Carpe Lumen

Fall at the woodland lake

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:58:00 +0000

Took a walk the other day around a woodland lake near our house to capture the fall colors. It was "hard to resist" not going as the weather was wonderful, pretty much summer temperatures and I actually felt a "need" to make photos, something that sadly doesn't happen too often these days. I even brought out my Nikon SLR with the "big lens" and the tripod, not just my handy Sony Nex-6, which have been an easy-to-bring-photo-friend lately - maybe too easy. All seven photos can be viewed here. Enjoy!

Closing day at Liseberg

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:53:00 +0000

The summer season came to an end (in early October is just crazy!) at the local amusement park Liseberg, so the family decided to enjoy the summer like weather, have a dinner, a few roller coaster rides (not me though) and watch the fireworks. I took the opportunity to make a few low light photos, this time with my Sony Nex-6. Handheld and mostly with the 55-210 mounted. I even shot a few videos, which doesn't happen too often. All 25 photos and two videos can be viewed here. Hold on as we take off.

Fender fun

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Mon, 12 May 2014 09:29:00 +0000

Spent Saturday enjoying an awesome gig by Jelly Belly's at the River Café in the evening and Fender exhibiting at the Fuzz guitar show earlier that day.

Was challenging my Sony NEX-6 in the low light, but I think it stood up to my expectations pretty good - just as Fender and the band did. Not something I do very often, but I even gave the NEX-6 video feature a shot when Jelly Belly's kicked-off their gig. Watch the video first and then the photo slideshow, or just the individual photos.

Thanks Fender for a great day!!

Mats' Gift Wrap Vernissage

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 21:32:00 +0000

We where invited to Mats' Gift Wrap Vernissage, which also included a Jazz consert with Lars Jansson and his son. Mats' artistic skills are amazing. He always surprises us one way or the other, no matter if it is clothes, food, gift wraps or just having fun together.

All photos are taken with my Sony NEX-6, with no flash and no tripod. Ultimately I had made the photos prior to the vernissage with better equipment, but it is always an interesting challange to capture the moment live. There is some noise due to the high ISO (3200), but I think it works pretty well with the environment and the mood of the event. However, and external flash is on the wish list and might soon becomre a new member of my photo toy collection. Who knows.

Link to the photos

Soppis 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:32:00 +0000

Årets Soppis-promenad avlöpte precis som vanligt i sol, lite kylslaget, god mat på vägen, fantastisk soppa vid målet och otroligt trevlig sällskap från start till mål. Det som var lite ovanligt var att årets promenad förgylldes av två yngre förmågor som visade att framtiden för promenaden är säkrad i många decennier framåt, vilket gjorde dagen ännu bättre. Ser redan fram emot nästa promenad. Tack Mona och Anders för en kanondag tillsammans med era vänner. Glimtar från promenaden kan avnjutas här. /Monica & Mikael

Windras dop

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Mitt i julstöket fick vi chansen att dagen före julafton lugna ner oss och ha det mysigt tillsammans i samband med Windras dop i Lindome kyrka. Släkt och vänner samlades till en fin stund för att bevittna den unga damen döpas i finaste klänningen. Windra skötte sig alldeles utmärkt till mammas och pappas glädje. Storebror Winton underhöll såväl i kyrkan som i församlingshemmet. Tack för ett härligt minne tillsammans. Klicka här för att titta på bilderna.

Mats 50

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:56:00 +0000

Ojdå, ytterligare ett 50-årskalas. Ett fantastiskt roligt, välorganiserat och unikt kalas med god mat. Massor av trevliga släktingar och vänner till Mats satte pricken över i'et. Klicka här för att se alla 337 bilderna. TACK FÖR ETT KANONKALAS MATS!!

Vi återkommer separat till er som lämnade er emailadress för att få en digital kopia på bilden på er i trappan. Är det någon annan som vill ha en kopia på en bild är det bara att höra av sig till mikael.orbratt@gmail.com.

Kramar från Monica och Mikael.

Peter 50 år

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:54:00 +0000

Vi var bjudna på Peters 50 årskalas, en seglats till Väderöarna med övernattning. Ett fantastiskt kalas med massa trevliga och roliga människor, underbart god mat och en del äventyr bland master och tampar. Tack Peter för en härlig helg!!! Klicka här för att se alla 279 bilderna.

Handheld HDR

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:16:00 +0000

Thought I would try out producing a handheld HDR. This is the result after post processing in Photomatix and Photoshop. Bracketed seven images, with a 0.7 EV difference and threw away image 2, 4 and 6. Images 1, 3, 5 and 7 went into Photomatix and the final result was adjusted in Photoshop which came out as a 615 MB TIFF file. Can't do too many of those before the hard drive is full.

Until next time, make sure you pick up the camera often. Happy shooting!!

Need for Speed

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Visited the local amusement park to catch high speed face expressions. It takes maaaaaany photos to get the expressions you want. Amusement parks are great to do people photography. No one can really stop you from taking these shots and most people don't even know... :-).

I have never seen so many mothers almost killing their kids. Just watch the photos, you wonder if the kids are screaming because they are afraid or because their mother is strangling them.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome.

Until next time, make sure you pick up the camera often, and play with the features in the camera - you will always come up with something cool.

Happy shooting!!

Twist & Zoom

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:37:00 +0000

Right before sunset when light was fading away I was trying out a teqnique I have been thinking about to create surealistic dream photos. I popped up the on camera flash. Grabbed the zoom ring on my Tamron 17-50 mm f/2.8 lens. Started turning the camera slowly and pressed the shutter release. Not only did I twist the photo by turning the camera I also zoomed at the same time. The flash frooze the object partly. I used shutter speed priority to ensure a shutter speed of 0.2 - 0.5 sec. The photo exposure, contrast and saturation were enhanced a bit in Lightroom to increase the zoom and twist feeling. Try it - it is so much fun. Please share your results in the comments to this post to encourage others to try.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome.

Until next time, make sure you pick up the camera often, and play with the features in the camera - youwill always come up with something cool. Happy shooting!!

Soon summer

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Soon, there will be summer and sun with kids playing by the beach. Currently the beaches are waiting for the sun and for the kids to get out of school. I thought these B&W images, taken while the rain was pouring down, would tell the story of all those places waiting for the summer. Dream, wait and feel how beaches are waiting. Soon they will be full of life.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome.

Don't forget to sign up for the Word Wide Photo Walk in Gothenburg, or any other place near you.

Until next time, make sure you pick up the camera often. This is a great time of the year to photograph. Happy shooting!!

Gothenburg Botanical Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Went to the botanical garden in Gothenburg (Botaniska) to catch the spring colors before they leave completely.

I managed to mix up techniques such as close ups, landscapes, HDR, flash and reflectors. Hopefully, you find one or two photos that you like.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome.

Until next time, make sure you pick up the camera often. This is a great time of the year to photograph. Happy shooting!!

Studio Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:09:00 +0000

Late March i attended a studio photography class, just to push myself outside my comfort zone. Studio photography has been something I have been interesting in doing for a long time, but never got around to do it. I've had some basic equipment for off camera flash photography, but always found excuses not to use it.

The class was initiated by Johnny Buchwald, from a Swedish Nikon photo club, and lead by John Hagby. We had two great models, Catarina and Mikael. John explained how to set up the light and then we were off shooting like crazy. It was super fun and I learned a lot. I only missed setting up the light myself, but the class schedule unfortunately didn't allow for that.

I recently bought a SB-900 flash, a stand and an umbrella, to further develop my skills. I'm also hoping to attend a upcoming class using off camera flash and learn how to set the light myself.

If you would like to get in touch with the models, please send me an email.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - make sure to pick up the camera often and happy shooting.

Spring photos

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:05:00 +0000

This blog post includes images from different occasions - kind of a summary of my spring photos. With a few exceptions the photos from these sessions have been taken during early morning or late night. It's getting difficult to get the early golden hours here during spring because it is sooooo early in the morning, sunrise right now is at 4:33 am. On the other hand, sun sets at 10:45 pm so it is plenty of time to do evening shots. I bought a new flash, the SB-900, which I have been playing with outdoors and indoors. Making outdoor late night phots with flash is fun. Playing with the balance between the flash and the ambient light is a challange, but very fun one you get the idea and how to take advantage of the manual camera and flash mode.

Here is an example of a late evening image where I decided to more or less let the background go completely dark. It was actually pretty light outside even though it was late (8:45 pm). With a short exposure time 1/125s, a fairly large apperture f/4.5 and ISO 400 the background turned dark and the object was correctly exposured.

Learning how to balance flash and ambient light really gives you tons of opprtunities to create images with a different touch. I would guess youwill see more daytime and evening flash photos here. The indoor flash images will have to wait a while until I feel more confident working in the studio. I still have to post the images from my studio shoot I did late March.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - make sure to pick up the camera often and happy shooting.

Mutants

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:00:00 +0000

This famous mutant is obviously a Photoshop product. A well known course objective for most classes. The images used for this mutant is copyrighted by Moderskeppet.se, where I took a very good Photoshop class a while back.

The apple, however, is not a Photoshop product, but a nature mutant. It might be the result of the Tjernobyl disaster many yeas ago. As a curiosa you might also want to know that I finally got good usage of the government pension funds, at least the orange envelop that the statement came in, which I used as a background for this shot. Right now, I don't think the fund is worth much more then the envelope to be honest.

I will soon post again. The next shoot will be one outside my comfort zone. I took a short, but very fun, studio photography class. Fun but difficult, there were so many things to think about. Here is a sneak peek of what we did.

Until next time, keep shooting.

Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:23:00 +0000

The theme for this post became Drama. This was one of those photography occasions when you don't know what to do with the images. The lunch shoot session was pleasant but I wasn't sure what to expect when reviewing the images in Lightroom. All I was trying to do when shooting was to find some interesting angles and add to the drama with contrasting colors, mainly blue and orange. So, I just let the sliders in Lightroom play and let the post processing make it's own way.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please critique my images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - make sure to pick up the camera more often.

Boats

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:11:00 +0000

For this post I decided on a theme - boats. Some of the boats where captured in winter landscape and some in spring landscape. It's just that time of the year when you really don't know what season you will end up in. You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment on the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - happy shooting.

Kvarnfallet

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Once again I visisted the very nice area of Kvarnbyn. About a month ago a shot the demolition area in the neighborhood and I have also done other parts of the area. I would recommend any photographer to spend a few hours there to get interesting photographs. It works well with all kinds of weather since you don't have to inlcude the sky if you don't want to. The old type of environment works well for black & white too.

This time I focused on the water from the lake Stensjön above the falls as well as the upper parts of the fall itself. I opted for both black & white, as well as color photos. The last image of the set is an HDR, using Photomatix and Photoshop. I did not shot three separate images, but instead used the RAW image to produce thre images with 1 EV separation in Lightroom.

Since the beginning of this year I only shoot RAW, having the camera set to lossless compressed RAW, which seems to be OK.

I hope the images works well for you too. I'm really happy with this set. As you might have seen lately, I only publish the few best images, which is my future goal as well, unless the image set is a documentary where I would like to tell as story or just share images from an event.

I have a tool recommendation for you. If you want cool web image viewer I would strongly advice you to install Cooliris. With Firefox, it works nicely as a plug-in for both images and videos.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment on the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - happy shooting.

Contrast & Views

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:36:00 +0000

The theme for this post is Contrast & Views, which goes both for sizes and colors. I had my eyes on a large red ship in the harbour of Gothenburg for a few days, which I thought would be nice in the sunset against a blue sky. Finally, I brought my camera to work the other day to caputre the ship on my way home. After a few other harbour shots I saw the ship leaving the harbour and first thought I would miss the whole thing, as I realized that that it would only add action to the images. I was lucky. I had plenty of time to capture the ship from several angels and with different foregrounds and backgrounds as it took a long time to get it out of the harbour. I learned that the Nowegian ship M/V Tijuca made its maiden call early this January. With a total length of just over 760 ft it has a capacity of unbelieavable 7,500 autos.

I also took the opportunity to shoot some images of one of the tallest buildings in Gothenburg, known as the Lipstick. I even went up to the top floor and grabbed a few shots of the view. That would be quite and office location to have.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment on the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - happy shooting.

Old fashion

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Before and after the Gothenburg Photo Fair I took the opportunity to shot some moody photos in Gårda. I knew in beforehand that they were going to be developed in black and white, and almost all of them came out that way.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. Until next time - happy shooting.

Blue winter water

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Winter finally came with a few wonderful days for photography. I think ice, snow and water is one of the most interesting and challanging subjects to photograph. Capturing shadows, objects and movements in this environment will always give you a new photo for every shot.

One of those beautiful winter days, I went to our nearby lake Finnsjön, which you already have seen summer photos from if you follow my photo blog. Inspired by my son's school art project whith the theme "water", I created the images in this blog post. I only used images with a similar composition and objects from this photo shoot. This means that there should be enough photos for another blog post. The blue cast was created mainly by setting the white balance to flash and some post process adjustments.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. Please comment the images below or at my Flickr account, both negative and positive feedback is welcome. I've changed the layout of my blog page, increasing the width to get more focus on the image. I've also changed the subscription feeds, so I suggest that you re-subscribe to blog updates, using the link at the top of the blog. See you soon again, hopefully with more winter images.

Hexion Chemicals Demolition

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:49:00 +0000

After a looooooong break, I'm finally back shooting and photo blogging again.

I went to a demolition site, the former Hexion Chemicals site at Kvarnbyn which will be turned into a apartment complex. I decided that the grey dull and boring weather wouldn't stop me from creating images. With some "pixel distorsion" something totally different than what reality was showing came out. Hope you like it.

You can watch the complete set of images by clicking here. See you soon again.

Worldwide PhotoWalk

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:08:00 +0000

Today I attended the Worldwide PhotoWalk like about 8,000 other photographers world wide. We walked along the north shore of the channel running through Gothenburg, Sweden. Arranging the photo walk in Gothenburg was Erik, a 16 year old promising photographer. Pretty amazing work, I must say, but a 16 year old. Kudos to you Erik!!

Botanical Garden, Flickr Photowalk

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:31:00 +0000

Today, I went on a photo walk again with the local Flickr group, this time gathering David, Leo, Eva and Rudi. Like the previous walk, it was great fun, even though it was raining cats and dogs. Because of the weather conditions we opted for the indoor experience at the Botanical Garden, spending a few hours in the Garden House, which holds tons of plants to shoot. Most of my shots were made with a fill in flash to get the details of the plants. I used both the 17-35 f/2.8 and the 70-300 f/4.5-5.6. A macro lens and a tripod would have been great. I need to email Santa Claus. The photo walk was completed by a traditional fika at the garden resturant. Thanks guys, see you next time.

To view the complete set of photos, press F11 and click here, for the best possible experience.