Sarela II

I am still cleaning up the catalog, it will take a looong time to finish. In the process I have found a couple of portraits from Sarela that I like.

Flowers

My mother in law asked for some photos for the wall as Christmas present and Marta and I decided that some flowers would suit. What do you think of these?

Red

When you are diving the first thing you notice is the lack of the red color. As you go deep the water filters the light and absorbs all the red leaving you in a world where blue is the king. If you are not too deep you can still see some yellow and green, as in the pictures from yesterday. But this changes totally when you add some artificial light to the equation. You just need to shine your torch anywhere and the lost red will come back at its bests. Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about.

Postcards from the deep

I am still sorting the photos from the Red sea, it is hard to pick the less bad ones from the rest. I do not dive enough to get the experience needed for underwater photography and although the G10 is a great little camera it is a bit limited when the light drops (excuses, the problem is just the photographer)

Anyway I think I am happy with some of the results. Here is a first batch to see what you think. All of them are taken with available light, no flash. That means that you get to see the place as I saw it. The amazing colors will come next. The biggest dificulty in this kind of photos, at least for me, was to move as little as possible. The light levels are too low and I tried to keep the ISO at reasonable levels (that is around 1600 or the highest the camera can give to get speeds that I could handhold) Another reason for not moving is that you don't want to shake all the sand from the bottom or you won't make any more pictures in that place.

Well, after so much boring text here are the pictures I hope you like them :-D

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Well, it seems that Christmas came early this year. I went to the city and passed by my favourite camera shop. They had a great offer on the new Canon 7D and since I had decided it was going to be my Christmas present I could not resist.

It feals great in the hand and I am sure I will have tons of fun with it. Although probably my photography will not be better the camera is not to blame.

Isn't she lovely? She paid it :-D

Anna P.

Yesterday Sven organized a shooting with Anna. Anna is great to work with and we had tons of fun. We focused mainly on the lighting and I am quite happy with the final results. I hope you like them also.

Meanwhile I am still working on the Red Sea images. As usual I managed to come back with way too many pictures and it will take a while to sort the few good ones from the crap, so be patient.

From 30 to 10

Back from the 30ºC water of the Red Sea into the 10ºC water of Düsseldorf's rain.

Pazo de Oca

Galicia is a region full of "Pazos", big stone houses from the old Landlords. Some of them are converted into small hotels and can be visited now. We went to the one in the small village Oca and I decided to try the infrared filter and I am quite satisfied of the outcome.

Taking IR photos means that you need to use the tripod, compose, put the filter, take a test picture, correct the exposure, try again.... Luckily the 40D can autofocus with the filter on, since IR focuses at a different point as visible light. Another good way is to use live-view with a 10x factor and focus manually.

All this implies that you need time and a bit of peace which is not easy to get with 2 kids around. So this was the only time in the 2 months that I managed to take any IR pictures. I hope you like them.

Santander

I am slowly starting to edit all the photos from the vacations. It turns out that I have taken 12000 pictures from which Lightroom tells me are only 2500 left. This means that I still have a lot to delete if I want to have a maximum of 10% keepers.

Anyway here are a few from Santander on a day with a great stormy weather sunset. They are taken with the G10 which behaved quite good in the low light, high ISO and no tripod. I hope you like them.

Home, sweet home

After a 17 hour drive we are back in Düsseldorf. Now we just need to finish unpacking and sometime I will manage to sort the 6000 pictures from the last 2 months so I can post something decent.

Here is what we got for most of the trip. Diego did not really like to ride the car. You are lucky that you get only the image and not the sound

Leonard Cohen

On Thursday we went to see Leonard Cohen in Bilbao. The concert just deserves two words "IN-CREDIBLE" It was amazing no sillz dances or special effects, just music, lyrics, poetry and a great voice. He will turn 75 on Monday and I do not know any young singer that can put such passion into the music.

We had seats on row 2 quite to the side but we managed to move to the center of row 4. I took the G10 and I am quite happy with the results, considering the high ISO and lack of light.







PS:
I have the DVD with the Concert in the O2 Arena in London last year and it is really a must have.

Summer is over

Today summer has ended, at least it feels like it. We have spent the whole last week at the beach, enjoying the sun. Today it looks a bit different. The weather forecast is more of the same for the next days. I hope it will be better on Friday since we have one of the big events over the weekend here in Laredo. I will take tons of pictures so I will post more about it next week.

Here comes the rain again...

Underwater

Today I had to test my birthday present so we went diving. The sea was quite rough and we got seasick on the way to the dive spot. The water was quite dirty and we could not see much, we had about 5 meter visibility. I didn´t take too many pictures, mainly because we did not see anything interesting, but I am quite happy with the results. I got used quickly to the external flash (Intova ISS 2000) and the G10 was perfect for the job. Next week we will try again and see if the conditions are better. I am really looking for the trip to the Red Sea in October. Until then I hope you like this ones.

Coral

More coral

One of the few fishes we saw today, here you can see how much dirt was floating around.

This one was around 5 cm long

My favourite Mermaid

At the sea

I know that I haven´t posted for too long but I just don´t manage to process all the photos that I have been taking. It will take quite a while to sort and prepare them for showing. I am sure that you will enjoy them once they are ready.

One of the things that I miss most in Düsseldorf is the Sea. Here I just can´t get enough of it. I could sit the whole day and look at it.



But the kids don´t give me that much time so we just...

sail;


even drink a bit of it;


or just make castles in the sand. And old hobby that I had left behind more than 20 years ago.


Greetings from Laredo :-D

Sarela

Sarela is my cousin here in Galicia. She is 10 and alredy a great dancer, traning 2,5 hours per day 5 days per week she has danced allready with a famous Russian Ballet.

Yesterday we went grilling to some friends and I asked her if she wanted a couple of photos. She was quite professional in posing and I think she had fun. All photos are made with a golden reflector and natural light.

Warming up

Laces

Tips

Streching

My favourite

She is going one week on vacation but we will try to organize another shooting at the dance studio when she comes back.


I have been shooting a lot during the last 2 weeks but I have almost no time for processing. I have been in 2 really interesting shows and I think you will like the pictures, so stay tuned.