Personal / Fashion :: Charlotte S

When I was living in Trondheim, I focused a lot on fashion photography, simply because I find it very fun and rewarding to do. I can play with all those technical tools to make pictures stand out, I can do all those things in photoshop - but most important - you can never be too creative.

Moving up to the north pole makes fashion/beauty photography harder, simply because there are not much clients here. The days are spent making money on commercial photography to pay the rent, so fashion is now more personal projects, just to maintain the skills - and naturally to have fun.

Charlotte S. was a girl that I spotted during those late hours in a moist weekend, so I approached her to see if she wanted to drop by the studio some day. Normally I don't do that, but she had a special look and I really wanted to shoot her.

So here are the pictures. They are very graphic this time, just something that I wanted to try out this time. I enjoy how they came out, and I hope you enjoy them too. Just to mention it;  there are no photoshop effects on these images, everything is done in front of the camera.

PS! Charlotte S. is now living just outside Oslo, if you are a serious photographer and want to use her as a model I can provide contact info.

Personal work, portrait of my dad

While I find commercial and fashion work most exciting, portrait photography is something that just feels very natural for me. It´s just that moment of no stress - just me, my camera and the model. That is a very comfortable place to be.

This portrait was just shot in a hurry. My dad popped by and his meter was running out, so I just grabbed my camera and lights and dived into it. And I just love the result. It's so calm but still full of expression. And the colors just flows so nicely.

So even if this is a private portrait, I just wanted to share it with you.

Commercial job :: Settem Transport, Trondheim

Here is a new job that I did for Settem Transport in Trondheim. Settem Transport is the sister company of Elvrum Transport, which is the job I uploaded to the blog previous of this one. They wanted similar, but different images for the two companies, so I decided to link them together with a surreal theme.

While Elvrum Transport is hauling goods into Trondheim, Settem Transport is in the crane business within Trondheim, hence the expression of the image.

This has been a fun assingment which I enjoyed. Hopefully you will too.

Commercial job :: Elvrum Transport (Trondheim)

It's been weeks since I updated the blog, and that is because there has been a lot of work, both with the new gallery but also shooting different commercial jobs - most of them rather big.

But finally I get to show of some new work! This job was shot in the last days of August and in the first days of September. In total this was about 200-300 hours of work. I took about four days just to shoot because I needed to wait for the light that I wanted, and because the locations were far away. One of the locations was 1000 km away, the truck was shot 700 km away from the office.

The backdrop is "Dovrefjell" between Oslo and Trondheim, and the city in the horizont is Trondheim. Elvrum Transport is a lifeline for Trondheim, constant supplying the city with their 30+ trucks.  "Dovrefjell" mountain is what separates Trondheim from the capital of Oslo and in the winter it has very harsh driving conditions, but you can always depend on Elvrum Transport.

Before photoshop:

Raw files:

Behind the scenes - Photoshop video

Behind the scenes: Waiting for the correct light, hating the moskitos (had to run back and forward to the camera for every shot to avvoid a "black cloud" in front of the lens)

Behind the scenes: Shooting from the back of a truck to get the correct perspective

Behind the scenes: When you need to get the light 5 meters up in the air, you need to think creative

Behind the scenes: Shooting Trondheim from the hills outside the city

Grand opening - Photogallery and studio

First of all: thank you everyone who showed up at the opening last night, it was such a good feeling to show everybody what we have been struggling with for the past 18 days. We could not announce the opening untill two days before, because some of the pictures for the exhibition was delayed in transport. And with that in mind, around 40-50 people showing up felt very good!

All this has just been a crazy journey. After my studio partner recently passed away, I needed to find a new studio space, and I was offered this place three weeks ago. But it was too big for my needs, and coming directly out of all the gallerys and exhibitions in London it was obvious what to do with the extra space.

So a studio/gallery place was born, and both are sorely needed in Bodø. There are no other commercial photographers in the area, in fact the nearest is something around 600 km away. And the gallery! Photographic awareness is something we got to have to be able to truly enjoy photography, and in a commercial aspect it's about getting the region competitive and be seen!

It's been three weeks since the idea was born. It's been 14 hours a day of intense working. It's been family and friends showing up and working hard to help. It's been 57 liters of paint. It's been arguments, happyness and exhaustion. 

But look at it now.

18 days ago .....

Combining art and commercial : Moveo portraits

Some people think that art and commercial jobs have to be two different things. Well I disagree and one of the benefits of having both a phototechnical education and a bacherlor in "Fine Arts", is to have the ability to combine both expressions.

The task was to portrait the people working at a newly established fitness centre in Bodø. It's a community for physical therapy, osteopaths and similar things. Their focus is rehabilitating anything from older people who is recovering from medical treatment to professional athlethes recovering from injury.

I wanted to create a new expression outside the box to give the company an advantage when promoting themselves. So instead of the dental-white fake smiles which every company try to sell as true, I wanted to communicate the simple truth.

So I wanted to communicate trust. When you go to these people you are afterall trusting them with your health. Where other businesses are looking like a crocked used car dealer with fake smiles, these people can stand out and show that we are professionals - we understand your situation and you can trust us.

Rather than working with fake smiles I decided to work only with their eyes which means working with their souls. Show yourself and be vulnerable and harmless. Be the one every patient dreams of; their equal. That is to stand out.

Hope you enjoy these images. I put a lot of thought into them, even ever the simplicity.

Business portraits for Enter Service (Hörmann)

I was approached by Enter Service in Bodø, which is the local agent for Hörmann gates, and they wanted portraits of all their employees, This was my first job since back in Bodø, and for me it was important to start doing things outside the box from my first job.

Because their employees are scattered all around the county, the only day I could do this shot was just a couple of days after the client contacted me, when everybody was in town for a gathering.

So I ran back to the office and started to sketch out some ideas which would fit the clients wishes as well as trying to go outside the box. The client was determined that he wanted portraits on white backdrop in studio, but aside that I was free to be creative.

These people are hands-on workers, and I wanted them to look that way, so I did a semi hard light setup to create the effect I wanted and did the developing in accordance to this. Also I told the workers to show up in dirty clothes that had been used on the jobsite and do this very "manly" pose. The managment was told to meet in a clean set of everyday clothes from the office, and I made them do a different more outgoing pose since they interact a bit different with their clients.

Underneath you can see the results, and for a series of quick and simple portraits with little time to prepare myself I am fairly pleased with it. I hope you enjoy them as well.

Basic shoot with model Kristina Hansen

One of the things I enjoy most is fashion photography. I can really focus on details, light and just try to create perfection. However that is easier said than done up north; here is no fashion industry, very few make up artists and even fewer models.

So I feel blessed to have met and worked with Kristina. She is always positive, always try to make time and has a look and body that really works with modeling. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of cute girls up here, but that modeling X-factor is so hard to find.

These pictures are just about untouched. Since they are basic pictures no retouching is allowed. Instead I try to work with the correct light modifyers and just use the raw converter to my advantage, and now we are really just talking pure developing (contrast, color, highlights/shadows/blacks etc).

Also the models can't pose in these images. So I bend the rules a bit, she is not really doing poses, just moving around a bit to show herself and creating negative spaces really. Also it's worth to notice that she is not wearing any makeup in these pictures. 

Hope you enjoy these images. Kristina comes highly recommended.

Photoshop video: Fjellproffen commercial editing

After talking to one of my clients the other day, I was encouraged to upload a video where I show the extent of post-processing I do with my images. Personally I concider it more to be developing rather than photoshoping, because for me it's all about furfilling the true potential of the image. My opinion is that if I don't bring out the whole potential of the image, then I'm not doing my job.

My client had a very good point: when a client is viewing the completed image, then it's hard for him to truly understand the ammount of time invested in getting it that way. It might be easy to assume that just having an expensive camera is the difference between good and bad.

So here is the video that shows how much manual laber it takes to get there. And yes - the original exposure was shot with a very expensive camera.

PS. Be prepared, it's a bit tedious video, but I have tried to move as fast as possible while including the important elements which makes the difference.

Please view in HD.



Raymond Engmark :: Fjellproffen Commercial Shot (Photoshop video) from Raymond Engmark on Vimeo.

Commercial work: Fjellproffen (Shot in Lofoten)

This week has been soley spent in front of the computer catching up on my photoshop work. The fall is here in the North 100% now, so lately I have focused on getting some shooting done before green surroundrings completely vanished. Still, it feels good to finalize some new work, there is a lot (A LOT) of RAW material waiting to be processed, and I can't help feeling a bit stressed.

I do a lot of my work in Photoshop! For me it's not that I always need to work my images in photoshop, but I have learned from some very skilled people how to improve your images (or develop as I would say), and I just can't bring myself to put my work away if I see more potential that I can bring out in photoshop. It's not tampering with it - it's developing. Just because we have quick digital cameras, it's not an excuse to be lazy.

About four weeks ago I spendt a weekend at the island of Værøy in lovely Lofoten. For a long time I have been trying to shoot some good commercial pictures for Fjellproffen (contractor), but they often do work in between houses and other not very good surroundings for commercial images of this kind. So when they got an assingment in Lofoten, I packed up my gear and got on the ferry for a five hour ride into the great Norwegian oceans.

This was not an easy assingment. There was "a ton" of gear, no assistant and this is a small island in the middle of the ocean! Wind gusts can come in without any warning, and as the behind the scenes pictures will show, it can go from blue skies to pouring down in a matter of minutes. One time i had spent one hour rigging up, and the weather turned on me, and it was just getting the gear inside the car without shooting any pictures at all.

Here are the results - hope you enjoy them!

There is a great efford behind creating these images. I spent several days planning in advance of traveling to the island (what backdrops I wanted, what light I wanted, what flashes I wanted to bring, which colors I wanted in the picture and many many other things). When I got to the island I spent one day traveling around and shooting test pictures and also testing how the flashes worked with lighting up such big objects.

I spent one day shooting the actual raw images I needed, and one day later back in Bodø shooting some elements for the pictures. In the end I developed the pictures in photoshop, and I did not punch in and out, but I certainly did not spend anything less than 40 hours, but I would guess around 50 hours.

I do not beleive in using plugins and filters to get it done quickly. Photography is a craftmanship, and I take pride in doing my work manually. I try to acheive not only photo realistic, but pixel perfect. I want my customers to be happy with my work, even if they want to blow it up to 5x3 meters. And that is the thing about those quick plugins; the give your picture a cool effect right away ... but most of the time it completely ruins your pixels, and it really looks like hell when you get up close on a big print.

This is not me trying to blow my own horn, I am merely explaining so that it will be easier for my clients and customers to understand why I want more money than a photographer that don't give a damn about how it all comes out. Check out behind the scenes pictures, it is just shot with a 5 mp mobile phone, but still, it gives you some idea on how an unprocessed picture looks in comparison.

So to my potential future customers; if you and a compeeting business were advertising in the same newspaper; which picture would you have in your ad? The one that gets the attention of the consumers and brings them into the ad, or the one that just merges into the newspaper and just makes you turn the page. And compared to the price of advertising, getting the best photographer for the job will be a drop in the ocean, no matter what.

Compare yourself - here is the behind the scenes pictures! (This is something I need to be better at, I have had a lot of crazy shoots in the wierdest surroundings that lever shows in the finished work).

Here is the weather when I arrived to the island. But I knew it would be good in between.

And naturally - this is the weather during breakfast the next day.

I needed to get up high to get the mountains in the background. Solution: Cat tripod.

1100ws flash unit. Anchored down because of the gusts on the island.

Weather struck all the sudden. Save the gear is all you can do.

Behind the camera when I shot the final picture of the day.

I love my work