A Guitar Hero

Yes, there was again the great Aalborg Carnival this weekend and I have plenty of photos that I have to edit at some point ... Today let me just post one of them from a concert of the group called Superstition that took place on Saturday afternoon. There was still lots of natural light and this mixed with strong tungsten spots added a nice warm tone to the guitarist, contrasting nicely with the somewhat cooler tones at the huge LCD background. This is essentially how the shot came out of the camera. There was no flash used and the trick was really the composition and timing. I was waiting for the rotating background screen to show the player in order to use the repetition. That had to synchronize with a good expression of the guitarist. During one song I was able to get about 4-5 great shots and this was one of the best. Hope you will like it too. Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 70-200 4L at 91mm, F5.6 @ 1/640, ISO 400.

Grease Style

Not a long time ago I was asked by our friends to photograph their daughter. There was a nice, old car standing in front of their house and I was thinking about how can I create something special for them. It was a sunny day, everybody was relaxed and the famous musicals Grease and Saturday Night Fever came to my mind. I opened the front door of the car, ask the girl to sit with her legs crossed over and suggested the position of her hands to make the photo look natural. Then it was a question of finding the right angle so that the leading lines point to her (there are really many of them on this photo) and press the shutter. The main light was provided by my off-camera speedlite 580EX II with 1/4 CTO gel to camera left and the accent light at her hair is thanks to the sun. Normally I would shoot with an umbrella but the sun was very strong so I fired a bare flash to create the butterfly lighting pattern. The picture also took a deal of postprocessing in Lightroom but it never saw Photoshop. I followed a great Lightroom tutorial by Scott Kelby here to create the effect I wanted. I might write little bit more about this in some future post. But now let's return to the sixties and seventies and enjoy the photo! Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 24-105 4L at 82mm, F13 @ 1/250, ISO 200.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Let me post a third picture that I took on my S90 compact camera recently. I was impressed by the light at the end of the tunnel on one morning couple of days ago. Lucky enough, I had my S90 with me that day. The photo was taken in JPG so that highlights at the end of the tunnel are completely blown out but I really don't mind it in this kind of situation. The ceiling and the ground were full of dark green which was very easy to selectively desaturate in Lightroom. After cleaning a few color spots with a brush and adding some vibrance and vignetting, the photo was ready just in a few minutes. Camera spec: Canon Powershot S90 at 6mm, F4 @ 1/25, ISO 80.

Converging Lines

This is why I love my new Powershot S90, it is always with me! A few days ago I was delivering my daughter to the kinder garden and it was very early in the morning. On the way back I noticed the beautiful shadows of the trees and the converging lines giving a nice feeling of depth of the scene. Picked up the S90 camera, went to the AV mode with -2/3 EV and took the shot. Enjoy! Camera spec: Canon Powershot S90 at 6mm, F8 @ 1/80, ISO 80.

Aalborg in Colors

Two days ago I had a nice walk in downtown of Aalborg with my new Powershot S90 in my pocket. The weather was still little bit chilly for this time of the year but the sky was beautifully blue. I used the FART method and realized that I like the contrast among the green grass, blue sky and red/white building. After finding the right angle and framing with the tree in foreground I got this shot which I truly like. The colors from S90 came out really great (I used the vivid setting and shot in JPG). Seems like that this small compact camera will become my good companion! Camera spec: Canon Powershot S90, F5.6 @ 1/800, ISO 80.

Leading Lines

Today I would like to share with you a photo of this young pretty lady that I took a couple of weeks ago. In all my recent work I try to focus on composition and I have become a big fan of negative space, as seen on the right of the photo. Moreover, the subtle lines in the bricks at the background all lead towards her, which makes the photo dramatic but soft at the same time (if you don't see the lines, you have to adjust the contrast and brightness of your monitor). I have to thank to David Ziser and his blog DigitalProTalk.com for teaching me to see the lines in his numerous video tutorials. The lighting was also done ala David with a shoot-through umbrella on a monopod at camera left. I opted for a broad lighting on this photo as it, first of all, suits my model very well and second it provides a very nice high-key background effect right behind her which is slowly disappearing as we progress to the right where the leading lines become visible. The on-camera flash was bounced to the wall on the right to fill-in the shadows just a bit. The colors of the final photo were only slightly improved in Lightroom to achieve a more fashion-like look. Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 24-105 4L at 90mm, F5.6 @ 1/125, ISO 400.

Tulips Again

Well, I could not resist to post this photo. What is so special about it? I took it on my brand new camera, Canon Powershot S90. Yes, I know ... it is a compact camera but there are a few things I quite like about it. First of all, it is as portable as it can get, which means I can always have it with me. Second, the quality of the photos (especially in a good light) is very good. The lens is sharp and the colors are reproduced very nicely (I used the vivid mode for this photo). Take a look at the 100% crop on the right. Third, it has all the Av, Tv and Manual modes I am used to from my SLR cameras. The ISO performance is ok up to ISO 400, which feels like ISO 3200 on my 5D mark ii (which is actually not bad at all). Further on it get quite noisy, but this was to be expected. A nice feature is that the lens at its wide end is F2.0, which is really good. So far I try to shoot at ISO 80 (the lowest possible) as often as I can and the results look very good. I somehow thing that more photos taken with S90 will follow in the future on this blog. If you want to read more about this nice little camera, take a look here. Camera spec: Canon Powershot S90 at 10.7mm, F3.2 @ 1/60, ISO 80.

A Flower for Daddy

A few weeks ago I have received a nice tulip-flower from my three years old daughter at the occasion of my name day. It was such a beautiful flower that it deserved to be published on my blog. I though how to make the flower stand out and decided to do a purely natural light high-key photo with lots of negative space around. I very much like the result. Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 70-200 4L IS at 200mm, F5.6 @ 1/40, ISO 400.