First off: Happy 2009. I had a couple of photos lined up for this blog but never worked up the interest in post-processing them better as was needed before posting them here. Now I’ve worked my way through most of the huge pile of photos from December and decided to give some attention to my stumbling blog. Stumblelog? Is that something?

I had this photo, from late November, that I was quite pleased with and coming back to it didn’t hurt it too badly. There are some issues but there are also elements in it that almost make up for them. Let’s just say that if I don’t have people in my photos then I like to have man-made things in them. Even better if the man-made can somehow be contrasted with nature.

But this is turning the blog into navel-gazing with lots of words and not so many photos. I’d rather let you see what you see in the photos and briefly account for photographic circumstances myself. I think this is the first photo I post here that’s shot with my little gem of a telephoto, the Nikon E-Series 75-150 f/3.5. I had fumbled with photographing the factory and the sky with a wider lens to no effect. On the way back I saw something else to photo, didn’t make anything out of that subject either but then turned back and noticed the scene above. The telephoto zoom was on my camera and it all seemed to fit at the time.

I would probably have posted it back in November hadn’t Lightroom exported it to JPEG with some linear artifacts along the edges of the factory. I resorted to exporting to TIFF, resize the photo in Pixelmator, add a touch of sharpening – which I’m inept at – and then export it to JPEG. I hope you enjoy the results.

Lucky thing that I looked away from the stage and at the audience as Mother of God played at Garagerocken last Friday. I can’t properly remember taking this photo but I obviously focused on the girl’s face so that must have been the reason for this shot.

Usually I let photos wait for a couple of weeks before posting them here but as soon as I started post-processing this one I wanted to post it here. I don’t think I’m going to regret this impulsiveness, though.

That’s Marie posing in a field. The photo was shot the same day, a bit later on, as Stumped. I’m not sure why exactly I skewed the white balance this far into yellow and purple but I hope you didn’t notice it before I mentioned it.

I’ve kept coming back to this photo; both to have a look and to post-process it. Everytime I look there’s something about it that I like so I ended up posting it here. But not before trying to convert it to black and white with no success and in the end, this. I think these colours fit the photo, and my memory, better than what they really were like.

Regarding the infrequent updates of this site I think I have, unusually enough, two photos waiting to be posted here. No street stuff, yet, but at least it shouldn’t be weeks until the next update.

Since I have shot very little of value since I last posted a photo I present you with – of all possible things – a landscape photo. Besides wanting to try to emulate Minor White at some point I have little interest in landscapes but fog fascinates me. In that fog and light, which a little while later became grey and dull, it was impossible to drive along Dalälven without stopping for a “few” photos.

I’ve been remarkably lazy with my digital camera since I got it back along with the Sigma lens that needed adjusting. Last weekend fixed that and I shot photos at two concerts with four bands in total.¹

I learned a lot from this, although at 857 photos I’m still too trigger happy, and there’s more than a dozen photos I’m quite pleased with. So, since I haven’t managed to do any worthwhile street photography in a while this blog is likely to be all about concert photos for the next few updates.

This photo of Martin from the Ninja Dolls, the band that got me involved in this, is right now my favourite of the lot. It’s taken at Kopparhatten here in Falun, a place with a tiny stage and unhelpful lighting (is concert lighting ever helpful?), and is pretty much as it came out of the camera. Well, besides a very modest crop on all sides, a bit of sharpening and the resize on export.

I guess it’s also interesting that this photo is only the second colour photo I post here but I think it’s more interesting that it’s the first colour photo I post that I shot digital.

Update: Yes, I’m the guy that changes his mind twenty minutes after uploading a photo to his photoblog and uploads a new version. A bit more cropping this time around. Cropping a bit more off the left side brought better balance and reduced clutter even more. I retained the aspect ratio at 2:3 so the bottom got cropped a bit as well. I may be illogically fond of the 3:2 aspect ratio but for a portrait format photo I also think anything slimmer is unlikely to work very well.

I finally got fed up with my Sigma 30mm ƒ/1.4’s front focusing problem and sent it in for repairs and my D40 along with it. So I have an excuse for posting an old photo this time around.

This is one of the photos I had considered for the blog originally but I was never totally happy about it although I liked the scene in it a lot. The “original” can be seen on my Flickr and the problem is I was too stubborn to crop it. After a square crop and relatively little fiddling I was happy with it and ready to post it here.

Update:

Looking at this photo again I got huge afterthoughts regarding the processing. The crop was correct but otherwise the black and white conversion and the rest of the post-processing was crap. I started again from the same crop and learned a bit about black and white conversion in the progress. Then I replaced the old version with what you see above. I think it’s a lot better.

I was passing the cathedral in Reykjavík as a wedding was about to start. Shot on Tri-X 400 with my Zorki-4 and Jupiter-8 50/2 lens.

Despite some faults I really like it and I had meant to blog this photo as soon as I’d have a decent scan of it. The negative was soiled, probably during drying, at the shop and then scanned in low quality. I tried scanning it at the photo club but despite a much higher resolution, and less cropping from the original, I still thought this scan looked better.

A couple of girls seek shelter under the same overpass as I. Just as we found cover the rain hit overdrive.

Victoria and Steve with Lisa, hosting the party, in the background.

Shot on Tri-X 400 with my Zorki-4 and Jupiter-8 50/2 lens.

Admittedly I sharpened it a bit on export but other than that and resizing the scan hasn’t been edited. The focus is a bit off and Steve might be suffering a bit of motion blur. If memory serves I probably snapped this prefocused and at something like 1/60 to compensate for the ISO 400 film and little light.

By The Pond in Reykjavík I snuck upon these two young blokes tossing pizzacrusts at the ducks.