STCC - Sunday

Last sunday "the Company" went for a little trip to Gälleråsen racetrack to check up on a driver we sponsored some months ago. I suspected the whole thing would turn out in one of those days you ought to have stayed in bed.
We caught the bus from Central Gävle about 7 AM. Some cooperative companies had offered to join as well, to cut bus-prices a bit.

I'm far from a bus person myself, but the whole trip actually turned out great. Our boss and some other boss had planned ahead and fixed catering and a movie. Great, something to do for 3 hours I thought to myself. The movie turned out to be "Driven" featuring the award winning Sylvester Stallone. After the gruesome experience I was pumped with American cliché steriods and jumping at the thought of smelling burnt rubber.

And to my personal amusement the whole race track reeked of it too.
Dissapointment struck when our driver had some automotive trouble and had to bail the race early. But his teammate lessened the blow by advancing some 7 placements and finishing 5th total.

Road trip to Germany

I'm home after a 1½ week long vacation in Germany. It all was quite fun at times, even though we had serious business. I had the opportunity to take a lot of photos over the course of the trip. My family owned a house in a small town called Schweina, Thüringen. That we sold during the course of the vacation. Neatly located in the beginning mountains of Bayern the whole town is intoxicated with an old pitoresque feeling. The architecture is simply stunningly retro, 30:s style.

This is the local post office in town. Intact since... cant remember actually. But its quite old. Put it in there so you can assess what I was talking about earlier in my post-journey ramblings. Nearby there was a bar you could order some banana-splits with alcohol inside. I decided to get drunk instead of divulging in the facts a local guide was more than happy to force on unwilling bypassers.

The whole town is enclosed in a mountain pass, some residential areas stretch the slopes but the city core resides on the bottom, creating a cauldron for the sun to cook. The temperature sometimes reached 39deg, C.
After about an afternoon of beeing totally baked in the sun I decided something radical had to be done. I took shelter in some old mining tunnels opened up for the public as a guided attraction, of course i brought the camera along. I figured the strap to have molten in on my sholder by this time.
I spent the rest of the trip trying to dodge the sun and doing fun stuff, like going on trips to nearby towns and getting wasted on cheap beer. Ended up with a half poor vacation and a sunburn from hell. Can't say it didn't have its moments though...
It's really nice to be home again, you just don't realize it until you've been gone for a while.

Case: Furniture Commercial

Did a commercial for a local furniture company recently. It contained a bunch of fun shots to work with. There's a ball bouncing to the beat of music through the store while a speaker sells the concept to the audience.
In the beginning we had a bunch of shots of the store. Thing is that at the time of the shoot it was midwinter. And when we finished the commercial all the snow had melted. So I had to revisit the site and take some more. Problem was that it kept raining all the time.
So basically I worked up some photoshop magic and got that summer look digitally.
The complex part of this tv-spot was the shadow and lighting of the ball.
Since the ball was bouncing all over the furniture i constructed a low polygon mesh of the scene and matched the camera to the real shot in 3D. I then matched the lighting and animated in the ball. The whole spot contained about 10 shots of that kind. So it was a bit of work. This commercial is now circulating locally in Gävle. So the audience is quite slim. But i think it will do the trick.

Case: Product Photography

Recently a snack bar owner approached our company and wanted some lit menu-signs with big colorful picures of his different snacks on them.
I took the boss's car and drove out with some reflex paper and 2x500w halogen construction lights (ooh the proffessionalism). We had kinda fun doing this as the manager and I joked around doing the different setups, between shots i got to eat as much as I wanted. Can't say anything else than that this was a dream gig. Can think of a few gigs that would be cooler, but nonetheless I love my job.

Case: Promotion Photography

December 2005 i snapped some model shots to promote a scooter that Brynäs was sponsoring (those hockey guys again). This was my second photo-session that actually contained people. Previously i found it reasonably hard to direct people. But its getting easier for every time as i learn what i want from each shot and how to verbalize it in simple instructions. A good sense of humor is also required to get the models to relax.
This shot is originally photographed in a really dirty garage with a white wall. I pulled the background using photoshop and kept some of the shadows along with my own painted ones to create a somewhat believable illusion that my company actually owns a photo studio. The scooter was eventually sold and everyone was happy, except for me that got some axel-grease on my suit pants just before a meeting.