do the same thing in 6-12 months.
And, of course, if you write, say, one book per month, while your competitors have finished and published one book, you have finished and published, and gotten paid for, 6-12 books.
That is pretty good. Also, with every book you write, your sales per book tend to increase, at least if you write well enough to make your readers want more of your books. For me, being able to reduce lead times in this way, means I can take on more work. It also means my management consulting customers know they get the real deal.