FREE 2013 Desktop Calendar!

Hello everyone,

I am excited to present to you my 2013 Fine-Art Long Exposure Photography Desktop Calendar:

In gratitude for a great year and optimism that 2013 will be the best yet, I would like to offer you my 2013 desktop calendar featuring my award-winning fine-art long exposure photography.

Each image is in full HD quality with 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, so it will fill even a 30" monitor (or a Retina display).

Simply update or add your contact info to my personal Bulbexposures.com Newsletter Email mailing list and a download link will be sent to your inbox. You can find the signup window on the right side of this blog --->

I respect the confidentiality of your personal information and would never share it with another party. You can expect 6-12 emails per year maximum, and you can remove yourself at anytime.

Please feel free to pass this onto others, I hope to inspire you with my images :)

Thank you for the interest in my photographs, I look forward to keeping you posted on my endeavours throughout the year.

Akranes Lighthouse - Color and Black and White!

Hello everyone,

Here's another image from my Lighthouse series. This one was photographed in Akranes, Iceland.

Image Details: Nikon D800, 17-35mm F2.8 Lens. Exposure time: 210 seconds @ F5.6. Total of 16 stops of ND filtration on lens.

I drove to Akranes directly from the airport. I remember being really tired, and my jet lag got worse the longer I was out photographing, but the weather that day and the incredible natural setting of the lighthouse had way too strong of a pull so I couldn't stop taking pictures despite my tiredness.

Shortly after I started shooting here, a man came walking up to me. He also had a camera with him, and it wasn't long until we started chatting about photography. Next thing I remember was being asked: "So do you wanna' go up on top of the lighthouse?" I thought he was joking at first, but to my surprise he pulled out a set of keys and said: "Let's go". I wasn't going to turn him down. 

In the image below you can see that Akranes is home to not just one, but 2 lighthouses:

So Hilmar took me to the top of the lighthouse pictured above. But his generosity didn't stop there. He pulled out a series of old photographs, and told me about the history about both lighthouses as well. The old lighthouse that is depicted above was erected in 1918, but is now virtually unused due to the newer, much taller, tower that has been built so close to it.

While visiting the newer lighthouse, I took some pictures from the top, including one of my host, Hilmar:

What a nice man and generous host Hilmar truly was. Running into him within hours after arriving in Iceland really set the stage for a fantastic week. I felt truly blessed having met him, and hope I will be able to return the favour someday. Hilmar made me feel welcomed not only to his hometown Akranes, but to Iceland as a country. It's because of him that this image will always have a special meaning to me. It was great learning about the location I was photographing from him. Months later, he found me on Facebook and it's because of things like that that I appreciate using social media services. Next time I will be in Iceland I'll surely make a point to say Hi again.

The climb to the top of the lighthouse was very steep. I took this quick snapshot while standing at the top looking down the first set of stairs:

And on this image, you can see the view from above, including my camper van that was my home while visiting Iceland:

On the image above you can get a vey good idea of the incredible location this lighthouse is in. I actually returned to this lighthouse 2 more times before I left Iceland.

Finally, I wanted to share another view of this same lighthouse with you. This one was shot with my Phase One P45+ Digital Back:

Image Details: Phase One DF camera, 45mm F2.8 Lens, Phase One P45+ Digital back. Exposure time: 64 seconds @ F14. Total of 13 stops of ND filtration on lens.

Yes, this is another color image. I just couldn't resist. It's photographed from a slightly elevated viewpoint compared to the first black and white image.

Please feel free to leave me a comment about which image you prefer - black and white or color.

Really been experimenting with color lately, and I think I am getting close to starting a new series of photographs that will be 100% in color. It's funny. I was chatting with a good friend the other day, about the fact that little over a year ago I wouldn't even look at any of my images in color. I wouldn't even consider it. Despite the fact that this series started as black and white only, today I am much more open to experimenting with color. I am curious to see what it can do. 

So please let me know what you think!

More tk..

Kálfshamars Lighthouse in Iceland!

Hello everyone,

here's another image from my emerging series on Lighthouses.

This lighthouse was photographed in Iceland, when I was there in May of this year.

Of all the incredible places I've visited in Iceland, I have the strongest memories of feeling surrounded by magic when I arrived here at Kálfshamars Lighthouse.

I spend almost 6 hours exloring and photograhing here.

There was an incredible sense of silence coupled with a strong feeling of being part of the surrounding nature. I sat down on a rock while the exposure was forming and kept sitting even after it was finished, just feeling so privileged to be able to visit this place. I listened to the waves and sounds of the ocean. I walked all around the lighthouse, exploring, searching, discovering angles and perspectives.

I remember there was some evidence of people being at this location. There was an outhouse and a small wooden shed that appeared to house tools and supplies. There were tire tracks leading to the lighthouse.

Despite these discoveries, I didn't encounter any other people while being there. 

I soaked up the silence, and can still remember how much I was hoping my photograph would succeed in conveying the magic and mystery of this place.

A long exposure can 'silence' elements, simplifying your compositions. You can see this 'at work' in this image as the water looks much calmer, or silent, despite the fact that the ocean was pretty stormy that day with lots of waves crashing on shore. 

A long exposure can also 'provoke' or 'stimulate' elements in your photographs. Here, the moving clouds create drama and draw attention, especially in contrast to the calmed waters and very stationary objects such as the lighthouse and rocky shoreline.

I recently had a student in one of my workshops who suggested these terms ('Silence' and 'Stimulate') as ways to summarize concisely what can be artistic effects of using long exposure techniques in your photography.

I really want to give credit here, as I have been thinking a lot about this. I hope this will help and inspire you all to not only give these techniques a try but also to study and investigate what the resulting effects are in you photographs.

While working on this image, I created a black and white as well as a color version. I've decided to share this color version first, the black and white will follow soon.

As always, your feedback is encouraged and much appreciated. Simply leave a comment in the section below.

More tk...

From RAW to Final: New York City Skyline!

Hello everyone,

Wow what an incredible 4 days I just had, being part of the New York Architectural photo walk organized and lead by my good friend Joel Tjintjelaar along with Sharon Tenenbaum and Armand Dijcks.

As everyone gathers for some farewell drinks in Manhatten, I am already sitting in a hotel room close to Newark airport, getting ready to say goodbye to my father who is catching a flight back to Germany in about an hour.

These past 4 days surely have been some of the most intense photographic times I have ever spend in Manhatten. I have met some truly wonderful, interesting, inspiring and fun people and cannot help but feel truly grateful for having been able to be a part of this event. To all the talented photographers who came out to New York for this event, thank you for welcoming me to the group. It was great to meet you all, and I hope there will be opportunities to catch up again in the future. Wherever, and whenever, that might be -:)

As I am preparing for my own journey back home to Vancouver, I wanted to share this first image I had a chance to work on. Late last night I was asked to do another presentation to the group this morning, and wanted to share an image that was created during the past 4 days. So I got busy editing, and here it is:

Image data: Exposure time: approx. 500 seconds @F5.6 and ISO 50. Photographed using my Cambo Wide DS and Phase One Digital Back.

This image is a panorama merged from 2 single long exposure images. You can see the original RAW files below:

These 2 files had only basic adjustments applied in Adobe Camera RAW. The panorama was created using Photoshop's 'Photomerge' feature, and because these images were shot using camera shift movement only, they assembled perfectly without any need for manual blending. What is more, with very few clouds in the sky, the merge became even easier. No need to worry that moving clouds wouldn't match up in the final panorama.

Let's take a quick step back now. I want to show you the image that inspired this composition. It's the reason I decided to shoot 2 images and stitch them, instead of focusing closer and isolating just a few of the buildings instead of the oevrall skyline.

The image above was photographed on the first day of the photo-walk, using my nifty Sony RX 100 point-and-shoot camera. in fact, I used the 'sweep panorama' feature, which created a huge, almost 180 degree, panorama of the exact same location.

What started as a quick snapshot, showed some potential once I realized that this composition could really work and make for a dramatic photograph. But rather than working on this images, I made a plan to return to this location and take my 'real' camera with me. And I did 2 days later. When comparing both compositions, you may notice that the aspect ratio changes, and I also 'traded' some negative space from the edges (in the Sony image) to the sky (the final image above). I do like the more elongated panorama the Sony gave me, but this would have taken a lot more time to reproduce with my Cambo. As the Sony is actually a very capable camera, I may take this image and put it through similar post production at a later point, but since it was created with an automatic mode there was no option for doing so using long exposures. Still, this example shows you how important it is to keep a 'snap' camera with you, as you can use it to take quick photos you can use for inspiration.

In this image you can see my camera setup for the final shot for this image. Taken using my Sony RX 100. Brooklyn Bridge Park provides an excellent view of the Manhatten skyline, and since the path is very wide it is easy to setup your tripod right on the water's edge. And no security guard bothered us either....

Here you can see screenshot of working in Silver Efex Pro 2. For this image, the adjustments were really straight forward. I did use 4 control points, shown above, which mostly allowed me to increase 'structure' and 'brightness' on the buildings themselves. I also added grain, something I do to most of my images. I feel that it provides a nice texture, and it is something I always used and loved while shooting film. Note that the vignetting, which is fairly pronounced in this image, is actually not added in Silver Efex, but comes from my camera and the strong horizontal shift movements I used to create this panorama.

Finally, here is a screenshot of the image while working on it in Photoshop CS6. Notice that it did not take many layers, nor very complicated adjustments to get to the final look above. What you can see are all the adjustments I frequently use on most of my images. They are:

• Curves (used with masks for selective adjustments)
• Sharpening using the Hi Pass Filter (and a mask to make it selective)
• Dodge and Burn Layer (using Soft Light Blend Mode)

Please watch the blog for more images as I will be working through them. For now, I will be taking the night off as I'll be on a very early flight back to Vancouver on the morning.

Thank you New York. I'll see you again soon...

On route to New York City!

Hello everyone,

I am writing this while sitting in my parents house in Germany. Tomorrow morning, I am off to New York City, where I will be a guest presenter at a very exclusive New York Architectural photography workshop organized and lead by my good friend Joel Tjintjelaar along with Sharon Tenenbaum and Armand Dijcks.

Only a week after the terrible storm 'Sandy' hit the city, and in the wake of yet another, smaller, storm forecasted for later today, I am excited but also hopeful for the weekend ahead. As I am sure many of you have done also, I've been following the news in the aftermath of the hurricane. I have many friends in New York, most of them photographers, and my thoughts and best wishes for a quick recovery and clean-up have been with them during all of past week.

Checking in with Joel, I know that the workshop, scheduled for November 10-13 has not been affected, and will go ahead as planned. According to the latest news, there is still one seat left available, so if you can make this happen on short notice head on over here for more information.

For today's image, I have looked through my archive and found an image I photographed in New York in 2009:

To capture this image, I used a Mamiya 7 medium format film camera with a 43mm lens. Film stock was Fuji Across. Exposure, as I recall, was about 8 minutes with 16 stops of ND filtration.

The Mamiya 7 is an excellent camera for long exposure work. Lenses are small but very sharp, and I especially love the rangefinder which let's me keep the ND filters mounted to the lens at all times while composing and focusing using the rangefinder. I still have this camera, and anyone interested in using film for long exposure work, should take a closer look at one of these.

I scanned the film, which was in native 6cm x 7cm format, using an Imacon virtual drum-scanner. The resulting file, crpped to square format, is over 400 megabytes in size (something I cannot even achieve using my digital back).

This was shot on Times Square, with the camera mounted on a fence pointed straight up into the sky. New York is notorious for not letting you use tripods out on the streets (unless you have a permit of course), and I remember vividly being chased by a security guard when I initially set this up. Luckily, I had one of those small Gorilla Pods with me. This flexible tripod was able to be mounted to the top of a fence, and the strongest version they sell was strong enough to hold my camera easily. The security guard looked at me, and let me continue without further disruptions. Pretty cool.

I am excited to return to New York and do a lot more shooting this coming week. If you take a look at what Joel has planned, you cannot help but be impressed by the detailed routes and information he has provided. New York is one of the top destination for architectural photographers, and I am sure everyone will not only have a ton of fun, but also come home with some amazing images.

In an effort to pack 'light', which is something I am actually very terrible at, I have left the Mamiya at home this time and instead brought my Cambo WDS along. I have written about this rare camera earlier on this blog, it's the same one I used during my trip to Iceland in May of this year. It's a specialized camera for architecture, so I think it will fit the bill perfectly.

I will be posting images from New York so please stay tuned and check the blog for updates!

Hope to see you out there this weekend,

Marc