London

Something is happening here

Finally, something photography related is happening here. 

I'm sitting at the Clarion Hotel at Copenhagen Airport waiting for tomorrow morning when I'm going back to the U.K. for a 14 day, 11 model tour, from London to Derby, Cardiff, York and back to London again. 

Hopefully it'll be great. It will be very very expensive and on top of that, I've been battling a cold for a couple of days, hopefully it'll get better soon. 

More updates will come soon.

Nearly done...

...with my shoots for this trip. 

I've had 5 shoots in 4 days and it's been pretty awesome most of the time. The weather wasn't really co-operating yesterday so we had to cut down on shooting time on my second shoot for the day, though we did get some good shots before that so it's all good. 

And tomorrow I'm having my last shoot with Nicole and I think it'll be pretty awesome. 

And I have to admit that I'm actually extremely happy that I bought the Fujinon XF 23mm f/1.4 R a while ago. Well, I actually bought it a lot because of having today's shoot with the amazing Ayla in mind. 
Though 35mm (FF equivalent) is not a favourite focal length of mine, it is very useful in either smaller spaces or when you want something wider, but not as wide as for example the XF 16mm f/1.4 (24mm FF equivalent) which normally is too wide and I shot a lot of my urbex shoot with Helen this Sunday and a lot at The Hacienda studio with Ayla today. But it's of course not a lens for headshots, there would be too much distortion and there I used the XF 56mm f/1.2 R, but for full or half body shots it is really nice. 

 

 

So I'm in London again...

...and started off with an epic nude shoot with Helen yesterday at an abandoned factory site outside of London. 

It was awesome, the place was so cool and Helen was fantastic, and had no limitation on what to do for a shot, and walked barefoot on broken glass, in murky water, sitting on the dirty floor, lying in moss and climbing around sharp objects and old cables, all totally nude. 

And we ran into a graffiti artist, making some art and his friend and video operator. The artist is sponsored by a spray can company and they were doing a kind of documentary for that and suddenly Helen and I had cameo rolls in it. :) 

I'm interested to see what it turned out to look like. 

I've only looked through some of the shots and made some previews for Helen and this one underneath, since my 13" MacBook Pro is a bit small to do any extensive editing on, at least for me, though it is a great little computer for travelling with. 

Gonna get ready for today's shoot but will be back with more travel stuff.

DSCF3893.jpg

 

 

New London trip

I am trying to organise a new London trip in September. I mean, hotel and flights are already taken care of, as well as a couple of shoots including models and studios for that. But I still have things to sort out and shoots to book since there are a number of models that I want to shoot with. 

Will update on this further on.

Post processing

Alright, so I'm back in Sweden, back to the old boring regular life, though I have a few cool shoots lined up for the summer. 

I left my hotel in London on Saturday morning and got home to Sweden in the evening. And on Sunday morning I woke up to the news of a new attack in London. Totally meaningless. Too bad the perpetrators were shot to death, since they deserved something much worse.

But I've already started to arrange for a new trip back ton London in Septembe again. So far I've already arranged hotel and started to organise shoots, but that hasn't come very far yet when it comes to that part. 

And I've started post processing, which will take forever since I'll start working again on the day after tomorrow and be on call again and won't have much time, which will make it an out drawn process. And it's also not exactly my favourite part of the process, but it is of course necessary. All the fun is the shooting and interacting with the models, but of course it's fun to get the actual end result, but the post processing isn't. 

So yeah, time to get back to work...

New London trip

So I've started to plan for my next trip to my favourite city, London.

My old passport will expire soon and I'm gonna pick up my new passport from the police this upcoming week and then I'm going to book the flights and hotel.
About the old one expiring, I renewed it just before moving to Australia. So, where the fuck did these last 5 years go?

Anyways, this time I'm gonna be staying around two weeks and I've started to get in contact with some models that I want to shoot with and they're more than before. I still haven't puzzled the actual dates together yet, but will do that this upcoming week after I have decided on the exact dates. I might try to squeeze in a couple more models than I've already been in contact with, but we'll see. I do want to do a bit more cityscapes and street photography than I did last time. 

The trip will be at the end of May and a few days into June. I'm also gonna go to MCM Comic Con, since I've heard that it's even bigger and better than London Film & Comic Con that I visited on my last trip in July/August 2016. We'll see about that as well.

Anyhow, here's an old photo of Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral.

Barbican Estate

I've posted a few shots of this cool place before in my cityscape section, since I visited this cool place last year while in London. This time I walked around a little bit more and it's an interesting place. The brutalist architecture is well, brutal in a way and the feeling while walking around is that it's both modern, and kinda old-ish, not ancient old, more dated and stuck in the 60's old. 

Still it's a fascinating place and here are a few shots. 

LFCC

That stands for London Film and Comic Con, which I attended one and a half week ago. 

It was a pretty cool experience, since I've never been to one before, and there's an even bigger one apparently (Anna Quinn told me so) at the end of May, with more of everything, including cosplayers, so I guess I'll have to go for the last week of May next year instead of first week. 

 It was hard to get any decent shots of cosplayers, since there was crap backgrounds and other people everywhere, but here are a few shots anyways.  

London July/August 2016 Day 10

So, yesterday was my last full day in London for this visit. As usual it didn't turn out as planned (nothing never does). I had a run in the city, having a look at a couple of things in a few stores (didn't buy anything) and had some food. While I was about to get on the Piccadilly Line back to my hotel for a chill (and for resting my blistered feet), at Holborn, it started to rain. 

That rain kept on going for the rest of the afternoon and the whole evening, spoiling my plans of grabbing some shots of The Shard at its base (London Bridge Station) and some evening/night shots at the Isle of Dogs. At the same time, I could give my feet a rest and maybe I can walk the rest of the day while travelling back to Sweden. 

It's been a pretty good trip, not as productive as hoped for, since I didn't find myself getting any good street shots, but had three nice shoots with Beth, Chloe and Lauren. And it was nice to catch up a little with Anna Quinn again and also to meet Ben and the others while doing the street photographer meet up. 

So thanks London, see you soon.

 

London July/August 2016 Day 9

Yesterday I went to London Film and Comic Con, held at Olympia, London. 

Quite a lot of people, but heard that it had been packed on Saturday, so was glad that I went on Sunday instead. One of the reasons to go there was to have a look at what it was like, be able to shoot some cosplayers in costumes, and the other reason to go on Sunday was to catch up with Anna Quinn, the model I shot with in Copenhagen in the end of June. 

I met Anna and we chatted a little bit and she was dressed as HellBoy, and looked awesome. 

I saw quite a lot of cosplayers dressed up in different costumes, some that I recognised and some I didn't. And with quite a large difference in quality and time/money put into their costumes. it was fun though, but I was pretty tired after the visit. I will post some more photos here. Now here comes one of Anna/HellBoy. 

London July/August 2016 Day 8

Went on my last model shoot for this visit yesterday, with the lovely Lauren. 

This was the first time we shot together, but it went rather well and we might be able to do it again on my next visit which I don't know when it will be, maybe in the spring of 2017. 

Lauren is a nice and easy going person and I had a nice afternoon/evening and while two of our locations didn't work out pretty much because they were so overcrowded with people, it was still good. 

As with my other shoots, I'm gonna post process the shots while I'm back home, but here is one test shot though.

London July/August 2016 Day 7

Had an interesting model shoot with the lovely Chloe yesterday. It took us south of the Thames and to Nunhead Cemetery, one of the Magnificent Seven, cemeteries built in the 1830's-1840's. 

We were running a little bit late and when we got to Nunhead station, it started raining. Awesome. We didn't explore as much as we wanted both because of the weather even if it cleared up and stopped raining after a little while, but also that we were running a bit late. 

After that we went to the more multi cultural East London and to the wonderful part called Hackney. Hackney has been a bit gentrified as I've heard but while sitting on the overground train it looked kinda shit around the area and it hasn't got the best reputation. We were not shooting in the street, but at a rather nice hotel next to Hackney Central station. 

I got back my to hotel after midnight so it was a long day, but we got some nice shots. And here's a quick edit and preview of one of them.

London July/August 2016 Day 4-5-6

So been doing a little bit of this and little bit of that the last couple of days.. 

On day 5 I was supposed to have done a model shoot, but unfortunately my model had to cancel since she was covered in heat rashes. Did not look very nice, judging from the photos of her body that she sent me and I hope you'll get better soon. 

Yesterday I did do a model shoot with the lovely Beth Smith in Epping Forest. Very nice place and model and I had a good time  and will post process the photos when I'm back in Sweden. Here's just a test I did. 

And today I'm off to do another model shoot. 

London July/August 2016 Day 3

Third day in a really hot London.

Been to the Barbican Estate once before and it's really cool and I had to go there and have a second look.

After sweating for a few hours, stopping by at a steakhouse for a healthy pile of tasty meat, I got back to my hotel in the late afternoon, had a shower to cool off and thought that I should stretch out on the bed in the cool air of the A/C before going out to shoot some cityscapes in the blue hour. Big mistake. I fell asleep and missed all of that. Awesome...

London July/August 2016 Day 2

Yesterday I went on my first photography meet up with some local street photographers. We went for the interesting Shoreditch and Brick Lane area. Unfortunately it was a bit too crowded and I found it hard getting anything interesting at all and while back at my hotel looking at the shots, nearly all of them went in the bin since they were pure garbage. 

Though it was a nice experience and the social part was great, I think I prefer doing the actual street photography on my own. But I met some nice people and had some good conversations during the photo walk and when we were done with it, we ended up for a couple of hours at a pub called Hamilton Hall just outside of Liverpool Street station, for some more conversations and refreshments. 

I'd do another meet up with this group if I get the opportunity again while being in London (and having a free schedule), because it was nice meeting some new people with the same interest, and the actual photography bit is not really the main feature.

London July/August 2016 Day 1

Just a little update.

I arrived in a really hot London yesterday afternoon. After a nice shower and some chill-out time in the wonders of human engineering (A/C in my hotel room) I went to Piccadilly Circus, had some awesome food at Jamie Oliver's Diner and walked around in SoHo and around Piccadilly Circus before going back to the hotel for the night. 

On the schedule for today is a meet up with some local street photographers in Shoreditch/Brick Lane for some street shooting. And after that, we'll see. :) I just hope the temperature will fall a bit...

Btw, this guy was shouting like a lunatic, with his "Repent ye" sign. The religious ones are weird.

London May 2016 Pt. 1

So I haven't posted any shots from London until now (except for model shots in my portraits section). As I've mentioned earlier I wasn't super inspired which is weird in a way, since this is my favourite city. But it might be because I had a cold and was annoyingly tired a lot of the time in between my model shoots.

Anyhow, I'll start with a few black and white shots of the city. Nothing new, nothing revolutionary, no new viewpoints really or anything, but oh well, that's the way it is sometimes. All shot with the Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R combination, except for one, with the Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2 R instead.

Portrait updates

No updates on this blog for more than a week. 

Well, I've been sick since I came back from London. And I've been editing a lot of photos for my models and yesterday I was out shooting with Hanna. 

My London trip I can sum up with this. It was great in some ways and a bit of a let down in others. I shot three very different, but all very professional and super nice women which was a great experience. Some of it came out really good I believe, some of it didn't turn out as well as I hoped, mostly because of myself. But still, it was great and I had a great time meeting, shooting and talking with these three women. 

Then my street photography, well, I didn't feel that inspired when I was actually there. It's weird, since it's an awesome place to shoot, but still. I have started to go through these photos and I will start posting them here in my blog (maybe a couple in my cityscapes) within a couple of days, I believe. 

So if you haven't, head over to my Portraits section and have a look. First many photos from my shoot yesterday with Hanna and then my three models from London. Enjoy.