xmagination Blog - photography » d300

Under the Softbox

Andreas — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 20:44:38 +0000

You must be strong now as the following pictures will show nothing else but me!
I usually do not like photos being taken of me but sometimes I feel I could need a shower under the softbox, so I can remember what I once looked like when sitting in my rocking chair.
Main light comes from a softbox almost above my head and in a straight line with the lens. Some of this light reflects in a reflector close to the floor.

Wedding Photos

Andreas — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:26:33 +0000

When I was asked to take wedding photos of a good friend of mine who finally found his big love I was honored and simply said ‘yes I do’ .

A nearby park which I cross when jogging has some nice spots, so we decided to shoot in a small clearing where sunlight could easily fall through the trees and provide light and shadow. As often plans do not necessarily work out well. The morning of the wedding I found myself sticking to my tablet to observe satellite pictures in order to estimate when rain would stop. Needless to say that weddings have a tight schedule and so we had to start at 10 anyway. But thank God at least rain stopped shortly after their arrival at the park only leaving heavy clouds that would hide the sun for the next hour, destroying my plans on light and shadow.

I decided to switch on my spare sun and clamped a flashlight with 1/2 orange gel into the trees in order to add some spice to the photos; a friend held a reflector to mirror the artificial sun. I think for most of the pictures this setup worked out well.

I wish you all the best M&R.

Istanbul – Final Impressions

Andreas — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:09:48 +0000

Istanbul is a beautiful city which I will definitely visit again! It is only 2.5 hours away from where I live but it is another world you step in. I had many great moments in Istanbul: early morning on the Galata Bridge, late night strolling through the empty streets, the warm sun rays on the Bosporus tour and a visit to an original Hammam (from which I do not post any pictures as the towel bent around my waist was constantly loose). The city is definitely worth a visit!

One word about the Fuji X100: It performed fantastic. Neither did I miss a zoom lens nor did I miss the weight and size of my D300. OK to be honest it could really have a faster autofocus – especially in low light it can drive you crazy!! But what amazed me most was the dynamic range the camera offers, this is something that I had been missing with my D300 so far.

Early morning at the Galata Bridge

Morning at the Galata Bridge

Tünel train

Tünel tram

Blue Mosque

Shop window

At the Topkapi Palace

Me in a mirror

Istanbul – a first impression

Andreas — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:14:22 +0000

Living in Nürnberg does also mean living together not only with native “Nürnbergers” but also with people from Greece, Italy, Ukraine and East European states, besides of people that relocated within Germany. But the major part of people from foreign countries come from Turkey, so that turkish language is ubiquitous on the streets of Nürnberg and Fürth. Maybe this is why Turkish Airlines offers direct flights from Nürnberg to Istanbul twice a day for a reasonable rate. And so my sister, her husband and me decided to spend a long weekend in Istanbul, an oriental world that is only separated from Nürnberg by a 2.5 hour flight.

With Turkish Airlines to Istanbul

Arcade near the shopping street

Entrance to a Restaurant

What was obvious was the fact that roughly 13 million people want to be fed. The main shopping street and its side roads are stuffed with kebaps, turkish fast food and fish restaurants, confectionaries and little carts selling roast chestnuts. Most of the meals contain fresh vegetables, goat cheese, white bread and nuts or pistachios.

Saray at shopping street

Saray at Shopping Street

Women preparing food in a window

It was the first time I left my Nikon D300 at home and only took the Fuji X100 with me. It is much lighter, smaller and has a superb image quality. I even dared to use the camera’s internal film simulation modes (Velvia, Astia, Provia and B&W) from time to time and saved some of the images in jpg only.

Self-portrait (continued)

Andreas — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:50:40 +0000

Here are some additional pictures of yesterday’s session.

Self-portrait

Andreas — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:46:41 +0000

Once again I had the desire to take some self-portraits of me and what could be better than to start the year with a camera, a flash and an idea. Inspired by a portrait shown in a german newspaper-supplement I saw the challenge to reproduce the light setup in my apartment. It (happily) still has a lot of white walls, which is always criticized by guests. In this case the white wall was just good enough to serve as a background. So basically everything I did was to position the softbox with one SB-800 approx. 6ft from the floor, pointing down, so that the wall would not catch too much light. What followed was: camera on, flash on, release shutter, Mac on, sync with Ipad. And then I had to take like 80 pictures, every time interrupted by a position check on the display, until the right hand and the tablet matched the face and the hand in the picture; aarghh… it was almost driving me crazy!

Backlit shot

Andreas — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:28:09 +0000

I haven’t done a lot of photos this year. I can’t really tell why but sometimes it’s the familiar surroundings which isn’t very inspiring. It’s sometimes hard to see the world with different eyes, to create something brand new out of something very familiar. I think this is what people call abstraction.
However I appreciated my sister asking me to take pictures in the park I live close by. As she is very familiar to me and so is the park I decided to give the pictures a punch of color and light, in order to make them something special. The only tree in the park that was still carrying yellow leafs had already been occupied by color searchers like us. But when it was our turn I dialed manual (over) exposure, pointed the camera towards the sun and tried to produce as much flare as possible. And this with a lens I preferred to buy for its flare-resistance (Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8). After some minor color adjustments in lightroom I finally got the pictures that match the colors, the mood and the time of the year.

Polar lights in Tromsø, Norway

Andreas — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:31:07 +0000

It was a magnificent journey to one of the most impressive natural spectacles, when heading to Tromsø in Norway, 350 km above the polar circle. Me and my friends we booked a flight, hotel and a car a couple of months in advance, not knowing wether we would be able to see the lights. I was told that it is not about the sun’s activity (the lights will always be visible – with variable intensity) but all about the weather. And to our surprise we were blessed with four star-bright polar days and nights!

What we basically did was to spend the day geocaching, hanging out in the shopping mall and sleeping while waiting for the sky to become a little darker, as there was no sun anyway. We then packed ourselves into the rental, drove through the underground road network of Tromsø, past the airport and went out into the western outback, where the lights of the city could not reach the sky any more. In this dark sky area we passed several well lit, though abandoned, villages, with our faces always tightly pressed against the windows staring up to the sky.

And then all of a sudden someone would cry “I see green lights…”, “for God’s sake, now stop that f****** car”. And there they were…beautiful…dancing right in front of our faces. The magnificence is as hard to describe as the depth and the dimensions of the Grand Canyon. You cannot see this in a picture, you have to experience it with your proper eyes. The pictures I took with the widest angle lens I own can only give you a glimpse on what you can expect on your own aurora trip.

Making our way to the farthest western point we reached the Sommarøy Artctic Hotel (http://www.sommaroy.no/no), an oasis in the middle of nowhere. After warming-up ourselves with a hot cup of coffee in front of the fireplace we went on and found a remote house on one of the many peninsulars that stretch out into the open sea. It was such a perfect spot so that everything we had to do was to wait for the lights to come. And when they appeared I pushed the shutter to preserve the memory that will accompany me for the rest of my life.

New York City

Andreas — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:25:26 +0000

After we had taken the subway, two flights, a train and another subway we arrived at our hotel close to the Madison Square Park where we only dropped off our luggage and headed to the ferry to Liberty Island. It was a “once in a lifetime event” that I booked in advance – to be on the island at sunset (at least in September). So I had a chance to take a close picture of the Statue of Liberty at the so called blue hour. They gave us to eat and drink and we enjoyed strolling on this remote little island. The skyline is not very attracting from Liberty Island as it is from Brooklyn but at least for me it was an adventure to take the subway in Nürnberg and to end up at one of the landmarks of New York, which showed me how “close” the world became.

I fell in love with one of the pictures I took the following days, it is a panorama of the skyline taken from Brooklyn, right at the base of Brooklyn Bridge. Despite of all my planning and dusk simulation in Google Earth before my travels my companions have to always be very patient with me. We were standing at the dock for at least one hour until the brightness of the blueish sky matched the brightness of the illuminated skyscraper windows. You could also adjust everything in Photoshop or take a HDR, but I am still too lazy for post processing.
This is the picture (four pictures stitched with Hugin).

I do not want to make too many words about the great time that I had in Manhattan, all in all it is a vibrant city with its very own unmistakable flair.