BEAUTIFUL PICTURES

When photo competition topic is ‘Beautiful’ you might thing that it’s so easy to select two pictures – only problem is to select two best picture from all beautiful pictures you have. That was the case what I though, but I should have known better. When competition deadline came closer, it’s was really challenging to have an idea what to use. First I thought that maybe some pets would do it, they are cute – yes, cute not beautiful. How about some nice scenery. Well, that probably is nice but beautiful… no way.

Some model pictures – that’s going to do it! I picked two beautiful pictures but unfortunately our grand jury didn’t understand beautiness in my pictures and both pics were dropped before the final round. Maybe the last one is more sexy than beatiful but at least black and white picture of Sanni is definitely beautiful. I like that picture. Jury’s comments were like “it has been taken too down” and “it’s not good when model is not taking eye contact to viewer”. My personal opinion is that this picture is better when Sanni is looking over the camera and she look like barbie-doll. Very beautiful I must say.

But we have to take another photo-session with Sanni and take better pics.

You can see all top pictures from here.

SUMMER 2010

Now it’s already over – my summer vacation I mean. Lets hope that there are still some warm summer days left before Autumn is here. Last Spring I was way too busy with my other works, too many football games and other photo shoots, plus also if you are living in the house with garden – you know how busy time Spring is. These are my explanations why I have not update this blog since May. My apologies. Summer vacation went too quickly (it’s always does) but now daily routines are back and this blog will be updated once or twice a week, so stay online.

Summer was great. We spend unforgettable two weeks in Toscana, Italy. Our ‘home’, typical Italian house in country side, was in small town or village called Tavarnelle Val di Pesa. It’s about 30 kilometers to south from Florence. It was just great time, days we spent in the pool (kids just love it) or by travelling to some nearby places like San Gimignano, Pisa, Montepulciano, Volterra, etc.

And like always, I’m not travelling anywhere without my cameras – so I have few thousands picture to go through. This time I also took some HD-quality videos. Let’s see when I have time to do presentation. Definitely we will do a photo book – it’s always nice to look those books of your trips especially if it’s dark and cold outside. Maybe we will taste some Italian red wine while reading that book…

Here is first taste of Italian pictures.

The other trip was not so successful. We went to Tallinn, Estonia, for two day vacation and on the second day we were robbed. Thief took my camera bag and I lost one camera (5D mkII), two lenses (24-70/2.8L and 70-200/2.8L IS) and several memory cards plus of course all our pics from that trip. Not to mention that our passport’s were there, car key and home key! Sad story but luckily everything went well with the insurance company and I didn’t lost too much money. Now I already have new camera equipment. I hope all possible bad things to thief, shame on you!

Here is the list of stolen equipments with serial numbers – if you notice these somewhere, please contact to me, insurance company If or police in Estonia Kesklinn or in Turku.

  • Canon EOS 5D mark II, serial: 053030304
  • Canon EF 24-70/2.8L USM, serial: 1738561
  • Canon EF 70-200/2.8L IS USM, serial: 387646
  • other stuff: ie. 2x Sandisk CF 32GB 60MB/s memory card, Tamrac Pro 5 camera bag, etc.

CHANGE

Photographer Jaana Kotamäki was special guest star in my work communes camera club meeting. She showed some spectacular pictures from Tall Ship’s Race event that was held in Turku last summer. It was definitely biggest event in Turku area that year. Jaana also won the Memorable Photography Trophy -competition with these pictures: Silver Trophy serie by Jaana Kotamäki.

Slide show was excellent with good music and effects (zooming in to the picture and out of it and also some horizontal movements). Of course you can always improve the presentation, but then you will never be ready… Presentation was created with Boinx FotoMagico -application – same app that I also used when slide show presentation is needed. It is very easy to use and still you can create professional level presentation, unfortunately it is only available for Mac OS.

Photo competition topic was quite challenging – ‘Change’. I was really surprised the amount and especially quality of pictures that was sent in. Surprisingly my ‘ring / heart’ picture won the competition. Certainly some other judge would have different choices, but like I said – this time I was the lucky one.

Like always, it was last minute panic when I realized that I don’t have any pictures to next competition. And it was the same morning already. iPhone picture has been in my mind earlier but my idea was to take it outside of Apple Shop. Luckily the local newspaper has this whole page ad just before competition. Idea for change is that youngster in the picture still has some old mobile phone but she would like to switch to this sexy and trendy iPhone.

Ring-picture started form the idea that getting married is big (or huge) change for everybody. First picture I took with two ring with the bible, but then I remember this heart-shadow issue with ring and open book. Testing couple of different rings this one was the best – it’s my oldest daughters class-ring – and she got that just day before. Picture is taken with Sigma 150mm macro-lens and light comes from morning sun.

You can see all top pictures from our camera club gallery.