I have always been extremely cautious about publishing my work online, and I have never posted images outside my own webpage, where I am the sole administrator. For me this has been a matter of copyright and respect for my work and effort. I am both a photographer and an artist, and I put a lot of both hours and soul into my work. The most recent example is my thesis for my bachelor degree; six digital composites which I spent nearly one year completing. And I think most people would be upset if one year of work were to be stolen from you by the right-click of a mouse. It's a matter of paying the bills and keeping control over the art you create. Sadly we have seen incidents where images have been stolen of the net and used in campaign on the other side of the planet. A word of warning; if someone is to violate my copyright I will sue.
Enough with the speech now! The thing is that I have begun to build up quite a bit of work that is worth showing bits of, just to tell the story. It can be small projects, behind the scenes or any other kind of work others might find interesting that don't go into my portfolio at my webpage. Twitter has been my channel up till now, but how much sense does it make for a photographer to only speak in just a short text? Not much! And I simply don't trust Facebook with my pictures, and this seemed to be a good solution.
Six days ago I handed in my thesis for my bachelor degree, and now I am returning from my studies and back to work. Back to the money - and the bills! So this was a good time to start a new blog since my studying days are over and I feel confident with the work that I do. And of course it is nice to be able to share my work. Just this year I have shot over 5000 pictures, and it's a shame if the just are "gathering dust".
The first image I am posting is a portrait I did for Trygg Luft AS. The manager needed a portrait to go with some new material he was sending out and called me up. This portrait was taken in his office, and since all my gear is all around Norway and UK because of me relocating, I simply used my emergency setup with two flashguns and an umbrella. The result was fairly good, and I am showing the finished version to compare it to what came out of the camera, although cropped.
I spent about 15-20 minutes shooting, and after making a selection I spent around four hours retouching the image. For me as a photographer it is not about making one big adjustment, but doing a lot of small and subtle ones to create a much better feel. It's all in the details, and I enjoy an image looking good without appearing to be retouched.
Some of the things that were done:
- Adjusting skintone
- Adjusting background tone to blend with eyecolor
- Retouching the white in eye
- Extra sharpening in the eye
- Retouching stray hairs and correcting facial hair
- Rebuilding heavy eyelid
- Made crests in shirt less apparent
- Toning down Adam's apple
- Skin retouch
- Much more +++
Now I bet most of you could not tell the difference if I only did one of those things. But when you compare it beside each other you can see how the end result is so much more calm and tasteful to look at. The one picture is cold and chilly, the other is a warm and much tidier person.
Within a month I am moving back to Norway, where I will be travelling around a bit to work, and much of my work will be in the northern regions around Bodø. Some photographers are trying to compete on price; I will rather compete on quality. Everyone in the whole world can get one good image if they just take enough pictures. But when you hire someone, they are responsible for making your pictures as good as it can be.
So let's be good together!
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