Fabio (photographing children in their environment)

It seems that in the new year I don't manage to post regularly either, no excuses.

Here are a few photos from the archive. I shoot a session with Fabio in october at his favourite park. He was having great fun running around and you can see it in the pictures. Being in a known place meant that he ignored me completely and I could do my work without him hiding from me or puting strange faces. Sometimes I would just wait for him to reach the place where I wanted him and then call his name. He would look at me only for a second but enough to capture his beautiful eyes looking into the camera.

I always try to adapt to the kids and follow them rather than trying to pose. It is important to spend some time observing them, since they tend to repeat the things they like, and position yourself where the light, or the scene, will be the best.

I choose the late afternoon in order to have that magical low light and it really paid off. You can see how his blue eyes are full of light and not in shadow, as they would be in the middle of the day.

I took the whole session with the 70-200 mm mostly at 2.8 in order to maintain the focus on Fabio thanks to the shallow depth of field. That also allowed me to work with speeds high enough to render him sharp, even when the light decreased after sunset.

I hope you like them.

At the park

Lots of work to do and too little energy floating around.

I have a huge backlog from photos I have taken lately but not started to edit. I feel that I have no energy left at the moment and the inspiration seems to be gone also. I have a few good photos in the pipe but I don't know where to go with them in post processing. I hope the Christmas vacation will let me charge the batteries and I will start the year full of whatever it is that brings the muse back.

Meanwhile here are a couple of pictures from the park. These 2 are the energy vampires that have us walking like zombis.

I am still getting used to the 70-200. It is a great lens but it will take a while to master it. I have been shooting full open but it is a risky business with moving targets, they are faster than an F1 car. We will have to go to the park more often and keep practicing.










PS: As you probably have noticed I am making some changes to the Blog appearance. The ultimate goal is to integrate it with the Web (which also will change soon), but I am afraid it will take some time.

Lifestyle portraits in Düsseldorf, Kerstin & Josie

A few weeks ago my neighbour contacted me because she wanted a few portraits of her and her daughter taken. She wanted to make a photobook for her husband's birthday, which is today. She wanted something natural not too posed and a few close ups so we arranged to meet at the park close to our house.

A few days later the light was perfect and I called her to see if she had time. I like my pictures to convey the emotions of the subject. My idea was to let them play together and have fun. I wanted to capture the moments as they happened.

I needed them to relax and we started the session with some silly pictures, them jumping together, walking along the path... Josie even helped me to take some photos of her mother. After 10-15 minutes they were totally comfortable with the camera and I had already a couple of keepers. Then I was able to come closer and focus on the faces. Once the mandatory portraits were taken we just strolled around, they played, sat together on the grass... I just kept shooting directing them just minorly to make them look towards the light or move to a better background.

We had all a good time and enjoyed the shooting and they were as happy with the photos as I was. The father has seen them today when he got his present and loved them. A satisfied customer and a happy photographer.

Here are a few images from the shooting. Enjoy!

88 years

I love to take portraits, someone once even called me a good portraitist, but this one is one very special.

We were celebrating the 88th birthday of my grandpa and he was looking at me, so serene that I could only run and grab the camera to capture taht look. The light was perfect and I managed to take a couple of portraits focusing on his eyes. I had my new toy "Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS II" which allowed me to have a shallow depth of field and isolate them. How many things those eyes have seen and lived!!



As usual, click on the image to see it bigger.

Weddings

From time to time friends decide to get married, I don't know why, and I somehow manage to photograph de wedding, I don't know why either. Whatever the reason, I always enjoy capturing the moment. I try to make something different to the traditional posed pictures and approach from a more natural angle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

This time I am quite happy of how they turned out. Here are a couple of examples from last month.

Transparency

Somebody just reminded me that I should post more often, so here it comes. On our last assignment in the photo course I am doing we were required to shoot transparency. I am not going out too much lately so I had to do with what I have at home. Miguel did not really want to pose but he had fun covering himself with the cloth. It is not a great photo but served the purpouse. I hope you like it.

Marta

Somehow I don't manage to have the time and energy needed to post more often. Between work and the kids it is just not possible. I have a lot of ideas that I want to shoot and share. I would like to post more photos, write more text, start some projects... But I guess they will have to wait for a while.

Anyway here is a photo of Marta taken after a session, pictures from the session will come sometime also. I think it reflects quite good our mood right now, tired.


Lighting details, if anybody is interested:
Small flash shoot through 45cm softbox. Black Ikea roll as background.

Back again

I am back in Düsseldorf after the Christmas vacation in Spain. This time I did not have much time for photography. This might be good since I already have a huge backlog to process from the summer vacation. There is lot of interesting material in it and I hope I will manage to post regularly (new year resolution)

Here is one picture I took from Miguel while he was playing at the park. The eyes are not completely sharp but I like it anyway.

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.

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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.

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.