Photography Blog

Opinions on Redesign

2011-11-11T16:13:00.003+01:00

Semi-official Launch

2011-10-31T15:14:00.003+01:00

Holiday

2011-10-31T12:10:00.004+01:00

City Wide Blogging

2011-10-31T12:10:00.002+01:00

Worldwide Blogging

2011-10-31T12:09:00.004+01:00

Some Pics from Spring

2011-10-31T12:09:00.002+01:00

Some Bike Pics from Spring

2011-10-31T12:07:00.001+01:00

Social Splash

2011-03-09T14:24:00.001+01:00

Andreea 3-fans

2011-01-23T14:25:00.003+01:00

Police Snails in Action

2010-12-17T19:05:00.001+01:00

My Christmas Present to Christmas

2010-12-17T19:04:00.002+01:00

Dendalions

2010-12-17T19:03:00.002+01:00

Four Seasons Hotel Zurich

2010-12-17T18:49:00.002+01:00

Oh wait, I did do new stuff, just forgot to post it.

Oh wait, I did do new stuff, just forgot to post it.

Back to School

2010-12-17T18:40:00.005+01:00

Finally something new... i'ts been how long? 4 months?

Spring

2010-08-08T16:39:00.002+02:00

Colors

2010-08-07T12:52:00.002+02:00

2010-06-01T11:26:00.000+02:00

80s sports

2010-05-11T15:01:00.000+02:00

My girls

2010-05-10T19:51:00.000+02:00

Raster Girl vs Vector Pigeons.

2010-05-10T19:16:00.000+02:00

Two older tings... I'd rather call them 'classics' :)

2010-05-10T19:11:00.000+02:00

Finally some photography. My parents on a shoot - how cute is that!

2010-05-10T19:07:00.000+02:00

Smartphones and their smartness vs. phonyness

2010-04-28T12:27:00.001+02:00

Back to square no 3D

2010-04-22T11:11:00.000+02:00

Timed 5 hours 32 minutes with parallel im-ing

2010-04-16T18:16:00.000+02:00

Based on the enormous success - Travel Reloaded anticipating Revolutions

2010-04-16T18:15:00.000+02:00

'Floral' turns 'Butterfly' to escape the legal consequences

2010-03-25T15:45:00.001+01:00

Ah and also vector clouds, take 2 - reloaded!

2010-03-25T15:39:00.001+01:00

This turns more and more into an illustration blog.

2010-03-03T11:23:00.000+01:00

All done through macros... yey!

2010-02-28T19:24:00.000+01:00

Vector clouds: Take 2!

2010-02-25T17:44:00.000+01:00

La vie en jaune!

2010-02-23T18:43:00.000+01:00

The no-show-with-mobile-on-silent shooting

2010-02-11T01:30:00.001+01:00

It's 1.30 and tomorrow I have to drive 700km...anywayz, after 14 hours I proudly present

2010-02-02T00:05:00.000+01:00

Anca redesigned from scratch.

2010-02-01T15:24:00.000+01:00

And the second one

2009-12-16T09:30:00.000+01:00

With the courtesy of NASA my second geometric creation. Invested 13 hours in it.

3D is coming to town

2009-12-14T15:33:00.000+01:00

My first 3D stuff ever!

Løve

2009-10-17T21:17:00.000+02:00

It's time... half a year has passed without me posting anything new... didn't get much work done lately, but it'll change starting with this post!

This picture was shot against the sun and then the original light beams were enhanced. After working for 2 hours on removing the stripes on the guys shirt and making it white... photoshop has crashed... no further comment on that.

Adding 'LOVE' was more for fun but I think it looks good :)

And a crop of what's most important in life...

Ski in the Sky

2009-01-03T15:34:00.000+01:00

On the 31st of december I've shot my last pics of 2008 starring mausu, cici, nutzi and silvia. 2000m above sea level there were damn harsh weather conditions, about -15 degrees and very strong winds. The fully charged battery lasted for only 50 shots so I didn't get much work done. But the result is satisfying as my first snow shoot.

Technically, I used only a head-mounted flash to kill the very strong shadows in 2000m altitude. Also I shot against the sun for the background to be very bright and to control the light on the models through the flash.

Lunch

2008-12-29T16:44:00.000+01:00

Hi. Just finished editing some of the pics shot in the summer. Thought they might be worth a look.

Customer Relations

2008-09-29T16:58:00.000+02:00

Only now I found the time for a shoot end of August. Models were all new but was a lot of fun to work with.

As for the technical details: meanwhile I know I have a focusing issue with either my camera or my lens, probably both. As I was expecting it, I used 3 strobes + head flash, all on medium power. That provided enough light to set f6.4 or even f8. Especially the f8 pictures came out perfectly sharp and still with enough depth of field. Till now I was usually shooting at f3.2..4 - not a good choice with faulty equipment.

Two problems when setting the strobes higher: long recharge times and hard to over light the windows. High ISO would help against both problems, but I don't like that (for studio conditions I always use ISO125). Instead I shot at 1/60 and 1/80 speeds, enough for static pictures and solved my second problem.

Mr Dudu & Galls

2008-07-18T19:42:00.000+02:00

Some pics shot in a freshly decorated apartment of a friend of mine - that would be one of the beauties; another one of them is one of my longest lasting friendships and jet another one just made her love official this summer. And most important to me - my freshly accepted fiancee. Ah! also dudu.

Technically (I meanwhile doubt anyone reading this part) it was fairly easy. 2 Strobes, equal power, one pointed towards the ceeling lo lighten the room (diffused through a semi-transparent white umbrella) and the other pointing to the models (reflected from a silver reflective umbrella also to diffuse). Strobes set as slaves and an on-camera flash as trigger, sometimes turned towards the scene but mainly bouncing somewhere in the room.

Vineyard

2008-06-28T19:35:00.000+02:00

At a picnic I accidentally found a very nice spot, right near the center of Zurich. So I went there a second time, at dawn, and shot the following pictures. The last one was something I did for pleasure... I wanted to induce some sort of afterlife impression... I guess it's one of that love or hate pics. Enjoy.

Technically I noticed that having an oncamera flash doesn't always produce the best results. I've already bought an ezybox, but didn't get the chance to mount it cause I miss a TTL cable... ah well. Anyway I guess the best results in this setting (remember: dawn) would have been achieved by a big reflector, but I didn't have anyone to hold it.

Ethiopia

2008-04-18T17:42:00.000+02:00

It's almost a year since I last posted. I've changed some of my equipment. 350D into 5D and the lens Tamron 17-50 2.8 into Sigma 24-70 2.8. In my opinion, the new lens is by far not as good as the Tamron. I also brought a new strobe with umbrella, but am not using it so much.

Some good ethiopien friends lent me their interiors for a whole week for this shoots.

The 80's

2007-07-05T13:02:00.000+02:00

I'll present the raw pics of the last shoot, without any post-processing because I didn't find the time to do it. Sometime I'll explain my post-processing workflow as well.

Light settings

As light sources I used my strobe and the on-camera flash, both at full capacity; so I could use f-numbers of around f7.1, which is good for the focus range. I used the strobe with an attached umbrella.
I don't see any difference between using a reflecting umbrella or a soft-box with a strobe, when lightening up something as big as a room. The strobe was emitting light from the right while on the left I placed a big reflective surface that reflected some of the light back at the model (figure). This made the shadows on the models face not so harsh.

I usually use white walls to make ultra-bright interiour pictures. The next picture is a darker one. Though there was a big window in bright daylight on the left, the room was very dark. So I've placed the strobe behind the camera with a small power output and shoot with high exposure (1/4 sec). High exposures, as well as high ISO, damage the quality of pictures, so it is good to control the darkness of pictures using flash lights. But because I own only one strobe, I used the window as huge but low power soft-box.(figure)

This last picture was made outside in bright sunlight. Thought the quality is acceptable, you can see the sun creates harsh shadows. A simple solution would be to use a reflective surface that illuminates the dark side of the face. Another option would be a low power on-camera flash.

Cherry-tree

2007-06-10T23:46:00.000+02:00

Light Settings

It was a pretty cloudy day. The sun was shining only from time to time so I didn't get much of an effect I desired: tiny spotlights through the trees leaf. This effect together with an orange hue makes pictures look more warm and familiar. But one has to be careful: the spots might burn the image - an additional flash helps.

As always I used the on-camera flashlight (auto modus - ETTL) which this time helped me a lot because it was pretty dark under the leaf. Again the used f-number was a little to small (somewhere around f4) and I say too small because the model was usually close to the lens (1-1.5m, 3-5ft) so I think I should have use f6.3 or something.

Focal Length

Because of the distance, I had to use a ~30mm focal length (50mm on 35mm equivalent cameras) but this makes the pictures look unnatural. Pictures look natural at a focal length of about ~55mm (85 mm on 35mm equivalent cameras). I didn't find any explanation for this on the net but using this focal length kind of resizes the foreground and background of an image to make their relative size to each other similar to the way the human eye sees it.

Ok, don't even try to understand what I wrote, just grab your camera and do the following: ask someone to stand in front of your camera in the middle of your room. Now repeat these steps: 1. slowly zoom in while getting away from the person and then 2. slowly zoom out while getting near the person's face. While doing this try to move so that the face of the person never changes it's size on the viewfinder. Sweet... and now repeat the steps looking at the background. You'll see it somehow shrinks when you are at step 2 and vice versa.

Seventies

2007-05-17T20:02:00.000+02:00

The biggest problem I had was the light. It was pretty cloudy outside and the sun was just above the house, so not much light was getting in. If I think of it now I wonder why I so desperately wanted the windows to be totally white? The problem when shooting pics like this is that if you are not using any internal light-source, the windows burn the image with their whiteness and the contour of the objects gets very very soft; so if you don't specially desire that, avoid it.

The light settings: to my disposal I had a big soft-box, a big reflective panel and a on-camera flash. So I placed the soft-box lightning from right to left. And on the left I've placed that big reflective panel. For additional top-light I used the on-camera flash facing upwards.

This way I obtained nice light for the models, but the corner in the back is very dark. If I think of it now, I should have faced the soft-box to that wall between the windows, and the reflecting panel besides me, shining on the model... it would probably have worked better.

Because of the pretty bad light conditions I had to shoot at f3.5 average (which was not so bad) but speeds of 1/20, 1/30 which is very slow, so I used the tripod for all shots.

Conclusion: if you don't have any competitive lighting solutions, don't start shooting inside on a clouded day.

Brown Dress

2007-05-04T17:45:00.000+02:00

The theme that I wanted to use for this pics was something like sorrow or anger. For that I insisted on dark eyes and the hair like after a fight. I've also darkened the pics in the post-process to strenghten this theme.

It was one of those perfect days for shooting: the sky was just a little bit foggy such that the sunlight wasn't harsh anymore. And it also was about 5:00PM. So I had perfect natural light conditions. Nevertheless I also took my on-camera flash and used throughout the shoot, which was not very good I assume (I used it fully automatically - ETTL mode). On the first 3 pictures the harsh flashlight-shadow can be seen... while the sunlight-shadow is soft and nice... i'll note id down for next time.

What else... ah right! The f number. I've again set my camera to Aperture Priority and shot most of the pics with f2.8. I don't know how to punish myself for continously doing that... I always regret it after the shoot because the focus area is simply too narrow for such near pictures. So the pics underneath are of those shot with f4.5 or above. I'll try to use f2.8 only in "controlled" situations, when I have enough time to set the focus right and also check the Depth of Field.

Here are the pics: