TOMAS WHITEHOUSE

This was the perfect example of how a portrait session is desired to go by all those involved, with the exception of the weather turning on us, forcing the initial location choices to be swept aside for a dry, electrics and hair-do friendly alternative. Everything went smoothly and was immensely enjoyable.

A huge thanks to Heidi for setting this up. This was a surprise shoot for her friend and neighbour Teija, who’s daughter was celebrating her 3rd birthday, super cute Princess style.

Also on the set was Cemile Nisametdin, an extremely talented make up artist, stylist, actress, singer, (the list goes on!) A very rare occurrence meeting with someone who is so delicately skilled in so many creative areas.

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Sometime in the middle of the Summer, my friend Ari-Pekka mailed me and asked to come shoot some pictures of his son Axel and his lovely wife Annina. I’ve known Ari-Pekka for a couple of years now, he is a professional figure skater and we’ve done a fair few shoots together in relation to the Finnish figure skating magazine Taitoluistelu.

The most recent collaboration was a cover shoot, which to this day is still my favourite skating promo shoot to date.

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Figure skating and synchro skating season is high on the horizon. So here we have a recent cover shoot for Taitoluistelu, the main Finnish figure skating magazine.

This is Viktor Zubik, a young and very promising skater for HSK, (Helsingfors Skridskoklubb), he won the Nordic boys championship in February this year. Viktor spoke very good english so we were able to chat about music and playing guitar, Viktor likes to play as much bass guitar as he can in between the intense training schedules.

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Here we are shooting the wonderful Van-Leeuwen family. From load in to load out this was easily the most fun, inspiring and exciting shoot I’ve had for a while. What pushed today over the edge in terms of excitement was two of my buddies (and extremely talented photographers), Derek and Anna kindly came along to help out and shoot some behind the scenes photo’s. The first shout out of thanks goes out to them for the extremely appreciated help with all the gear and of course, the seriously crisp and fabulous ‘BTS’ images.

Derek, Anna – Your absolute stars. Thank you.

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Representing a little excursion toward the prestigious Sibelius Monument near the sea, a fitting scene for my pal here, Dubber is Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University. He’s a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and is an internationally-renowned lecturer, author, consultant, public speaker, broadcaster and blogger. His research interests include digital media cultures, online music enterprise, and music as culture. Dubber is the founder of New Music Strategies and Music Think Tank, is a board member of Un-Convention, and is a member of the board of advisors for Bandcamp. His free e-book ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online‘ is required reading for musicians and independent music businesses.

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Once again my families visit has come and gone, the time rocketed past even faster than last year. They flew home yesterday and I already miss them very much.

The morning we were due to collect my folks from Vantaa airport was all fun and games to say the least. Two trips taking some of our belongings to our new home, leaving us 20 minutes to pack our bags and my photo gear for our 2.5 week excursion to the summer cottage in the east. I forgot just about everything that would have a detrimental effect on pretty much everything – laptop charger, wallet, AA battery charger, the list rolls on.

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Over a course of five evenings, I took a handful of delightful photographers each night to Suomenlinna, (a beautiful sea fortress on an island off the coast of Helsinki city) and then demonstrated how to use a hotshoe flash to light a environmental/location based portrait.

There was a brief but detailed explanation of the equipment, how to put it all together and operate it. I chose the most common and also the simplest of hotshoe set ups to get these folks started. Then with guidance, the ‘ball’ was passed over to our workshoppers to get their hands on the kit and cut their teeth.

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Representing my first time out with the prestigious Andrea Joki and also only my second time shooting children’s portraits.
Maia is Andrea’s lovely daughter and she’s fairly experienced when it comes to posing for a picture so I was lucky, very lucky.

Andrea and I have talked many times on the phone, via email, she’s one of those people that has a seriously cool and interesting story to tell, I thought I had reasonably cool ex-jobs but Andrea has worked for NASA which certainly trumps playing guitar in a punk rock band.  Anyway, we have been fans of each others work for some time, also conspiring to shoot together for a while too but one thing or another presents itself as an obstacle and we’ve always had to postpone.
Today was a spur of the moment call, both a little frustrated with sitting indoors editing or tending to the infinite loose ends of photography related business (Y’know the kind that doesn’t involve taking any pictures whatsoever), so we had the idea of shooting Maia with my dog Maddie out somewhere nice.

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Let me introduce todays lovely bride and groom - Maarit and Ville.

The weather could not have been better for our session in Lauttasaari, a very picturesque and ornate area 3 kilometres west of Helsinki city. A huge thnaks to the assistant of the day, Mr Sami K for being a really good sport and also pointing out the Lauttasaari would be an ideal location for us today.

So, I’m lucky in all respects today, great couple, great weather and also a great assistant. Perfect.

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This workshop represents the first ‘episode’ in a series of three:

Episode I: An Introduction To Flash.

Whether you’ve only just picked up a camera for the first time or already have prior experience and wish to practice flash photography – everyone is welcome to take part.

This workshop will provide a hands on introduction to using an off camera hotshoe flash to light a portrait on location.

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Here we are shooting some promo’s in some very fine weather.
This is Finnish DJ Olli Riiho aka JNKS. A thoroughly fabulous gent who knocks out a pretty decent mix too.

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My good friend Henrik and I were hired by Canon through event management team – Sisters Inc to shoot 20 portraits and process them in the style of Andy Warhol’s Che Guevara piece.
As part of the presentation, the final edits were then printed onto canvas by the state of the art Canon large format printers and given out as 30x30cm souvenirs.
The time allowance for this assignment, from shoot to canvas in hand, was less than two hours.

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Quick & dirty are the keywords here. I met up with a pal for an evening of civilised banter followed by merriment and the usual jokery. Instinctually I took along a couple of hotshoe flashes and my camera bag. Lucky for me, the evenings ‘model’ had a fanciful array of costume and props.

Our frame of the night was lit with a Nikon SB-800 on camera left with shoot through umbrella and an SB-28 over on camera right. I only took a single Manfrotto nano stand with me, so the 28 was ball bungeed to an easel, ghetto style.
The original background was a decorate tapestry kinda affair, but I swapped it for some dark and moody pathway.

Have a great May day folks! I’ll mostly be having eucalyptus tinted sauna due heavy congestion a la moist springtime season.
I can neither taste nor smell a single thing.
Shot this very quickly with my absolute all time favourite, the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G.
If I could only be equip with a single lens for all time, then this would certainly be it.

More Whisky…

When your thinking about flash photography for the first time, one can become a little intimidated by the seemingly elusive and complex subject.

Whether you shooting as a hobby or to earn a living, all of the points covered in this post will help you to understand the differences between the available systems.

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