Why I deliver digital files to my customers?

Today I have found some of my very own writing that got lost for some reason... I just stumbled across this reasoning of my own from some 2 years ago...  Well, not much has changed in my own attitude during this time, I would say. Was a little offline in terms of reading about these topics lately, so not sure if fellow photographers are just as scared of giving away digital copies of their photos or not so much any more.

Question to photographers: do you deliver digital files?
Question to clients: do you expect to receive digital photos from your photographer?

Here is the whole text from early 2013 or maybe late 2012:

Not all cancellations are bad!

Today got a last-minute Christmas card session cancellation (here it is the season of ill children) which turned out into a ton of fun at home instead. So in the end some free time is really good as well. Always look on the bright side of life!

E has a new hideout! One of the 'top secret' type.

J is all laughter. She will never miss her chance to smile back at you.

And I played with Bibbles cross-processing preset while they were resting.

Happy holidays!

This year was 3 times more productive than the previous ones (hooray for statistics, sounds cool but this is post number 30 this year:) ). That is if we measure by amount of posts I have written (the only directly measurable thing, I guess :) ). As for myself - it has been the most educational year EVER in all available senses.

Looking forward to next year and hoping to have more time for sharing what I've learned with you all!

Thanks for sticking around another year! Hope you have a ton of fun and great pictures and a very educational 2011 ;)

Cheers!
//M.

P.S. just to stick to it- one 60x60 softbox (from Elinchrom BX 500 Ri kit) straight in front of the teddies. 4 sec exposure to catch the candle light. Complete darkness besides  that.

Now it is time for xmas :)

On-Line photo printing in Sweden

Note: this one mostly applies to Sweden-based photographers... And is a nice find for myself.

A few days ago Frida and Pikki (I photographed them this summer) came over to order their wedding prints. And this really embarrasing thing happened- I could not upload the pictures to the printing companies web page... Then the lightning struck me- I have never done this since moving to Linux!

Some kind of Java plugin error... IcedTea it's called... This was all I was getting in my Chrome window...

Darned, the whole situation was just so ugly... I tried some other photo printing companies. Seemed like everyone was using Java for the photo upload interface...

Blah. After F&P left, I dived into the web for more detailed research. Came across Crimson lab in Stockholm. And what a lovely find that was!

More details inside the post.

Textures

Any weather is good weather; any light is good light, apparently. Today the sky was all muddy and overcast, creating perfect light to look for details.

A couple of shots from an open air museum (Forngården) in Trollhättan, exploring old wood and brick textures.





I hear clever people say "Go out and take lots of pictures"...

Made in...

Good long vacation back home- doing nothing more but the good stuff: eat, sleep, take pictures. And enjoy the best peace and quiet nature can offer!

More wilderness pictures and technical details on the above image after the jump!


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The first attempt I had at this shot was in complete darkness, so I tried using a flash light to light-paint the house making it at least a bit visible. Made probably dozen of those pictures never liked one of them... So just left the idea until this beautiful moonlit night came. -20C outside with moonlight really does have it's own charm! And I did not need any more fill light- I had a perfectly good moon hanging exactly where I wanted it. Remembered what Joe McNally said in his book about the dark windows, but could not turn the lights on as long exposure time would have burned the windows, so I used natural candles. Works really well. 30 second exposure added the fairytale look to the image. It is a perfect place to grow up I tell you!

My Nikon seems to take the cold quite fine. I have two batteries for these extreme cold days. One is always in the pocket close to the skin. The first one freezes in 20-30 minutes. I guess it takes longer first time as the camera is still warm too. Afterwards I have to switch batteries every 10-15 minutes... Well, depends on how cold it is.

Enough babbling, forest is pretty back home:

All good things are over some time. Vacation too. Going back West! Harbour in Riga was different this time- all frozen as the rest of Baltic countries. Still looking good though!

Welcome back to life in 2009! ;)

When the Swedish night gets long and dark...

There is nothing else you can do but fool arround! And that's what we did the other week after figuring out that hotel where we stayed apparently had an IT type spook haunting it...

All these ghost talks triggered Davids imagination which lead to experiments with long exposures.

Some test shots and we decided to shoot on 20 second exposure, first 10 seconds we sit pretending to drink coffee then quickly get out of the frame, that way exposing the scene for another 10 seconds without us in it, making ourselves transparent. Here is the original result:


We used 2 sets of coffee cups. One was always on the table, the other we held in hands and took with us when leaving the frame.

The ghosts were there, but the mood was missing. I needed to make it look like those old long exposure shots. So, here is the result after just a few minutes of post processing:


Well, D and myself had a good time.

Cheers to the night shift girls in Hällsnäs! :)