TheHatter.net

 Communication and social life i mean. I have tried to take some photos to my upcoming exhibition about sports outside the mainsteream. Mostly those involving great deal of voluntary work and team spirit.

But oh boy it’s hard. Specially when everything happens at least 100km away. Can’t be hanging around the sports halls and parkinglots to find out if something is going on. It’s utterly impossible to get any info abt gatherings or plays from internet. Nothing is shared outside the teams. It seams that the info is on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’ as Douglas Adams said.

Funniest thing of all is that no one reply to the emails or other inquirys, no one… No wonder most of these sports remain unknown. Guess that’s the subconscious meaning of this silence… Let us do our stuff in peace and among friends, strangers don’t come bothering.

It’s a slow day after a hectic summer season and a good rainy day for updating those thousands of blogs and profiles and websites. Stopped to think things over… How do people manage to keep up with these? Don’t they do work at all or where they find all that time to write blogs and tweet all silly things. To me, it usually takes a whole workday to write something to all media you have to be active, to be socalled social person and therefore accepted in circles.

As the circles was mentioned… Thats the other thing  i don’t understand. Whats the catch with that brand new Google+? I’ll tried to write there and followed some photographers too, but what’s the thing with it. There is nothing that should be expected from that kind of a social media. Maybe i’m too FB oriented, but I can’t find anything useful from G+. Where are invitations to some  strange peoples parties where you can meet new friends, where are writings from old acquaintances that can be used as Pons asinorum to warm up the old frienship. Nowhere. People just write to their innercircle and only thing to read is some jobless photographers that brags their things in public or otherwise writes some nonsense. Like this.

There’s just that one thing too that has made me think about blogs, media and advertising. What can you write to your blogs and what kind of pictures can you show in these blogs and media. As a portraiture and wedding photographer I take pictures in quite private occasions and dig out quite personal emotions in portraits. Is it moraly right to put these weddingparty pics with weeping brides to my blog, in order to promote my business. Sure those look nice and touching, surely sells assigments, but does that bride always like to see herself crying in my blog. Isn’t there that thing called customer confidence any more. Just wondered, as people seems to want to switch to more private G+, just because they don’t want to everyone to get to know about their feelings. Strange times.

Taking photos in a dance show is a hard thing to do. First of all, there is hardly no light at all. Only light sources are the spotlights, running randomly around. You have to wait that perfect moment as the light illuminates the perfect spot. But… that is not the hardest part. After the decisive moment, you have to decide time and aperture for the photo. Not too fast, that the movement don’t die and not too slow, as there should be some sharpness in the photo. Usually that means that the aperture is the largest you can get and still you have to go more than ISO1000 to have the job done. And there we go again… you got noise. It’s ok, when you are shooting some grim metalband or the punkband with attitude, but in a clean classical dance that in not desired. With small web-sized photos that can be avoided with good denoise-software and lotsofa pixels. In a large prints that is just something you have to live with.

With that large aperture comes the second thing, the dof. Usually you stand on a edge of the stage and dancers are about 10 meters away. In that situation the focal lenght is something about 200mm and aperture may be even f2. That means that your depth of field is something like 30cm and the dancer is moving fast. In that situation there in not much that can be included in photo. Dancers on a background are helplessly out of focus and even the hands or legs of the object are a bit soft.

Then there is a problem, where to put yourself. Can’t run around the stage during the show, neither can’t stand in a front of stage blocking the view. From the sides comes dull pictures and the dancers are always running away or towards to you, that makes living hard. Usually nowadays somebody is also making a video of the event and it don’t look good if there is a photographers ass in the middle of the screen.  Even if the photographer might be a bit curvy. I usually change place between the change, when the lights go out for  a couple of seconds.

That’s my observations around the subject.

Just went watching some sport some time ago and now wanted to test this gallerything.

No, I’m not going to give you an advise, how to assassinate a rockstar, although in some cases it might be a good resolution for the human race.  No, I’m not giving any advise for photographers to shoot pictures of rockstar on gigs either. There is a plenty of books, Internet pages and opinions from besserwissers for that. I’m just ranting about the lights and effects on the stage, specially in those small gigs, where are unexperinced mixers and no one specially assigned for lights. How can it be so hard? I guess that most of the less known bands would be happy if someone take good pictures of them and spread those all over the world. But no, those nice men behind the mixingdecks have taken for their life mission that there is at least sufficient amount of smoke to ruin those shots. Best case was last weekend, when the mixer filled old boat restaurant with smoke that visibility was under a meter as in couple of feets. People just keep asking, that is there a band or does that howling noise come from disk. Nice.

When someone with little sense have limited the amount of smoke then there is for sure no light from front of stage, just some excess amount of red light from behind, so you get burned red channel silhouette pictures. In some cases the mixers think that the dark is the way to go and there is no light at all, haven’t ever understand that way of thinking, but guess that’s their choice.

Just for your information bands. Please, if you want decent pictures with little money or in some cases for free (that is the only way for me nowadays), make sure you got a good lights on the stage. Occasionally demand some good white spotlight to your face and make sure that there is moments with a decent amount of smoke and at least once move around the stage and try to get so close to your bandmates that there is something else to shoot than those boooooring static statues with mic.

Funny how time flies, when u r having fun.

Just stopped for awhile, to think about things done past couple of months. Once again… Haven’t done almost nothing.  Spend one day in Tampere to learn a secrets of boudoir-photography. Don’t know if that workshop was any good, but it was fun to do things in croup. Also got pictures to put in my shop window as it’s hard to convince ordinary housewife to give permission for that. Specially for those boudoir and pregnancy photos.

Then there was two sets of promoshooting events for Roller Derby league Tampere Rollin’ HOs. Hope they start using those pics soon, so i can put em to display. Then there was a roller derby bout in Helsinki. Rare change to see a real competition as our Kallio Rolling Rainbow met Stockholm Roller Derby. The bout was named as KnullBout and have a sea cruise theme. The name is derived from the widely known ferry ride between Sweden and Finland. That knull is Swedish and means… Well look up yourself.  Have to say, I had fun time and just impatiently wait for next bout in Finland.

Then there is just that plain dull living. Visited dentist twice, couple of visits in different doctors and that neverending battle against IRS. Then two gigs in Tampere, performed by Manzana and yes… Then there was that small photosession for Nitrobabe, clothes for webshop. Then there is a annual apply to School of art and design, guess that it is an empty ticket this time as it has always been. I’m convinced that someday…

Once again, a year has passed and once again it’s all quiet on the western front. The year has passed as a gray foggy scenery, have done something, but no much recollection of what. It has been the same for a decade now and as for my early new year’s resolution, things must change next year. I even have doubts that i have been struck by depression. In fact to be honest, there has happened a lot, but those are things that I won’t write in my public blog. But in those things that can be written there’s not much ado.

By the way, I have a masterplan… I’ll start making a photo exhibition… Yes i know, i have talked about that for a years now. But now i have that plan… Kiss (keep it simple, stupid). I don’t try to make something revolutionary, but mere a simple pictures hung on the wall. That should be a start and we’ll see where that goes. Every time before, that plan has crushed, because it has been too hard. I have had a vision of models with top make-up and tailored clothes and pictures taken in the glorious locations. Without a great pile of pictures of dead presidents that can’t happen. Now the plan is just plain black and white pictures of people in their work. That should be easy, just go, take pics and leave.

The past year has been gray, as mentioned. Have shoot some weddings, couple of portraits, couple of editorials and couple of hobby pics as that roller derby, some dance and few tfp-shoots. The roller derby shots couple of weeks ago were something i liked, but almost everything else has suffered a lack of joy. Pictures were just good and people were quite pleased of them, but for me those were just pictures and that bothers me a lot. That’s why i have to do something about it.

That’s about it from this year. Have a great New Year.

Haven’t done much anything else than ordinary jobs, weddings and stuff in couple of last month. Have done couple of tfp-shots, but nothing special.

I did however take couple of promopics for Roller Derby. Always been very delightful for things that has been made with voluntary work and are not so serious by nature. This Roller Derby is one of those things. Everything is made just because it’s fun and nobody cares what other people says. Damn it’s just nice. Hope long life and prosper for that sport.

One thing that has nowadays puzzled me is how to sell your photo services. The old way was that there was a small amount for photosession and the money needed for living came from sold prints. Now the world has changed, people don’t need prints anymore. They want coffeecups, calendars, photobooks… and for that they need digital pictures, as no photographer hasn’t got the energy to order those things and resell them. At least without any compensation, and that can’t be great as the customer is well aware the price of the goods in manufacturer.

So the only option is to give the prints in digital… but how to rate them? Nobody wants to pay more for one hour photography session and sertainly not they are prepared to pay hundreds of euros for a simple disk with couple of photos. The second issue in this is… everybody doesn’t want to make thousands of pictures, but some does. So it’s not fair to those who take just a couple of pics and in the other hand, it’s a big loss for photographer from the customers that would order a huge amount of pics anyway.   Hasn’t figured that out yet.

Btw. I started once again a picture by day project. Don’t publish the pics before I have at least 30 in pile. Usually that project has dryed out in couple of days.;)