Goodbye (for now)

This is the last post for now and the first post in quite some time. I still photograph, I still publish some of my photographs, and I still write comments and stories. But for now, not here. Perhaps I will start again, perhaps not. If you are interested you can follow my new stories on my Flickr-account:

FFF (Faugel's Fantastic Flickr-account)

The enlightenment of snow

The winter came late this year, when the first snow covered Göteborg it was already the 5th of december. However, the soft white blanket of snow did not last for long, the morning after the city was back to its normal appearance, grey with a hint of moist rain. Hopefully, there will be more snow soon.

The enlightenment of snow

The fresh white blanket

And yes, I have an announcement. This blog have been treated as a bear in its winter lair the past months, I beg you pardon for the lack of new updates. I have lost my inspiration to take new photos, the last months my photos have just turned out dull and expressionless. But I will find my way to inspiration once again. Also, I have moved, lost my computer and lived a life without internet access, if that is some form of forgiving excuses.

Please listen to Aqualash – They Say Surrender

A beautiful song and a source of reflection

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.

Note to self

It is not advisable to buy tubes of toothpaste and face cream which looks very similar to each other. Trust me, it isn't pleasant to apply toothpaste on your newly washed face. Fortunately, I didn't manage to try the other combination. Yet.