At the photo exhibition

This last weekend I was one of the officials for my photo club's big international exhibition that we've held for 13 times before (so logically this was no. 14 ;-) ). I was the webmaster for the whole thing, so whenever something is related to the web or pretty much anything related to IT...it's my duty to get it done. It's okay, because it's fun to do (and rarely means any extraordinary amount of work). 

So many awards!

Wait...I take that last bit back. Just before the deadline back in August, when everyone suddenly discovered that they had to send in their photos on the very same four or five days it got a bit busy for yours truly. But not the event this last weekend; that's where it's good to be part of a nine person board where everyone has done this kind of thing before. It just runs smooth!

Audience members watching accepted images in the color section on a big screen TV

We had a nice turnout and people seemed to appreciate the images we had on display, both on TV screens (for the accepted images in our two categories), large screen (for the awarded images) and in print (images from the six jury members and club members). 

Tony Clements (R) receiving his gold medal from exhibition chairman Nils-Erik Jerlemar

I didn't take all that many photos at the event since I tried to be social and a good "host", but I did snap a few, including of Tony Clementz, the winner in the monochrome section receiving his PSA Gold medal, deservedly so too I think.

Yours truly on the right discussing photos with Christer Lindberg (L), one of the jury members and an enthusiastic guest..and hopefully future club member. Photo by Ingrid Nilsson (no relation)

With all these photographers running around it was probably inevitable that I ended up in a picture or two...which is nice...I guess, but I can't help feeling a bit awkward at being in front of a camera rather than behind it. Silly notion I know!

Now it's a few days of non-photography before Friday when the local Culture Night is on, and I get to show images at City Hall, along with my dad...something we both look forward to a lot! I'll be sure to write about that too once it's all over.

Look Ma! I'm on a poster!

No, it's not that kind of poster...I've not been asked to pose for a front-facing and then a side-facing portrait while holding a plate with numbers and letters! It's much better than that!

Like a bolt out of the blue

A few weeks ago I was asked by Lion's Club, a local charity organization if I had any images that they could pick from for the poster for the annual Culture Night event on October 17th. It's a one-night event that I've participated in a few times now, and it's always been a lot of fun to show photos there in front of rather large crowds.

It was very flattering to be asked, and it came totally out of the blue! While it wasn't explicitly stated that it should be pictures from the local area I assumed it ought to be, so I picked ten candidates from around Staffanstorp. Well, at first I picked 5, then I didn't hear anything from the committee for a few weeks, then it turned out that they couldn't agree on one particular image, so just to make their selection process "easier" I sent them 5 more. (They did ask for more candidate pictures, so it was their own "fault"). In the end they picked an image I took a few years ago in the faux-medieval neighborhood "Jakriborg" on a late winter afternoon.

On a poster and in the paper
So here I am now, with the official program that has been delivered to every household in town and I must admit it feels pretty surreal that everyone who lives here (in theory anyway) has looked at a picture of mine! I was interviewed for the program as well, and against all odds I come across as pretty sane and coherent in that interview! Hats off to the reporter for that one!

Here's a link to the actual article (in Swedish only I'm afraid): Spegeln.

My rough translation of the colorful language in the article is below:

---

Tomas Nilsson: The World Through The Lens

View fullsize

(CI Tomas Nilsson

It's late in the winter afternoon and the sun has already descended past the steep roofs and pointy rooftops of Jakriborg. There's still a sleepy twilight, but soon the December darkness will fall upon the houses and alleyways.

The first page of this year's program is a photo taken by Tomas Nilsson. The 42 year old Staffanstorp native is not a newbie to Culture Night; he and his father Ulf Nilsson has participated with photos several times before.

- When Sven Jönsson of the Lions' Club called and asked if I could provide a photo for the poster and cover page I was very surprised and then very happy. I felt very flattered, says Tomas.

Light, shapes and stories

The image of the unmistakable rooftops of Jakriborg is taken at the Christmas Market a few years ago. Among the first things you notice is the benevolent light. Light in particular is something Tomas focuses on in his images. Where others see a thick cloud cover which thankfully lets a few solar rays through, Tomas through his lens sees how heaven opens a small gateway to eternity. The mood borders on the divine.

When others, during the Staffanstorp Motor Show, admire a row of very speedy vehicles in front of Town Hall, the photographer captures a colorful palette sparkling in the June sun.

But it's not all about light; graphical elements are also likely to activate Tomas' shutter button finger.
- I'm often intrigued by shapes, he admits and shows his contribution to the Lions' arts raffle; the curved entryway to the Emporia shopping center, in a tightly cropped and black and white version, for maximized impact.

Meetings, or moments in stories attract Tomas too.
- I don't often do portraits, but I enjoy photographing people.

A young couple in a loving embrace, joy and happiness during last year's Pride parade in Malmö, with a lot more colors than the rainbow.

Tomas sees the world through the lens and it's a beautiful, exciting world full of stories.

The bar is constantly raised

During the month of August Tomas has participated in three photo exhibitions, one together with other photographers in the Malmö Photographic Society, where he is a member of the board, and during the three weeks 3,500 people visited Köpmansmagasinet in Smygehuk to see the photos. Other events with lots of spectators were the one-day events Linan and Planket in Malmö.
- It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work, Tomas reflects. So during the month of September I sort of lay low and prepare for Culture Night.

Through his father Ulf there's always been lots of photography in the Nilsson household, and Tomas had his hand on cameras early.
- But it was still mostly typical vacation photos. My real interest in photography started around 2000 when I got my first digital camera.

Tomas is an honest photographer who edits sparingly and very rarely adds anything to his photos.
- Light and cropping is what I work with. Cropping is a fantastic tool for making sure you only have exactly what you want within your frame.

After many years, and thousands of photos, he is his own harshest judge. He calls it a necessary survival skill, both not to get utterly swamped with photos as well as for improving his skills. Images that don't stand out or aren't better than average tend to end up in the recycling bin.

Not a gear head

Making a living as a photographer isn't something that the realist Tomas thinks will happen, but selling a picture here and there, that's something he hopes will happen.
- There are interesting online solutions that I'd like to study more. The question though is what images to pick; does the prospective buyer like the same pictures as I do?

Photography can be a expensive hobby. Not so in Tomas' case. Even cameras for a few hundred dollars do an excellent job these days.
- The most important pieces of equipment are your eyes, your brain and the connection between them.

During Culture Night Tomas shows a selection of his images. If you want to see some of his works already, go to www.tomasnilssonfoto.com.

Text by Ann Mellblom (translation by yours truly)

No photography? Sure there has been!

It's been a few weeks with no posting on this blog. I've not exactly been off the planet, but haven't had anything interesting to post either. It's been a very non-photographic few weeks for me. That actually felt nice after the onslaught that was August with all the exhibition and photo club events.

I've only taken the DSLR out a few times in the last three weeks and to be perfectly honest I've not really taken any pictures I'm happy with during those outings. That's perfectly fine though, I didn't feel my heart was in it, so the pictures weren't that exciting. It felt more like "I should bring my camera now that I'm stepping outside", rather than, "Oh I want to take photos! I should go outside!".

View fullsize

No trains in sight!

Still, a few cell phone snaps were taken here and there, so that's what I'm sharing here. This is an image I took a few days ago near my home on an old defunct railroad.

I have also "abused" the photo in Snapseed to make it look like an old photo that's been through the ravages of time (sort of anyway). I tend to do at least some treatment to all my images (whether it's in Lightroom for my DSLR photos or Snapseed for cell phone snapshots, although this one has been put through more steps than I usually take!

A Tall Stack Of Papers

This website is called Tomas Nilsson Foto (since I am Swedish I spell it that way), and it's obviously no secret that I enjoy photography a lot (anyone unfortunate enough not to be able to make his or her escape fast enough will probably know that ;-)).

I do however have other interests that will show up on this blog from time to time. One of these interests is writing. I feel it is time for that now that the month of August is over and the next exhibition event isn't until October.

I've enjoyed reading since I figured out that those strange squiggles could be translated into words when you put them together; according to my mother the first word I ever read on my own at the age of 5 was Tobak (tobacco in Swedish). I don't know if that was necessarily a good thing, but there ya go.

I was one of those kids who played a little bit of Dungeons and Dragons in my teens, mostly as the Dungeon Master, sending my brother and other neighborhood kids on quests here and there. It was fun, but in the end they liked doing sports more, and I found it was more fun to write than to actually play the adventures (plus I wasn't really that good a Dungeon Master).

When I was in high school my best friend at the time wrote a book, and challenged me to do the same ("you always said you wanted to write...now get to it!"), so I ended up with a ghastly poor First Novel. It's got very few redeeming features, but at least it didn't discourage me from trying it again! In the ensuing years I've written a few other things, both longer works and short stories. It's never felt like I've made something worth sending to publishers, it's always been something I've done for my own enjoyment.

In 2008 my dear friend Montie told me about National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short-ish) and I thought was an absolutely hair-brained idea; write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in 30 days. That felt impossible, especially for a devout procrastinator like me. But I figured I'd give it a go, since at the time I needed a jumpstart to my writing. That ended up as "The New Leaves", a book that I think actually does have some merits, a book that I think I'll get back to soon to expand certain parts that needs something more.

Six years later I am about to do the writing challenge for the sixth time and it is still a lot of fun! I especially enjoy the group of awesome friends I've made through the write-ins and get-togethers we've had through the years, people I would never have met otherwise! What this year's book will be about? I haven't got a clue, but hopefully I'll have at least a first sentence by the time November 1 rolls in!

Here's the beast, ready to fight me all over again...

That being said, there's been this project of mine that's been ”on-going” for many years now, a book that I've not been able to finish, nor let go my hold of. It's currently in its...probably sixth or seventh re-write at around 135,000 words, but I still don't feel it is really there. It's an intimidating stack of papers, but it's also a nice feeling to know that I've been able to put together the story at least this far! So I am going to have a crack at it one more time in the next few months, hopefully being able to finish it at some point. If nothing else it'll be a nice warm-up for the November NaNoWriMo event!

Photo judging...with a very wet obstacle

This last weekend I was one of the officials (being the "tech guy") for the international exhibition that my photo club hosts every year, this being the 14th edition of the exhibition.

It was time for the two juries to do their duties and pick the medalists, honorable mentions and personal favorites. On the Saturday they did the major part of the work by going through over 2,000 images in each section (!) and picking around 10 percent that got accepted into the exhibition.

On the Sunday morning the idea was for them to start going through the accepted images to find the best of the best to give out the big awards to. Since I was part of the "crew, being the tech guy I was supposed to go there as well and stepped onto the bus to go into Malmö. It wasn't until we turned off the ring road and turned into Malmö proper that the day turned from the ordinary to the rather surreal.

The water is beginning to pour into the bus...

A lake? There shouldn't be a lake here!
I was preoccupied with listening to a podcast when I noticed that we had stopped in an unusual spot, and when I looked up to see why I saw a big new "lake" around the bus that doesn't usually exist there. Then I heard one of my fellow passengers say that water was pouring into the bus. Soon there were several inches of water forming a nice little reflecting pool where there absolutely should be no water!

A quick glance at the local newspaper's website later I knew this was quite the flood all over the place because of the month's worth of rain that had fallen in just a few hours, and that we couldn't count on rescue service or any tow truck to come by any time soon. And as we sat there waiting the rain picked up even more outside, dumping even more water into the temporary lake, and making the water rise even more in the bus.

We're walking out of here!
By the time us passengers decided to evacuate the bus on foot the water reached my thighs as we stepped out of the bus. I was still lucky though, given that there were several ladies on the bus who were quite shorter than I am! The water was cold, but at least we could traverse the lake and make it on to terra firma a few hundred yards further up the road. The bus driver had told us that a replacement bus would come and pick us up, but given how almost every underpass nearby was probably flooded I didn't count on that to happen...so I started walking into town instead. I didn't see any city bus either, which I would have on any normal day, so in the end it was probably a smart decision.

The yellow bus over there was my bus...and the water up to my thighs was quite cold!

Dumbass drivers
At the next underpass I saw several small cars try to traverse the water, and I can't for the life of me figure out why they dared to do that, since it wouldn't take much for the electronics to just go "poof" and then they'd be stuck there in water at least a foot deep! That is precisely what happened to several cars throughout the city in the end, making for quite some spectacular photos in the newspaper afterwards.

If you wanted to walk here you'd need scuba gear!

Actual photo judging
Once I made it to my destination (and one of the jury members lent me a pair of khaki shorts to wear) I was able to do what I had gone into town to do in the first place, be the tech guy at the judging of the international exhibition. I do not envy the juries the amount of decision making they have to do, just to pick their favorites and decide what image deserves "best in show". Sure we who are "staff" do a lot of work before and after the jury weekend, but I am sure the jurors are pretty much spent after the weekend.

The jury for the color section looking at entries, trying to decide what images deserve to be accepted.

This is how pleased two juries and "staff" look when the job is done and images are selected, awarded and sorted.
(Photo by Julija Broberg)

Now comes the "clean-up" period, where lists of accepted and awarded images are collated, images are prepared for slideshows and electronic report cards are sent out. Once that is done it'll be a few weeks before it's time to rig stuff for the public viewing of the exhibition. But for now the work with the international exhibition is done...almost!

Shooting against the light

View fullsize

At the Harbor Festival in Limhamn, Malmö, Sweden 2014

As photographers we're often told to make sure we don't shoot into the sun, because then you risk getting all kinds of issues with too high contrast ranges between the bright and the dark parts of the image; and if we do have the sun in the frame we risk getting flares big enough to make J.J. Abrams wince...

Sometimes though it makes for a very interesting effect, creating strong silhouettes and backlighting our subjects.

The image of the man with the water-jet thingy is an example of mine that turned out pretty good in this regard. This was not a conscious effort on my behalf to shoot silhouettes, but a product of the location where this performance took place. I couldn't shoot this any other way but against the light, and the combined glare of the sun and the reflection of that in the ocean made for a lot of light pouring into the camera. I didn't mind because it looked cool when I did a quick glance on the LCD, so I went for it.

Then I read the "Into the light" article by Lee Frost in the September '14 issue of Black+White Photography about this phenomenon (naming it contre-jour, from the French for "against the daylight")) and how it is a perfectly "legitimate" form of photography, used to great effect in dramatic landscapes, silhouette photography and other such situations. Turns out my accidental foray into this sort of photography was an example of that.

At the train station, Lund, Sweden 2014

Then I began to look through my files for other examples of contre-jour photography, and discovered it's a technique I've used several times without even thinking about it, or giving it a name. The girl's backlit hair in this image from the Lund train station is an example of the effect, giving her a halo, while the bench they sit on is fairly dark and contrasty. The silhouette effect here is nowhere near as strong as in the waterjet photo, but it still has hints of the same thing.

It's definitely a technique I will use in the future...and now I can call it by its fancy name too...although I probably won't. :-)

August - exhibitions galore!

August turned out to be quite the busy month for me and my interest in photography. Previous years I've only done one photography event in August (Planket...or The Plank); this year however I've done three!

Pixel & Korn (Pixels & Grain)

The audience during the inauguration speech by the club chairman

This is the big one, my photo club exhibited the works of 37 different photographers in an old storage barn right on the southern coast of Sweden. We've gotten almost exclusively positive comments for our show, and the number of spectators are the highest we've ever had for a group show. Several of the participants have also sold a few of their works, which is great!

My six black and white prints shown at the Pixel & Korn exhibition in Smygehuk, Sweden

Linan (The Line)

My twenty black and white prints at the Linan 2014 event

This is an event where where photographers put up washing lines between steel poles along paths in a park and hang their photos from those lines with clothes pegs. Over 50 photographers had signed up via the Facebook page, so it was pretty crowded, but we somehow managed to squeeze everyone in so they could show their pictures.

I showed 20 black and white prints that I had selected for this purpose, a mixture of street photos, details and landscapes, and for the most part everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Planket (The Plank)

Two generations of Nilsson photographers, my dad's photos on the left, mine on the right

This was event number three and one I've done several years before. This is another one day open air event where photographers hang their photos along a 2 meter high fence of one of the parks in Malmö, Sweden. This year we had twice the area we have had the previous years, so it took a bit of thinking to pick out what to show, but in the end I went with 4 color and 4 black and white shots I've shown previously at the 2013 Culture Night in Staffanstorp, Sweden and at a local business during the spring of 2014.

So why do I participate in these events?

One simple reason: It's fun!

Okay, in more words than that: I get to show my works in public, so that visitors can get a look at what I'm capable of doing and give me feedback. It's fascinating to see which of your pictures get the most response from people; it's not always the ones that you as a photographer are the most attached to! Also I get to see what other photographers do, and get inspired by what they do. The social aspect is important too; getting to meet other people interested in the same thing as I am, very often brand new to me people.

New look for the website!

I've done what many others have done before; I've taken the plunge and moved over from WordPress to SquareSpace for my personal portfolio/web site. It's not that I don't like WordPress, it's just that I didn't really get into my head how to make it work to my liking. 

I've deleted the previous entries of my blog, so that I'm starting fresh with the new look, which I really like. It's clean and I hope to keep it that way, not overloading it with pictures. I've seen far too many websites where "more is more" seems to be the idea. I used to think like that before but I've since changed my mind and will try to keep the number of images lower. It's better to swap them out more often if need arises!

So what will I be posting here? Since it is a website owned by a photographer it won't take much to figure out that one...yep, photos. Well done! It'll be one-offs, stories about photo outings, recommendations on other photographers' works, picks from the archive. We'll see how I get the blogging going...hopefully I can be a heck of a lot more prolific (and disciplined) than I was before in that regard!