Hengill is a beautiful area east of Reykjavik, popular as a hiking destination. It´s famous for it´s vivid colours and geothermal activity. There are two power plants that harvest the energy from the Hengill area, one at Nesjavellir by Þingvallavatn National Park and one on Hellisheiði. Even though the area is very active, there has been no volcanic eruptions here in the last 2000 years.
The highest point is Vörðuskeggi aprx 800 meters high. The hike from the Hellisheiði power plant to Vörðuskeggi is relatively easy, around 12-14km long. From Vörðuskeggi there are great views in every direction, Þingvallavatn, Reykjavik, and Hveragerði can be seen and on a good day the south coast and the Atlantic ocean are visible.

Getting closer to Vörðuskeggi

Geothermal areas in Innstidalur

I was happy to see that my photo from Gordon´s Beach ended up on the front page of the Outdoor Photographer website. I´ve been an avid reader of this fine publication for some time and enjoy the website, check it out Outdoorphotographer.com

Here is the original photograph, shot on the way home from canoeing on the San Juan River

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

Interesting post on google and your past

An interesting video via Chase Jarvis

http://642blog.ca/

A Photoeditor with 2 interesting quotes

Talented Photographers are 99% a pain in the ass to work with
Without promotion something terrible happens

Doug Menuez - on Film vs Digital

A couple of friends and I, just launched BCoutside.com it is an Online Magazine on Active Lifestyle and Travel. Medium to long articles on all kinds of subjects that have a common denominator, being outside. Check it out and visit often, as it will be updated on a very regular basis.
The idea is to share the vast library of prose and photography that we collect through our travels in this beautiful province. We are always open to stories with photos from other outdoor enthusiasts, so if you want to contribute send me an email with your ideas.

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.

Just a quick announcement. Me and two former classmates at Western Academy of Photography, Greg Miller and Matt Kelley, just started a business. As would be expected it is a photography business but with a twist. We want to offer a whole package so to speak a whole Image, hence the Imaging in our name.

So if you are interested please take a look at www.iii-imaging.com

Not Fisheye, but the good old 17-40 @17mm

No its not about putting fish back in after catching them, I read on a forum a discussion about normalizing or correcting the fisheye look from photos taken with a Fisheye. I have a 15mm Canon Fisheye and though I appreciate the effect and try to use it sensibly, sometimes I have thought “Hey thats a good photo, shame about the Fisheye look”.

After doing some research on the good old Internet I found several ways of Defishing a photo.
The easiest way is DXO Optics, its a program that has presets for cameras and lenses and “corrects” skewed lines and spherical abnormalities. It does alot of other things that I am not interested in as I use Aperture for my RAW processing. But this lens fixing feature is quite cool and with the Batch process tools of DXO Optics very handy for bulk “corrections”

I have also experimented with Defishing in Photoshop, using the Transform/Warp, Transform/Skew and Distort/Lens correction. This is more labour intensive but I find that it preserves more of the character of the Fisheye lens. Also this method gives more control but at the same time it is a slower process and not something I´d do for a large shoot.

Here are some examples, the same photo – original, Photoshopped and DXO´ed

I like the Photoshopped version the best, the DXO one looses the wideangle feel that I like. Also it is somehow very long.
I liked the fisheye effect on the sky and on the water in the foreground and in DXO Optics the photo looses that effect a little.
Here are 100% crops from each photo first the DXO´ed then the original and then the photoshopped version.

Do not Defish People, this is what happens

If the person is more in the center it works better.

I actually like this version defished by DXO Optics.

My excuses to Byron for distorting his face