The Streets Of Barcelona

As I recently visited Barcelona I had a little time to do what I normally do in cities - walk around. So I made some street photos. This is back to the basics - all photos are taken with my old 400d+50mm lens.

Barcelona, a lively city with contrasts. With no further ado, I will let the photos speak for themselves.




Elderly Man


Street Life


Man with flowers


Sleeping


Sleeping


Night Life


A couple in the streets



My only comment is about the balance between respecting privacy and getting good photos. Somehow it’s easier, at least for me, to have less doubts when being outside of my own city/country. In one way it’s understandable as it means taking pictures of people it’s very very unlikely I will ever meet again; also they will never see the photos. In another way it’s worse, as it can be seen as outsiders exploiting whatever there is to exploit. In that sense I see a value of not treating places differently. But the way forward for me is to photograph more people in the streets of Stockholm (as I already do) rather than abstaining everywhere.

Comments on whether you think I’m crossing any lines I shouldn’t be crossing are very welcome!

All photos taken from my “Best of Barcelona”-album which can be found here.

Nu blommar syrenen / The lilac is flowering!

In Sweden we say “mellan hägg och syren” - “between bird cherry and lilac” - to refer to this time, which by many is seen as the most beautiful time of the year. Not much more to say.

Taken just outside where I live - in late evening light, mixed with street lamp light.







First one is taken with my 16-35 lens, the other two are taken with 50 mm+a 12 mm extension tube I bought some month ago (a cheap 12+20+36 mm set), but haven’t found the time to use that much (yet).

Go out and enjoy them, and other spring flowers, everyone who can. Soon enough it will be June / the lilac blooming period will be over.

Liveness!

Obviously I don’t have the time nor discipline to post long posts telling a “full” story on a regular basis. Instead, not to let the blog become completely stale, I will try to give some samples from recently uploaded photos.



Pre-morning light over Norrviken


Above is part the reason why I really like Stockholm, including its surroundings. The shot is taken at 3:15 am, last Sunday morning (8th of May) while biking home from Upplands Väsby. Handheld, 1/13 sec, 24mm, so I’m happy it turned out as sharp as it did.

The view is towards north-east, where the sun would rise in another hour. This means that the gradient towards the corners is not only full-frame vignetting, but the sky actually was much darker in all other directions.

An obvious drawback with the 5d+the 24-70mm lens compared with my other favourite setup, my old 400d+the 50mm lens, is the size & weight. The result is that it most often stays properly sealed in the camera bag in the baskets on the back of my bike. This view though, partly seen between the trees from the bike path along the lake, caused me to stop and take some pictures. I’m glad I did.

Speaking of my other favourite setup; the below photos that I like are taken using it.



Midnight Blues Dancing

"Fallin in Blues", the weekend blues workshop in Grenoble in the beginning of April was very nice. It would deserve a post of its own, but, at least for now, head over to the album instead.









The two first portraits are from the last day of Herräng, week 2 last summer. It was evening, but still very bright. Even after adjusting the light levels I guess some would call them over-exposed, but I like the effect.

The last is from the SICS Open House, after the session of presentations and demos, when people were socializing, and I finally had the time to take pictures (as I had been demo-ing and talking all day before that).

That's it for now, hope to get back in less than two month :)

Public Transport

I have found that public transport offers plenty of different photo opportunities, from entire train stations to people and small details. Everything from wide angle lenses to telephoto lenses can be useful. Even if I just happen to carry my camera from some event, no matter which lens that happens to be on the camera, it is likely that there is something to photograph.

(The timing of this post is not entirely arbitrary - until recently I had the one month regular public transport ticket - starting with the Snowball week - but now I’m again primarily bike-bound, so fewer public transport photo opportunities for me.)

The big picture / Wide angle

Using the subway, passing escalators is normally a part of the journey. Several photo opportunities. Many of mine turn out dull, but now and then the lines and/or the colours create a pleasant visual effect.



Colourful escalators


Since I don’t care about the documentary aspects as I’m photographing for fun, I have no objections to manipulating the colours the way I want them - which might mean anything from over-saturation, like the one above, to black and white.





As a winter bonus you get the moist-lens softening for free if you come in from the cold into a warm subway hall (the camera manuals advice against this usage, especially if you do not have weather sealed lenses).



Converging Lines


Movement

Large vehicles rapidly moving - opportunities to practice your long shutter speed skills:



... either from the outside ... (Photo is from Häggvik tramway station, shutter speed 1/30 sec.)





...or from the inside! The photo above is from inside a German bus going from Dagstuhl to St Wendel. The driver drove at least 10 minutes with the doors wide open before realizing something was odd (we didn't complain, as it was rather warm, and no children in danger on the bus - in fact, me and my cs summer school travel companion D were the only passengers). The shutter speed 1/50 sec was enough to create the blur.

People

If you have the guts and/or don’t mind risk being seen as obtrusive, public transport is also good for candid portraits. (Since I do mind being seen as obtrusive, there are many moments where I later regret not having the reflexes to snap a picture.)



Waiting for the subway




Security guards


The two pictures above are taken with my 135mm lens, which allows you to get close without physically being close.





In the line for the bus


On the other hand, travelling nighttime on weekends you might also encounter people that want to pose for you when you carry your camera visibly...



Random posing people


Details

Finally, there are plenty of details which can be worth paying attention to.



STOP


Refresh Yourself


All of the photos in this post are taken from my compiled set of public transport pictures

Herräng 2010, Week 2, Tuesday

This is very much old news, but I’m still going through the Herräng photos. I was just going to write some text to go with the flickr-album, but I ended up with more text than practically readable in the flickr small column format, so I modified it a bit and posted it here instead.

Tuesday (the 13th of July) was a terribly hot day. Sweaty classes, including a “special” one. Later I escaped to the beach, where I met some of my most stylish friends, enjoying the afternoon with style. Nice Retro Fashion Show during the meeting. Blues night, so no dance photos! (Well “Slow Drag Night” with the new official Herräng terminology, to emphasise that old style music and nothing modern will be played.)

The 13th class
Here comes one of my (hopefully very) few rants about Herräng 2010: The idea of a “13th class” was very appealing - instead of the 12 classes we were paying for (or working for) we got 13, where one of them was something completely different, to introduce some randomness and fun. Some classes petted a boa constrictor, some gave massage to each other, yet some were comparing candy from different countries. We, we were told to make one row out of several in a paint-by-checkboxes giant Frankie-portrait, on the asphalt in front of Folkets Hus, in the blistering midday sun. As the “cult” part of the lindy movement is the thing I have the most objections to (add that I have too little sun tolerant facial pigment) this was not my favourite activity. Although of course, I participated and had kind of fun convincing myself and others that this was not a bad working-in-a-group practice - fake it until you make it.


Almost everybody drawing


Drawing


Well deserved break



At the beach
The beach was, for understandable reasons, well occupied. As mentioned I encountered some friends who know how to do anything with retro style. They kindly shared a glass of well-known sparkling wine with me. Listening to “Champagne Galop” on a portable wind-up phonograph, while drinking champagne, in the shade on the beach next to the world’s best dance camp - one of those “life could be worse”-moments :)


Winding up


The portable phonograph


Champagne


Retro Fashion Show
A returning theme at the evening meetings has been to have a short retro fashion show, with clothes that can be ordered through the Lindy Hop Show.











To be honest I don’t remember who made these clothes, but I do know that one of the companies which does make retro style outfits suitable for dancing is Swing Outfits, so it could have been them. (p.s. Take a closer look at the cup in the last photo, and you will find another returning theme :)

Blues Night
Blues (slow drag...) night was very good! At least after some hours, when we had moved down into the library. Up in the main hall it was way too warm and crowded, and too many beginners / people that were not that interested in blues (don’t misunderstand - I’m a beginner myself, but I know I like dancing to / trying to dance to blues music, which some beginners who haven’t tried find out that they don’t).


In the Mood for Blues


Blues Morning


Dancing all the way until the last blues dj gave up, which was ~7:30, as can be seen above. (Or, of course, in the photo meta-data, but all my Herräng photos are one hour off, since I never switched to daylight saving time.)


Walking back


Going to back to shower (no sauna week 2 - it was broken for one full week ): and finishing the “day” with breakfast at Yum-Yum. Then sleep - horay for Wednesday = “cultural activity day” = sleep until afternoon.

Visit the flickr-album or the Herräng 2010 collection for more photos!

Christmas decorations

The theme might seem a bit outdated already, but it is not until now that I've taken the time to upload the Christmas pics... (Yesterday, Thursday 13th, was "20-dag Knut", which is the old official Swedish "end of Christmas"-day, and still many people keep their Christmas Trees until then.)

These days handicrafts have become very popular. Everyday, everywhere you see people posting pictures of their creations. So in that sense, you could say I was some 15 years ahead of time. When I went to high school I was stubborn enough to create Christmas gifts myself, through embroidery. (And, as I wanted to be very exact, it was a rather slow work.) So the two below are photographed at the receiver site, my parents place. (I did start doing an embroidery work for myself at one time. Never finished it. Having a deadline really helped getting them done.)

God Jul


“God Jul” - Merry Christmas in Swedish. My own custom made font - I think I went through five checkered A3-papers before I was happy with the proportions. As is barely visible in the picture (nor, unfortunately, in reality) is that the rightmost stich in every letter is in another, darker red, colour. Every cross is just one thread wide, and there are plenty of threads... Original plan was to have some form of border pattern around the text, but time did not allow that, and I think the result was ok nevertheless.

Jultomten

Jultomten / Santa Claus. No prefab pattern but “my very own” design. So, it is in any case unique :)

Pepparkaksgubben

A surviver - Pepparkaksgubben / The Gingerbread Man. This is one of the very few Christmas decorations that have survived from my mother’s childhood, one that she made when she was a kid.

Christmas Tree Ball

The large red christmas tree balls are part of the essence of Christmas for me. They also make fun mirrors, making it a challenge to get both the ball itself and the reflection to be sufficiently sharp.

Gift wrappings

Shameless self-promotion. Yes, I confess I printed some of my pictures in size A5 and used as gift decorations. To be more exact, one from Strandvägen, an autumn photo from Järvafältet, a Christmas Tree from Skansen and two winter photos from Sollentuna.

Advent Candlestick

Included because I like the DOF (Depth of field). The candlestick has been around as long as I can remember. As a child living at home I saw it as a challenge to keep a steady burn-rate per week/per Sunday, to get the candles to form a nice slope.

As usual, larger sizes and more pics can be found over at flickr.

By now, Christmas 2010/2011 has ended. Now towards longer days with more daylight - yes please!

Cat and bird

I figured it would be nice to have a way of showing different subsets of my pictures that I post to flickr, and to have some more space for blablabla around them, in case I would want to.

Without further ado, I start with a small photo serie of a very friendly cat, and his interaction with a bird feeding outside the kitchen window of a friend's countryside house.

(Head over to flickr if you are interested in higher resolution or photo meta-data.)

As you might have noticed, the story-telling using these pictures is a construction, since the pictures were actually taken during two days. But this is how it happened, just that I couldn't capture it all at once ...! There was recently a good Swedish radio (P1) documentary about how much in nature programs that are staged that comes to mind (a pity I can't find the link now, I might be back with an update).

*Small update* The biggest challenge while shooting this was finding a reasonable balance between the brightness outside and the shaded room. As you can see from the picture where he tries to attack through the window, it is impossible to have a good exposure for both the cat and the bird at the same time. (Without more fancy time consuming post-production, of course...) But at least it was me who made the trade-off, not the camera, since they are all taken with manual settings.