Some shots I recently took of my sister Karin and her husband and daughter. :)

Sigma SD14, 10-20 (first shot) and 70mm. And yes, the Sigma 530DG flash is used from a distans – would be better if I for ones started to use some colored gels.. but, no. Not yet. :)

Today I’ve been very busy taking pictures like the ones above – my dear mother paints for a living and sells reproductions in a huge amount of different frames, and sizes. She has an online store today but the images there is un-buyable and I decided to help her out and make it a little bit more welcoming. The empty frames could be filled with whatever selected art in the online store (at least that’s my thinking – that’s my next headache)..

Sigma SD14 – Sigma 70mm and Sigma 530 strobe.

EDIT. Late Evening, day three. Last edit for tonight.
This last one has very strong colors because I selected “vivid” color mode in SPP. No added saturation - actually I pulled it back a bit in PS. The full size shot, with all it’s flaws.

Morning part: The basic setup is taken from www.ImagingPrep.com so I don’t feel right about showing you too much, but you will be able to follow my progress thru the reflections and before after shots. Anyone know where to get transparent white wax that I can use as glue? Now I’m using the yellow bee thingi..

In day two I really felt I didn’t get the shape right, and so I put small pieces of black foam board around until I got the shape that I wanted. Now I did a very quick PS5 fix and no dirt removal (just a tiny bit) and I now understand the importans of gloves! :D

Before

How do you feel? Better than day 2?

Alright, it’s not really day two, but at least it’s first shot! I dealed a little with it in Photoshop and will play more with reflections to get the right feel (but not in Photoshop, but on the set). What do you think? It’s ISO50. I think I will get more black in the corners of the ring, like a black frame somehow. Also it’s a little too tilted. :) But that’s not the important part right now.

Right now, I only play with fake rings – will get the real stuff when it’s time for the real deal. About 200 of them.

Light from above, two paper reflectors on the side. Elinchrom Quadra. Sigma SD15, Sigma 70mm.

This post will look strange because these images has been taken from my pbase gallery. They’re all uploaded at 100% quality, no PS used. Enjoy.

Had another wedding session this friday and just started to develop the first images and thought I could share some.. It was a pretty cold day that ended in heavy rain! :D (grain is fake, yes)

My friend and artist, XuYun has been artist in residents at the Nordic Watercolour Museum on Tjörn. She’s just leaving and I rushed out to her little island to take some last minutes pictures of her. Here’s some of them. All taken with SD14 and lenses used 10-20, 30mm, 70mm and 50-500 OS. Can you see what lens took what photo? edit: Some images has a warm light coming in from the side, my doing. Some of these shots has been lit by light from reflecting windows.

above: Double size output

One more thing, I wasn’t thinking about publishing these at first so I saved them as jpeg from Sigma Photo Pro – but then I thought that it would be much easier for her to find her photos if were published. I never before published photos that has been edited from jpeg and then re-saved as jpeg again. mmm.. I wonder how much has been lost?

above: Double size output.

 

Photo taken by Martin Carlsson using a Canon 5D Mark2

Me and my friend Martin Carlsson had one of our nerdy meetings yesterday. We didn’t have a real plan, more then go out for a session but weather was really as dull as it gets and none of us felt really happy about it so Martin came up with this truly excellent idea to try out some extreme macro using the reversed lens technique.

I thought the idea was brilliant, especially in mind that I had my trusty 70mm macro that probably would become like a microscope and what if I turned my 120-300 bigma around? Would that make me see atoms for real? I was pretty sure I would so we made a setup with my Quadra, a bunch of lenses and a VISA card. Mostly because people know what it looks like.

Now, here’s a shot with the Sigma 70mm Macro NOT reversed. You get pretty close by doing nothing, just using it as it’s supposed to be used. This is as close as you get. (and don’t you dare try using those numbers!!!)

Now I reversed it but to my surprise nothing much happened. I didn’t get any closer. hmm. I ran out getting myself a bigger gun. My 70-200mm 2.8 lens. I swong it around and it gave me less then the 70mm, at least at 200m. 70mm looked closer. So I figured that my assumption of more mm was wrong. So I got myself my 17-70. At least I could try and see if wider meant closer.

Sure enough, soon I was traveling over the VISA cards surface and maan was it a beauty. I never thought a piece of plastic could look this beautiful. Close to the same feeling looking at Avatar in 3D for the first time. :D

So if 17mm meant closer what was my next step? The 12-24 (which Martin now tried in the background) was a bit tricky because of the round frontal lens. But I did have something even wider – my 10-20!

Now, the 17mm was difficult enough to control. Every breath and dare I say heart beat effected my steadiness greatly and things didn’t get easier with the 10-20 at 10mm. It was really tricky, to give you a feeling for how shallow depth of field is I tried to catch the top of one of those small letters on the card.. See how background fades away! Nice bokeh too! :D

It was EASY to miss, either you got the top, bottom or just a big blur. All depending on who touched the table or walked the floor or if a big bird flew outside my window.

Now, what’s next? All above shots has been taken wide open. I had no idea how to change aperture on a lens that wasn’t mounted but Martin had an idea. By changing the Aperture while mounted he then pressed the “aperture test button” and while holding the button he gently released the lens and oala – aperture was still at wanted f-stop! Now things got even more interesting!

How about Linns face at f8 – f32?

Or why not some fine salt? (not sea salt or anything huge like that)

Or the landscape of a swedish 20kr bill? And yes, the black part of the image was me not holding the reversed lens perfectly aligned. It wasn’t that easy!

And finally Martin started staring into a good old light bulb – as if the quadras flashes and strong LED wasn’t enough disturbing. I’m pretty sure Martin took some better shots with his 5D but here’s my only sharp one. Or at least, a bit sharp. Lamp never stood really still and it was terribly hard to take a decent shot.

But I got pretty close! :)

Alright, if you have your own shots to share, then please do! (it’s easy to do when you post a comment).

Second batch from the session with my students only this time I involved a little bit more photoshop. All these are available as big size (around 4573 x 3048px = 14MP) in this flickr set they’re all developed using Sigma Photo Pro 2.5 for PC and later post processed on a Mac.

But there is many more images to be developed, I might put out a few more.

We had real fun last night – me and my young peoples group. I told them to add some make up this time and telling by these shots, at least there is some hair spray! They’re all saved as double size output – so if you want to see what they look like as huge printable pictures – please go to my flickr page and enjoy.

This time I didn’t use the DP1 – only SD14. Lenses used was Sigmas 28mm, 70mm, 70-200 and 50mm 1.4. All of them performed splendidly!

Hans Gardelach story, translated and partly edited by me and google.

[slightly updated] My dad was a alcoholic, mom divorced and we moved in with another man. Some guy from the neighborhood tricked me down into a basement and raped me when I was four years old. I was almost beaten to death at the age of 12 and a couple of years later raped again by another man.

Life had gone wrong for me. It was very noisy at home, and I became an easy victim of flower power-wave and its drug culture in the late 60′s.

I took pills and alcohol. Some time later became heavier drugs and homelessness my everyday. Moreover, I soon ended up in sexual perverts circuits; porn industry, porn clubs, gay and transgender sexual small. I was in prison the first time in 1970, followed by the juvenile school, hospital, nursing and more prisons. After release from the last prison sentence in 1977, I realized that my life must change. I tried to get the record straight through hard work and marriage. But it burst again soon and I fell back into my old habits. 1985, I was saved, but still fell back into the gross abuse two years later. I had met Jesus, but thought that he would turn around and follow me.

In 1989 I became HIV-infected by the woman that I then lived with. I took the death sentence almost as a relief. I thought; “O how nice, now would society have to take care of me.”

No matter how much I drank or how much dope I pumped into my veins, I experienced no satisfaction. Already in 1993, the HIV infection progressed to AIDS, and this because of my hard abuse. Three years later, in 1996, the disease had taken life out of me – all hope was out. Immune system weakened rapidly. The doctors told me: “We can not help you if you continue like this.” I had in August 1996 only two months left to live. Carls note: The medical record from this time said the following translated again..

“18 / 7 -96 showed HIV-RNA PCR extremely high virus levels in the blood, 6.6 million copies / ml. Help cells has fallen compared with November -95, now only 160 x 10 per liter. “

After receiving this information I went and sat on a bench outside the S:t Clara church in central Stockholm. I drank a large bottle of strong wine and thought about what it would feel like to die and when it would happen. Then suddenly I heard a voice within me that said: “Where did Jesus go?” I felt strongly that I just have to get back to Jesus. I went into the church and spoke with a deaconess. I told her that I would die soon, but I first wanted to ask Jesus for forgiveness before I died.

A bit later I had come to a Christian treatment center, mostly to receive a dignified death. I began to eat anti-retro viral medicines, called out to God and asked to be cured, but was constantly deteriorating. I was getting weaker and weaker with everyday that passed. My body smelled strongly, I had three loose teeth in my mouth and I was looking very thin. I really was a walking dead – but at least I was among people who loved me.

One day I received a clear appeal from God: “Make up with your conscience. Now is the time that you put your self-pity aside and deal with everything, that you have done against others, but above all, as you have done to yourself as my image. I also found this verse in the Bible, John letter, Chapter 1, verse 9, which says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, so that He will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” – I took this verse serious.

I started cleaning up the conscience to confess all my sins, even though it was very painful. I was sweating all over my body but I had made my decision to get all debris out! In a couple of hours, I presented and confessed to a pastoral the drug and sexual addiction, which had been my life. After two hours the man said – Well done Hasse, now come back in a week and we’ll continue. 

In a few months time, I wrote down everything that floated up in the memory of sins from the old life. After reading and confessing I threaded all notes.

He forgives and cleanses
Something within me broken and I can honestly say that I have not had a single demand for drugs since that date. The odd thing happened to the immune system started to grow and heal out. A couple of months later I my doctors checked me and my AIDS had gone down to “untraceable”  Today I am healthy and have a strong immune system. Carls note: Medical records again, saying the following: 

“Patient with AIDS diagnosis since -93 on drugabusing basis. Lives now in treatment in Västervik. On Epivir, Crixivan, and has gone down from 6.6 million copies to 0 in a few months.”

I have at the time of writing have not had a single HIV-virus in any of all of the tests for now over thirteen years. I’m checked about four times a year to be on the safe side.

As a bonus, another healing in 2006. I had hepatitis A, B and two types of C (the worst and the kindest type). Some of which I had since the late 60′s. So in early 2006, after my doctors did a liver biopsy they found out that instead of dealing with interferon (cancer treatment) – to save me from dying in liver cancer or more likely in cirrhosis – my liver was completely healed.

Carl again:
Well guys. Not sure what you think about all this, I’m very happy to have been able to meet with this guy. I don’t know if anyone with AIDS have been cured before but looking at him, and his wonderful, loving eyes and listen to his story – it’s special.

Update: He also gave me this picture that a doctor gave him about what he was like back in 96. It’s like parking an old car in the forest for 30 years. Rust will eat it’s way thru everything and the only thing left will be a spidernet of old metal. No medicine will work, because there is nothing for it to catch onto. The same thing with Hasses body when having two month left to live. Beyond repair.

Oh, and yes, I’ve seen medical records from before and after – that’s something I just HAD to see with my own eyes. My second name must for sure be Thomas. ;)  I can’t put them online though because they can be missused.

I had an incredible meeting with this man the other day. This guy had full blown AIDS back in 1996 – but not only AIDS he also suffered from hepatite A, B and two types of C. (the most evil and the kindest type). Today he’s alive and kicking – he has no hepatite and no AIDS virues what so ever – and his story is mindblowing. Will get back to this.

So I had to have another session without my DP1. My 28mm and the 70mm made me proud and the quality was as expected. The full size is all available over at flickr.

Once more I used one light, you even see it bright and clear including ME in their eyes. Aperture differs quite a lot in these shots from f3.2 to f8. I did notice that the 28mm sharpens up quite a lot with aperture. Sweet spot around F8 as normal, but this one really becomes VERY sharp at f8. Most of these shots are done with the 28mm. It’s my favorite studio lens. (I wish I had the 20mm and the 24mm as well).

His music happens to be very good, listen at www.broshan.com (or at their myspace page)

Sigma Photo Pro + Lightroom 2. 70mm is a very very sharp and picture perfect lens! One light. All vignetting etc comes from Lightroom post processing.

Another really fun wedding session, this time a bit north or everything in a town called Mariestad – more famous for it’s fine beer. It was a bit tricky as Linn is now working down south as a guide on a castle and she couldn’t be my assistant. I really wanted that – so we improvised and used the best man for the job. Lucky for Jon and Carolina, it worked great! You can actually see him on several shots.

Oh, I also improved my car shooting style thingi – fun stuff! Lucky for me we had the time needed to play.

Cameras used was SD14 and DP1 – I had many lenses with me – more or less all but I ended up using the trusty 12-24 the most as I love the cokin filter border effect so much. Second place I think is 30 or 50mm 1.4 not sure as 50 is so new for me I tend to reach for the 30mm. 120-300 does give me joy when needed. It’s not very easy to find good occations or locations for it but when it’s time then it’s great!

I also noticed a slight magenta cast in some of the “just out of the church” shots – just so you know. :D

When open the whole article more pictures appears as well as some whom has been shown already above. Don’t be frightened about that, it’s perfectly normal.