Photography – Page 4 – Harald's Photo Blog

Getting that shot

After the spring jumping competition, the girls at the local riding school found out that I could take quite nice photos. And apparently there is no limit to how many photos of themselves and their horses they can have, so we agreed to meet in the field on a sunny day to take some photos and have some fun.

Now, as any observant viewer may notice, the girls are riding without helmets and saddles. This was to get better photos, and I had not thought through the risks involved in riding like this.

Fortunately, the horses behaved properly…

Of course, I could say to myself that this was not my problem. In fact, I think I did… However, I also think that as photographers (amateurs and professionals alike) we have a responsibility to not encourage people into taking unneccessary risks just to get better photos, nor allow them to push themselves. And I know that I would never have forgiven myself for taking those photos if one of them had been hurt during the shoot.

On the other hand, I am not sure that I totally understand the real risks involved. Just as with the photos of Sigrid, I have seen a lot of photos taken where the riders are without helmet in far more risky circumstances than the soft field we were using… At least I have learned to review the risks next time so that I (and the subjects) don’t take unconscious risks.

We also found the time for some non-action shots. I noticed that one of the girls had the name of her horse tattooed on her neck, and it made for a striking image together with the horse.

And to see the connection that these girls had with their horses was touching….

And of course the mandatory portrait(s)…

Event photography

It’s been a long time since I posted anything (until the last couple of days that is). I have been busy travelling (without my camera unfortunately) and taking photos at the local riding school. Over the next couple of posts I’ll outline some of my recent photography experiences…

The first event was the yearly spring jumping event. The event is based around volunteer work, and my contribution is photography (since I am better at this than say, baking or cooking). I took photos at last years event as well, but this year I felt confident enough to post my blog address around the event to attract readers. And it worked…. Over the event days I got almost 30.000 pageviews of my photos, quite a lot compared to the 20-50 I usually get per day.

Based on last years experience I prepared by thinking ahead where I should place myself to get the most out of the fences.

A lot of considerations had to go into this, such as the position of the sun, the background, distance to other fences and much more. And of course everything changes for each class, so I had to study the course diagram to position myself correctly for each class.

After a few riders, I was getting warmed up and had found a few favorite spots that gave me good coverage

Of course, the event wouldn’t work without volunteers, and they did an awesome job of keeping the course organised and in shape

Even though it was the beginning of May, it still got quite cold to stand there all day…

All in all, I took about 3000 photos that weekend, of which aobut 400 survived the editing process

Sigrid

One of the girls at the local riding school approached me some time ago to ask me if I could take some photos of her and her favorite horse. She is also a budding amateur photographer and I can see her improving almost from week to week. Therefore we agreed to meet at the riding school and take some photos. She even brought her father along to help me hold reflectors, flashes and the like.

We started of with some horseback photos:

By moving around on the fields, we found several nice places to grab photos.

After the fields, it was time for some other portraits.

Knowing the school well, she also had some great locations in the stable for photos

This shows that knowledge of the location is just as important as technical photography skills…

Captivity….

A loooong time ago, I wrote about my visit to the Kristiansand Zoo. I promised to write more about the visit behind the scenes, and here goes.

We got to visit the Siberian tigers in their cages where they spend their nights (well not into the actual cages, but at least inside the caretakers rooms. The tigers are part of a preservation project, where the tigers are mated according to strict plans to make sure the long-term health and survival of the tigers. There are about 350-400 tigers in the wild, and a few hundred in captivity.

When I posted these to my Flickr account I thought that was the best tiger photo, since the cage was not visible. A friend of mine however felt quite strongly that another of the photos were much better, since it captured the captivity better….

And looking through them both, I found that I agree. The second photo is more moody and captures the tiger in captivity far better… It just shows that the first impressions are not always the right ones, and that different interpretations leads to new ways of viewing…

To round it off I managed to capture a common squirrel monkey (most known in Norway for being the monkey of Pippi Longstocking. The monkey is a known thief and steals wallets, cameras and other goods from the tourists. We were warned to keep our pockets thoroughly closed 🙂

Vårspretten 2012

To all my English readers; my most sincere apologies. This post is for the horse jumping competition at the local riding school. It will be written in Norwegian only.

Oppdatering 06.05 kl. 20:10: Da er bildene fra dag 2 også ferdig og på vei ut. Regner med at alle bildene er lagt ut ca kl 21:00 (212 stykker). De finner dere her

Oppdatering 21:00: Da er alle bildene ferdig redigert og er i ferd med å legges ut her. Alle bildene vil være lagt ut ca. 21:30 (228 stykker). Enjoy!!!

Oppdatering kl. 16.45: Dagens stevne er nå ferdig, og jeg har begynt å sortere alle de 3000 bildene jeg tok i dag.

Hei alle!

Her kommer bildene fra Vårspretten 2012 ved Reppe Ridesenter.

Mens dere venter, kan dere jo kose dere med bildene fra i fjor: Dag 1 og Dag 2

Eventuelle spørsmål kan dere stille til meg på harald.wesenberg@gmail.com

Behind the scenes

A few weeks ago, I visited Kristiansand, Norway for a project kick-off. The evening activity was a visit to Dyreparken, or Kristiansand Zoo and Amusement Park. Since this was a private tour, we were allowed into some of the animal enclosures, especially in the tropical house.

One of the animals we could visit was the ring tailed lemur, a sweet little animal from the south end of Madagascar. Very curious and trusting, we soon had them eating out of our hands.

We also saw some rainbow lorikeets that flew free inside the tropical house. Watching them was a real display of sweet love 🙂

We also got to go backstage to the Siberian Tigers, more on that in a later post…

The return of winter

Two weeks ago, we had the feeling of real spring around here. All the snow was gone, the roads had been swept for gravel and the kids were bicycling in the streets. In the back of my mind I knew it was early and maybe even a bit naive, but the voice of reason drowned in the joy of spring… Of course winter struck back with a vengeance and at the moment we have around 40 cm/15 inches of snow. We had decided to spend the Easter holidays at home to enjoy the spring, but instead we had to find other ways to enjoy our holidays.

The local riding school had an offer out for free riding of school horses for experienced riders, so that the horses would get their holiday exercise. (You can also read more of all the acitivities in Norwegian here) My wife and daughters are enthusiastic horse riders, so they have spent some days in the riding hall and out on the track.

My wife on the fredriksborger Calypso — Smiling from ear to ear

In between the snow showers it was also possible to ride outside. The constant weather changes made for beautiful light.

And of course, my dog Theo was ecstatic as always in the fresh snow.

Lego day at work!!

The company I work for makes an effort to take care of its employees. Last Sunday they arranged a day where all the employees’ kids could come in and build Lego.

The kids got to build the future city and use all of their imagination. Well, with several hundred kids (and parents) doing the building, the result was quite a large city:

And all through the city, there were lots of little details to feast on:

Traffic control? Not sure what this is... All in all, a great day at work! Share this: Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook More Reddit Print Like this: Like Loading...

In the darkness…

One of areas where cameras have really improved since I bought my first DSLR 8 years ago is in the ability to take photos in the dark. My EOS 300D produced fairly nice photos up to ISO 800, while I can get better results at ISO 6400 with my current 7D. This opens up new areas of photography where I felt that I had something I wanted to capture, but didn’t have the means to do so.

One such area is concert photography. One of my friends plays in the band V Before U, and I get to go their concerts and grab some photos every once in a while. One of my favorite concerts (in terms of photography) was the concert at Rockheim in April 2011.

V Before U on stage at Rockheim — V Before U on stage

One of the things I really like with the band, is the energy in both their music and their performance. Especially the lead singer is all over the stage during the concert. Even so, I managed to capture a rare and tender moment where he was standing still.

This is a more common sight:

Giving all — The lead singer in a more common sight

My friend in this band is the guitar player, and we have shared many a laugh during lunch for the past 15 years whenever we get the chance to have lunch together (and that has more to do with me than him. He eats lunch at the same time every day. It’s just that my schedule prevents me from doing the same). The same playful mood and humor is also evident during the concerts.

The last photo is of the bass player.

The other photos from this concert can be seen here

The PoEM keynote

Last fall, I was invited to hold a keynote at the Practice of Enterprise Modelling conference in Oslo.

I usually talk at a few conferences every year, both domestically (Software 2011) and internationally (SATURN 2011 and Gartner EA Summit 2011), but to hold a keynote would be a new experience 🙂

I felt that I had to stretch a little and decided to make it into my own little art project combining my passion for photography with my message on Enterprise Modeling in an Agile World. I had plenty of time (I felt) to take photos for the keynote.

The first photo was taken in the early spring. I ordered my father and eldest daughter out on bicycles and found a quiet, winding gravel road. The point I wanted to make was that to develop models was a journey which would take time and effort to complete. To have an experienced companion on the journey is good, while to bring in young talent brings in new perspectives.

As you may note, my father is not wearing a helmet. This is very intentional, and is meant to illustrate that even the most experienced companions may not always be up to date on current best practices, so the balance between experience and talent must always be maintained.

The next photo is from Flor og Fjære where I visited in the late spring as part of a project dinner. I had been there before, and knew that they had these apple hedges that are apple trees cropped into growing as hedges.

The photo reflects one of the discussions I have often had with modelers: What are we modeling? Is this an apple tree (important for those that harvest fruit) or a hedge (important for the landscapers). Recognizing that all models are abstractions and focusing on getting the abstractions right is crucial to getting a model that is understood by the target audience.

The last photo in this post was taken over the summer where I got my wife and youngest daughter to pose:

The key message here lies in how my wife reads Fortune as bedtime stories for her, even if she is not interested (and has her back turned). I have often seen this in real life as well, where the story told is not the story that the audience want to hear. Luckily for my daughter, this is a staged photo, so my wife never reads Fortune for bedtime stories 🙂

The rest of the photos is found in my Google+ album, and the paper that accompanies my keynote is published in Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Volume 92, 2011, pp 126-130

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