This is a picture taken of the sunset, the 13:th of March. The view is over Lake Mälaren and the picture is taken in Stockholms archipelago.
The apps used for creating this pic is HDR Pro and Photoshop Express for reducing noise.
This is the first real week in Stockholm with “full spring”. In Sweden this is some amazing days. It seems like everyone just un-freezes from the Winter and there are happy people all around.
What’s also really amazing when spring arrives (as in the autumn) is the lighting conditions for photo. I can’t exactly tell you what it is but I think it get’s so much easier to get good shots, even with an iPhone-camera, so I’ve been quite busy taking pics during the days this week.
First of is a pic of Kungsgatan two days ago during lunch hour. What I like with this view is that there are very few who takes any pictures here (maybe it’s due to looking silly on a shopping street.. I don’t know 🙂 ) while I think this view holds one of Stockholm’s nicest views of great architecture.
This pic is taken with HDR and then adjusted with Photo Toaster to get a touch of an older look.
I hope you all have a have a great week!
If you’re looking for some new and creative ways of using IKEA:s furnitures you’ll find lots of new ways here. Really like this Macbook Air Stand that’s made out of a IKEA’s napkin holder “Fantastisk”.
Instead of buying an Apple stand for $39 a piece, you’ll get this one for $2 …
Click on the image to read more
Ever since I started taking photos I’ve always liked the final Canon-images better in terms of color saturation and depth, rather than the Nikon but at the same time the Nikons have been better in terms of noise.
Last year I went ahead and bought a Canon 7D (at that point instead of buying a Nikon D7000), but I had some real difficulties with noise in my images, and i also thought that the camera didn’t focus correctly at all times, so I swapped back to a new Nikon again.
Now, after Nikon have release some really good cameras, Canon 5D Mark III is out and I’ve really been looking forward to this one to see if Canon can step up the game as when the Mark II went public. The previous version has been really good in my opinion, but Nikon have been really strong in the areas I mentioned above over the last years.
So here’s a short preview of what we can expect. What do you think, except personal preferences? I know it’s a bad question but I can’t resist;
Is Nikon or Canon ahead in the game?
My favorite source for Photography Reviews (external link):
Digital Photography review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos5dmarkii
Maybe this quote from Digital Photography is a good overall conclusion: “While there are still other cameras in its class with marginally higher resolution, marginally better high ISO performance, more advanced AF, faster performance, better weather sealing and more solid build quality – and the Sony A900’s built-in anti-shake remains unique in the full frame arena – the 5D Mark II is certainly one of the best value for money propositions on the market for image quality – especially in RAW, where you really can see the benefit of all 21 million pixels. Canon has also wisely made only minor tweaks to the external interface, so that 5D users can jump right in and feel at home. Looking at the package as a whole the EOS 5D Mark II seems hard to beat.”
Recently Swedish artist Amanda Mair released her first official songs, and if you listen to the music industry, she’s all set for a fast carrier in the industry. I can’t agree more. Her great voice is really unique and is easily recognized.
Hope you all have a good Wednesday
Prewords: This will not be my most “manly” post in this blog, and I’ve reflected so much about if I should post it or not, and I guess if you aren’t or haven’t recently been in some kind of crisis these words may sound silly, but for me they’ve been extremely important so I decided to post them anyway and I sincerely hope that they can be of comfort to more than me.
Post: Last year I went through some hard times and I often reflected about how hard it was for those around me to know how to act. Should they call? Is it okay to laugh? Is it okay to ask how I feel and so on…
At the same time there was a battle inside me where thoughts like “Is it really okay to smile and be happy when I shouldn’t be?”, “Will I be this down and out forever”? So I decided to write some words to myself, to keep me on the straight line on the days when things were rough, to know that it’ll get better; and for the days when I felt that “Now I’ve passed this test”, some words to lessen the bounce when I bounced back and also give myself some slack to “just be”.
And if you are in the middle of some kind of crisis, remember that it’ll take time, It will never go over, but it will get easier and the days between when you feel weak will be more and more rare. So, hang in there, life’s beautiful, and things will change and you’ll soon laugh out loud for some ever reason that you won’t even know today.
I will also take this opportunity to thank all those around me, both friends, family and colleagues for the support on those days when things aren’t the best, and for sharing my laughs and craziness when things are up 🙂
Swedish version
If you, like me, LOVE the thrill of speed (not the chemical one), you’ll love this video, shot with a GoPro Hero 2-cam.
Happy weekend!
This winter went by so fast. There wasn’t much snow to talk about and on the news they are talking about 10 degrees celsius today, Saturday and Sunday, so I guess we will not see so much snow in Stockholm anymore.
During a day when I took a really long walk (the same day that I shot the pic of the seaweed posted recently) I also passed by this snowy roof against the sun. I really liked the lines of the roof and the crispy cristals of snow.
Life doesn’t have to expensive to be absolutely beautiful.
Hope you’ll have a nice weekend
Tara Miller from Winnipeg entered the Photo Contest “Canadian National Institute for the Blind”. The contest was aimed at the public, both blind and non-blind. Tara was the only one with under 10% sight, 6%. Despite that, she went ahead and won the contest.
This is the pic she used to win the contest. Click the image to read more about Tara and her husband Jeff. Don’t miss out the galleries either.
Earlier today I browsed Wikipedia and came across this amazing story that’s been the inspiration for two movies.
What a strange and unbelievable destiny… Mehran Karimi Nasseri fled from the Shan in Iran and was awarded refugee status in Belgium but wanted to settle down in UK. Unfortunately, while he was on his way to a detour in France he lost all his papers (they got stolen) and he got stuck at Charles De Gaulle-airport in France.
This was in August 1988. Who would’ve thought at that stage that he would be stuck there until July 2006? Two movies has picked up inspiration from this story; “Stuck in transit” and “The terminal”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
Last week I had a business meeting in Sälen, which is a famous ski resort here in Sweden. Since I have a friend that lives at the same place, I decided to stay over the weekend and what a weekend it turned out to be, especially Sunday with blue skies, just -3 degrees.
This is a pic from a ride with the snowmobile. Will get back with more pics during the week. What I liked with this view is the trees that almost gives a surreal experience and even though I’ve been in the Swedish mountains I’ve never seen them as frozen as this.
Hope you all have a great start of the week.
Recently I’ve read quite a few articles about HDR.
Is HDR a “real technique”? Is it a “true” technique? Should I use HDR on all images or just some type of images? I guess this debate is interesting because the debate is much about new technology. Those in favor of HDR usually says that HDR is the closest thing to reality, and I guess those against arguing in the absolute opposite direction.
Anyway, here’s one of the interesting articles on the subject.
Hope you all have a great Wednesday evening
Link to the article -> http://www.pixiq.com/article/hdr-garish-or-realistic
This post will be updated as soon as there is more information/new pictures
As some of the readers of this blog already know; I’m a big fan of Formula 1. I’ve followed it almost my whole life and visited races (only in Europe). The speed, the sound (!!!), even though they lowered the effects during the last years, the technique and finally the design! If you like photos and beautiful designs, you gotta love F1.
During the last weeks the teams have presented the new cars for the 2012 season. To be honest, these cars are not the most beautiful I’ve seen. There has been some new rules, among those a rule to lower the nose, which has dramatically changed the design of the noses.
I’ve put together a list of the cars for the new season. Below every picture you’ll have a link to more pictures for each car.
Enjoy, and let’s hope that february goes by quick. Can’t wait for the first races to kick off!
If you find any errors or get information of any of the cars to be announced, please let me know!
Red Bull Racing – RB8
Ferrari
McLaren
Force India
Mercedes F1 W03
Caterham
Link to Caterham
Link to the images site
Lotus – E20 – 2012
Lotus F1-team
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk
Toro Rosso – str 7
Williams
Sauber – C31
Not announced – To be updated
Marussia – Link to Marussia F1 site
HRT F1 Team –
I’ve always been a big fan of images from, and images of space. These are some images of the first kind, images from space. Love the detail and quality, ans as always it makes me think of how small we all are.
On the Flickr-site you will also get an insight on how these images were done.
To get the full image size, click on “original”
Have a great end of the weekend.
Link to the pictures:
Earth, with focus on USA
Earth with focus on Africa
This morning I took a really long walk. At the moment it’s pretty cold in Sweden (-20 degrees in the morning and around -12 degrees Celsius in the day), but it’s also so beautiful. I’ve always loved winter and these clear blue days together with the snowy scenery is so great and it’s almost like you don’t wanna go inside again, even though it’s pretty cold.
So I got up early, stopped by at 7-11 and bought myself a big Latte and off I went. What a great way to start a weekend.
Two photos from today that started cloudy but around noon, it was clear blue skies.
I wish more companies /ad agencies would have the same kind of creativity when they’re creating Billboards. Almost every ad on this page is truly amazing!
Hope you have a great weekend! (Click on the image to jump to the site)
This is a photo from my walk last Sunday in Grimsta Naturreservat, just outside of Stockholm.
Hope you’ll have a good day at work or wherever you are.
I’ve never heard this song before. A little on the safe side but I just can’t stop playing it.
Hope you all have a great Tuesday evening!
On my way from work today I had to stop two times. Just had to preserve todays sunset that was awesome. Unfortunately I didn’t have my DSLR, but I’m really starting to like my “little friend”, the Olympus. Small enough to keep in the pocket everywhere I go and I think the quality is satisfying compared to the size.
Hope you have a great evening!
This is one tough kitten! Takes nerves to fight an Alligator over food, but it doesn’t keep this one from trying!
Now that’s attitude!
Since I’m living in a country where the word for Married and Poision is exactly the same (and pronounced the same) and, as you will learn in the video the number six is the same as sex, I thought it would be of great value to share a quick introduction to “how to speak Swedish”.
A little international warning: In Sweden everyone’s allowed to speak words like fxxk, and other foul words in TV and press, so if you’re offended by those words this is a little warning that there are no “beeeps” in Swedish film clips in general. If you, on the other hand likes a little bit of irony and language comparisons you might find this extremely short introduction interesting 🙂
So, this is Sunday evening. The end of a week, that in many ways feels like a month! The week started of hectically with all the work that needed to be done, before getting up from bed at 3:30 Tuesday morning to jump on a plane to London for the ICE fair, so Tuesday night was a night out, and do I need to tell that my eyes were both pointing at my nose?!
Wednesday went by pretty quick. Had some nice discussions during the day and in the evening I had a great dinner together with some new acquaintances and a colleague of mine. Back at the hotel I found out that an old school friend from Piteå also was in London. 15 minutes later we had a beer and shared some laughs at a restaurant and talked to a French woman in her 60:s about life in general, and the history of Europe. A friendly conversation that made some sudden U-turns at the end when she started to repeat “I wanna kill, I wanna kill”…. 🙂 so, we jumped in a taxi and finished the night down at Picadilly.
Thursday afternoon I went back to Stockholm and had a full night of sleep. Friday morning I had some really interesting business meetings before I went on a conference with me and my colleagues company, DevCode. We stayed at a conference center called Skepparholmen which I really recommend! Great service, great view and excellent food! In the evening we spent two hours in the outside pool, surrounded by snow and all the boats that enters / leaves Stockholm. Magic! A good conference that I think can be important for the future.
Suddenly, it was Sunday. A week that went by as fast as it can and at the same time feels like it was an eternity.
To get back on track I spent the whole Sunday walking in the spring like weather in the woods in Stockholm. Don’t think that are any better ways to slow down and fill up the reserves again.
I hope you all had a great week too, and best wishes for the new week.
This is a powerful article I’ve found yesterday, about old B/W-photos that now has been colored and how they actually describes the reality in a new way. Two of the photos are really graphic (warning), and when colored even more horrifying than before.
For me this was an eye-opener. It’s easy to think that the history looks so much different than the present, but I guess it’s easy to imagine that things were more different than they were.
This is a pic I took a few months ago (also in Piteå). The pic has just been lying around on my computer but I recently got some new inspiration in composition from a close friend of mine and the composition of this pic is actually a suggestion from my inspirer; and I think the result came out so much better than the original. It’s strange. Sometimes you just need that push to get out of the blocks.
In terms of other adjustments I’ve added some Noise reduction. Part from that the image is all natural.
I didn’t thought that polar bears (as I’ve learned to be one of the toughest animals out there) could be this gentle and playful.
Really great short video!
During my winter holiday I spent some time in Piteå. The 27:th of December was a remarkable day in terms of a beautiful sky and a clear moon, so I spent a whole day walking around in my old home town. On my way back (behind Nolia for those that are familiar with Piteå) I came across some electric wires, and just behind the wires, The Moon – so I thought I’d call the pic Electric Moon…
Hope you all get a good start of your week.
Happy New year!
So, Christmas and New Years Eve is over and things are getting back to normal. Have tried to keep my hands off the blog world for a few weeks and find new inspiration, and boy, inspiration I’ve found!
Let’s kick this year off with a really clever page turner 🙂
Best wishes for a happy 2012!
Saarimner.com 
