In July, I visited my home town in Eastern Finland. These visits usually include swimming in the lake and going to sauna. After we’d done swimming, I took a few sunset shots on the shore and my father spent a while casting his fishing rod. For some reason, I haven’t got that many photographs of my parents, so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of him in the beautiful evening light.
I went out to photograph the sunset on a cold January afternoon because it looked like there might some nice colors in the sky. As I was looking for a good position, this man skied past me and I knew I had to get him in the frame with the sun. I had my camera hanging on my neck, but I wasn’t really prepared to take any photos. Luckily he wasn’t too fast and I was able to adjust my camera settings and take this photo. Looking back, I think this was the best photo I took that day.
For those of you who are interested in tech stuff, the image is a blend of two differently exposed versions of the same file. Blending allowed me to adjust the exposure of the snow and the sky more easily to my liking.
I took this photo of a great tit last December on one of the last days of the year. We spent a day away from the city near Pieksämäki. It was a fairly cold day, but very productive in terms of bird photography. I haven’t had the time to go through all the images yet, but I know there are at least a couple of photos I like.
There’s a small hill with a relatively nice view near our apartment where we sometimes go. I originally shot this photo bracketed to make an HDR image, but ended up using only one exposure. Apart from the sun there wasn’t much need for the extra dynamic range. I think I’ll try to make the HDR version later when I have more time.
This image is also from 2007. It was taken just a little after the one I posted earlier. Well, actually it’s a composite of a few photos, but the base image was taken in 2007. This year I plan to do more processing than before, so some of these experiments might go a bit over the top. I try to keep them tasteful though.