Archive for the ‘Photowalks and trips’ Category
A ride around the countryside
This is gonna be a short one… I recently got a used car, a giant old boxy Volvo 740. This thing is huge, I mean it’s just shy of a bus and my dog immediately took a liking to it. There’s space enough for him to frolic around in the back so he’s happy. We’ve never really been to the countryside around Kungsängen so we figured we’d go for a short drive. I didn’t really plan to do serious photography but I grabbed my camera, an 18-200mm lens and a flash just in case. Unfortunately there weren’t too many places along the road we could park and take a couple of pictures but in the end we found this little spot right by the road. The sunset was amazing and I’m definately gonna go out there again at some point. There are also a few riding schools with so many really lively, playful horses so just that is a shoot in itself. I ended up trying to make the best of the situation an used the car window to lay my lens on in the hope of getting a sharper picture – makes me wish I planned ahead and brought a tripod, or just kept it in the car in the first place. In the absence of a tripod I’ve seen people use piping insulation draped over a car window to lay their lenses on… apparenly works wonders.
Here are the remaining two sunset shots:
Uppsala Photowalk
I’ve been waiting for a free day to go out and do some photography…and finally… this was a pretty great saturday. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been there although it’s only a 40 min train ride from Stockholm. Uppsala has more of that central european feeling, it feels way more relaxed than Stockholm. There’s a few great parks, a small river, a botanical garden, a really stunning cathedral and a castle, which like most casles in Sweden doesn’t actually look like a castle. It’s predominantly a university town which is very noticeable in the warmer half of the year. All this lends itself for a whole lot of photography.
As I didn’t have the time to wait for magic hour I thought that HDR could save some of those high contrast mid-day shots. What I’ve done is bracketing, trying to expose the darkest bracket as close as possible to what would be right for the shadows, the highlights were already high enough so if I exposed them any more they’d be completely blown out. To add some contrast where necessary I’ve added a b&w layer and then lowered the opacity. One annoying thing though… the sun just sets in the wrong place to get a good silhouette of a building against a golden sunset. The best you’ll get is low light against warm colored buildings by the river.
Here are a few shots:
Nynäshamn Photowalk
I seem to be making a habbit of these after-work photowalks. There’s nothing like night shift to get the creative juices flowing especially on one of the first sunny days after weeks of hard to stand weather. Today was meant to be a partly cloudy day so I thought it would be great to shoot some HDR images and just generally be out in the open after being couped up at work.
The sun is a tricky thing. Every time it comes out it gives me a false sense of it being warm, which in this case was dead wrong. It was pretty windy and my hands froze even in gloves. (Mental note: Get wind-proof gloves!) The cameras were feeling it too, the 350D decided the battery was low but continued working fine for the entire day. Today I also had the chance to try out my new photo backpack, the Lowepro Flipside 400 AW. Great bag… I tend to get back ache when carrying my large Crumpler shoulderbag, with the backpack, none whatsoever, the weight is really evenly distributed. The great thing about it though is the ease of access, it opens up on the side that goes on your back and can hang from your body by just the waist strap leaving your hands free to deal with gear.
Here are some images from today:
One match, six cars
There’s something exciting about seeing news as they happen, granted in the grand scheme of things this really isn’t news. On my way to the store this morning I noticed a strong police presence on a parking lot by where I live, and what looked to be 6 burnt cars. The events that followed are kind of obvious, I got back from the store and grabbed the camera. Apparently the fire started at 1 am last night and although I live less than 400 m from there I didn’t hear a thing. From what I gathered nobody got injured and nobody knows what caused the fire.
I try to always keep the batteries in at least one of my DSLRs more or less fully charged and the same applies to the flash. I also try to download whatever I have on the card as soon as I’m done shooting.
Long story short, here are some shots:
Kaknästornet
Kaknästornet is a 155m tall telecom tower in Stockholm with a pretty good cafe and restaurant. Since they decided to enclose the viewing platform in something resembling chicken wire photography from there was pretty impossible, at least with a DSLR.  This is one time i wish i had a compact camera so I could squeeze the little lens through the wire. The wire was so thick that even the wide aperture trick was pretty useless. I decided instead to record a little video, this time on my phone (LG Viewty). Surprisingly the quality’s almost better than what I get from my compact camera. Note to self : I still need to get  decent video gear. Anyway, here’s the video:
Kaknästornet – View over Stockholm from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.
Walking on water
Well mostly biking on water… or ice actually. Turned out the weather was great on Valentine’s day 09 so after a 12 hour night shift  I decided to get the bikes out and go biking on lake Mälaren. About half of Stockholm decided to show up too, there were people skating, ice sailing, riding quads and motorbikes, pushing prams and so on… The feeling is really incredible…me, my girlfriend, 2 bikes, 2 dslrs and solid ice as far as the eye can see. It’s been a real long while since i felt that free.
I always wanted to try sailing on ice. Apparently they use the same mast and sail that you use on regular small sailing boats so I guess you just swap the hull out depending on the season. I’ve seen these “boats” go pretty fast, i’ve heard that on windy days they can easily reach 100km/h – seems logical enough seen as though friction between the blades and the ice is pretty minimal.
Here are a few photos:
