Since the last location I shot at (see the pictures on my G+ profile) is a bit inaccessible due to the snow and it was -30°C, I didn’t even consider hopping into our car and driving to a different location so these have all been shot right at the edge of our property. Enjoy…

I knew that the airport would offer me many strangers and having some extra time would mean that I couldn’t really avoid talking to someone and getting their permission to photograph them. So spotting a little labrador puppy at the airport seemed like a real blessing since now, as a retriever enthusiast, I had a good reason to start talking to the people with the puppy. Turns out the breeder was taking the puppy to his new home in Czech Republic, so the portrait has the breeder, puppy, and busy airport in the background.

My final selection is this one:

In fact, it was taken with a composition that I had previsualized while walking around the terminal, so I’m glad it was also the best photograph. The following to out-takes aren’t as strong. In both the sharpness of the puppy isn’t quite good enough and either the crop or contact with the subject is laking. But all in all, I’m satisfied with what I got out this assignment, even though approaching only one stranger for a photograph almost feels like cheating ;)

Both books cover the use of small flashes – mainly speedlights – off-camera to assist or fully light the photograph you are making. I’ll admit to not being a stranger to the Strobist movement since I’ve been following it from sometime during the early ages of the blog and the initial Lighting 101. Admittedly though, although I’ve dabbled here and there and tried to understand what has been written I’ve spent too little time actually practicing my strobist skills.

I’ve liked the Craft & Vision books I’ve read so far so I grabbed both as they came out and finally started reading them now. Admittedly since I’ve been following a lot of the gear discussions on the Internet for so long, the general parts of the books didn’t really offer me anything new. But they were written extremely well and concisely enough to not bore a reader. What I liked most about both books were the case studies of individual photographs and how they were lit. The text and final image were also – in places – supported by photographs taken without the addition of light giving the reader an even better picture on what the effect of the lighting was.

As a bonus the second book has interviews of several Belgian photographers who use strobes in their work. The interviews offer an even deeper insight on how strobes can be utilized in personal and commercial work. And of course the pictures shown are absolutely beautiful and wonderfully simple gear-wise in their execution. It is so refreshing to see so many photographs that have only been lit with a few lights instead of the often convoluted lighting setups seen in many commercial situations.

After reading both books I feel like I have an even better understanding of what and how to achieve what I want. Now I just have to start really practicing my skills before submitting some poor souls to sit in front of my camera. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend picking both e-books up. The total price of $10 most likely won’t break your bank.

Although vision statements are not necessarily public, I don’t feel any need to hide mine. In fact, I feel that forcing myself to write it down in publishable format makes it a bit more real. And it forced me to spend a bit more time reflecting on it. So, here goes:

My work shows a glimpse into the character of my subject. It tells a story through the moods and atmosphere it invokes. The first sentence is what applies to my current work in photographing dogs, live music, and fire. It is a sign of a good action or unplanned shot. The second is where I am taking my photography in creating planned photographs.

Miss Mallorys Third Time Lucky "Topi"

Update the list of all entries can be found on Jim’s blog.

Moonlit

Windswept Luka

Tom S. Englund of Evergrey

Esa Holopainen of Amorphis

Marcus Jidell of Evergrey

Olli Herman of Reckless Love

Topi

Emil

I have two broad goals that will take me in the direction I want,

1. first, I’m following Glyn Dewis’ footsteps in committing to reading a photo book per month; and
2. I’m participating in Don Giannatti’s Project52.

Don’s project will various themes forcing me took look more into what I want from my photography and learn how to plan and execute shoots. In addition to these two, I’m going to go through Strobist 101 and 102 during this spring.

These are the broad goals that I have. I know for certain that in reading a photo book per month I’ll be looking into furthering my vision (yes, I’m certain to have David duChemin on my reading list) as well as delving deeper into various tools. This means I’ll be cracking out various post-processing books with the goal of learning portrait retouching and compositing. Both of which are fields in which I have no skills whatsoever.

And because I’ve always felt that writing my thought processes and learning helps me, be prepared to see increased activity in this space. And if I stop writing quite so much, then you’ll know that I’ve dropped the ball ;)

This year I’ve used it more and more on the road simply because it really is always with me. And as Chase Jarvis says, the best camera is the one that is with you. I’m writing this while watching the live feed of creativeLIVE’s workshop on iPhoneography. If you are at all interested in using your iPhone for photography, then I really recommend the workshop. So far we’re three hours into the two day session and I’ve leaened quite a dew tricks and seen several beautiful images.

As has been stated in the workshop, 90% of the images shot today end up on the web and most modern camera phones have more than enough resolution to give you lots of room to crop. But with the growing sensor sizes printing is also a very alistic possibility. But as most people know, the old 3G’s camera is poor. Or so I thought.

Anna has been using my old 3G as her phone and has taken lots more pictures in over half a year than I did in two. But what really surprised me is the photobook Anna got from her parents for Christmas. During our trip to the US last autumn, Anna sent shots (at medium size) from both of our phones to her parents documenting our trip. What she got was a photobook of every single shot she sent. And I must admit, I was surprised at the quality of the pictures, especially the 3G shots.

And of course, we really can’t touch iPhoneography without discussing the sharing aspects. I must admit that Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter all add to the appeal of shooting with a phone from which the images can be shared instantly. And of course, viewing others images is always inspiring.

Alas, due to me writing this post on the iPad means that I really don’t have many processed photos available, but I’ll update the post tomorrow with more examples of my iPhoneography.

Despite the feeling of not quite getting where I wanted during the year, I did make several photographs I’m proud of and they are scattered here among some more or less useless statistics of the year ;). The images are shown in a chronological order, so don’t expect any logical order in the groupings.

Moonlit

So after doing some final cleanup of my Lightroom library, the end result is that I shot

• 18400 pictures (give or take a few)
• 200 taken with our old Canon 30D, the rest with our Canon 7D
• 2500 tagged with metadata, the rest are untagged at the moment.

Topi in the spring floods

Now I should note that these statistics only cover my DSLR photographs, iPhone shots aren’t in my Lightroom catalog, but I’ll get to iPhoneography later on in the post.

Tom S. Englund of Evergrey

Marcus Jidell of Evergrey

I’ve known that my lens selections tend to vary mostly between the 17-55 and 70-200. Thus the following statistic on lens usage isn’t at all surprising. In fact, I was more surprised on how much I’d used the two Sigma primes. The 70-200 IS is a friends lens that was quickly tested for a few shots.

• Tokina 11—16 362 pictures
• Sigma 50/1.4 910 pictures
• Sigma 150/2.8 1029 pictures
• Canon 50/1.8II 175 pictures
• Canon EF-S 17—55/2.8 8241 pictures
• Canon EF70—200/4L 7670 pictures
• Canon EF70—200/4L IS 38 pictures

Topi and apple blossoms

Based on this years experience of using IS more than before (I bought our first IS lens late last year), I must say that I’m reconsidering it’s use. Sure, dogs rarely stay still enough for the IS to be of any use, but a 70-200/2.8 IS has found it’s way on to my wishlist. Not that I’ll be getting it anytime soon…

Luka jumping after a dummy

Of course, right after listing all of these statistics, we went a dug out the camera for some more pictures. We took 87 more pictures, all of them with the 17—55. Look at the last picture of the post to see what we came up with.

Luka and Anna

I started the year with a strong intention to finally complete a 365 and managed to keep going for some time. Sure, I missed a day or two here and there, but lost my enthusiasm for it – and many other things – when we suddenly lost Jalo. However, you view the set of pictures that I managed to make in my Flickr set.

Pepe of Reckless Love

Even more than the loss of Jalo, the whole year was marked by too much procrastination. During 2010 I decided to work on the business side of my photography. Honestly – other than watching some Creative Live sessions and thinking about the business side a lot – I haven’t done a thing. For the coming year I have some more thoughts and a preliminary todo list with some scheduling thrown in. I finally realized that I must make some kind of timetable for myself if I’m to achieve anything.

Topi and dummy

One of my goals for the year was to put more effort into learning the video side of everything. Alas, despite shooting a few different sets of footage, I never got around to editing any of it. The only video that I edited all the way was the test of how shutter speeds effect the image in video.

Tuomas Tuominen of The Man-Eating Tree

As I noted, our Lightroom catalog doesn’t have any iPhone pictures in it, but it doesn’t mean that our iPhones have been silent. They really are a good replacement for a point and shoot – even my old 3G which Anna uses (more on this in an upcoming post). As a part of my 365 I decided that I will make photographs with my phone and it has been a good experience. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been posting iPhone shots on Flickr (mostly in the 365 set), Facebook (friends only), and Instagram. But some shots have appeared in other social sites as well – I probably don’t even remember then all.

Zachary Hietala of Tarot

I think in summary I could say that for me, photographically, 2011 was a year of some great photographs that were made intentionally more than just snapped. Most of this has come from the process of thinking of the vision I have for the photographs – something I took home from David duChemin’s Creative Live session in 2010.

Skål!

2012 will bring a more structured and thought out learning process to further my skills and more disciplined shooting to get me where I want to go and further some of the projects I have in my head…

Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis

Honestly though, I probably have many good photographs I’ve missed – mostly because of my laziness and lag in editing and tagging photographs. I’ve also got photographs from two trips that are largely unprocessed which will be appearing later on.

Esa Holopainen of Amorphis

Luka and toy pheasant

The gang

Sabaton

Marcus Jidell of Evergrey

Firefighter

Facing the fire

Let it burn, I'll finish the book first

Olli Herman of Reckless Love

Ville Vänni of Insomnium

Niilo Sevänen & Ville Vänni of Insomnium

Topi posing

A flatcoat running

Anyone down there?

Topi wishing everyone a merry christmas

As an interesting fact, I also realized that the surgeon who operated on my finger that I managed to damage a couple of years back is/was Insomnium’s second guitarist, Ville Vänni. I remember at the time, Anna and I were thinking that the surgeon definitely is a metal-head with the long hair and tattoos. Well, that mystery was finally solved.

This was also to be Ville Vänni’s second to last gig in the band – and his last gig in his hometown so expectations were high at least in the audience. Ville was greeted with shouts of his name throughout the gig. And honestly it felt like Ville played his heart out.

While lately Kerubi (and it’s predecessor Kellari) haven’t been really full in metal gigs, the place at least appeared packed to the limits. It was hot, loud, and even managed to have a small circle pit going on every now and then.

For a metal band the lights were surprisingly good. But for once, when I had fairly good lights there was a security person parked practically right in front of me, so many a good photograph has been left out. Although if you look through the gallery, you’ll see his head silhouetted in some photographs.

But the night was all we wanted it to be. An evening of good metal and headbanging with the chance to get some good photographs thrown in. Thank you Ville V. and good luck to Insomnium on their road to come.

As always, more pictures in our gallery.

Celebrating the 94th anniversary of Finnish independence with the colors of our flag. A fresh sprinkling of snow on the ground suits the day.