Hello...Again!

These two little elves popped by for a shoot early one morning to try and catch a little frost.  Such adorable brothers these two.  I believe this is the third time I have had the honor to fotograf these two little charmers.  It is always such a pleasure when customers return.  I try my best to provide the best service and the best photographs I can.  I love my job and I hope it shows through my work. 

Busy, busy autumn time...

The stork is not the only one busy this fall.  I have so much to do, that once again this blog has been neglected, though not at all in comparison to previous years.  I will not complain, for busy means many wonderful fotoshoots with fabulous people that I love getting to know, as often the case has been lately, returning  customers I get to catch up with!  I am not sure why fall is always my busiest time of year, I love the spring and always yearn for a million fotoshoots of gorgeous children and mothers to be in the newly blooming flowers, but somehow that is not the way of things, at least at the moment.  No, fall is when my phone is ringing and my camera is snapping away.  This fall however was a very short one, as far as beautiful fall colored leaves go.  It was beautiful and then a hard frost, and the leaves all turned brown and fell from the trees.  But that did not stop us,  nope,  still out into the chill to capture amazing people at all the different stages of life.  Here is a pic from a recent shoot,  it was sooo cold and she was sooo gorgeous and did such a great job.  I had so much fun,  I cannot wait to meet her little girl!

Syskonkärlek

I have mentioned before that I love capturing the connection between people.  One of the most important ones is between family members, especially siblings.  I love syskonkärlek (sibling love).  These two guys braved cold weather a couple of weeks ago in short sleeves, but I loved the way they interacted.  People fascinate me, perhaps this is why I love capturing their special moments and connections.

Backdrop of life...

Sometimes things just work out.  Like we recently started putting a new siding on our house.  I love it.  But it just happens to make a gorgeous background for fotoshoots too!  Double happiness!  And then along comes one of the cutest kids ever,  those curls are to die for!  Man I love my job!

Connections

One of the things I love most about photographing people is capturing their connections.  Whether it be connections between each other, or the connection they make to the camera, I feel like when you capture this, you capture a little bit of who they are.  I love that.  I literally cannot live (or shoot) without it.  I am constantly learning and technique and trying my best to improve, but it is just the way I shoot, I prefer connection over technique,  it is what makes the shot for me.  Perhaps this is why I struggle with photography without humans (though animals do sometimes come through for me).   I need my photos to convey who the people are that I am shooting.  The need to show the world just who they are,  it is a part of me. 

Muddy feet on gorgeous children

The rain is falling outside my studio today, and there is a chill in the air.  Fall is definitely here.  I want to curl up in a blanket on the coach with a fire in the fireplace and read a good book.  The days of chasing butterflies through the forest are gone for this year.  The kids running barefoot through the creek,  also is only a memory for now.  I love the summer. I love the freedom it makes me feel.  I love that there is so much light, enabling much longer shooting hours during the day.  I guess today I am just reminiscing about the summer and how great it is. Autumn is lovely too, be assured I do appreciate its beauty.  The fall leaves make for amazing backdrops for fotoshoots.  But there is just something magical about the summers in Sweden,  and it is with a sad adjö  I say good-bye to summer 2017.  I do still have many images from this summer to sort through and edit, so I am sure this will not be last summer image, but it is one of my current favorites.  I love muddy feet on gorgeous children.

 

Learning and growing

I have this need to see progress, even if it is baby steps,  I need to be moving forward. Learning and growing, it is what keeps me going.  Every small improvement keeps me hopeful.  Every thing that I can cross off my list as completed improves my mood.  I write a million and one to do lists,  sometimes I even add things I have already done, just so I can see something else crossed off on the list.  I know it is silly, but it feels good to have accomplished something and be able to see it.  I have been focusing on growing as a photographer a lot in the last couple of years.  Reading, research,  online courses, and a lot of experimentation, are some of the ways I have been working on improving my art.  Sometimes it is discouraging,  sometimes I feel like a total failure but then other times I get the shot that I had been envisioning, or I receive a compliment from someone who has been following my photographic journey about how much I have improved, and it feels good.  Enjoy the baby steps,  do not forget the positive and good things that happen on what can sometimes be a difficult journey.  This is what I try to remind myself of everyday.

This image I love. I am proud of it.  It is a leap and a jump above the newborn images I was taking a few years ago.  As I learn more about light,  and about my own style I am creating more and more images that I love.  I hope that I can continue to learn and grow, and my newborn images are even better the more I practice.  Even this entry is a small baby step. It is my 13th entry since I started posting again,  I have never in the 8 year history of this blog managed to do more than 12 in a year.  Progress, it is a good thing.

Keeping me humble

As probably everyone who knows me know. I love to take fotos.  I have my camera up way too often according to my very patient family.  However, being a portrait photographer is very different from being a landscape photographer, or even an event photographer.  I have no lack of inspiration when there is a person standing in front of my camera.  I can shoot for hours and never get bored or run out of ideas.  When I look at the gorgeous nature I am surrounded by,  I see it and I appreciate it, but somehow I just cannot manage to get it to translate into the images I attempt to capture.  It is funny, you would think that if someone is good with a camera, that is it, they are good, and can take images of anything.  However this is not true, not true at all.  So despite my total lack of a knack for landscape photography,  I still try.  It is a good way to keep me (very) humble, and I am learning,  albeit very slowly to improve my images.  So if there is something you are not good at, do not give up,  use it as a challenge to learn and grow, and if you are like me then, there will be a lot of room to grow!  Ha Ha,  if you cannot laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?  I leave you with one of my more recent attempts to capture the incredibly beauty mother nature provides. 

Shhh....Listen....

I believe that every artist (or very nearly every) has moments of self-doubt.  Am I good enough?  Are my creations of value?  Should I just give up?  These questions plague many of us,  and not just as artists, but as people.  Life is hard,  work is hard.  Sometimes it is hard to value ourselves.  I know I suffer greatly from self-doubt.  It was a huge jump for me to put myself out there and start my photography company,  to actually call myself a photographer.  I may not have looked like it, but I was shaking in my boots.  I often still do.  But this means I can only get better.  I try to look forward, not side to side.  Not try to compare myself to that amazing photographer over there, but rather to be inspired by them.  I try to put myself out there,  no matter how scary it is.  And well, if they do not value my work then I guess they will not hire me.  BUT as long as I value my work,  there will be people out there that value my work, and they will find me, or I will find them, and we will make beautiful images, together. 

Breathe...

Sometimes life just seems to be flying by.  Today is one of those days.  It always seems like there is not enough  hours in the day.  So today,  I am just coming up for air.  Just trying to tread water. Just trying to remember to breathe, to slow down.  To feel, to hear, to see this life that is just flying by.  Trying to stop the blur, and make time stand still.  Timeless,  it is where I want to be.

Lovely to see you again!

One of my favorite things about being a family photographer is that I get to watch so many families grow up. Two become three, then four, then more!  I love returning customers!  Just the other day this lovely little family stopped by for a gravidfotografering (maternity shoot).  I had the honor of capturing this adorable family, when the the little fellow was both in the tummy and newborn.  Cannot believe how fast they grow up!  I cannot wait to snuggle (and smell) their little brother who could be arriving any day now. 

I actually have found doing maternity shoots with smaller children challenging sometimes, especially when there is more than one.  However as you can see by bringing a small basket to contain small beautiful wildlings,  I was able to get a couple of shots with them cooperating, so yes, that is my tip of the day.  When there are too many small wonderful things running around and you need to get them all in the same picture, contain them or entertain them!  Ha ha, easier said then done, but it all part of the fun.

Progress and New Beginnings

I am a little surprised with myself, but at the same time rather proud.  This is the most consistant I have ever been since I started this blog 8 years ago.  I actually done more posts in the last ten days then I have done most years!  Obviously I am pathetic at keeping a blog, but I am yet to give up.  I am actually beginning to believe I can do this.  It is amazing how different it is when all the pressure is gone.  All that imagined pressure that has been stopping me all these years.  What a waste.  Well,  new beginnings, with a lot less stress!  

Speaking of new beginnings.  I love photographing newborns, especially when I get to pick them up and smell them.  Oh how I love that smell.  It is nearly reason enough to get into newborn photography. :-) Normally I am more of a lifestyle newborn photographer, but sometimes new parents are not so keen on being in front of the camera, and then they usually bring their newborns to my studio instead (Eimi Thoren Fotography, din fotograf i Örkelljunga) (nice plug right?).  So it is a relatively new process for me, posing a newborn.  I have found there is a huge amount of information and courses online, so much so that it can seem overwhelming at times.  But I am so grateful for it.  One of the sites that I owe much of my growth to is Creative Live, their courses are amazing.  I have learned so much from them, and still have so much more to learn, but I can say it is been a major help in this, my photographic journey.  Definitely check them out if you are interested in improving your photography, though they also do courses in many other things as well. Oh, and the live ones are free!  Nice, right? I leave you with a recent newborn image, there is something about this image that is a bit, hmm, I do not know, different, but somehow it intrigues me and draws me to it.  Besides, isn´t she just adorable?

Fairy Princess Improntu fotoshoot

I love photographing children, my own and any others willing to stand in front of my camera.  My kids are so used to me having a camera, and are basically sick of it.  LOL.  So it is a very rare occasion that they actually ask me to pull the camera out and capture whatever they are doing.  But this was one of those rare times.  One day our little pixie girl decided to dress up as a fairy princess, and was running about digging in the dirt and climbing on stones, as fairy princesses do.  I happened to walk by and she yells at me to go and get my camera.  My heart soared!  A child who wants to cooperate!  So of course I dropped everything.  The light was perfect, she was magic, and we had so much fun.  I love those spontaneous shoots, so i guess my tip for today, is always keep your camera nearby ( and charged) and if your child ever asks you to take their picture,  drop everything and enjoy it.  These moments will not last long, so that is why I love to preserve them.

Old, worn, and torn, and absolutely fabulous

I have been looking for the perfect chair to use for my portrait photography sessions.  Of all the ones I found, they never were quite right, too modern, or too big,  too much pattern, or just way too expensive.  But my patience paid off.  I found this beauty on a second hand facebook site,  it is in dire need of love,  but oh so beautiful.  Perhaps it is silly that I get so giddy when I find something I think is perfect, but I cannot help it!  It is just so pretty!  

 

Being a mom is great, it means I have models always on hand! Granted they are not always willing to cooperate,  but sometimes, just sometimes, it is magic.

Happy Duck, dirty knees

I love this image cause even though I realize ducks cannot smile.  It sure looks to me like that is exactly what this guy is doing.  He just looks so happy.  I am not so sure that he was considering there were a bunch of crazy kids running around, and then a crazy lady crawling up on the grass in front of him with this huge black thing coming out of her eye!  ( ha ha).  This image is the classic of how to take what could be a rather boring image and make it more interesting.  All I had to do was get down,  get way down, in the duck poo covered grass, but it was worth it.  I love teaching photography, and find it fun to give a student a single simple tip, and watch them run with it and improve their photography.  So I guess my tip for today is to get down.  Had I taken this shot straight on it would not have been nearly as interesting to look at.  New perspectives can do amazing things to help your images, especially when photographing animals or small humans( I am a child photographer, so I see a lot of them).  Get down to their level and see what you come up with! And yes, I end up doing a lot of laundry, but the kids love it when I get down and dirty with them.

Transparencies

Sometimes my insecurities can take over, and I feel like I am a fraud.  I am not really who I think I am.  I am not good enough at this or that.  Thoughts that I am not a good enough mother, or a good enough photographer plague me.  And at the same moment that I feel these emotions and feel these thoughts trying to control me,  I logically can see the transparency of it all.  Good enough,  what does that even mean.  Everything, and I mean everything in life is relative.   What is good enough for someone is not for another.  Why do I care if I am good enough.  If I am doing my best at something (albeit, occasionally failing) that is enough.  That should be enough for me.  Do I love taking fotos?  Yes.  Does it make me happy?  Yes.  Do I enjoying pushing myself to take better and better fotos?  Yes.  So it is.  That is enough.  I am enough.  You are enough.  Just the way we are.  Sure we can always strive to be better, that is a good thing, but we can also appreciate how far we have come and wherever we are on our journey.  Sit in the moment and take it in, and try (at least I try) to be grateful.
 This image of a slightly translucent and rather minuscule flower was a bit of challenge for me.  I like to shoot with a shallow depth of field (DOF), but I am discovering that I really have to close down my aperture (bigger f numbers) in order to get enough of the these tiny things in focus.  This of course shuts out more light.  This process makes me think how grateful I am that I finally worked up the nerves some years back to get out of P mode and go over to manual. The process I now go through to zone in on the correct settings is almost like a form of meditation,  and though the results are not always the best,  the process, the journey, is a success in itself.

Experimentation in small measures

I am a portrait photographer.  I have tried to take nice landscapes, and I just do not seem to have what it takes.  Of course I do get the occasional decent looking shot of a beautiful lake or some exotic location, we all can get lucky sometimes.  But in general, I feel like my landscape photography is rather lacking.  Being as I actually started off as an underwater photographer,  I thought that nature/landscape photography would come quite naturally for me.  It didn't.  It doesn't.  Aboveland shooting is literally a whole other kettle of fish!  (pun intended).  I found this difficult to deal with, though honestly I supposed if I dedicated myself to the craft and studied and tried, perhaps I could become a better landscape photographer, but that is just not where my passion lies.  But I love nature.  I love gardening, I love plants, animals,  heck I even love dirt and feeling it between my toes!  So how do I incorporate this into my passion for photography and lack of not being able to dive like I used to.  Macro!  That is right,  the closest thing to underwater photographer I have found is macro.  I love it,  it is addicting, though it can be rather time consuming, and since I usually have three crazy munchkins and often two furry ones on all my nature outings, it can be rather difficult to capture the images I dream of making.  But this is a journey,  it is part of life.  so I take the shot when I can, and just enjoy it with my naked eye when I cannot.  But this summer I did invest in a new macro lens, which I am really enjoying.  I hope to be able to spend more time developing the skills I need to make amazing macro images.  The camera settings are not the same as when I shoot portraits, and I am enjoying challenging myself.  I leave you with one of my first images I took with my new lens. I am sure there will be many more to come.  BTW I am slightly obsessed with ladybugs!

End of the summer

So I have not quite come to terms with the fact that it is the end of the summer.  School is in session and Autumn is on her way.  This summer was so strange,  in that I feel like it almost did not happened.  I do try to be mindful and live in the moment, but I swear I blinked the the summer was over.  Where did it go?  I am not sure.  Even as I look back through the pictures I took this summer, it seems like there are not so many of them.  Where did they go?  I do not know.  Do you?  So I browse the ones I have and remember the fleeting memories.  So grateful to have these images to remember by.  I do not know about you, but since having children,  I feel like my mind is going.  My memory not as clear.  I remember feelings better than events or happenings.  Perhaps this is why I became a portrait photographer,  to try and preserve the memories my brain just seems to have a hard time holding onto.  Memories pop in and out, and they are beautiful and luscious,  or sometimes bitter and sweet.  But I will hold onto my images in hopes that my memory does not leave me entirely.  Picking strawberries this summer, yes, that is a memory I would like to hold onto.  Looking at the picture I can almost taste them....yum.

Free at last!

I have to admit that this blog is woefully neglected.  Nearly a year since my last post.  I suppose it is because I find myself overwhelmed by all the social media outlets.  Feeling the need to post to instagram, to facebook, to the blog, it can all be too much, for me anyway.  Trying to decide which images would be the most appealing, which would get the best response. Not to mention, I was never really sure if I should post in Swedish or English.   I suppose the pressure of posting the best possible images led to posting less and less, and finally not at all.  I find myself with hundreds of images that I love but no one (except the ones intended for customers) ever see.  Sooo, while laying in bed last night I came to the decision, that I will reclaim this blog.  I will post with no pressure on myself. I will post merely because I feel like it.  There need not be rhyme or reason, only the desire to share, albeit there may be no one out there in my cyberspace.  It feels so liberating somehow. No idea where these pressures arise from, perhaps my own head,  must be actually.  So I guess this will now become a place where I learn to free myself, a work in progress with no plan, no pressure, just a relaxing meandering down my own photographic journey.  So I leave you with my thoughts and a picture of one my muses.