Business & Pleasure :: Promo picture for Thor Einar, Stand UP Bodø

It's always nice when you get to combine business and pleasure and in this industry it's nice to just play with your own ideas from time to time. Keeps the creative part of the brain up to date.

So with this image I just wanted to do something silly as Thor Einar is a stand up comedian, which led me to the PEZ dispenser - everytime you bump the head, a new treat comes out!

Big thanks to the kiosk in Bankgata, Bodø, where one of the staff had a vintage PEZ dispenser to lend me.

Also; I will try to update the blog more frequently now, it obviously comes and goes. But now it's finally spring up north and we can play around in the lovely landscapes up here. So I am shooting a lot, and just editing whatever is needed - there will be time enough to sit inside in the winter.

To my followers on Facebook: when it comes to imagery, Facebook brings as much good as a molesting uncle. Since it feels the need to compress every image, images with red backgrounds get pixelated - and there seems to be no solution to the problem.

Thank god for alternativ stuff, like this blog!

Whoop, there it is!

Shooting for EBEN, a new label (it's fishy!)

Fashion photography is what I love to do most. It's so playful and out of the box (if you want it to be), and you can just play around with different techniques, lighting, locations, models .. the creativity is never-ending. That was definitively the biggest downside of moving to Bodø, the lack of fashion.

But in every mountain there is an ounce of gold I guess. I was so happy to be introduced to Elisabeth Benoinsen and her label EBEN. She is an designer who did what I did, moved out of London to work on her own expression. She is developing her brand with a series of exclusive fishskin handbags. 

If you are into design you will know how cool that is, but if you are a regular Joe, then you might think it's icky, smelly and rough. It's not! We are far away from talking about gutting a fish and making handbags out of it; the skin goes trough a long process to magnify the skin, and in the end you get a super exclusive and expensive skin that feels like leather, only it got the insane cool structure to it!

Elisabeth have been investing so much time, effort and money preparing her products, and she is so focused on quality that you get blown away. Absolutely nothing is left to chance, and I am so excited to see the products in the shops soon!

So during the last months we have been planning a photoshoot to promote the EBEN products. While we have been waiting for all the handbags to go into production, we have been testing different models, different clothing and accessories, different locations and so on. 

And I am the kind of photographer that doesn't want to leave anything to chance either. Out there it is so competitive that even the smallest thing can be the difference between success or no success, and imagery is often what get you noticed. Also we are aiming to make an editorial to get into magazines, so it's also trying to create that little extra.

We have learned from out test shoots and we now feel ready to do the final shoot. All the handbags will be here in any time now, so expect some results in the near future. I can say that this shoot will be a fairly big production all things considering; we even need to establish a camp in the "wild" to let the model thaw up during the shoot. But we have been out there testing - and the results can be astonishing!

Follow EBEN on Facebook!

Here is the pictures from the first shoot that have been edited to test retouch style. Hope you like them even if they are just testshots :)

Photoshoot :: Royal Guard

In december I did a shoot with a soldier from the royal guards. These are the men that protect the Norwegian king and the Norwegian castle in both peace and wartimes. This platoon was the ones that managed to get the royal family away from the Germans and over to England during the invation of Norway, and scenarios like this is what they train for even 70 years later. 

I think it was amazing to shoot these images, because the uniform is under strict regulations and you don't find many photographers that have been able to shoot this inside a studio. I enjoyed it, hope others do as well. 

Urgent shoot for Østbø AS

It's been a while now since the last blogpost. I decided ho have a real holiday during christmas, and when I got back to work, it only took one day before I got a serious flu. So the studio was basicly closed from December 23rd untill Jannuary 14th. But now everything is dandy.

The other day I got a call from Østbø As which work with special waste and recycling, they needed pictures for an advertisement with a 48 hour deadline. In finishing stages of creating their ad, they had discovered that their old pictures were not up for the job. I accepted the job and started to plan in between other shoots that day, but for a commercial photographer that is really toying with the results you get in the end.

Let me explain. There is a lot of different photographers out there. You got portrait, press, documentary, fashion, action/sports - and many others. In example, a press photographer often rely on getting plenty of frames to capture the exact moment that gives that case the correct expression. Most of the times, the picture only needs to be noticed for a day or two.

For a commercial photographer it's the other way around. We shoot few frames, we spend a lot of time bringing forward the expresion we want in photoshop - but most of all we plan, plan and plan to have complete control over every detail in the image. Which colors to use, what backdrop, what props, what location - and so on. And the image needs to last for months or even years.

Most big commercial shoots are planned in advance by an agency, and the photographer only gets a brief. And that agency can in extreme cases plan a shoot in houndreds of hours. A couple of months ago I spoke to a couple of photographers working for a frensh car manufacturer. They spent a full week driving around Lofoten just to find locations for the new campagin - and that is just a small part of the work going into the planning stages.

Now, I'm not saying that this is normal, but the key for good commercial images is planning and preperation. Fail to plan -  plan to fail. Don't expect - inspect. And so on. So accepting a commercial job with a short deadline can also be peeing in your pants to keep warm. Sure you get the job now and the money that goes with it, but if you create poor or mediocre pictures you are painting yourself into a corner.

First of all, a photographer reputation rely on two things - his best and his worst image. The next thing is that if you don't show quality work at a regular basis, you will be known as the photographer who does ok work, but nothing more. That will not lead into anything bigger or better anytime soon.

This time I actually feel the images came out fine, especially concidering that I had to plan, shoot and edit within 48 hours. But then again, just 20 minutes before shooting the worker with a garbage can there were a blizzard, and I know I don't get that lucky every shoot!

So for future clients - not only my clients, but for every commercial photographer out there - if you allow us time to plan our images, that chances are that they will turn out ten times as good - if not more. And this is not a critique for any of my clients, it's just a helpful tip, because most people are not familiar working with commercial photographers. When I started my photographic education I only knew of portrait and press photography - so why expect something different from other people?

Enough jibba jabba! Here are the images!

For this shoot I kept record of time spent, for future refrences.

Preperation: 2 hours
Shooting: 3 hours
Editing: 11,5 hours

Often less planning shows in more time editing. On these images I was not able to light everything as I wanted and to have the perfect balance between ambient and flash outside, so more time goes into creating that effect afterwards. And that is just simply to give the image impact - make it stand out. Because when people turn that page in their newspaper, you want them to notice your message instead of the one from your competitor. It's that easy.

Before / after photoshop:

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.