Part II and part I linked.

It doesn’t happen very often that the sun sets under the cloud deck like this. It’s quite an impressive sight.
This image is straight out of camera (conversion from the RAW file), no post-processing (like saturation or anything) save for resizing and the border. It really was this colorful.

D700, ISO800, 1/90 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

Mid/end summer always brings out the full-grown crops. I have a weakness for many things in terms of photography subjects, and one of them is wheat. For many reasons.
One of those is that it’s perfect to play around with depth of field (DoF). Even though it’s probably one of the most cliché things ever to photograph, and there probably isn’t a single angle or point of view left that it hasn’t been photographed from, it just never fails to entertain me.
I guess I’m just happy with the small things Life has to offer

For all 4: D700, ISO200, Nikkor 70-200mm. 1) and 2) 1/6000 sec @ f/2.8 -- 3) 1/350 sec @ f/13 -- 4) 1/45 sec @ f/22

Place your orders for prints, posters, cups, etc. etc. now, before any one else has the chance! You’ll be one of the first ones with a poster over your bed like this!
I’d never seen a pink grasshopper before, so I googled it and there’s a stack of results coming up saying this is a rare thing. I remain sceptical until the orders come in

Ok, all jokes aside… When out with the Better Half (I guess I won’t disclose the location to prevent news teams showing up at the place ) I took a stroll through the garden when my eye caught a glimps of an out-of-place color. At least for the part where I was looking. I checked in closer and saw the cutest little creature sitting on a leaf.
Needless to say I went for the camera to shoot a couple of pictures. I did have the macro lens on, but that didn’t really turn out too good, so I went back to the car to get my bag and the extension tubes, expecting the little bugger to be gone by the time I came back. But lo and behold: it was patient, and and apparently experienced in modeling, because it had turned around, head up, facing right up in to the light (if you lean in closely you might even catch a catch light or 500 ). So I set up the tripod, which I also brought, put the extension tube on, stuck it in the face of the grasshopper and even then it didn’t move.

D700, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/4.8, Tamron 90mm macro + 24mm extension tube

WOA! That was exciting!
Not that I haven’t seen thunderstorms before in my life, but still. This was one of the better ones we get in this -usually- thunderforsaken place. It all started when things got really, really dark really, really fast.

D700, ISO1600, 1/4 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

Usually I’m quite fast with taking out and setting up the stuff, but this time I was just so in awe about the power of the whole thing that I stood there on the balcony with the Better Half just watching it unfold. Then I quickly ran back inside, grabbed camera, tripod and remote shutter, put a plastic bag over the camera (it had started to rain really badly), set everything up on the balcony, put the camera on C-high with the remote shutter locked and a long exposure time. And then I continued to stand there with the Better Half watching it unfold (I even missed -like- an hour of Star Wars Return of the Jedi – which I’ve never seen before in my life!).

It was just too cool, literally, after having been fried in plastic balcony renovation plastic, which they took down only two days ago!

D700, ISO200, 10 sec @ f/19, Tamron 28-75mm

D700, ISO200, 10 sec @ f/27, Tamron 28-75mm

D700, ISO200, 30 sec @ f/16, Tamron 28-75mm

with a clear blue sky, a field of bright yellow rapeseed, a beautiful bride and an even so beautiful groom.

D700, ISO200, 1/500 sec @ f/9.5, Nikkor 70-200mm

D700, ISO200, 1/500 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm

D700, ISO200, 1/500 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm

Don’t you just love the contrast with the white, red and yellow?

And then there was of course the bride’s and groom’s son and one of the best men:

D700, ISO200, 1/350 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm and some more post-processing in Photoshop

It tells a story, that picture. Maybe not the story of a wedding, but a story nonetheless. One of my absolute favorites of the day. Together with this one:

D700, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm and some more post-processing in Photoshop

I was really pleased with the last one. The whole day he seemed to be aware of “the Photographer”. When I had him in the viewfinder he either would look/turn away or make a funny face. Here I caught him off-guard

I’m part of the Worth1000 community and a couple of years ago I participated in a Surf and Turf competition for which the idea was to combine a land animal and sea animal into one being. Lots of hilarious things come out of that. Mine was called the Seahound and it looked like this:

Seahound

Courtesy obligates me to mention that neither of the two images I used to create the above one were made by me. See below for the two sources. I have no way of retracing who the original photographers of these pictures were. I found them through a Google search when I came up with the idea of making a Seahound. Uses like this, non-commercial, supposedly fall under the creative commons license, meaning (in short) that, as long as the user doesn’t sell the derivative image onwards and doesn’t use it for commercial purposes, it is okay to use the source images. This image ended up 8th (out of 73) in the contest, with seven even more hilarious ones going first.

Seahound sources

Occasionally I do a Reverse Image Search on my work (typically the stuff that IS my own and COULD be used commercially) through Tineye and see if anything comes up. Several times something did come up, but nothing close to the results that were returned on this particular image. Together with a good number of other images from this competition it came up on a wide variety of sites, among which websites that sell backgrounds for cellphones and such.

Dilemma, then. What to do?
This is my image, I created it. But it it’s not completely my image, because I used source images that aren’t my own. Should I pursue this? Should I find out what I can do about it? Someone out there IS making money of images that aren’t his/her.
Kind of frustrating it is. And the biggest problem is that most likely the servers that host these images are based in some obscure country where the laws in these matters aren’t taken too seriously. And if for whatever miraculous reason they would reply to emails, or if for whatever miraculous reason the websites would be taken down, then they would simply set up another website within a couple of days.
Carrying water to the sea, that would be.

So… as you’ve noticed before in some of my posts I’m a big fan of Jim Carrey, and I’ll quote that favorite quote of mine from Liar Liar again:

…so what I am going to do is piss and moan like an impotent jerk, and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!

Cows are probably one of the most photographed animals. And one of the most prominently visible animals on funny post cards and stuff. Why?
They’re so dang curious and they stuff their nose IN your lens if only you give them the opportunity.

I was out with the wide angle and that makes things even worse, because you get in so close and when you look through the view finder you don’t realize how close you are really… Until you get a wet slimy slobber on your glass.
But nonetheless… got myself a couple of those post cards

D700, ISO200, 1/180 sec @ f/13, Sigma 10-20mm, on-camera flash

D700, ISO200, 1/180 sec @ f/13, Sigma 10-20mm, on-camera flash

After the second post about cross-processing I thought I’d make second post about HDR to even things out. So here goes. Victim this time was the old church in Uusikaupunki, Finland.

No auto-bracketing or anything, just two straight-forward exposures. One for the church, one for the sky. Manually merged in Photoshop (CS3). I’ve never been too impressed with the auto-merge in Photoshop. Just upgraded my system to CS5 and I have yet to test those features there (I’ve heard they’ve improved a lot, so I’m curious to give that a go).

Left: D700, ISO800, 1/350 sec @ f/13, Nikkor 50mm. Right: D700, ISO800, 1/1500 sec @ f/13, Nikkor 50mm.

The above two images merged in Photoshop CS3. Levels, curves, contrast and saturation adjusted.

See there’s no halo around the church (sure, go ahead, click image to enlarge)? That’s one of those typical things you see when HDR exposures are merged together automatically using software. It’s one of the reasons why I prefer to do things manually (still). Then you’re sure that things are looking more natural, and if you HAVE to cheat, you decide where you cheat and how you cheat. Of course I’m cheating. Do you really think I’m masking around branches and leaves in the trees? Of course not. I cheat. But I make sure you don’t see it, unless I want you to see it

Stage background in Kirjurinluoto Arena, Pori, Finland

A lot of great artists this year on Pori Jazz. Massive Attack, Melody Gardot, Toto, Eternal Erection… And that’s only to name but a few.
We managed to get tickets to Tori Amos and John Fogerty and the Kirjurinluoto Arena in Pori was packed with about 15,000 people (if you don’t know who these people are you’re either still wearing diapers or you’ve been living under a rock for the past decades, Google them!).

15,000 people packed in the Kirjurinluoto Arena

There was a half day program, starting around 3pm. I wouldn’t really call them warm-ups, since both of the bands were excellent. But of course less known than the two main acts.

Ricky-Tick Big Band performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

Ricky-Tick Big Band performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

And then the two main acts. The beautiful Tori Amos, playing on keyboards and piano, with her back turned towards the latter. Quite impressive.

Tori Amos performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

Tori Amos performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

And the never aging John Fogerty.

John Fogerty performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

John Fogerty performing on stage in Kirjurinluoto Arena

More images of Pori Jazz 2010 at stock.arnoenzerink.com

So not to confuse with HDR, because this hasn’t seen any HDR (and no, it’s not just about dragging the saturation slider to +100) 
If you’re intending to over-do it, with pictures that are suitable, it’s actually quite fun…

D700, ISO200, 1/1000 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm, and some serious Photoshopping...