A guide to light the kitchen.

Saara and Antti renovated their kitchen, while the main plumbing repairs where going on in their apartment building. They decided to make the new white kitchendesk wall more personal, with something that tells about where they live and something that fits the colors they love. Something that brings the surrounding nature inside and something that is mainly blue.

Living in Helsinki the Harmaja lighthouse and it's surroundings fitted their wishes well. On a clear day the city coastline makes a stunning view. And would make a great addition to their kitchen.

Now in order to get a large size print of this lighthouse on a kitchen wall, one needs:

• lots of extra pixels
• water resistant camera
• nice blue sky
• a boat
• calm water
• sea legs
• lunch for the captain
• printing house with good service

Lunch for the captain where self made spicy chicken rye-burgers with cranberry juice. Like they always say: the best part is the journey itself. Thanks to Captain Hans it became an enjoyable day being out on the water.

Making the final picture from several different frames gives the opportunity to play around a bit. In this case the focus was shifted from the lighthouse on the left in the first frames to the coastline on the right for the next frames. Given an overall sharp picture, which in this case is perfect when trying to discover little elements from time to time.

In order to get a more impressive picture the camera position was a few centimeters above the surface of the water, that will make the water waves in the front of the picture stand out more. At the same time being careful though not to get the camera wet, cause the waves are quit deceitful.


Finally because the picture was going to be on the kitchen-counter wall behind the sink the print got pressed between two pieces of acryl, making the print water- and air-tight. With a promised resistance to color fading of over a 100 years!


Technical information: all lighthouse images outside where shot with a canon 60D camera, canon EF-S17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens, time 1/250s, aperture f9.0, iSO 100 at 55mm and handheld.

 

How the squirrel ninja got made!

Disclaimer: "No animals were harmed during shooting, but got seriously chopped up in photoshop".

This project involved:

• about a dozen squirrels
• some bags of exotic peanuts
• many hours chasing little animals
• loads of patience
• clear vision of end result
• over a thousand of frames to choose from
• even more hours chopping them up
• creating digitally my own wooden ninja sword
• great fun from begin till end

The basic squirrel material got shot almost in my own backyard, but demanded anyway many walks in the woods at different times, to find the right conditions and cooperating models.

One of the unsuspected surprises was that the Great-tits where more interested to become models then the squirrels, although a pleasant surprise, it kept the squirrels at a distance.

But with enough patience it works out just fine. The most important trick to learn was the fact that the squirrels are more afraid of the photographer then the camera. 

So if you just stick out your arm and the camera slowly towards them and away from your face, turns out they are very interested in their own reflection they see in the lens. Aren't they cute?

The animation at the top shows the post-processing part quite detailed, but it is very important to ask help from some experts. Ones that know your target-group well, to get the right feedback for the subject your working on. In this case lots of thanks go to Pietari and Max, who where not afraid to give their honest opinions, including suggestions for improvement.

And last but not least, once the image is near completion, it is very important to let it rest a couple of days on your hard disk without looking at it. This in order to detach yourself a bit from it and making it easier to evaluate what is important. In this case the canvas size was enlarged, showing more of the surroundings in order to emphasize the squirrel's size compared to the whole.

Technical information: all images where shot with a canon 60D, canon 17-55mm 2.8 lens, time 1/125s, aperture f2.8, iSO A.

Promoting the green way!

Here a few examples of the latest stock photo's that we did on green living.   

                            

                                 

All of the above conceptuals, and some older ones seen here below, are available from:

http://www.futureimagebank.com/asp/results.asp?HAKU=eco

Some of the ones we did on the same topic last year.

It is a great topic to work with, always room for creativity and the fresh colors do the rest.

Anybody any similar ideas wanted to get realized? We will gladly help produce them :-)

mail@jefunne.com

Sculpting Camp for Kids!

Someone wondered if this picture was to good to be real. 

Down here the material that was used to make the above composition.

Hopefully it is now even more real :-)

First Post!

We now have a blog setup! This will be a place to show how some pictures got done. And to explain some questions some people had. Or to just share something awesome from time to time.

Hope you like it.