I was given the job of taking our company portrait during an annual gathering. We took some traditional group portraits inside, but I think this is the best one. We walked right onto one of the main streets in downtown Helsinki and blocked the traffic for a few minutes to get this shot. I really like the Finnish atmosphere that shines from it…look at the guy all the way to the right in his t-shirt in the middle of Finnish winter.

For tech geeks:

This shot had to be prepared a little beforehand. Before taking the shot I marked the places of the camera and where the people should be located on the road. It all had to happen in a matter of minutes, so as the group was walking to the premarked place, I placed the camera, tripod and the remote controller in the middle of the street. Then I ran into the picture, took some quick ones and ran back to save my camera from the still calm car drivers.

It has been a while without any blog posts…life has been a little busy lately. But today I had 15 minutes to take some portraits of Oona. These were totally unplanned. She dressed herself for swimming and I thought that she looked so good that I had to take some portraits of her.

For tech geeks:

I used two speedlights for the lighting. One through an umbrella on high camera right and the otherone was gridded to give that round backlight.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

For tech geeks:

This year’s Christmas card photo is shot again at our home. I used a white backdrop with a white cloth on the floor to provide a seamless background. The photo was lit with three speedlights. The main light was a shoot-through umbrella on camera right. One gridded speedlight is used to light the background and one bare speedlight is used as hair light.

Last year lighting wise it was a bit more complex, as we had a shiny box that the kids were in.  My blog post about last years shoot: http://www.anttikansala.com/?p=271 and the end result: http://www.anttikansala.com/?p=372.

Yesterday we had our traditional Christmas card photo shoot at home. My blog post about last years shoot: http://www.anttikansala.com/?p=271 and the end result: http://www.anttikansala.com/?p=372.

When I was setting up the lights, Iisa wanted to come and pose so I took some photos of her. I think that the photo above best shows her natural, laughing expression. A couple of more shots of her: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2012-12-06+Portraits+of+Iisa/

Today was the first rainy day for a while, so we decided to stay in and take some sibling portraits. I think that the above photo shows our kids at their best: laughing and enjoying life!

Below a few of my favorites: Continue reading →

Time has flown…it seems that Iisa was born just yesterday and now she is already big enough to play outside. Today right after nap and snack (=happy kid) I decided to try to take some quick natural light portraits outside. My idea was to make her sit in the middle of a dandelion field. The reality was that none of the dandelion “fields” around our house were big enough, just a couple of flowers. Due to this, the photos ended up being normal on-the-grass portraits. In addition to the above shot, I somehow like the one below with Ode and Iisa:

Rest of the photos (+some extras from today) in slideshow: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2012-05-20%20Outside%20portraits%20of%20Iisa/?action=slideshow

..and in folder mode: http://kansala.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Antti/2012-05-20%20Outside%20portraits%20of%20Iisa/

I compiled a new desktop background from a couple of black and white shots of the kids. This will be the background for my work laptop. Earlier I have been just using single images. This time I thought that it would be cool to have all of the kids compiled into a single messy background.

Today when I got home from work, I was greeted by a half naked boy with a chainsaw. I had to get my camera out and try to catch him on the sensor. I could not get him to make quite the same face when he was trying to saw me in half when I walked in, but the above shot was pretty close. Another black and white shot from the same session:

For tech geeks:

The lighting was setup really quickly with three speedlights. One on the background with a grid and a full blue gel. One on camera left front to give some rim light and one through a diy beauty dish.