I made a Zine called This is Portrait.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/60 | ISO500
How do I take a photograph of art and retain my own style in the photograph?
Photograph good art.
Be a mirror of that art as best as possible.
Don’t attempt to outshine the art.
Keep the art as the centre of attention above all else.
Step back and find the frame that illustrates mirrors my view of the art.
My photographs use a lot of geometry, so I used a lot of rectangles and squares above.
The leaves hanging across the top are one of my new favourite ways to frame subjects after spending a lot of time in the forest this summer.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/60 | ISO200
There was a period about three years ago when everyone was obsessing about camera bokeh. I think a good photographer understands that it is not about how shallow a photograph can get, but how well you can layer that depth of field in the photograph. In the above photograph I wanted to focus the viewer’s attention on the drops of rain on the leaves and highlight the red of the plant. In order to achieve this, I opened the lens up a little bit more than was en vogue a few years ago so that the viewer would be disoriented by the blurriness of everything outside of the plant. As you can see, this still allows for the bokeh to shine at the top of the photograph, but still give you, as the viewer, a path for the eye to follow.
ƒ/1.7 | 1/125 | ISO100
Double Rainbow
A little home experimentation while the rain pours here in Iceland. I was trying to create texture and a piece of art similar to what you would see from the later abstract expressionists.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/20 | ISO400
Ellý
The band from the show Ellý posing on the stage just before they were to go on. The thing I’m trying to wrap my head around two years later is how I got away with such a slow shutter speed while still maintaining the crispness I want with when I’m shooting with my flash. Somehow someway. And I guess now I’ll have to experiment and see if I can’t recreate that.
ƒ/4.0 | 1/60 | ISO100
Cemetery
The endless cycle. Life on repeat.
ƒ/16 | 1/100 | ISO100
Scale
Being out on the glacier is totally hard to comprehend and messes with your sense of scale on a level that is only really possible to understand when you are actually in it. I tried to create an understanding of this scale here by stretching the frame to include my friends hiking around the ridge, as well as the climbers in the background, and the climbers in the middle with the rope leading to a climber not visible in the crevasse below.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/100 | ISO100
Just a simple scene from walking around Reykjavík. Love the way the colours coalesce in this alleyway, from the sign to the house’s exterior to the jungle like garden, it all just works so well together.
ƒ/1.7 | 1/60 | ISO1600
Saturday Night
The fact that I can take this picture handheld, in the middle of a Saturday night is something that I will never get over. When I was learning how to be a photographer, a shot like this would have required at least 1600 ISO or a tripod and neither would have been easy to come by when casually walking out of an art show.
ƒ/3.5 | 1/60 | ISO500
Fun with Framing
I’ve been looking at this frame for a long time, there is a table at my favourite coffee shop that looks right down this way. I finally got the light I wanted and luckily, Hanna was working in her normal spot in the space, so I was able to snap the above shot. This is one of the many photos I have been taking lately that really shines at the largest viewable size, and unfortunately doesn’t feel too compelling on an phone screen.
Beyond all polarities I am
Let the judgements and opinions of the mind be judgements and opinions of the mind
And you exist behind that
Ah so
Ah so
It’s really time for you to see through the absurdity of your predicament
You aren’t who you thought you were
You just aren’t that person
And in this very lifetime you can know it
Right now
The real work you have to do is in the privacy of your own heart
All of the external forms are lovely
But the real work is your inner connection
If you’re quiet when you meditate
If you truly open your heart
Just quiet your mind…
Open your heart
Quiet the mind, open the heart
How do you quiet the mind?
You meditate
How do you open the heart?
You start to love that which you can love and just keep expanding it
You love a tree
You love a river
You love a leaf
You love a flower
You love a cat
You love a human
But go deeper and deeper into that love
Til you love that which is the source of the light behind all of it
Behind all of it
You don’t worship the gate
You go into the inner temple
Everything in you that you don’t need
you can let go of
You don’t need loneliness for you couldn’t possibly be alone
You don’t need greed because you already have it all
You don’t need doubt because you already know
The confusion is saying “I don’t know”
But the minute you are quiet you find out that in truth you do know
For in you, you know
Plane after plane will open to you
I want to know who I really am
As if in each of us, there once was a fire
And for some of us there seem as if there are only ashes now
But when we dig in the ashes we find one ember
And very gently we fan that ember
…blow on it
…it gets brighter
And from that ember we rebuild the fire
Only thing that’s important is that ember
That’s what you and I are here to celebrate
That though we have lived our life totally involved in the world
We know
We know that we’re of the spirit
The ember gets stronger
Flame starts to flicker a bit
And pretty soon you realise that all we’re going to do for eternity is sit around the fire
ƒ/5.6 | 1/125 | ISO400
Terminator
From Wikipedia:
A terminator or twilight zone is a moving line that divides the daylit side and the dark night side of a planetary body. The terminator is defined as the locus of points on a planet or moon where the line through the center of its parent star is tangent. An observer on the terminator of such an orbiting body with an atmosphere would experience twilight due to light scattering by particles in the gaseous layer.
ƒ/3.2 | 1/640 | ISO800
Scene on a Friday
Just a simple scene of some people greeting each other at a special spot in town on a Friday afternoon. There is something really lovely about sunny winter days in Reykjavík, when the sun hangs low the entire time and you get the light that cast shadows across the frame.
ƒ/2.5 | 1/60 | ISO800
HVERFANDI by María Rún Þrándardóttir
A lot of times, the absolute best way to experiment with the camera is to go to art shows and photograph other people’s art work. This is both a lot of fun and slightly frustrating because it brings some questions of whether a photograph of someone else’s work is wholly original to the photographer who took the photograph. There’s a grey area. If I take an amazing photograph of a building, is it the architect who deserves credit for the look of the photograph? What about a dance piece? Where does the line get drawn? For me, the artist deserves the credit, at least in the title, in regards to a photograph in a gallery space as they are the reason the photograph exists at all.
ƒ/1.7 | 1/60 | ISO1600
Biggi Veira
The absolute best part of social living is dancing to good music. I love it more than any other form of socialising, everyone is letting go of their pretences and enjoying themselves while listening to great music. This is another reason I love the compact camera as an every day camera. Being able to dance and be discreet with the camera allows me to get results like above.
ƒ/1.7 | 1/200 | 400
I took this photo with my Leica about a month into owning the camera. It was very new in my hands still, so details about the camera that I know now were still things I was learning then. Take, for example, when the aperture ring is set to Auto, the camera defaults to a 1.7 f stop. Certainly not an issue, but definitely a bit annoying to not be aware of when using a 28mm lens that has a rather shallow depth of field when it is at 1.7. As such, the above photograph is sharp as can be in the smallest section of the frame. Still, I kinda prefer the mistakes to the perfections and this one fits that bill.
I remember when they first opened Millennium Park that Anish Kapoor had such a hissy fit about letting people take photos of his work that if you had any camera on you, security would come and give you all this total BS about how you can’t photograph the sculpture and that it was strictly forbidden to sell the image if you somehow got a shot in before they’d come hassle you. This was in 2003 (classic Chicago delays causing Millennium Park to open 3 years late) and pre-dated smart phones by 4 years. I really want to know what Anish Kapoor thinks of this whole situation now, knowing that “The Bean” (not its real name, ha ha!) is the most photographed spot in the entire city.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/60 | ISO400
Harvest
Although some of these are not the kind that you’d want to eat, nor the kind that will help you release some stress, the beauty of this bounty is all nature’s pleasure. Walking in the forest all weekend with the family, connecting to the trees and moss and the like, these souvenirs are just a nice memory of a weekend that felt so good.
Summer House Moments
ƒ/5.6 | 1/100 | ISO1600
Summer is over, so here’s a memory of summer from the past. It’s always such an incredible thing to be out in the countryside in the middle of the night. The weather always seems to clear up enough to make sure you see some incredible sights while the sun is never too far off the horizon.
The Princess is Seven
ƒ/5.6 | 1/60 | ISO400
I have a seven year old daughter and she’s pretty amazing. As such, we had an incredible birthday party for her and spent the whole day making her life as perfect as possible. I spent the morning experimenting with a gel and my flash, trying to create some cool looks by placing the gel directly in front of the flash so that the light it cast would be different colours depending on where it went through the gel.
ƒ/5.6 | 1/320 | ISO100
Baptisia Sphaerocarpa