“Coorporate, Cecilie Stranger-Thorsen, independent media consultant based in Malmö, Sweden

She works in all of the Scandinavian countries, focusing on cross-media and media education projects, arranging seminars, writing and lecturing.”  She is also a witty facebooker with a lot of humor.

It´s easy to get inspired by David Hobbys STB (Shoot The Bloggers) project wich he just started, but have several interesting thoughts about. In short, the idea is to shoot freelance corporate portrais while you get the opportunity to pull the camera trigger and experiment with ideas of portraits on different personalities. It´s a win-win!

We had fun and altered between full stdiolightning, available light in the studio and mixed speedlight/daylight. All this to get a broad range of pictures useful to Cecilie in several occasions.

Luckily the studio has three large windows at northwest and if the weather is good they provide a nice, soft natural light to use. In worst case there is one or two huge trucks parking outside the windows, delivering beer, wine and food for the restaurants in the block. The only chance to get decent light then is to trigger the Elinchrome studiogear…

Once a week Sanna (from Veckans Middag.com) is providing a nice recipe and a cooking tutorial for the online grossery store Hemmalivs. My pleasant task is to shoot it and to taste it now and then.

This time we decided to shoot outdoors since the light seemed to be nice. A small Speedlight as fill, and a silver reflector whas all it took to even out  the soft evening light.

The peppers were among other delicious things stuffed with cottage cheese, bacon, Feta cheese, fresh cheese and garlic!

Every now and then I have the delicious assignment to shot food and products for the food blog “Veckans Middag“. Most often this emanates in a tremendous hunger and a lively salivation. (Wich is good for the teeth my denstist tells me). Here are some pictures newly shot.

Playing with available light only (and some reflectors), outdoors and indoors.

Here Cloetta´s Royal wedding edition chocolate. (The Wedding Chocolate) With blueberries and lingonberries! Among other delicious ingredients! If you happen to see some pieces of chocolate missing in the product shot I know nothing about it!

Product shot

The fine italian ecological wine Dolce Vita Monica no 3745

Zeta, the fine brand of olives, oil and vinegar.

Have been working on half strength for a while. Got help on the hospital this week.

Dramatic for me – routine for the surgeon. Found a picture from last autumn I thought was illustrative for this.
(50mm @ 1.8, 1/200sec,  gold reflector)

The studio is located in a very old building, the kind of building that has very deep windowsills. The window in the kitchen is right towards north. In a special time of the day, in a special time of the year, when the sun comes through a thin layer of clouds, it shines on the wall of a fairly high building to the opposite our kitchen window. The building has a warm, almost pink surface which is reflecting the light through the fairly dirty window which delivers a very rich, soft light.

That kind of  light occured yesterday and luckily we happened to have some products perfect to be shot in this kind of light:  A friend of my wifes has a nice business on Sicily, Citronodlingen, (The Lemon Orchard), at the foot of Etna. My wife had recently got some products sent to her from Citronodlingen  for testing out and  to tell about on her food blog.

This time it was chocolate, lemon cream, artichoke paste, and fantastic dried chili seeds.

The wall in the windowsill made a perfect backdrop and the light falling in through the window gave these jars with their delicious content a nice soft shine.

The Crema di Limoni is  a complete success! And so is the Paté di Carciofi & Mandorle.

A tiny silver reflector to lighten up shadows a bit was all that was needed to get a good exposure here. I really like this light and I wish the window was four times bigger …

The idea is to produce pictures with strong, saturated colors , in contrast to  traditional scandinavian food photography. Lets see if it is possible. We´re not really used to that…

More pictures to come after postprocessing. Here is one I couldn´t resist to upload.

Food styling: Maria Dahlquist, The Food Company

Not much happened in the studio this week, actually. Starting up a new isue of a comic magazine I produce twice a year. “Kalle Ankas Sommarlov” (Donald Duck´s Summer) An extra issue published all over the summer. A mix of cartoons and activity pages.

Looking for cartoons to the issue (I´m not drawing the cartoons, just choosing from Disneys bank of cartoons), planning the layout, thinking of a cover. Mostly administrative work in the startup. Nice and calm.

Going to do some food shots next week and I was browsing around my pictures to get some ideas of lighting. Maybe there will be enough available light through the windows to skip flashes?

Here are some pics I found in my archive. I really like to shoot food. Trying to make it look like available light.

My brother is a talented potter. This is  part of a collection of coffee cups in his studio window.

(food styling; Sanna Ohlander)