San Francisco
Tag: Nikon
San Francisco – Architecture
This is a photo of one side of the famous “Cliff House”, an awesome place for photography since the sun sets right outside the restaurants window.
If you ever visit San Francisco, don’t miss out on this amazing place.
San Francisco And Vegas – Photos
During the last few weeks I’ve visited San Francisco and Vegas. Two amazing cities. San Francisco when it comes to being cozy, friendly and open, and Vegas when it comes to craziness. Not a bad “crazy”. More in terms of a place that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.
This will the first post in a series, of these great cities. I hope you enjoy.
Best wishes for a new week.
Summer In Sweden 2014 – Midnight Sun Norrbotten
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 6 – Ekbergs Konditori
This is a classic place in Piteå, Ekbergs Konditori. This small café has been around during all of my years in Piteå. A place that looks just the same as it used to be. If you ever go to Piteå, don’t miss Ekbergs and their famous sandwich “Landgång”.
Previous posts:
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 5 – Rådhustorget
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 4 – City Center
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 3 – City Church
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 2 – Christinaskolan In Infrared
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 1 – Behind Statt
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 4
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 2
As I previously blogged about, I really like dark photos. They are hard to accomplish, and they need a lot of thinking to come out good. Even so, I’m trying to explore this type of photos, and during my photo capturing hours in Piteå this was one experiment where I tried to keep the darkness in the photo.
Best wishes for Saturday.
Link to other posts about dark, infrared and B/W-photography
– Autumn in B/W
– Infrared Autumn Photo
Piteå Through My Lens – Part 1
Guards With Shadows
Photo: Stockholm Castle Towards Kastellholmen
Great New Song and Photography – Tall Walker with Running Fast (footage with “standard” DSLR:s)
This great song and music-video is filmed with a Nikon D7100 and a Nikon D800.
Great footage with pretty standard DSLR:s, or what do you think? To get a “behind the scenes” footage, click here
More posts about photography? Click here
More posts about Music? Click here
Swedish Countryside
Infrared Autumn Photo
First Signs Of Autumn
First Signs Of Autumn
Ever since I started this blog I’ve been portraying autumn. In my opinion the best season of all if you’re into Photography. In Sweden it’s one of the warmest start of September, ever.
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman
I hope you have a good start of the week.
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/3mL0pzaHLsjJoaGfvQWyD5
Best album of all times – Number 15
Best album of all times – Number 15: Coldplay – Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
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11:th of June 2008, Coldplay released the Brian Eno produced album “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends”. For me, this album was the first time I really started to enjoy Coldplay. As often when I come across new artists it takes a little while to get used to the sound, the atmosphere and of course the lyrics. What really makes this album complete, is the fulfillment of all those categories.
In short, the album covers the aspects of life, death, war and love. Not the typical “easy going topics”, to say the least.
The album starts off with Life in Technicolor, which is a long intro to the rest of the album. In my opinion this intro works perfectly as an atmosphere leveler.
Cemeteries of London; a typical track about the topics of the album, was recorded in a Barcelona church, and if you listen closely you can hear some spanish “clapping” in the song, while “Bass player Guy Berryman told Entertainment Weekly: When I imagine the song in my head, I see London in 1850. A hell of a lot of rain and men in top hats.” (reference Entertainment Weekly)
Lost! is really well described by “Floridaguy” on song meanings:
This was one of the first songs Coldplay worked on for the record. The band were originally inspired by the song “Sing” by Blur, which they were listening to in their dressing room before performing in a gig in Detroit. They tried to write a song like it and it ended up evolving in various ways with lots of different versions before the final recorded rendering. Chris Martin explained to MTV News: “That’s often how we write, is we listen to something and we think it’s incredible, and we feel stupid for not having anything as good as that, so we go and try to play it. And then, of course, because we don’t know how to do that, we often come up with something new.”
42 is a quite melancholic track with many of the big life questions asked. So far in this review I’ve kept much focus on the lyrics, but the album musically is really amazing. What’s different with this track is that it doesn’t contain a chorus. Instead it’s divided into three parts.
Lovers in Japan. When asked about the development of the song, during a track-by-track reveal, drummer Will Champion said:
We were in a studio in New York, this place called the Magic Shop, and it had this thing called a tack piano there, which sounds like an old honky-tonk piano, where you put little tacks in the hammers, so it sounds like more of a harpsichord almost. And so we wanted to use that kind of sound, but we didn’t have a tack piano, so rather than sample it, we went and bought an old piano from the shop up the road from our studio, and we bought a load of tacks, and me and Guy and Jon spent a couple of hours pushing tacks into the piano hammers. (Source Wikipedia)
Yes: As many of the tracks on this album, this track also have it’s completely own identity. The vocals by Chris Martin are really low.
Viva La Vida is the big top hit from this album reaching the top in both the UK singles chars as Billboard Hot 100. I guess almost everyone who reads this blog at least have heard the typical strings intro. The lyrics carry many biblical references but seems to be more aimed at the conflict between people and government, and especially around war.
Violet Hill. Also a track about a soldier going into battle. The first rows in the lyrics are truly amazing, and gives the rest of the track its atmosphere.
Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow
White snow
I really like the contrast in this song (which I may write about almost all the tracks on this album)
Strawberry Swing is a low-key track with african drums, a guitar melody that almost runs throughout the track as a thread.
The last track, Death And All His Friends somehow share some identity with the Swedish pop band Kent.
In the later part of the track the summarize the album beautifully with the sound of “Life in Technicolor”
As I think I’ve written in all my posts, this album should’ve ended up higher in this list, and I begin to feel that I will have a correction post afterwards where I will rearrange all albums. This album is truly great!
<- Back to Number 16
Full album on Youtube:
Spring in Sweden
Click image for better resolution
Stockholm in Spring
Winter Flowers against wall
– Walter Hagen
Woman walking in snow
Currently we’re receiving a lot of snow here in Stockholm. The airport is closed, the public transportation system is out, but the roads are still pretty ok.
It may sound strange but I kind of like these situations (as long as nobody gets hurt), because it brings people together. Everybody is friendly, and starts to talk to each other without anything more to talk about than the current weather. Maybe that explains why Londonders and Dubliners are among the most friendly people in the world (due to all rain)?! 🙂
This is a pic from the early stages of the snowfall, and it actually snows even more right now. But as long it’s possible to stay inside there is no reason for complaining.
Best of wishes for the evening
Morning walk
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin
The first snow has arrived in Stockholm just in time for Advent.
Cold days like this are super for a morning stroll, and when it comes to many photographers best time of the day, “The Golden Hour”, it’s great for us Swedes that we easily can combine a good long sleep and still enjoy those early moments. At least in Winter….
The woman at Norr Mälarstrand
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
~George Washington Carver
Sometimes we pass those persons with a really strong character. It doesn’t matter if they stand up and shout, or as this woman, just sits at a bench, they have an aura.
Before I took this photo I exchanged some words with her, and I really got the impression that she was so calm and satisfied with her life, the way she had lived it, and I guess that gives an aura in itself.
At the end of our small conversation I asked for permission to take a photo, and she just said ok, and went back to her earlier calm, relaxed pose…
Entered Rodposse. Photo Challenge
Earlier today I entered Rodposse. photo contest. I’m not sure whether I’ll fit or not, but I thought that I might do something more with my photos.
Link to the contest: http://rodposse.com/2012/11/19/15th-challenger-the-dogs/
My contribution was a photo from a while back, that I thought turned out well, especially when it comes to lighting.
Best wishes for the evening
This is my photo, and you’ll find the story about it here -> https://saarimner.com/2011/11/19/a-man-with-two-dogs/
Busy woodcutter
This little story was sent to me by a friend of mine. I think it’s a really telling story of how things can turn out when you just go ahead with something, and never stops for a minute to reflect, train or think.
The photo is taken in a national park just outside Stockholm. This photo suffers a bit from Chromatic Aberration (look at the purple around the edges) which I will soon make a new blog post about, and how you can clean it up. Other than that I think the framing and composition in the photo went pretty well.
I hope you will have a good day
Busy
Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter ask for a job in a timber merchant, and he got it. The paid was really good and so were the work conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.
His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work.
The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees
“Congratulations,” the boss said. “Go on that way!”
Very motivated for the boss’ words, the woodcutter try harder the next day, but he only could bring 15 trees. The third day he try even harder, but he only could bring 10 trees.Day after day he was bringing less and less trees.
“I must be losing my strength”, the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.
“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the boss asked.
“Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees…”
– Stephen Covey
Autumn – Harbor Winter Closing
Yesterday, our small harbor had its closing time for the year which means that the club is closing down and start to prepare for the winter. Since the seasons in Sweden are pretty sharp, in the sense that we really have them all, this also comes with a meaning, that the winter is soon here.
While cleaning up I took a few pictures.
I hope you all have a great start of your working week
© Pedro Hansson – Flower along the canal – Nikon D7000
To reach port, we must sail
Autumn, late autumn in Sweden
Yesterday I made a short trip to Ekerö, a small island west of Stockholm City. On my way back I made a stop at the royal castle Drottningholm, which is typically amazing this time of the year.
As the readers of this blog might know from last year, I truly enjoy this season of the year; the Autumn.
Where your mind goes, your energy flows…
Isn’t it strange that sometimes the most ridiculously small task can feel like moving a mountain, but another really heavy one just feels like a swift? Some years back I had a CEO that always told me the quote in the subject of this post, because he was so sure, that if you’re not really enjoy your work you can’t be really good at it.
Of course there are many degrees of that saying, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense. This quote (in the picture) is almost the same one. But I think this quote is more focused on actually finding what we believe in, and through that find interest and energy, both in our professional life, as in our private dito.
I hope you all have a great Wednesday, a day that’s sometimes called “little Saturday”in Sweden.
Barcelona – Morning expedition – Woman at 6 AM
Almost every time I visit other towns I choose one day to get up really early in the morning to experience that particular town waking up.
Last week I was in Barcelona for work and I decided to try to portrait two areas that felt extra important in these hard economic times for Spain; people that we might not see otherwise during our hectic days, those that live their lives in the dark and have nowhere to go. The other topic was to show the town getting ready for a new day.
The first photo is from the first category. This is a woman I came about while walking over Plaça de Catalunya, and I really felt for her. A woman, without almost anything besides her stroller; but still she quietly stood there and shared her bread with the birds.
The moment really did have a mix of emotions. Sadness for her situation, compassion for her willing to give but also calmness since she, a few moments after this pic was taken carefully smiled at me and then continued to feed the birds. But most of all she made think of how she ended up there.
I couldn’t imagine how it must be, to have a life like that, and moments like this always brings perspective of the differences in the world. I’m really thankful of how Sweden have tackled this recession that has hit southern Europe so badly (even though there are things that also can and must be improved in Sweden as well).
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
– Marian Wright Edelman
Thomas Edison – Quote
When you have exhausted all possibilities – remember this – You haven’t.
– Thomas Edison
The photo is taken in Piteå last year.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III – First tests out there
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.”
Saarimner.com 