My wife gave birth to a beautiful set of twins on friday February 5th. Victor and Carla are their names.
We are in heaven these days, trying to get the little toddlers to eat and sleep. We are rewarded with cute little smiles and grunting sounds.
Sleep is elusive but I can’t help smiling even at 4 in the morning when the diapers need changing for the gazillionth time ) Talk about meaningful work!
So as you’ve guessed business will be a bit slower here on the paintshooter blog for the time being.
I will post new artworks and the occasional review etc in the weeks to come, but expect maybe 1 or 2 posts a week tops.
Here’s how being stuck in traffic sometimes spurs creativity.
Monday evening I found myself on a plane towards the northern city of Ålborg where I had a teaching appointment on tuesday. The ride was smooth, and while the news reported of a looming snowstorm I felt confident that I was going to make it back to Copenhagen on my plane tuesday evening. Not so wise as it turns out… Most of Denmark has been bogged down in snow since tuesday afternoon.
Anyway I tip my hat to SAS and their kind staff for lodging me at the SAS radisson in Ålborg and checking me in on another flight wednesday morning instead.
Here’s when it gets juicy for all you HDR lovers. I was actually ready to go to bed at the hotel when I happened to cast a glance out the window…
There, moored at the quay was the Icebreaker Elbjørn in front of some makeshift ice skating rinks. I just could not resist this opportunity, so obviously I had to sneak up to the 6th floor of a service stairwell to find a suitable window from which to shoot a few handheld HDR series.
Here’s the result, 3 HDRs spaced 2 stops apart at f3,2 ISO 200 shot with my 35mm prime on a canon 7d. I did the tonemapping in photomatix and additional work in PS4 as well as adding some topaz adjust.
These days,
there’s really not that much interesting to watch on television…
I shot this video the other day: wondering what the famed Danish arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen would have spent his time doing during his trips up north.
Remember, this was before the time of the Jedi…
Knud now spends his days looking at the Baltic sea from Skovshoved north of Copenhagen.
His statue was placed there in 1963.
I was watching an artist being interviewed on Danish television DR2 the other day. The host started asking questions about technique and how the artist creates his work. This was all good up until a certain point when the artist had to stop the host. He simply would not answer any more questions about his method.
Why?” asks the host.
“Well, if I told you, you could just go home and copy my work” he replies.
Sure, there’s a craft in CREATING art, but chalking the value of your art up to some industrial secret seems sad.
Sure, anyone who wanted to spend their life praticing their craft so that they could be copying your work could do so, but to them I say – “Enjoy your life!”
So whats the secret about the value of art? The secret is that there is no secret. No one can copy your creative spark. A copy of Van Goghs sunflowers is well – a copy.
I got the feeling this artist was scared his art might lose its value if he told everyone how he made it.
Corporations often use so called Non Disclosure Agreements NDA’s to ensure that industrial secrets shared with business partners are not divulged to third parties. This makes sense since the value of a company rests on knowhow, patents etc.
Take The Coca Cola Company which fiercely protects the recipe for Coca Cola because this recipe is what makes Coce taste the way it does. What would happen if another company could claim that they make the exact same product?
Well obviously there is also the matter of branding, shaping the bottle etc., but clearly the value of the The Coca Cola Company would deteriorate.
What about artists then?
What happens when someone copies your method?
I hope you copy mine is all I’m sayin’
Enjoy this beauty as she emerges in 8x speed! Music by Bon Iver because his music is great. Go buy his album everyone. Seriously!
I am a Copenhagen guy, but my roots are grounded in the sand of Skagen and Bornholm. These two locations are about as far distanced from each other as is possible within the tiny country of Denmark.
Bornholm has always played a large role in my life, and I continue to spend many vacations there.
I have yet to visit with a proper camera though!
The topography is unique by Danish standards, and as an Island it has historically played a key part for whoever wanted to secure control of the Baltic sea.
The northern tip of Bornholm is home to “Hammershus” – the largest castle-ruin in Northern Europe. Hammershus dates back to the beginning of the 13th century.
Hammershus and the other medieval buildings on Bornholm are by some believed to have been constructed by the Knights Templar.
Alongside Hammershus, 15 medieval churches were built. 4 of these are round and were purportedly used as astronomical observatories which were part of a larger geodesic experiment to calculate the curvature of the earth!
Check out more charts and graphs at http://www.new-science.co.uk/
Remember these churches were built 400 years before the renaisance, which suggests that our present idea of the history of science might not be correct.
Dare to be thrilled by the ideas of Erling Haagensen on his website.
Todays painting depicting Nylars Rundkirke, is the second of the 4 round churches of Bornholm.
Winter is really sinking it’s teeth into little Denmark. I was out walking around the central lakes of Copenhagen today, shooting photos of people skating, flying kites, playing etc.
“Søpavillonen” is one of the typical vistas in this neighbourhood. I managed to get a few decent shots despite of the frosty wind biting my fingers.
I decided today that I was going to get started on my HDR journey, and I have now spent a great deal of time on Trey Ratcliffs excellent blog “Stuck in Customs”
Trey makes some amazing HDR photography and I really encourage you to check it out. Temples, Fireworks, Sunrises – it all looks great!
Anyhow, since the COP15 riots in front of Forum things have cooled down here considerably.
So the weather was stacking up for some time in front of the screen. With the help of this cute little piece of software Photomatix it is possible to stack together 3 differently esposed photos into one.
And Voila, you have the detailed contrast of the dark areas without the bleeding whites in the highlights.
Remember, this is an early effort into HDR, but comments and suggestions for improvements are welcome.
I have been busy celebrating xmas the past few weeks, so as you might have noticed there has not been much activity here on the Paintshooter blog. A merry xmas to you all! I hope you have all had a great time with friends and family. I sure enjoy this time of year. Long evenings, time to talk, reflect and think forward.
Ever since I started shooting with my new Canon 7d, I have been fascinated by the world of HDR photography. I am really excited about the amazing light and colour that this technique enables and I hope to bring you plenty of this type of photography on this blog in the near future.
For now though you’ll have to make do with a “standard dynamic range” photo from Vankiva, Sweden where I spent some days with my family yesterday.
) Talk about meaningful work!
