Writing this blog has been a very rewarding experience for a couple of years now, a lot of input from visitors from around the globe and a growing number of contacts that I didn’t really have before. No direct income, though.

This English blog started as a little brother, a lot more focused brother with just studio lighting diagrams and setups in the beginning. More like a “Read More” companion to my Flickr account than anything else. And a way of getting a little amount of my Flickr traffic to spill over to my own domain.

Always think of a blog angle

I have been helping a lot of people starting a blog of their own, and their first question is always the same: “How do I find stuff to write about?“.

When I started, I had the exact same problem, coupled with what we in Sweden call the Law of Jante (in short, who do you think you are? You are not especially good or very interesting, work harder instead). And that can make a lot of people put their blogging plans in the trash bin even before they have started writing their first post.

Nowadays, I always think of the blog when I work (will it blog?), or when I say yes to some assignment that might not be the best paid thing but could have other qualities, for example good material for a blog post or adding to a section of my portfolio that needs more examples in that category.

This will blog just fine

And that is a new way of seeing things, depending on the market you work in there are bound to be open niches for a photographer to fill in. To use an example, I did a photo shoot for a Swedish clothing brand a couple of years ago. They couldn’t pay me as much as my ordinary clients would, but I had no experience of shooting garments on models so I was happy to try.

To get the most out of this project, I took my time documenting it all for the blog, and wrote a blog post about it two years ago; Clothing Photography – Step by step.

This post is also available in Swedish, and it has lead to at least three more assignments of that kind. And a lot of price quotes that never landed in anything, of course. But without the post, no one would guess that I could do stuff like that (partly because I have been so slow on updating my portfolio).

It also resulted in this being featured on the blog lighting company Profoto has, which during two years has given me a lot of new visitors.

Money, brand or ego

Being a photographer, I need a little of everything. I can’t pay my rent with the value of my brand, but it helps for other things. The same goes for my ego, even if I have a bad day, just looking at the visitor statistics from Google Analytics makes me feel good. I can have a day when I produce completely nothing, but my blog still gets visitors, I still get comments on Facebook or Flickr. And that helps me from feeling lousy. And if I would feel lousy, I would probably be a bad seller and an even worse photographer.

It is of course a bad economic decision to spend too much time on social media, but it might be even worse not to do it at all. You just have to start, and sooner or later things will come naturally.

Write everything down

Nowadays, I have, as I said, more drafts than I have the time to finish writing them. And many times the drafts never makes it into a blog post, but just having them there can help me finding ideas for other posts.

I write blog titles or small ideas as notes in my phone, and I always shoot some behind the scenes photos on every assignment I do. You never know if you might find the time or inspiration to let it turn into a post, and they always benefit from a couple of snapshots. It fills the posts, can be used as on-the-fly updates on Facebook and/or Twitter etc etc.

Note to self

Many times, my blog posts begins as a reminder to myself. For example to always shoot a clean background picture when I do portraits on location, so I can match every portrait to the same background with some masking. That makes the editing process much faster and gives all the portraits the same framing. But I can’t remember if I have written a post about that. Must do that soon, if I haven’t.

Writing things down has a lot of advantages (as opposed to having it all swirling in my head). One thing is that I remember it better if I have been forced to formulate it as a blog post, another is that I don’t have to think about it all the time.

It comes full circle when I can go back to my blog and find stuff I might have forgotten, like a diary of some sort. And if I, as a photographer, can find those things interesting and helpful, there will probably be others that feel the same way.

Nothing is too easy or simple

“Everything looks easy when you know how to do it”, or something like that. And that is the same with everything. What I might find simple logic, others might see as a solution to a problem they have. It can be simple things like always bring a couple of meters of black fabric to cover windows or to use as a flag. Things I pick up somewhere and incorporate into my routine. And probably don’t even think about it, I just do it.

And that, can be a blog post.

One assignment – many blog posts

Every assignment could easily translate into at least three different blog posts. The first could be about the planning, or the brief, or the challenge.

The second one could be a short one on-location, maybe during the shoot. I sometimes post Instagram photos to Facebook and Twitter when I have the time. It is interesting how many that respond to simple behind-the-scenes photos of a setup or just a detail, but then again, I find that interesting too, so why wouldn’t others do the same?

The third version could be on the editing process, or the many choices you have when everything is on the computer and you have to chose how to process it all.

It could also be a post on how to get people to act during a group shot, and the psychology behind it. How to keep people focused or how to place them.

And of course, the final result.

Cross-link everything

I have been trying to tag my posts as good as I can, but there is still work to be done there. After a while, when the tagging structure is in place, it is easy to make a simple post much more interesting by linking internally to other posts on the same subject, or ones containing examples with the same light modifier.

Sooner or later, you will have a structure that allows you to write blog posts on a specific piece of equipment and easily link to other posts with examples. You don’t even have to produce anything new, just make a different package of the same content.

Refry old stuff, and make new stuff

It works when you cook, so why not for the blog? I can sometimes go through old posts to find inspiration for new ones. That goes for setups as well as other ideas.

Taking old content and give it a new spin can be interesting, if just to keep the writing going. Because if you stop writing, you might start questioning if this is interesting and then it all stops. This is not a book, this is a blog, and I can edit old content, or just fill it with new, better content.

I do the same thing over and over again. Thinking of blogging about the same thing might sound boring, but there are certainly small details that differ. And they can be the subject of a new blog post. How I do the same thing better by changing X, or by using this new technique. There is always something to write about.

This could go on forever, now I just lost my original idea for this blog post a bit and will stop here. But I hope that my message is clear. Start writing a blog about what you do, you will get a lot out of it. You will learn a lot, you will feel good and you will create contacts around the world. Maybe not today, but sooner or later.

I will end this post with a Thank You to all of you that visit my blog, encourage me and press the Like-button on Facebook once in a while. It keeps me going.

Thanks.

I bought a Fuji X100s after what feels like years of research and thinking about what I really was looking for. It is not that I lack cameras. I have a few, but they are all DSLR, and for some reason I almost never use them outside my work as a full-time photographer. My family only gets the iPhone/Instagram treatment, and that is a bit sad. And boring for my kids later on.

My experiences from compact cameras are not the best. I tend to use them a bit and then put them somewhere, never really liking using them or the resulting photos. Most of the time they stay there until I have forgotten that I even own them. The problem is often that I compare them to my Nikon cameras in terms of speed and ease of use.

But now, only after a couple of days with my new Fuji X100s, I am finally happy with a smaller camera. Not that it is that small, but easier to hang on my shoulder and start using whenever I want to.

Fuji X100s is not slow

As I said, I have compared the smaller cameras that I have owned to my Nikon DSLRs, and the big difference is always that it takes forever to start using them, not the DSLR that is. Starting them from off takes time, getting autofocus takes time, and taking a picture takes time. Not so fun when you have kids around you want to catch in the moment.

The X100s feels really quick starting and the autofocus is better than I had hoped for. Not that it isn’t without flaws, sometimes it locks on the background and sometimes it gives me a red AF! in the display that I can’t really understand. This early I write that off as me not having learned fully to use the camera as it should be used.

But in short, just being able to pick it up and taking a picture after a very short time feels good, it is still no DSLR, but that is ok. Using fast memory cards is a good thing to do, I tried it with an old SD card, and then it felt quite slow suddenly.

Good auto-focus mostly

I have only been using AF-S and AF-C, not trying the different styles of manual focussing with different modes of checking focus. AF-S is quite fast, being able to lock onto most subjects with good or decent contrast, but might have problems sometimes. I haven’t figured out what makes it stop trying.

AF-C is good too, the example above is not the sharpest one I took that day, I got a lot that was very sharp panning his moves on the swing. It is more learning to use a smaller camera to pan than get the focus right.

Easy to use different focus points

Having a good coverage of focus points is nice, and switching between them is also quickly done. It took me just seconds to learn how to do that, and now it is almost as automatic as when I use my Nikon cameras. Ok, sometime I press one button the wrong way and start changing the macro or flash settings, but it is easy enough.

There is a small problem, I think, with the optical viewfinder, and that is that the green rectangles for the focus point can sometimes be hard to see.

Quite easy to hold with one hand

You can hold the Fuji X100s with one hand and still be able to brush the teeth on your son, but I would love to have a little better grip. They chose the retro style, ok. But adding a grip for the thumb or on the front would help a lot. I also bought the leather case, and with that on, you can get a little better grip near the lens.

I got a tip that you can buy some kind of grip on eBay that might help, but I haven’t tried it. It is a bit sad that this retro look gets in the way of handling. I find this design a bit silly, but the camera is still a very good camera. And it is easy enough to hold.

Backlight and stuff like that

I haven’t peeped at all the pixels of the images I have taken, but it seems like there is no apparant problem of ugly pixels around silhouettes. And that is good. I like to blow out light backgrounds and let light seep into the rest of the photo. And this camera lets me do just that.

Focus against the light

Using the camera this way, pointing at the brightest part of the room trying to focus on the little kid’s eye lashes was no problem. With a realtively small camera like this, it is also easy to help the AF by shielding the light from the lens just enough so it can focus and then take the picture. With a heavier and larger camera, not so fun.

Develop photos in the camera

This might not be the biggest invention, but I think Fuji did this right. Developing a RAF-file in the camera is easy and fast, and the photo above compared to the one I spent a minute in Lightroom 4.4 is not that bad.

It is nice that I waited until they got it working in Camera Raw/Lightroom, using Fuji’s own software might produce great results, but I like having all my files in Lightroom. The same goes for Nikon files, I never use their ViewNX/CaptureNX anymore, the un-usability of their programs drives me insane.

I just adjusted the colour of his helmet a bit, it is signal orange and hard to get right with almost any camera. And added a little saturation in the sky and the grass. Just being able to adjust photos a little and then send them to Facebook or somewhere else using some kind of card reader for my iPhone will be great.

The same goes for using this camera professionally later when I start working again can be very useful. This might be the first time I thought that having some kind of transfer function, WiFi-connection or something in the camera would be nice. But it certainly can be done by some other method. Eye-Fi cards maybe?

Close-up and macro

There is a limit to how close you can focus, any closer and you will have to activate the macro function which uses a the other viewfinder, the electronic one. I must learn where that limit is, now I get close and suddenly it will not focus. But switching to macro is very quick, so it is more a matter of me learning, not the camera. I guess they didn’t want the camera to automatically switch to EVF from OVF, or something like that. I don’t know.

What I like with the Fuji X100s

• Easy to use
• Easy to learn
• Quick to start
• Good AF
• Really good RAW files
• Nice skin tones
• Good development module

What I haven’t really gotten used to, yet

The AF. I still don’t know if the focus is correct or not, even if it signals green. Switching to using only the EVF was a solution to the earlier X100 for some, might try that I while.

The active focus point. It might be that is is green, or the display that works better or dark than on bright images. Sometimes I have a hard time finding which focus point I am currently using.

The button. It is ok, but I have not the same feel for when I have focus locked and when I really press the shutter as I have on my DSLR’s.

The grip. They could have added a better grip, either on the back or the front. I am not worried about dropping the camera, it’s not like a slippery iPhone, but I am probably holding it tighter than I could have been with some more support.

The retro design. It is currently only available in silver, and I didn’t want to wait any longer for a good, compact camera. But I would prefer a black one, or something less designed in this silly style.

The battery. I have no problem inserting it the right way, but buying an extra battery was a good thing to buy from the start. You get a bit spoiled using, for example, a Nikon DSLR with countless of hours of use from just one battery. This drains faster.

Why did I buy this Fuji X100s?

I already own enough cameras, one might think, but what point is there having cameras if you never bring them with you. At least not on vacations and in your daily life apart from working as a photographer.

As I mentioned, I have never liked the smaller cameras I have used before. Not the handling and seldom the resulting photos. This camera is easy to use, it is fast enought for documenting my kids that never rest and the files are really good to work with. With all that, I have a camera that I can hang on my shoulder and bring everywhere.

This, also a bit silly, very useful leather case I bought together with the camera adds to the usefulness of the camera in many ways. It improves the grip a bit, unintentional, and makes it easy to have the camera hanging, protected, when helping one of the twins getting over a small obstacle. With a heavy DSLR on my shoulder, I am always worried it might slip and hit them on the head, or fall to the ground and break.

Primarily I will be using this instead of my iPhone that has been documenting the life of my family for too long. Making albums from Instagram-photos might not be the albums you really wanted to have as a memory of a time running away very fast. And I will get out of this trap that is very easy to get into, that you only bring your big expensive camera to big occasions, the normal day goes unnoticed.

And maybe the best part, I don’t have to chose between lenses, this one is fixed. I just have to use my creativity to get the most out of it. Not to pack more lenses.

As a professional photographer, I think I will have this in my camera bag on all assignments. Probably using it a lot, too.

I am often hired by companies to take photos for their image banks, and many times they more or less request a style that is seen often in stock photos. Clean setups in a bright room, one or two persons having some sort of meeting and a relatively simple background. Photos that are easy to use on the web, in financial reports and newsletters, but with their own people, not generic models.

Using ordinary people to act as models can be tricky, but it can also be very simple. In this case, where they would be having an informal meeting around an iPad, I just told them to play meeting. And that is something most people can to, and even find amusing. As soon as they start having their fake meeting, I start shooting, giving them as little directions as I can. Sooner or later it looks almost natural.

Lighting this kind of photo is mostly done by adding light in a fashion that makes the image bright and clean. I try to imagine how the light would be if they where in an office with very large windows.

Behind the scenes

We used the cafeteria/kitchen in their office, and the distance from the models to the background was very short. Instead of re-arranging the furniture hoping to blur the background by moving things around, I set the lights so the panels/curtains in the background were evenly lit. No shadows at all, except from the panels/curtains themselves.

Windows as background

Outside, the weather was grey and boring, so trying to get a blue sky with puffy clouds outside the window as background was no option. Instead I let the highlights be blown out, surrounding their heads with white.

I often use windows as backgrounds, it is an easy way of incorporating natural light even if the rest of the lighting is artificial. And it is also an easy way of framing the models, adjusting the panels/curtains gave me the right ratio of window/panel/curtain that I liked.

White walls as reflector

My main light this time was from camera right; a Profoto D1 and a 5-foot softbox Octa adding a little character to the light. To get a fill that was big and looked natural, I pointed another Profoto D1, bare bulb, into the white kitchen walls, bouncing the light back at the models.

That is also a technique I use quite often, bouncing light in the wrong direction to make the light less obvious. Most of the time, natural light looks natural because it has bounced around and transfered colours from surfaces it hits, it is seldom just one perfect big source, more like a lot of different sources from approximately the same direction.

Traveling light

This was a setup with two lights, and that was enough for this photo I think. I am working mostly in Stockholm where I live, and where my studio and stuff is. This assignment was is Gothenburg, a three hour trip by train, so I had to pack as little equipment I could, while still being able to get the photos right.

Two Profoto D1, a 5-foot softbox Octa, umbrellas, a Chimera reflector/diffusion panel and a couple of light stands, that can do almost anything like this. The problem might come if the room is too dark and to big and trying to light it, and models, with just two lights. But, as I am working on my own, with no assistant, having more than two bags and the camera bag, makes traveling a lot more complicated.

So I think I have tried to create photos that can be done with less equipment than before, when I carried around a lot more just to be sure. Often the resulting photo is just like this, one or two people, and a little space around them.

The goal is to deliver photos that are easy to use for my clients, and looking at what they use on their web sites and in printed matter, there is almost always just one or two heads, in some kind of environment. Just like in tv-series.

Last year, I posted a test shot from this photo session with a Swedish author, and now I can show the real portrait. Her book is out, so there is no restrictions anymore.

This is from the studio were we tried a couple of different setups, one of them with a green background and ring flash. My main light was a beauty dish, but the ring flash did its part too by adding fill from the camera angle, on-axis as they say.

The main light is camera left, a Profoto D1 250 Air with a Profoto White Softlight Reflector. Fill is the ring flash and a Widesoft reflector, the gradient on the background is from a third light placed close to the background. And I think there must be a hairlight involved even if I can´t see it on this behind the scenes pic, probably on a boom.

This last photo is from the test shot with a friend, here the fill light from the ring flash is more visible on his skin, I think. It reveals details in a really nice way but is quite hard to work with. When I stood in front of the camera for the first test shots, I felt the light coming straight into my eyes wasn’t all that comfortable.

I will try adding a layer of ND-filter later for the ring flash, otherwise I have to use smaller aperture and being restricted to f/8 and above isn’t really my style, as well as having the model go blind during the session.

This portrait showcasing make-up from a Swedish company was one of the last photo sessions I did before I started my paternity leave, just before Christmas 2012. Not the kind of portraits I do often, but very rewarding to work with talented people creating something beautiful.

We worked a couple of hours in the studio and the result was six portrait with two different make-ups and styling. I will get back with a more detailed blog post showing how I set up the lights and all that.

This is my contribution to the huge video archives on YouTube with twins dancing to Gangnam Style, I was a bit surprised to see how many they were. Not that I thought we were first, but anyway.

As a social networking experiment it would be interesting to see if this might spread, so please share on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else you might hang on the Internet. All shares are welcome.

Last year I did an assignment for a Swedish company that runs a lot of clinics, and one of the places I visited to photograph image photos for their new web site and annual report was, of course, quite small.

In a small room, lighting the background separately can be a problem with so short distance from the models and everything else. Even with a tele. But we had some luck as the door to the doctor’s office were the type with a large panel of frosted glass in the middle, a perfect diffusion screen.

Instead of using a big softbox to light the background, or place my Chimera panel with diffusion fabric inbetween the light and the background, I could just put a Profoto D1 with bare bulb outside the door.

The angle and everything worked just fine to imitate the light from large windows, but from the “wrong” direction (which doesn’t matter if you haven’t been inside that room), and it hit the glass doors of the book shelf in the background in a way that gave them a good, diffused glow.

The main light came from another Profoto D1 250 Air, with a large 5-foot (150 cm) softbox Octa placed close to the desk, and with me shooting from under it. Using a Nikon D700 and a 70-200/2.8 VRII made it possible to get a little shorter DOF and in the same time not getting all the other stuff in the picture. It was quite crowded with machines and instruments in there.

Having the main light almost straight on made it easier to position the models in different angles without having to adjust the lighting, and placed a bit up pointing down made it look natural, I think. Maybe natural deluxe?

The first thing I did when we arrived at the office was to find an angle that got the right amount of details in the background, after that we adjusted his desk a little bit.

This was done the same day as we did the shoot with bare bulbs and white walls, and I think the key to getting good, natural looking photos like this done in a reasonable time is to keep it really simple.

One advantage with this kind of photos is of course that the models stay in one place, so it easier to set up the lights for that. If they had moved around, it would have been so much harder.

As you might have noticed, I have not been able to write anything on this blog for quite a while. The reason is simple, being home with twins, now 15 months old, full time, requires all my time and energy. Or maybe not all my time. There is always time, but if you don’t have the energy for it, you can’t really write something interesting. At least, that is what I feel.

And they have an older brother, and we just bought a house.

I will start writing new blog posts very soon, I have missed doing that.

If you want to follow me on Facebook, please do. Or browse a lot of photos with twins, you might want to follow me on Instagram.

I am happy to answer any question you think I might have the answer to, probably something related to photography and studio lighting, that I can make time for here and there. Easiest way is probably my Facebook page.

More to come, as they say.

I check Google Analytics a bit too much, it is interesting, and with the new feature to compare to previous year or a custom period, it makes it all the more interesting. But when comparing the visits to my blogs and portfolio 2012 to 2011 I thought that there was something wrong with the numbers.

Look how closely the blue line (2012) follows the orange line (2011).

It is almost silly.

They came as a surprise, mostly a very nice one, but expanded our family from three to five in an instant and wrecked our plans of a peaceful maternity/paternity leave as parents with a little more experience.

A couple of days ago, they celebrated their first birthday, and a month before that they learned how to walk which has expanded their reach very much. They have also found many new places and activities to get bruises from, something we didn’t have to teach them, they seem to find that out all by themselves.

Now, after a year in their mother’s care, it is my turn to stay at home and try keeping them from dangerous places and maybe teach them a thing or two. My photography business is put on ice for a while. Must save my energy.

Last time, with their older brother, I managed to work one day a week, which was for a while a very effective day. My clients were very understanding so I could fill that weekly work day with lots of assignments and do the retouch during evenings.

But, after some months, I felt that it was too much work to combine working and handling a kid with growing needs for activity, so I shut down my business temporarily and chose to sleep when he slept. I had to do it, if I didn’t sleep when he slept, I would have been to tired when he wanted to jump around.

This time, I am a bit older, and after a year with twins, not really less tired than I was before. So staying at home full time is the only option. And hopefully they will continue to synchronize their sleep patterns, which might give me a chance to recharge my batteries once in a while.

As luck would have it, last year was a really good year, so I can afford to do this. Though I can’t really understand how I managed to get so much done when it felt like I worked so little.

I hope to continue writing stuff here on the blog, not only posting photos of my kids. During the autumn, I mostly worked as fast as I could to get home as soon as I could, blogging became a very low priority, so there are a lot of drafts just waiting to be finished for the blog.

For photos of the twins in action, follow me on Instagram @stefantell.