April 3rd, 2010
It has been a rather busy couple of weeks and I haven’t had a chance to update the blog with weekly photos. I was on business trip in San Diego for a week and a half, which was a nice change to the almost daily snow shoveling here in Finland.
During the week end I had a chance to drive around the San Diego county and take a few photos.
On Saturday I drove with a couple of colleagues to small desert town – Borrego Springs. Coming down the mountain via S22 gives a nice view to the desert and the town.
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This is the time of the year when desert flowers bloom after the short rainy season. After a few weeks desert dries up again for the rest of the year.
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We left Borrego Springs via highway S3 and 78 which took us to old gold mining town in the mountains – Julian. Town is pretty lively at least in the spring and summer week ends, but other times I assume it is pretty quiet here.
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Of course when you are in San Diego, you just have to visit the beaches as well.
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March 12th, 2010
… well – not really, but there was a wedding portrait session at the Kuutio club monthly happening on Tuesday. We had one one “real” couple (this was not their “official” wedding portrait though) and a pair of models in the session acting as the groom and bride. As usual, there were half a dozen club members and other Studio Kuutio activists in the event with their cameras so plenty of portraits were generated.
Setting up the lights for this kind of shoot was a new experience for me, as I have been shooting mostly individual portraits and there has been no need to worry about shadows on other person’s face. It certainly was good to get some practice on this in case I get a chance to shoot couples or groups in a studio.
The portrait on the right is of the model couple. Two soft boxes from top and below straight in front of the couple. Works pretty well, but produces easily two catch lights into the eyes (easily fixed with Photoshop). One gridded strobe used for the background.
The other light setup had two large soft boxes pretty much in front of the couple and one gridded beauty dish on the top and one strobe on the left side behind the couple. Background lighted with one tight grid.
Big thanks to the models, they kept their happy face on through the whole two and a half hour session. Something I probably would not have been able to do.
February 28th, 2010
Yesterday I had a chance to photograph in the Finnish Dance championship competition in Oulu. It was a bit harder that I thought as the dancers are pretty quick in their moves and there were up to 12 pairs on the floor at the same time. Getting and unobstructed view to your target pair, good light and nice pose all at the same time was a rare moment. There was not much time to think about composition and focusing. Getting a clean background was pretty much mission impossible.
February 21st, 2010
Winter seems to have a firm grip on Finland. This week end was again rather chilly – but beautiful. On Saturday temperature was -28 C and ice on the river was forming big frost flowers and open water produced nice steam.
February 13th, 2010
This week we had the monthly studio Kuutio club session. Theme for this session was “Special close up portrait”. I’m not sure if I ever grasped the meaning of “special” in this context, but I did my best to get some close up shots.
