Yesterday I had the question if I had any photos of the lighthouse in my hometown Hjo next to the big lake Vättern in Sweden.

Going through my photos I saw at least one photo a year of the lighthouse for the last 12 years (I won a camera and started taking photos at that time). It was also very interesting seeing the progression of me as a photographer. From “Hey I won a camera, let’s take some photos!” to todays professional and more clean stock image style. The communication, the emotion and ,technical quality is of course much better today but sometimes I miss the experimentation period when you got so happy for each and every photo you took. Today I am happy with a few photos every year at the most. You get picky =)

Photo tips – Recepie for how the top image is created

  1. Choose the right light – rain together with sunshine is a good combination.
  2. Choose the right light – evening light that is being filtered through a cirrostratus cloud.
  3. Position yourself correctly and compose the image with the objects (the lighthouse and the rainbow) correctly.
  4. Use a good camera (Canon 5d Mark III here) with the right setting for maximal dynamic range.
  5. Use a good light sensitive lens (Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM here).
  6. Use a polarization filter with the sun in an angle of 45 degrees behind you.
  7. Turn the filter until you get the maximum amount of reflections. Usually you use it the complete opposite way to get rid of reflections but then you will loose the rainbow.
  8. Take the photo in raw format which will make it flat, colorless and with low contrast.
  9. Open your post production software (Lightroom in this case) to correct the raw format with exposure, saturation and contrast.
  10. Done!

Which one is your favorite?

Which one would you like to have as a big canvas on your wall? Feel free to comment at the bottom of the page!

The new images are the first ones and then they get older and older the further you go.

More about my hometown Hjo

Hjo is a locality and the seat of Hjo Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden It had 6,094 inhabitants in 2010. Hjo is known to have had a charter as early as 1413. Hjo is, despite its small population, for historical reasons normally still referred to as a city. Statistics Sweden, however, only counts localities with more than 10,000 inhabitants as cities.

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