Family portraits

Christmas means spending time with my family. Swedish meatballs, beatsallad, herring, and other classic pastries are all part of the family holiday. But it’s very easy to forget to document the people you hold most dear. I took the opportunity to remedy that…

Simple setup on the following photos: one SB800 on each side. The right one with a +0.7 warming filter in a softbox, and the left one into a silver reflector.

Same setup as above but this time with a blue filter on the left flash:

Lesson learned: it’s sometimes very hard to work effeciently in small confined spaces using multiple flashes. It took many tries to get the setting right when using this setting.
You need to be careful when using side lights, especially with a colored filter, so you don’t light up the wrong part of the face.

The following photo below is taken in a very small stairway, with a Elinchrom Ranger with a 20 degree raster together with a SB800 with a blue filter at the bottom of the stair. In my left hand I’m pointing a silver reflector to lighten up the shadow in his face.

The following photos are taken into a woodshed with SB800 with a +0.7 warming filter inside the shed, and two flashes on the outside, on one of them I again put a blue filter.

Backlight and front side light:

Winter wedding

A winter wedding in Sweden can be a real gamble if you want to do the shooting outdoors. Per and Lina Granlund got married on the beautiful island of Marstrand just outside of Gothenburg, and plan A was to do most of the shooting outdoors. The weather in Sweden can be very unpredictable; you need to be prepared for anything between very cold with lots of snow to very wet with heavy rain. And sometimes you feel very lucky and can actually spot the thing we call sun

The weather turned out to be mostly on our side even though it was cold and occasionally windy.

Here are some photos from the shoot:

Using flashes and big softboxes on windy days and close to water makes the job impossible without a good trustworthy assistent. My nephew Alex made a terrific job making sure the Elinchrom Ranger flash stayed dry on land.

The moped wasn’t only used for props, it also served for effective transportation between shooting sites.