Colour vs Black and White

I've finally become well enough to be able to sit up straight for more than ten minutes at a time (I'm up to half an hour! Whoop whoop!), so I've decided to dive into the old photo-folders from earlier this summer and see what I can make of them.. and since I have, until recently, been unable to calibrate my screen properly, I've been going for a lot of black and white experimentation. And it's been really neat. I like the extreme variations you can get from simply going monochrome vs colour. 

Click on the images to see a larger version.

But sometimes I can't really decide which I like better.. and that's where these photos come into it all.. I like them both, for different reasons. The colour version makes me think of elven forests and summer and all that good jazz.. magical mysteries. But the black and white one brings out chaotic forms, a gloomy look and more of a "twisted and turned in the moment of death" type of vibe.. and I like them both. And I think I also like the base-photo even better because the same image can show two entirely different worlds.. just with some minor editing. 

Imagination and Forests.

Sometimes you find things that immediately sends your mind on a journey through fairytale-like stories and worlds much more magical than this one. Roots can become monsters climbing out of the forest floor, with long and deformed hands, and a tentacled mouth reaching out to eat you! ;) 

Click the image to see a larger version. 

Good news everyone!

One of my photos will be at an exhibition in September!

"The exhibition consists of three modules / parts that are right next to each other. Your photo is thought to be "top picture" of all this, that is, it probably must be trimmed slightly to be more" panoramic " and it must be divided into three parts."

"the 2nd of Setpember is the international wetlands day that we mark, with activities and talks, and with the official opening of the new exhibition."

For anyone who is interested in seeing it, the exhibition it will be at:

Fetsund Lenser
Lundveien 3
1900 Fetsund
Norway

More information about the place:  http://fetsundlenser.no/besoksinformasjon.html

A motherload of motifs!

There's not going to be much philosophy going on in this post, since I've been pretty preoccupied lately. Just some nice photos for you to look at :) 

I had been feeling sick for a few days, but when Sondre and Magnus asked me to come along on a short trip out to where Magnus' family has a cabin, I couldn't refuse :) and I found a lot of nice things to photograph.. this tiny flower for instance. 

After a bit of climbing and rummaging around in bushes I found this old tree :) and standing knee deep in tick-infested underbrush was definitely worth it x)

Forcing a New View

After months of pneumonias and colds, and moving etc, I've finally started to feel a little better and I've even been out a couple of times with my camera. However, after I got a wide angle lens for xmas I've been thinking about how I usually only go around looking for the same kind of views and motifs whenever I go out. So with a couple of new lenses I decided to try to force myself to start looking for new things. By limiting myself to only one lens each time I go out, I have to force myself to look at the world from a new perspective. I've gotten so used to the macro-oriented style that it can feel a little uninspiring. So the first time I went out, I decided to only use my wide angle lens, and this was one of the results:

(click thumbnail for larger view)

There are more photos from that trip, but I haven't gotten around to editing them yet.

I liked the way this made me think and made me search for new views, so I did it again only this time with my telezoom. I was extremely lucky with the light too.. there was a very, very thin mist hanging over the entire landscape, and if not for the bright sunlight it would have been easy to miss.

These are some of the results:

(click thumbnails for larger view)

The last set of photos can also be viewed here: Google + Album: A New View :)

So in conclusion: experimentation is important, and above all else; fun.

The importance of Hashtags

So why are hashtags so important when posting something online?

From Wikipedia; what a Hashtag is:

Hashtags are words or phrases prefixed with the symbol #, a form of metadata tag. Short messages on microblogging social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca or Google+ may be tagged by including one or more with multiple words concatenated, such as those in:
#Wikipedia is my favourite kind of #encyclopedia
Then, a person can search for the string #Wikipedia and this tagged word will appear in the search engine results. Such tags are case-insensitive.

Wikipedia

Basically it makes it easier for anyone online to find posts related to what they want to see/read about. And it's something I haven't thought much about until now. When Google+ first started out and everyone shared and commented on everyone else's posts the stream didn't seem so "full", and getting attention wasn't really a problem. However, now that G+ is open to everyone and the best photographers have over 100 000 followers and people are posting all over the place, getting noticed is actually getting harder and harder.

I haven't been all too active lately because of my health, but I have noticed that my posts weren't really getting any attention. Not like they used to a while ago anyways. But then I remembered hashtags. I've been seeing posts about it here and there (and being on Twitter have made me quite used to how it works), but I haven't been any good at keeping my posts updated with hashtags.

So after today's urban exploration I was going to publish a photograph (below) and thought to myself "I have to remember hashtags THIS time!", and I added a few (#urban #exploration #decay #ruin etc).

You can see the G+ post here.

Then: WHAM! the +1's and comments started raining in almost immediately!

Of course, it must be said that the published work needs to have quality too, otherwise all the hashtags in the world won't make you noticable, but you catch my drift.

So for my conclusion: Remember hashtags so you don't drown in the endless stream of information that just rushes by!

Being a Photographer and dealing with Bad Health.

You might ask yourself why I would choose to be a nature photographer when all odds are against me in such a line of work. I have had severe asthma and allergies (food, pollen etc) since I was born. I also have hip dysplasia and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Combined this results in quite the cocktail of health problems, and the actual reach I have of going anywhere is short (and random) at best.

It should be mentioned that I have some wonderful members in my family, and friends, and a boyfriend, who help me a great deal with all of these challenges. My mother was so wonderful to take me on a trip to Iceland this autumn. Paid for and arranged everything so I could just tag along and see the sights and take photos. (With being sick all the time I haven't had the chance to have an actual job, so my income is extremely limited). That is to say; photography is a job and a career, but it's one I can't pursue at more than a randomly part time sort of level. I can't live off of it.

In addition to my mom, my boyfriend is usually both my driver and my sherpa ;) I don't know what I'd do without him :) My sister is also wonderful, and buys a lot of my photos to have in her home. It's cool to see all my art on her walls. And last but not least there's also Gøran, my step dad, who keeps letting me "inherit" some of his camera equipment when he buys something new, and buys me the most amazing birthday gifts (which I never expect). This year I got a Sigma 10-20mm 1:4-5.6 :D

But just this year I've had the flue, a severe cold (after my trip to Iceland), I got way more sick than expected after taking the seasonal flue-shot, and then finally pneumonia that had to be taken care of by antibiotics. And all within a 4 month period. With all that ravaging my body, it's pretty hard to do anything except sitting in front of the tv being a vegetable and taking triple of the usual medications (doc's orders) :P

Getting back to the point though. It might not seem like a logical choice to become a professional nature photographer of all things with this going on (and considering professional means a person who is paid to undertake a specialised set of tasks and to complete them for a fee, I think of myself as a professional photographer, even though my rates of sale are still low). But after a lifetime of trying to figure out who I am and what I love (I tried painting, drawing, sculpting etc) photography was where I found my calling and fell in love.

And like most other things you can't choose what you love. It's just something you discover and that makes your heart sing, and takes you away from all the other crap that exists in life.

It often depresses me how little I actually get to do on any given day/week to pursue this love of mine, but the reality is what it is, and there's not really anything I can do about it. At least not yet.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you find something you really love, you'll do what it takes to stick with it. Even though abilities, economy and situations might be limited it's always better to do something wonderful a little bit every now and then, than not at all. And it can give an otherwise meaningless existence meaning and purpose.

And as you can see in the photo I posted at the top of this blog post, even parent's backyards can hold exciting and wonderful things to capture :)