The Accidental Sea

This mistake of mankind is stunning, you should watch it:

Across the universe of Göteborg

One of the photos I took this spring at home is very special. It is my spheric version of Göteborg (in the surroundings of Eriksberg), my own tiny planet. I have been inspired from skilled photographers, great tutorials and, of course, the beauty of Göteborg (Gothenburg) in dawn. I have used 33 photos merged together to a 360/180 panorama and then to a globe. This is the tiny universe of Eriksberg, Göteborg, cold and empty.

Listen to: Laibach – Across The Universe

or the original version of the same song by The Beatles.

Cats and rats

In order to get some system of my blog posts, I have chosen to divide the otherwise huge blog post below where I gave some background information to the photos of "Springtime in Sweden" to smaller separated post. Still, it is the spring pictures which are in focus.

I love animals and I do love my pets. During my time at home I photographed both rats and cats, as seen below:

Above and below, my pet rat Nils

My sister's cat Tina, nose against nose with M

The very same cat together with sister's fiancee B

And with He-Man. As I have written before, she is a very posh cat but she doesn't mind being in front of the camera.

Springtime in Sweden

Well, I have to write something constructive in order to give the photos above some essence and to give you a part of the full story. It has been a long time since I took the first of these photos, but still, they needs to be explained. First out, a self portrait of myself:

I have spent a fair amount of time with the post processing, I admit. If you want to take a similar photo, here is the way to do it:

The photo was taken with my Nikon D90 equipped with a 24-70 mm Nikon lens, working on f 5,0, iso 200 and a shutter speed of 1/25 s. The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a remote control to take the picture. I took the picture as a standing format, so I have the camera and lightsource a bit on my left side. My flash was directed 45 degrees upwards, and since I have completely white walls and ceiling it reflected the light quite well.

Now to the fun part, the afterwork in my computer (I love processing pictures). I use Lightroom 3 and PS5, mostly the first mentioned program, for editing this picture. I made it black and white, adjusted contrast, blacks, brightness and maxed the clarity. I have made adjustments on my eyes (increasing the clarity even more) and on my hands. I masked away the background behind me and made it completely black, plus adding appropriate shadows so the line between my hair and the background wouldn't look that sharp. And yes, I blurred a part of my arms so it would put the focus on my quite photoshopped eyes.