Farmers

I started to work on my uncles farm this winter, he was starting to build a cow house for the big bulls that he has so he needed an extra hand. I have had an idea on my mind for the past year to photograph farmers and their work. The main reason is because I used to work on this farm when I was younger and after I started working somewhere else I realize that people that have worked on a farm are most of the times harder workers and not as carefree as many others. So I want to show the world how hard farmers work, so people realize that behind every meal is a lot of hard work, because the meat is not just manufactured in the store like so many think. I have just started with this serie so I have not formed it precisely but it is still in the making so it might change.

During the time I was a sheep's roundup on several farms in the valley and we went to help out some neighbors with their sheep's. It was a lot of fun because there were so many sheep's and so much action. I started with a film camera but then it ran out of battery and I forgot to bring extra, but I had my digital as well.

On this farm there are now women only two older brothers and two younger. The have 1000+ sheep's on the farm and so many dogs, which as they say don't even know their own name (because when you order them to do something they just don't do it). I think this was a fun start of the farmers serie and I honestly hope I can photograph different sorts of farming in the future.
Here is a set for sheep's on my flickr

 

An Icelandic sheep dog

Sheep's coming home

Getting tighter

Sorting the sheep's

Sorting out the unknown

My cheap still life studio

Today I just got a new window for my room, it used to be split in two pieces but now we put a new one in and now I have this good window with a lot of light. Today we harvested some vegetables and there was this big cabbage that I wanted to photograph some parts of. So i decided to make a small still life studio on my desk. Today I only took few shots but i will definitely do this again.


here is both a post of the set up as well as the outcome. I did not use a tripod because I have not been able to buy a batter one that I can put the camera directly above the subject. 

My first exhibition

Well, I have finally managed to scan the photos from my exhibition since last April. I just uploaded them to my flickr, they will go to the webpage soon.

The theme for this exhibition is the streets in March. I used only film in this project and I shot it with my Olympus OM2 with Ilford HP5 at iso 400. I wanted to show the coldness of March. I also enlarged the photos in an agfa enlarger on Ilford paper.

I have for a while wanted to try something like this, photographing the street by film and specially when its snowing. I just love the way the snow is on the photos, it makes them look a bit grainier  and more street.

I just want to make it clear that photoshop was not used in any of the photos and the frame around the photos is the film frame so they have not been cropped at all.

Back in Iceland

Well I'm back in Iceland. I didn't Blog as much as I was going to but I posted some photos to my flickr. While I was in Thailand I traveled a bit. I went to the island Kho Lan, its close to Pattaya. I have only posted few photos from that trip but I'm still working on going through them.

But the first thing I did when I came there was to buy a new camera. I got Nikon D700 and wow how my life has changed. The photo below is borrowed from http://www.kenrockwell.com just until I have photographed mine but I mainly use 50mm 1.8 until I get another prime lens. This is such a huge step from my old D80.

I stayed few days in Bangkok but then in end of may I went to a town called Khon Kaen, that's where my fiance is studding. I brought my camera almost everywhere and I took a lot of photos. I made some portraits, landscape, among other things. While I was there I learned a lot how to use my flash in different situations and I used it more than I had before.

I went to Bangkok in July to take photos in my sisters - in - law's graduation but I shot many other things as well while she was in some ceremony because only students allowed during the ceremony.

I shot a lot of film as well but I'm still working on developing them and now I'm working on buying an enlarger so hopefully I can post more film here this winter.

Final project

Well now I have finally finished school and I'm going to Thailand after one and half a day so a lot to do until then.

For my final project I made a "post apocalyptic photo essay". It is a photo essay about the same character as from the post apocalyptic photo I made in November last year and I will include that photo in it as well. I really liked doing this project but I want to do something more with this theme. The first photo shows him sleeping outside, cause he didn't find a shelter for the night. The second photo show's him hunting a rabbit to eat, it is a way to show that he has to hunt his food. The third one he is looking for shelter, I know it's a bit dark but I have not been able to post it online in its correct colors. The forth photo shows him cooking his rabbit dinner.

I had an exhibition from 15th of April to 10th of Mai, I took the photos in March while there was a lot of snow. The exhibition was in my school, I decided to have it there cause there are a lot of people that walk the hallways there every day and I picked the one with the most traffic. I will post photos later.

5 days of school left

Well now the easter holidays is about to finish but there are only 5 days left of school so there are many things left to do. I'm currently working on my final project and it is a photo essay about a man living in a post-apocalyptic world. I have already photographed almost all the photos I need and I have made sketches for everything, but there is a lot of photoshop work left. I took photos of the model in the studio at my school and I'm creating the surroundings from scratch. Now I have not blogged for for to long so there are several projects that I have to post.

Movement.

This project was about photographing movement in several forms, that includes, panning, zooming, 2sync, freezing and moving object. My theme was traffic just after a rainy day. I enjoyed this project, specially the 2sync, it came out exactly as I planed and I will definitely do more 2sync. I would have liked to do the zoom bater but it was the best I got by the time I had to turn it in.

80 minutes around the world.

This was an exercise in photoshop that we had to make before we did the manipulation I posted this on my flickr a bit after I did the manipulation because it was just an exercise and we had to use a background photo from someone else. I got the photo from commons.wikimedia.org so I didn't take it without permission. I wanted to make it look more realistic so I brought my traveling trousers and my old film camera that I often use on my travels.

Jewelry.

In this project we were paired with a first year student from the jewelry major. It was an interesting project we had to come up with an idea, it could either be all the same theme or separated themes. I decided not to use the same theme for all the photos but just use what I like for each piece. The photo with the two rings I got a lot of help from my classmate Þórdís and by the way its my wool sweater in the background, I think it looks so good as a background.

Hair.

In this project we worked with students from the hairdressers major. I worked with a girl called Kristín Kristmundsdóttir. I got the idea of this shot from a paper about hair styles, first I was going to do a more poses but I was put first in line and I was given not so long time for this shot because others were waiting. I hope I can do something like this again so I can practice more and hopefully then I can take as much time as I need.

Food.

This is a project that I just loved, the model was perfect and yummy since it was noodle soup. I really enjoy taking photos of food and I'm definitely going to do more of this. I'm thinking of taking photos of Thai dishes when I go to Thailand, but then I will just use natural light because that's just enough for photographing food but I will use a reflector as well. Well enough about that, here I used only the lamp on the studio light with a big soft-box on the studio light and some natural light as well.

Well this is all for now I will post the rest of my works later.

Surviving in a post apocalyptic world 2

Now I have finally made another photo in this series and I am thinking of what more I can do. I want to make at least 5 or even 7 in total. This one took me a lot of time and when I made the first one and this was my original idea but I didn't find a good place to take the main photo but then I was in a book store the other day and looked out a very small window and there it was the photo I was looking for. The photo of the man I took last year. I am happy with this photo but it seem like that some browser make it to dark so its best to see it in google chrome.

I have a webpage

I have been making a webpage and its finally online the domain is www.pammyphoto.com and I put it on the top of the sidebar so its easier to go to it from this page. The blog link is connected to this page so I will still be updating it hopefully more often in the future.

It is still in development but I'm almost ready with the main layout just have to ad several things to improve it. I have made a photo gallery that I'm trying to update and put most of the photos I am satisfied with.

I also put some ads on the blog so I could hopefully earn enough to pay for the domain and to improve my webpage with some things.

until next time

March

There are just so many things that I have been doing for the last two months. First of all I did some studio works. Taking photos of an object made of glass and something shiny. This was a bit hard to make, The glass with the butterfly's I had to almost build a box around it with black walls. I had it on top of a see through pane and below I had one studio flash to shoot through. It was a bit tricky but in the end it worked. The I took a photo of the shiny object. I wish I could have done it bater but this is what I got.

After the shiny project we were told that we had to make up a project by our self but that was not entirely true because the teacher already decided the theme for us and it had to be connected to the 18th century. I decided to take photos of food here in Iceland because in February most Icelanders eat traditional food. Most people that saw the photos thought they were disgusting but only because the food looks bad, but this is just how the food looks. I had it on a white plexiglass and shot through it with a studio light I had as well a light with honey comb from the side. I enjoyed shooting project and I realized its not that bad takeing photos of food because the food just stays still and I can move it around as much as I can. It was also not so hard to work with this food because it can and is often served cold and sour. We had an exhibition in the oldest house in Reykjavik me and the rest of the class where we showed our photos from this project. The first one is sheep's head and many Icelanders like it. The second one is dry fish its one of the best traditional food you can get and most people serve it with butter. The third one is kind of like haggis but I think it came here when the vikings got slaves from Scotland and brought to Iceland, its one of my favorite food. The fourth one is sour sheep legs, I don't know why people eat that but its my grandfathers favorite food, he would eat it every day if he could

One night me and some friends went out to take photos of the auroras because we saw on the internet that there would be a lot of auroras that night. When we finally saw the auroras it was so amazing and I could not stop staring at them. I tried to take some photos but I am not happy enough with them but we drove further from the city and we found a lighthouse that we tough might look good in a photo with auroras but the auroras were not as beautiful as before but this is my outcome. I clearly have to practice more taking photos of auroras and I have to get a bater lens as well.

This is it for now but I might post something more soon. I have to be more active here and post some more of my works.

Environmental portrait and landscape

This is something I have started to love in photography specially when there has been put a lot of work in the photo. The once I did aren't that great comparing to others but I want to put more work into each photo and do it more in my own way. In this project we had to use studio flash in one inside photo, a flash in one inside photo and in one outside photo as well. The portrait with the bee keeper I want to take it again in the summer when there are actually bees around her, but I had to do this in February so there are no bees. Then there is the one in the coffee house, I like it good colors but maybe a bit dark. Even though the photo of the video editor is a bit flashy I still like it cause its usually dark in this room.

I will try to do this one again. I want to make it batter, in the summer with bee's around and some honey. I am also going to document the harvesting of the honey but that is going to be for another project.

This is one of my friend's he works at a coffee house in a market. I cropped the photo a little bit. The biggest problem with this shot was that it was almost impossible to bounce the flash of a wall or the roof because the roof is so high and the was no good wall close by. I managed to bounce it off a sign.

This portrait was fun, but at the same time it was also hard because there is not so much space in this room and when I used the studio flash, it was usually to strong or to light. I used one umbrella on the right side, that lights up the table where the desktop is and then I used a soft box directly in front of him. I kept it as far away from him as possible. I took several photos in several positions but I liked this one the most.

This is about 8 photos merged together into one original size is 10.000 px x 4.000 px so it is really big. I will definitely do this again, specially when I want a lot of detail in the landscape.

I enjoyed both of these project even tough I should have given myself a lot more time to do them. I am already doing three projects now I have started shooting two of them and I am still trying to get all the things that I need for one of them. I will hopefully post them here soon.

Until next time