Going Home

After a complete weekend at home, the only time I went out was to take Miguel to the hospital, the short week has started. It is now time to pack and on Wednesday we will drive down to Spain. We will stop one day in Laredo, at my parents, and then drive to Coruña, to the in laws. We will stay one month in Coruña and then drive back to Laredo where we will spend another month.

I will have some time for photography during the next months, but I don't know how much access to internet I will have in Coruña. In Laredo it will be no problem. So, it might take a while until I can post again, but I hope I will get some nice images that make the wait worth.

The panorama above was taken in Laredo and it is made out of 7 images. I hope I can repeat it again soon with a more colorful sky.

Until then, I leave you with a couple of roses from the balcony taken with the G10 during the weekend. As usual lately they do not have much postprocessing since time is scarce.

Anna II

Here are a couple more from Anna. In the end I am quite satisfied with the results. I still need to process a few more, but Miguel has some fever and needs a bit of attention.

Anna

I took some pictures of Anna last year, mainly portraits with a simple black background. Today we have tried something different. I wanted to do some enviromental portraits kind of fashion style using her room as set. I must say it is much more difficult than using a plain background. I will need to practice much more at it. Anyway it was quite fun.

Although I had a couple of flashes with me I just used natural light and a reflector, which gave us great light.

I have not been able to check al the photos yet but I have seen some nice ones. Here is a quick pick as starter. Stay tunned for more in the next days.

Anna & Bruno

On the blog's technical side, I was not satisfied with how blurry the photos appeared. I have found out that it was a problem of the browsers resampling them to fit the size. I have edited the html code and now the photos are sharp as they should. I hope you will enjoy them much more now.

Kirmes

In Düsseldorf the "Kirmes" are one of the most important events of the year and the most important of the summer. Yesterday I went with Maria, Sven and Thomas on a photographic tour.

The weather forecast was good, according to our own weatherman. But just when we arrived the clouds started to look a bit darker than desired and a few drops fell.



Then the sky really got dark and started to RAIN. But in a small break I managed to get a couple of nice images.






After the storm we managed to walk for a while and capture the light and spirit of the "Kirmes".




Then, the sky started to darken again and we decided it was time to go home. Of course, on the way I kept shooting. Luckily the storm just passed north of us and we didn't get wet.



I just made a quick edit and I have not edited much the pictures because I am short of time today. It is late and I have to prepare the bag for a shooting with Anna tomorrow.

Still alive

I am still alive and shooting, I just don't have too much time for processing and posting. I guess I will be able to use the post title many times in the near futuro. Yesterday I went to the Eifel with a friend and on the way back we stopped by the power plants and open mines in Grevenbroich. We ended up with quite a few pictures, so stay tuned.

In the meantime I continue testing the G10. I love what the "litte" monster can do for macro flower shots.



It can also deliver quite proper photos under good light.



I carry it with me all the time now and I guess soon I will get the chance to test it under not so good conditions.

Alexander

On Sunday I met with some Düsseldorf friends to practice lighting scenarios. Sven & Manfred had arrange a couple of great models and we had tons of fun.

Since we were too many photographers for Sven's studio we broke up in two groups. One stayed in the studio with Tina and the other went to an abandoned building with Alexander. Alexander is a great model and he entertained us with good music. It was a pleasure to work with him and I just hope he had at least half as much fun as we did.

I had brought my small flashes and umbrellas so I joined the second group. I am an fan of the amazing Joe McNally and always wanted to do this kind of shooting. Here are some of my best pics of the day.

I set up a flash with a snoot and a CTO gel to get some hard light focused on Alexander only and set up the White Balance to Tungsten to make the background go blue. I also let the ambient light drop a stop or two in relation to the flash.

First we started with some posing and I took the chance to make some close portraits with the 85mm 1.8



And then the performance started. One musician and 5 photographers dancing around him. It was amazing.


I tried to capture the magic of the drumming but I am afraid I didn't totally manage.


After the first half of the concert we let Alexander take a break, protect himsef from hypothermia and have a smoke.


As I was editing this image I thought "What does make a picture interesting, the light or the shadows?" and today I my RSS feeder gave me this answer from Rick Sammon: Light Illuminates; Shadow defines. Well, maybe not...

... or, maybe yes.


You can see more of the session on Barbara's and on Sven's blogs.

Paz & Rodrigo

One of the reasons for my last vacation in Spain was to go to a wedding. Two of my best friends from the University times were joining the club. When I arrived I noticed that they had no photographer so I asked them if they wanted some photos. Since the wedding was in Asturias, a really beautifull region, I had taken the camera with the 17-55 f2.8, the 50 1.8 and my new 85 f1.8. The lens combination was perfect since most of the time I had to shoot in really low light and with quite high ISO.

This was not the first time that I photograph a wedding and I think I am getting better at it. I am very happy how things turned out. A couple of issues to notice for next time:

- I did not have anywhere to leave the lenses while I was changing them so they went into the jacket pockets. I need to get a belt or a similar solution.

- I had no difuser or reflector for the outside portraits. I ended up using the reflector for the windshield from anothers friend car.

- I had no external flash and had to use the internal one to kill shadows. It looked horrible. I managed to change the color and difuse it a bit making it go through a bottle of apple juice. The end result looks cool, I have to try it another time.

Well here are a few pictures, if you want to see the whole set you can download this slideshow in pdf. Once it is completely loaded, just click on the gray frame to go to the next image.Be patient it is 10MB.

I am interested in any feedback so please leave a comment if you like it; if you don't; or, even better, if you have suggestions for improvement. Thanks!

We know who is in charge here.

85 mm @ 1.8

My friend Carlos will need a new windshield reflector after this.

g10

Yesterday I bit the bullet and bought a Canon g10. I had been thinking about it for quite a while and the planned diving trip in October just made me decide. I will buy an underwater housing and an underwater strobe. I will try to learn a bit of underwater photography during the summer vacation in Spain.

Anyway, after the first tests with the camera I could not be happier. I took a couple of sunset pictures yesterday and there is almost no noise. Since I shot raw I could recover lots of detail from the shadows. Today I took some flower pictures taking the advantage of the high depth of field that the small sensor provides. I love the color and detail and I think I will be taking the camera with me everyday.

Time thiefs

As I mentioned yesterday the time I can put into photography is quite limited lately and here are the 2 main reasons.

Miguel

Diego

They might steal most of my time but they are also my greatest models. What do you think?