Whole March, the weather has been amazing – sun shine and few degrees below zero! Today was no exception. We were playing outside in the snow and I had my camera along to capture some snow fun.
A few more pics: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-03-24+Snow+Fun+Vol3/
After 15cm of snowfall last night, it was a beautiful winter day today. We decided to head out for some cross-country skiing with the kids.
A few more shots: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-03-03+Skiing+with+the+kids/
Today was the second annual Samsung Koffari Slopestyle event in downtown Helsinki. I decided to head there with the kids to enjoy a nice winter sunday, hopefully meet some old friends and take some photos. And it turned out to be a very good day. We had a magnificent day with the kids, I did manage to take some photos and even see a few old friends.
A few more shots from the session: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-03-03+Koffari+Slopestyle+2013/
For tech geeks:
Today’s theme was simple. I only had my Sigma 50-150/2.8 lens along and used it to shoot all of the shots. I think it was a perfect companion for today.
For the past two months we have been building and maintaining a snow park in our yard with Ode. Today we again had a 1h session. this time I took my camera along to get some shots of Ode. The guy is developing at an amazing speed. I only wish I could learn that fast…Maybe it’s his motivation, everyday I come back from work he asks if we could go snowboarding.
Rest of the shots: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-02-20+Ode+snowboarding/
This has been yet another magnificent winter with plenty of snow. The kids (and I) love it. A few weeks ago I took my camera out when we were building snow slides. A few more pics from that session are available here: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-02-10+Snow+fun/
For tech geeks:
I used again my trusted two speedlight setup triggered with Elinchrome skyports.
I was given the job of taking our company portrait during an annual gathering. We took some traditional group portraits inside, but I think this is the best one. We walked right onto one of the main streets in downtown Helsinki and blocked the traffic for a few minutes to get this shot. I really like the Finnish atmosphere that shines from it…look at the guy all the way to the right in his t-shirt in the middle of Finnish winter.
For tech geeks:
This shot had to be prepared a little beforehand. Before taking the shot I marked the places of the camera and where the people should be located on the road. It all had to happen in a matter of minutes, so as the group was walking to the premarked place, I placed the camera, tripod and the remote controller in the middle of the street. Then I ran into the picture, took some quick ones and ran back to save my camera from the still calm car drivers.
It has been a while without any blog posts…life has been a little busy lately. But today I had 15 minutes to take some portraits of Oona. These were totally unplanned. She dressed herself for swimming and I thought that she looked so good that I had to take some portraits of her.
For tech geeks:
I used two speedlights for the lighting. One through an umbrella on high camera right and the otherone was gridded to give that round backlight.
I did my first ever timelapse video yesterday. Timelapse has been something I have wanted to try for a long time. So when I bought a triggertrap dongle for my ipad, it was time to test timelapse functionality on that.
The timelapse is a 4 hour time period from our parking lot compressed into 9 seconds:
http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2013-01-12+Timelapse/TimeLapse3.avi
For tech geeks:
I used a triggertrap (https://triggertrap.com/products/triggertrap-mobile/) application on my ipad and a triggertrap dongle to trigger my D2x for the timelapse. The application seems to work very well. There were a few extra shots in the middle, I don’t know where and why those came. For the timelapse I used a 59s interval to shoot photos over a 4 hour time period. To compile an AVI video file from the JPGs, I used a software called photolapse.
Triggertrap contains also some other cool functions that I am looking to test in the near future in more detail:
The above shot is from a very quickly organized 1-year portrait session. We had a few good friends over for new year’s eve when we decided to take some portraits of the soon-to-be 1-year old. I set up some speedlights quickly and we used about 10 minutes to shoot some 50 shots. The kiddo was super relaxed and seemed to enjoy being photographed. As always with kids, the window to get the shots done is only a few minutes. This time we were lucky and had almost 10 minutes 🙂
A couple of more of my favorites: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2012-12-31+1+year+portraits/
We have been lucky to get new snow almost everyday during December. With Ode we have been doing some snow work and to make it a little more fun, Ode has invented this game where a push him off a jump into powder snow. Today I took my camera along to get some shots. We were really enjoying it and Ode promised to push me once he grows a little bigger!! Can’t wait!
A few more shots: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2012-12-26+Snow+work/
For tech geeks:
I used a remote control to fire the camera. I was holding the remote in my hand. I used my 12-24 Tokina lens. The lighting was created with two speedlights. Main light was a speedlight shot through a beauty dish. I used the beauty dish to shoften the light a little and it works fairly well even in windy and snowy conditions. The other lightsource is a bare speedlight with a full CTO gel on it. I decided to use that to make the lighting a little more interesting. The initial idea was to use it only to light the snow, but in the end I ended using it more as a rim light. I think the CTO gel worked there as well.