I’ve always felt a bit bad, spamming this blog with photography. So I had an idea of creating an extra, photo blog, which would mainly showcase my photography and would be updated more often.

In decided to do it in a simple manner.

• I wanted a simple, dark design, emphasising photographs.
• I wanted Flickr to be the source of my photos, so I don’t need to reupload them.
• More precisely, I want to be able to make a post right from flickr photo page.
• I decided on using an online blogging platform to avoid the hassle of management and software updates.

In the end, I decided to use Blogger, as it allows me to create my own template and can comply with the above needs.

The result of a couple of hours work:
Proudly presenting Dušan Smolnikar: Photo Journal.

Again, it’s been a long long time since I last wrote. It’s been quite a busy summer.

In the last 2 months, I’ve visited Scotland, Amsterdam and Crete. Hooray for being a student! ;) I’ve also entered my last year of faculty, as a so called “absolvent”. Basically, that means no more lectures or practical work, just a year to write my diploma. Hooray!

I will upload photos from Scotland in the next few weeks. I don’t want to make them public just yet.

Meanwhile, here’s a set from yesterday’s trip. We’ve been to the coast. But not just any coast. We’ve visited the Sečovlje salina – a place where salt is being produced, making our food taste a wee bit better. Salina has been transformed into a nature park, allowing visitors to walk around and enjoy the surroundings.

The place is just astonishing

As always, I wasn’t quite happy just doing landscape photography, so I experimented with the flash …

… and also, some fashion-like photography

View the full set, or better yet, the slideshow.
Sadly, it seems as yesterday was the last day of summer around here. But on a brighter note, autumn was always very photogenic. Expect some colours soon.

Some theory first …
Light doesn’t come in one color. Ever noticed how things look more yellow under a light bulb, than under the sun? It’s because the two produce a different color of light.
And if you’ve done a photo or two before, you’ve probably noticed how they look very orange indoors, under a light bulb, but much whiter when you turn on the flash. Different colors of light. Flashes, they have about the same color of light as the sun. It’s what we’re familiar with, so it looks white. But we don’t always want it white. Maybe you want to color that flash the same as a light bulb? Or green, for a special effect? This is where gels come in.

I bought myself a Lumiquest FXtra, for some color. And as with everything new, testing it was inevitable.

A great thing about gels and photography in general is, you don’t need to make it look real. You don’t always need to make things look real (and light look white).

I’m living with a fluorescent light bulb above my head. It’s stated as being “neutral white”, but my camera doesn’t know that.

I equipped my flash with a CTO gel. CTO means orange, about the same color as a standard light bulb. So I convinced my camera this CTO was white — I shot a gray pillow and set custom white balance to that gray. In contrast, the white fluorescent turned blue all of a sudden. Which was exactly what I wanted.

Click, in my face.

“Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items.” -Wikipedia

Ema is a fashion designer. Soon to be a graduated fashion designer.
She had some clothes to show, which meant taking some photos.

So we improvised a little studio. We used a white wall as a backdrop, plus some white shelves to make the floor white as well. Sunlight was coming through the window, but was not quite as bright as we had wanted. Therefore we had to use an extra light — A Canon 430 EX flash. We bounced it off a white towel, which was taped on a closet, as per usual.

These took some Photoshopping. As we were shooting quite late in the afternoon, sunlight was turning a bit orange and did not quite match the color of the flash. So I decided to put the photos in black&white and mask out the skin colors, which was a bit time consuming, but worked out quite well. I also had to stretch the floor, as our shelves were not big enough. Erasing electric plugs from the walls was the easy part.

See the full set at Flickr

As you might have noticed, I haven’t updated my blog in a while. My faculty life is coming to an end. And anyone who’s ever been to the faculty knows, the last days are the busiest.

Besides that, I’ve been teaching Sabina a little bit of photography. Shooting people, especially. Which means I have to model a lot lately. But I like it. Look.

It started like an ordinary Sunday afternoon - Out in the pond, taking silly photos of some ducks.

I quickly got bored of the little creatures. So, as I do, I started taking photos of Darko taking photos. Taking photos of Darko taking photos of me. Meanwhile, he was taking photos of me, doing this. See recursion.

We got bored of that as well, and started shooting some portraits. But Darko, being his technical self, soon decided that sun light was too direct, as one side of the face was always in the shade. Luckily, he had a handy reflector in his back pocket.

As the name implies, this little toy reflects the light. Which means it bounces the sun back into areas it wouldn’t otherwise reach. Ergo - no harsh shadows anymore. And just because we can, we brought out an extra Flash as well, to look even more professional.

So there we are, 4 of us, fighting for one goal - to take a photo. A girl modelling, Darko holding and turning the reflector, suggesting on the set up and giving instructions, another girl holding the flash, and me, pressing the little button on the camera, moving everybody so I could see the mountains. After a few clicks, this was the result:

I’m happy.