The second day was much better with a mixed bag of glaring sun, thick fog and everything in-between. The area around Landmannalaugar is very beautiful, and so different in winter with snow covering everything. I went as a passenger with a friend as I do not yet! own a Land Rover – After this trip the Land Rover virus has spread and is now a full blown disease!

Gallery

It is shot on a Canon 5D mark II, with 85mm 1.2 – Canon 24-70mm 2.8 and 70-200mm 2.8

I had the pleasure of Photographing a wedding a couple of weeks ago. Allison and Kevin got married in a small church in James Bay Victoria BC and then we headed out for some shots.

Summer is sweet, busy but sweet. I have done some interesting assignments this summer but all of them are still in post production, have not yet been published or used. So I cant either.
I moved out to the country last month, 30km from Victoria to the beautiful Metchosin. Enjoying it thoroughly and doing a lot of personal stuff.
BCoutside is busy as always check it out for some fresh stories and photography, lot of new stuff will be there in the next couple of weeks.
I have begun Twittering, follow me on Twitter if you Tweet, it´s fun. http://twitter.com/SnorriGunnarsso

Isabella and Oluna, Metchosin BC

Went to Lake Cohwichan for a weekend, stayed in a town with a strange name, Youbou.
Many strange, unusual, beautiful and wacky names on the Island and Youbou will go into that category.
Most of the photos I took were long exposures with a 5 stop ND filter.

12 sek exposure at dusk, I like the purple tint from the ND filter in this image, usually I colour correct ND filter images, but I think it works uncorrected in this one.

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I’ve been in an experimental phase in the last days and one of the things I have tried is tethered timed shooting. I attached a 5D to an iMac with a USB cable and used Canon Eos Utility to control the camera. You can set the intervals and how many images to be taken total. Actually you can also control the aperture, shutterspeed, ISO, WB, kind of file and the exposure metering.
For my shot I chose a flower in a vase, dying. I shot it during 5 days with 10 minute intervals. It is lit with two lights, a softbox above and an umbrella in front 45 degrees to the left.
After all the photography was done I assembled the movie in Adobe Flash, flash even imports the images in a right order, each on its own keyframe. Pretty handy for this kind of work.

As most nerds and geeks I have a need to buy a computer at least once every 2 years.
I bought my desktop computer in January 2007 and I am quite satisfied with it still. My Powerbook on the other hand was bought in January 2005 and I am on the verge of a tech breakdown. It is 3 years old and that´s an old computer. The problem is though that it just will not break down, I have had Zero issues with it. The battery still goes for 3 hours when doing light work and the screen is flawless, nothing is loose – no problemos. That is the problem though, I want a new Powerbook, so in my head I am reasoning with my inner practical guy. He´s not very strong, my whimsical inner guy is much stronger and in the end he always wins, just takes time.
Now that is just the first hurdle in a very long race to the finish line, the biggest hurdle is my wife. She does not need tech, she would be happy with anything that runs a word processor and goes on the Internet without a fuzz. She is so undemanding that she uses a 4 years old PC. Yes it is that bad. So to say the least she does not understand my cravings for beautiful, shiny, slim things that can leave other similar things in the dust in benchmark testing. I always tell her that she should consider herself lucky, I have no need for a 50 inch plasma TV, I don´t need a Harley Davidson or a quadruple 16 piece surround system. That reasoning falls on deaf ears. But persistence is the key, young master.

I have been using Aperture from Apple Inc for 1 ½ years now and I have to say that I am hooked. My Apple fetish probably has something to do with it, but I also have an Adobe fetish and Adobe Lightroom is the alternative to Aperture. So my unhealthy adoration of Apple products is not really a factor.
I used Lightroom for a year, was a part of their beta testing and I generally liked it. When I upgraded my computer and got some real muscle and a two-screen system, Lightroom did at the time not have what I needed.


©Apple Inc.

What Aperture has and I need, is a real support to a two-screen system, it also uses the Graphic Cards memory, when at the time Lightroom did not. Those are factors not everyone would think a big deal, but if you have the horsepower and two screens they are paramount to the decision.
Now this week Aperture 2.0 saw the light of day with even more options for Professional photographers. Tethered shooting, a big one. I have never liked the Canon programs, not surprisingly as they are a Camera manufacturer and it shows in the GUI of their software.
Aperture 2.0 has a clone brush that works this time, more reasons not to go into Photoshop. More speed, enhanced RAW processing and other not so useful stuff.
Lately I have even been printing from Aperture. I always used to print from Photoshop but had some problems with the program not saving my settings and etc. In Aperture it´s just easier, something that becomes more and more important in a fast workflow.
So this is my little love song to Aperture. I still like the name Lightroom better though, but although whimsical by nature, I am not that whimsical.

I have been doing Panoramas for the last months, very nontechnically just on a regular tripod and sometimes if the light is good, hand held. This is a big no no with Panoheads and for a real Panorama a Panorama head is the optimal way to go. They are often more expensive than the average tripod so I´ll wait a while with that purchase.
Panoramas are fun and I see potential for exciting things in conjunction with strobes and people.

Port Renfrew

For one thing Panoramas offer a very large file, which is very good if a project needs to be printed Xtra Large. Another perk with Panoramas is how you can give a truer portrayal of a place. More alike what our eye can see in conjunction with our senses and peripheral vision.