Hasselblad 2000

For now I have stopped blogging about every photo I post on flickr. I just don't have the time but I still post photos every. I will try keep doing that as long as possible. I found a way to connect to 3G internet by using my android phone as a hot spot so I'm covered in Iceland but I'm afraid it might get harden when I go abroad later this year.

Well the biggest news of May is that I bought a Hasselblad 2000 camera. I just could not resist because the prize was so low and I knew that I would never find a camera like this at this prize ever again. It is perfect in every way only shows some signs of use at the bottom where the tripod is mounted but that's hardly anything. I read about this camera online for a few months some people say it ain't that good just because of the fragile shutter curtains but I also read that with the type I bought which is FC/M the curtains retract into the body when the film back is taken off so it is even harder to damage them. Also some said you should just take good care of it and not lent it to strangers then it will last very long.



I tested it one night with a Kodak Tri-X 400 and the results were just as good as I had hoped for, even better if anything. The focusing is quite easy and I just love that it has a grid view. I also got a Carl Zeiss 80mm f 2.8 lens with it which is not so different as a 50mm on a 35mm camera or a full frame on digital. I started looking for second hand digital backs for it on ebay but after a short search I decided to just use film for a while. I just love shooting film and even though at the moment I don't have a darkroom I just scan the film in tiff format so I can work with the photos as 114 megapixel raw files. They are only about 100 MB since its only black and white, I assume they would be much bigger if it was color.



For now I will try to blog an over view of each month not about every single photo since I know I just can't keep up with that. I want to blog more but I felt I had to write something for all the photos because that is what I started doing but I try to write more for every photo on the flickr instead. Some of them I don't write much description but then I just feel like I have been writing what I want to say on another photo as well and I don't want to repeat myself many times.

This is good enough for now just pleas visit my flickr for daily photo updates

Upload a day week 8, February 19 – 25

It has been to long since I posted something to the blog but there are more blogs to come in the next days, since I finally have some time off I will try to keep the blog up to date.

February 19th
On May 19th I went on a small trip close to the river, mostly to shop in the markets there. There are many things to buy by the river, clothes, food, toys and almost what ever you could desire. How ever on the river there are many boats, many of them are used to transport things up and down the river while other are used to transport people across it. I think this boat is just a personal property of the men’s in it just to get around in Bangkok. There are so many canals that lead to the river so it’s easy to travel around Bangkok on a small boat.

 

February 20th
This photo is from the same moment as the one from the 18th. It is Vietnamese food, vegetable with a little meat wrapped inside something I think this is Bánh Cuon you can read more about it on Wikipedia

February 21st
After a long hard google search I found nothing, then I asked my friend to help me with this and she told me it is Mantis shrimp. I don't know much about this shrimp but I found out that it’s not actually a shrimp. I took this photo while staying in Koh Larn.

February 22nd
This is the same Mantis shrimp since 21st

February 23rd
In Khon Kaen there are several restaurants that serve a noodles with boiled bones. First when I saw these bones I thought it was to give to the dogs but then I realized how much Thai people like eating the left over meat on the bones. I used to like this as well when I was a kid but now I usually just finish all the meat off the bones.

February 24th
I have not found out yet what exactly this is but this tastes like a blend of Doritos and Cornflakes. I really like this and I always order a big bowl of it when I go to this restaurant, it is at the same place as the noodle with bones and it’s always the main reason why I go there. I will ad everything I can into the description when I have some more information.

February 25th
This is a rice field in Bangkok, it is mainly used to show how rice field looks like for tourists and I think for the city kids as well, since not every one has a rice field or even leaves the city like in so many big cities of the world. This is a part of a cultural museum in Bangkok.

Not every one has the chance to experience the farmer’s life. I have been to a rice field, but I have never worked at one, I hope that will change soon because I want to know how hard it is to work in a rice field. If I ever move to Thailand then I hope I can have a small rice field for my self and try to grow rice, even tough I would only do it for the experience and so that I can say that I have done it.

Upload a day week 7, February 12 – 18

In this post there are only photos from Thailand and even two of them are since 2008 that I found while going through my older photos.

February 12th
When I was on my way from Bangkok to Khon Kaen I was looking outside my window and once when we were stopped at a red light I saw these workers outside, doing something for the road. Usually people that do work like this are covered with a cloth or they have a hat on that also covers their face, sometimes they even use a skie mask. I often wonder how they can use it because it is really hot outside and they still use a thick hat like this. I think it is so the sun wont damaged their skin as much or maybe they don’t want people to see who they are. I think this must be hard to work in the sun like this.

February 13th
On my way to Bangkok We stopped at a lake to walk around a little so our feet would not hurt because we had been sitting for a while. There were some boats on the lake and it was a really nice place to stop and get refreshed

February 14th
When I was in Koh Larn island close to Pattaya I went to the beach and there I saw all these piles of something on the sand. What I first thought was “dog shit” but then quickly I realized that it was just sand that the crabs that live on the beach had pushed out of the holes that they were making. These crabs are really small and when you stay still and just look at the sand it seems like the beach is moving but when it is actually just hundreds of crabs walking around. When you walk on the beach they all run into their holes to hide.

February 15th
This is photo has the same story as the one before but it was taken just seconds before the photo uploaded the day before.

February 16th
This photo was taken on a trip in 2008, we went to the south part of Thailand to visit my father-in-law’s family. We met two of his brothers and his mother. One of the nights we stayed at a really special hotel. It was located on the lake that was made by a big dam. We had to take a boat to get to the hotel and then we went on a trip on the lake to see the mountains. Everything was covered with trees, it was just amazing to go there. In the afternoon we swam in the lake and it was even batter than swimming in a swimming pool because nothing in the water to keep it clean and it was warm and nice.

February 17th
This photo was as well taken in 2008 while on a small bike trip around my girlfriend’s village. There is a lake on one end of the village and there some people go to swim on a hot sunny day. We were there in the afternoon and I was lucky enough to see this fly holding onto a straw. I was lucky that it had not become to dark since I was not using a good lens at that time.




February 18th
I went traveling with the family and we bought a box full of Vietnamese food in a town close to the boarders to Laos and when we were back home we invited friends over to eat with us. I thought it was a really special moment when everyone were trying to get some food, grabbing onto what ever they can get.

Upload a day week 6, February 5 – 11

February 5th
I went on a trip with my dad and we were going to find a bat that had been seen on a farm not that far from my town but we were unlucky because we could not find it. So we went on a road trip, we went to a place called Stokksnes and it’s even closer to my town. There were big waves all around the place. I have always been fascinated about this place and so are many tourists as well.

February 6th
This is a photo of the boat Ásgrímur on its way back home to Höfn full of Capelin that is sold to Japan to make sushi. I never knew that when I am eating sushi in Thailand that it could possibly be a fish caught by my home town.

February 7th
This is a camel in a zoo not far from Khon Kaen I don’t remember the name of the zoo at the moment. Always when I see a camel, which has been three or four times, I always think of the cigarettes, not sure why. I have always been a bit curious about camels, maybe because when I was young I always wanted to go to Egypt and I still would like to go there some day.

February 8th
This is the cat in the food court in Khon Kaen, I saw him there several times. There are some cats and dogs that stay there hoping to get food from the visitors. When I saw it first, it was sleeping on the table and I wanted to see if I could get a photo of a sleeping cat so when I was close I just started taking photos because I was sure it would wake up and I was right, just when I was in a good spot it rose up and opened it’s eyes and stared at me for few second’s then I was not as interesting anymore so it went away.

February 9th
This is one of my micro tests, when I’m in Thailand I always want to photograph the small things as well but to do so I need to turn my lens around to make it into a macro. I hope I will be able to buy a macro lens soon.

February 10th and February 11th
This is my top favorite model. We went to a public balcony of our apartment building and took some fashion photos. It was a lot of fun, I tried some with my new reflector.

Upload a day week 5, January 29 – February 04

I guess I just always wait until the end of the month to start posting in the end of the month. This past month I have been working a lot and there were few days when I was not sure if I would be able to post a photo but it for some reason I always managed to upload a photo a day. I just hope next month will be as good. I will make every week separated like I did in January and the posts will be come in the next day’s.

January 29th
This photo was taken at the same time as the two photos from 27th and 28th. She was working on the rice fields with another woman. My girlfriend asked her if it would be ok if I would take a photo of here and she said it was fine so she looked up to me. I like this photo because it shows how old people still do work in the fields. When I look at her hands I think they are so big comparing to how small and slim she is.

January 30th
This is a farm inside Bangkok, it does not seem to be in a big city like Bangkok because there are not that many tall buildings around. There were workers harvesting some vegetables there and getting ready for the market I assume.

January 31st
This photo was taken close to the park Sanam Luang park in a middle of a traffic island

February 1st
I went to a traditional market that I think was close to Siam shopping center in Bangkok and there I saw this old man making lollypops and selling almost instantly. I have seen several of these lollypop makers before and some of the lollypops they make are a work of art. This one was mostly making them around but some make them in many different shapes and once I saw a man making it look like a fisherman with a fishing rod and a fish was hooked on the rod.

February 2nd
In Bangkok there are many post boxes and they are marked for either Bangkok or Other places. I have not seen this before, probably because I’m not always looking at post boxes but at least we don’t have anything like this here in Iceland but maybe that’s because I only have a small fraction of the amount that is delivered in Bangkok.

February 3rd
This is a statue at the end of a stairs in Wat Arun one of many beautiful statue’s in this temple.

February 4th
This is my favorite Isan dish, Isan sausage or sai krok Isan like it’s called. It is a spicy sausage but not to hot for my taste. I usually eat it with a lot of rice because it is a bit heavy for the stomach to eat without anything else. This is something that I would recommend for everyone to try some day.

Upload a day week 4, January 22 – 28

January 22nd
I went to a really holy place for Buddhist in Thailand it is called Kum Chanod and we had to walk on a bridge over some water to get to it. When I was walking on the path there I saw this snail crawling as fast as he could to cross the path and since I was in a holy place I had to be very careful where I was going to put me foot down because it is forbidden to kill any animal even the insects when you are in a place like this. There are not many photos from this place on the internet and almost no articles so I can’t read a about it as much as I wanted. First when I took this photo I thought to my self it would probably just look like a snapshot of a snail but when I was going through my photos in bridge and I saw this one I thought to my self that with a little help from camera raw I could make it so much batter and this is the final result. I would have gone closer but this is as close as my lens will focus but I think it would not have been as good if I had been closer because the wood around the snail makes a lot for this photo.

January 23rd
Finally I managed to go out and photograph and since there were so many auroras I decided to go out and experiment photographing them. After about 3 hours of driving around and trying several locations I decided to go to a place called Stoksnes because so many people photograph there during the day. Even though the road was covered with snow I took the chance of not getting stuck somewhere. When I was almost at the place I had thought of going to I saw this place and thought to my self that this would be a nice composition. The auroras were just perfect at that moment and shortly after they were almost gone or so weak that it was hard to photograph them. It is hard photographing landscape with a 50mm lens but I try my best since it’s the only one that works for my D700.

January 24th
I borrowed my in-laws car and went on a small trip out of town. Everywhere surrounding Wapipathum (town I was staying in) there are rice fields and on one of the fields there were two women working. They were reorganizing the rice, everybody does this. I am not sure why but I think it is so the rice will be in a straight line so it is easier to harvest or something like that.

January 25th
This is a photo of a street vendor in Bangkok.

January 26th
One night I was out with my girlfriend and her friends because they were studying together until really late at night and we were in a canteen when all of a sudden in started raining really heavily I tried to show the rain but since the internet has such a bad color profile it is not as clear. I thought it was a dramatic shot showing those bikes out there in the rain.

January 27th
This is from the same place as the photo on the 24th. I really enjoy photographing thai farming. Hopefully I get the opportunity to photograph it more, specially when they plant and harvest the rice.

January 28th
This is the same place as from 27th but a different angle

Well this is the last post in January more will come after this week. Until then ;)

Upload a day week 3, January 15 - 21

January 15th

This photo was taken at the same place as the two photos uploaded in 13th and 14th it shows the men looking at the sky trying to see how high the rockets go and another man taking bets. I think it is amazing how many people there love gambling, they love it so much that they did not even notice the foreigner that was walking around photographing everything that was happening there. Usually when I go to a place like this in the north east of Thailand everyone stare at me constantly and it can be fun to get this attention but sometimes it’s also a little scary to be watched like this. I try not to let it bother me anymore I just walk and pretend that I’m not different from the others.

January 16th

This is a photo of my friend Saxophone or Sax like she is usually called. She likes skateboarding and BMX biking and in many way’s she is acts like a boy. This photo was taken while on a trip with my girlfriend’s class, it had something to do with welcoming the new students into the major. We only went there for few hours and while I was there she asked me to photograph her with her skateboard. I uploaded a similar portrait of her last year and it was taken at the same time as this one. The only thing I don’t like about this photo is that for some reason I cut of her toe.

January 17th

Always when I see ants walking in a line like this I always imagine that some of them are calling “Hold the line!!” When I took this photo I was in a park that we stopped at just before I went to Laos to renew my visa.

January 18th

When I went to the paradise island Koh Larn in may with my girlfriend we first had to go to Pattaya to take a boat from there and on the docs I saw many interesting things and one of them was a many with his bucket searching for crabs on the beach. This was not the part of the beach that many people were sunbathing. Crabs are really popular seafood in Thailand even though not everyone knows how to eat them there for wont enjoy them as much.

January 19th

This photo is also taken on the docs in Pattaya on the way to Koh Larn and there you can see someone fishing in the sea. I think they use the bucket to keep what they catch in it. I wish I had seen some of the fishermen’s catch anything because I really wanted to see how the catch what they were hunting.

January 20th

When I was walking in the same park as where I shot the photo of the ants from the 17th I saw this floating in mid air but I could not see how, I just assumed it was attached to a spider web. I’m not exactly sure what this is but I think it is some kind of seed or something that came from a plant. I like the depth of field in this photo they way the focus is only on this tiny subject, but everything else is blurred.

January 21st

This photo was taken in July when I was photographing my sisters-in-law’s graduation days in Bangkok. We had to wait for her for few hours so I walked around and photographed something’s in the school and I saw this water lily and tried some macro by taking off my lens and screwing a reversal ring on the front of the lens then I could photograph by keeping the front end of the lens closer to the sensor than the back and that’s how the lens became a macro lens, it works the same way as looking through a binoculars the wrong way everything seems so far away and you can only focus really close. It was really hard focusing with the lens that way because I had to move forwards or backwards to get the right focus, I could not use the focus ring. After using this for a while I realized that I need to buy a macro lens some day, because taking macro photos is a lot of fun.

Upload a day week two 8 - 14 January

January 8th

This is a slide that I took on my way to Reykjavík, this is shot on the mountain road just before entering the capital. This was one of my first slide films and I had not shot much with my Olympus OM2 before. So when I think of it today I think the exposure is kind of good comparing to how little training I had had with this camera. Even it seems a bit dark in the bottom the film isn’t this dark but the color profile for the internet is just not batter than this.

January 9th

On day when I went out running I passed this place and I thought to my self that this would be a great place to photograph, I think the different color heat in this photo does a lot for the photo otherwise it would not have the same feeling to it. For me it is hard to describe what I think about this photo because I just don’t have any words that would describe it the way I feel. I just think it is so mystical.

January 10th

Close to the flat that I lived in last summer there was a night market, it was in a walking distance. We went there several times to buy some food. Most of the times we went to this vendor to buy some curry’s. I think it is so special to go out and buy a curry in a plastic bag. I guess that I’m just not used to that in Iceland. I usually bought Massaman because that’s my favorite curry, specially with chicken and rice.

January 11th

This photo was shot in late September and it was shot with my Olympus OM2 loaded with TX 400. I was in a sheep roundup with my uncle at a neighbors farm, we went there to help them out because that day we had not planed anything special. It was a lot of fun to be there with all these sheep’s, so much action. I started the day with my film camera but then unfortunately the battery was finished and for some reason I had forgotten to pack extras in my bag but I just started to shoot digital there after and some of the shot are in the farm collection in the sheep’s set.

January 12th

This photo was shot when I was just arriving to the paradise island Koh Larn close to Pattaya in Thailand. I saw this fishing boat just arriving home. I don’t have much to say about this photo but I just wanted to share it.

January 13-14th

I shot this while on a trip with my family, we had just gone to Laos because I had to renew my visa and when suddenly we saw a rocket fly up into the air. So of corse we wanted to go and check it out, my family already knew what was going on and I had a clue but it was something I had not seen before only heard of. There was a big group of farmers standing all around something made out of bamboo with blue rockets attached to it. I ran to it with my camera because this was something that I did not want to miss. There were mostly men standing there and looking up into the sky, they were betting on which rocket would go highest. This is a tradition in Thailand to shoot rockets at this time of year. It is a way for the farmers to remind the gods that they have already planted the rice and now they need rain. This has been done for hundreds of years and I was told that NASA used they same methods when they started shooting spacecrafts into space. I don’t know if it was because of these rockets but when we had just entered the car to go back home, it started raining.