A First from Iceland!

Hello everyone,

well here it is. The first image from my recent trip to Iceland.

Iceland easily places on the top of my list of countries to visit if you're into long exposure photography. In fact, there are many more cool things to do an explore there, but having only 7 days kinda' cut my agenda down to the essentials. Photography essentials that is. I rented a small camper van, hit the road and didn't stop looking for picture opportunities until it was time to head back towards the airport, 7 days later.

Along the way I took 337 pictures (yes that's less than 50 per day), saw some incredible places, ate great food and met some wonderful and friendly people. Oh, and I got a private visit and look inside an old lighthouse, almost got stuck on a high mountain road, and managed to survive without internet access for several days. Well, barely. 

Chatting with a photographer friend of mine just before the trip, he mentioned that Iceland is one of those places that can't be adequately described - you got to be there to really understand and appreciate it. When I arrived at the Glacier Lagoon I was blown away and couldn't agree more with my friend's statement..But this is by no means the only place that deserves this description. During my travels, I came across many sites and vistas that not only made me fall in love with Iceland but also had me mark my calendar for the next time I would be able to return. 

The image below is one of the first I took, right after touching down and picking up my camper. It's less than as 15 minute drive from the airport.

Camera is a Cambo Wide DS. 35mm lens. Phase One Digital Back. Exposure is 64 seconds @F11 ISO 50 with 13 stops of ND

This image is a stitch (or panorama) made out of 2 separate exposures, each shot at 64 second exposure time. It was real windy that day, so the clouds were moving fast and I was happy to have packed my big and heavy, yet very sturdy, tripod for this trip. I stayed at this spot for several hours, and actually re-visited it twice before my time in Iceland was over.

In the coming weeks, I will be posting more images from this trip, which in addition to Iceland, also took me to Amsterdam and Berlin, where I participated (and presented) at the Gplus Euro PhotoWalk.

Both Amsterdam as well as Berlin deserve seperate posts and those will follow soon as well.

For now, I am happy to be back in Vancouver, united with my family. This was the longest trip away since my kids were born, so it was time to put the camera(s) down for a while and return home.

More tk...

Interview on Nikonians Photo Professors Podcast!

Hello everyone,

just a short note today that an audio interview with me has just been released on the Photo Professor's podcast.

The Photo Professors are Rick Hulbert and Rick Paul. They talk with me about my long exposure photography, and there are a few tips in there for you to get started shooting in this style!

This podcast is available for download on the Nikonians website where you can also find the RSS feed and link to iTunes.

My Photography wins 7 Awards at Epson International Pano Awards!

Hello everyone,

wow what a week I just had, touring around Iceland.

I left for Iceland the day after returning from VPW's Tofino Photo Tour that I lead togther with Arthur Meyerson.

Yesterday, I arrived in Amsterdam, and in a few days I will be speaking in Berlin (Germany) at the Google Plus Euro Photo Walk.

About 150 people are registered for this FREE event and I will be talking about long exposure photography before hitting the streets of Berlin. Click on the link above to get more details - it's completely free to attend!

After camping in Iceland with no access to Internet, I have been eagerly catching up ever since I got to Amsterdam yesterday, where I now have Internet again -:).

I will be posting images from Iceland soon. But for today, I am happy to announce that I just found out that my photography has won 7 awards at the Epson Pano Awards 2012. As mentioned before on this blog, one of the reasons I photograph is to share my images.

This is the first time I entered this particular photo contest, and I am honoured to receive the awards. Thank you also to my friend Angus Macgillivray who encouraged me to enter this contest. If you're reading this make sure to clikc on his name and check out his website - he's a great photographer!

Stay tuned this week for images from Iceland. For now, here is a quick collage of my winning images from the Epson International Pano Awards:

A 33 Minute Long Exposure with the Nikon D800:

Hello everyone,

I was out teaching my Fine-Art B+W Long Exposure Workshop here in Vancouver this past weekend.

I usually do not shoot during my workshops, as my attention is reserved for the students, but on our second photography outing I had an opportunity to make this one picture using my new Nikon D800.

Here's my final image:

Exposure: 1986 seconds (approx. 33 minutes) @ F8 ISO 100. Total of 19 stops of ND (using 2 filters)

The image above has been converted to black and white in Silver Efex Pro 2. Grain has been added, the original has almost no visible noise at all. One nice advantage of the high resolution is the fact that even after cropping this image to a panorama with aspect ratio of 1:2 we are still left with almost 25 megapixel resolution. Nice.

Here is the original, un-cropped image:

Note the vignetting that is caused by stacking two ND filters while shooting with a 17mm wide-angle lens. There are also some branches visible in the top left corner that have been retouched out in the final version above.

This is a 100% view of the original image. Good sharpness and very little noise. Exposure has been adjusted to +1 to show details of the tree trunk.

In addition to sharpness, noise level and resolution I am also very impressed with the D800 tonality capture. If you look at the smooth gradation of tones in the black and white image above, it's hard to belief this has been taken with a digital SLR. Still, I see a very noticeable difference to my Phase One Digital Back, but the 'gap' has certainly been narrowed. Especially when considering the extended exposure time of over 30 minutes.

Turning our attention to composition, I'd like to point to the importance of 'negative space'.

This is one of the most important concepts in my photography and I cannot stress it enough when talking with my students.

When considering how to approach my composition for this photograph, I decided to use the widest lens I had in my bag that day. The 17mm lens on a full-frame body gave me a very wide view, and allowed me to include lots of negative space (aka the sky) around my subject (aka the tree). What is more, I decided to add a strong vignette to my final image which I belief helped to direct the viewer's eye to my subject by increasing the negative space even further.

Many composition classes point out the concept of 'Fill the Frame', which essentially is meant to help you make your compositions more effective and intentional by placing visual emphasize on your subject.

In this case, however, by including large areas of negative space I am doing the exact opposite. By pulling away from my subject and making it fill the frame less, I also heighten it's visual importance.

For more examples of this, take a look at the incredible tree photography by Michael Kenna. He is a true master of minimalist photography featuring lots of negative space. He is one of my greatest inspirations and I keep my fingers crossed that one day I might be able to achieve his kind of 'pure vision' and photographic excellence....

More tk...

In Color!

Hello again,

some friendly competition going on at the studio today!

Pooya has been working on a copy of my shipwreck image as well, and just send me his final look.

This man has some serious Photoshop skills! I think this is a great example of how post-production can really influence and change the way your images look.

This is the 4 minute exposure of the same composition I used.

I personally really like this version, and Pooya says he prefers mine. We're always our own worst critics.

I like the smoothness in the water, and also love the panoramic aspect ratio. The land has been almost completely retouched out, heightening the visual attention on the boat. 

Let us know how you feel about these two images. It's been fun seeing how another photographer interprets your images...