Some three months ago I decided It was a good time to quit my job. The past ten years or so I’ve have had thoughts about what it would be like running my own business, and I finally got to the stage where I had to make a final decision regarding my future career. Working as an employee in the design business has its advantages – you don’t have to bother with selling yourself or your company, you don’t have to deal with written proposals nor balance the budget, you know you’ll get payed the 25:th each month, you (might) have fantastic breakfasts/coffee/office chairs/colleagues, and well… you’re pretty much home safe as long as you deliver what’s expected of you.
But. You might find yourself in a situation where you can’t make changes in projects, the company or even your own working situation. You might also feel like a production robot, working yourself off just to make your boss happy (and rich/er). And you might just simply feel that you want to make your own fortune (so to speak).
During my paternity leave starting 1:st of January 2011 I started thinking very seriously about starting my very own design bureau, and came to the conclusion that it was the right time to try my own wings. My wife also supported me wholeheartedly and gave me comforting words whenever I mentioned things that could go wrong. And finally I quit my job, registered a company and well… got to work.
My new company is named Blacktip, and its website can be viewed right here. It’s all in swedish, but should anyone want to know more who doesn’t speak the language, just send me a message and I’ll tell you all about it.
When me and my family lived in Spain during the harsh October and November months I shot a few timelapse scenes from the surroundings. Some of the clips are (unfortunately) taken with aperture priority set on my Canon 7D, so bare with me on the flickering in the movie. One could argue that I just should trash these scenes, but hell… only profound DSLR-videographers will get annoyed of the quality.
I really miss the wonderful scenery of Costa Blanca. Hopefully, we’ll meet again sometimes.
The past saturday, Cecilia and I got married. Despite illness, nervousness and other ess:es, everything went as planned – or even better than planned. The pre-wedding-film above was shot and edited by dear friend Martin Botvidsson. Hire him.
This easter I had the opportunity to try to make my very first timelapse photography session. This meant placing my Canon 7D on a tripod in a forest in the middle of the night, letting it take images at certain intervals. Assembling the still images resulted in this little short video. It’s really amazing to see the rotation of earth.
A Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you all. This little video is something I shot yesterday whilst freezing my parts off on the balcony. Directing the two gnomes must have looked quite entertaining, and I could almost hear Cecilia laugh from the couch inside our apartment.
Of course, a christmas card wouldn’t be anything without a matching tune, so I had to compose my own version of Santa’s Coming To Town. Enjoy!
So, I went along and got myself a new Canon 7D. The mere thought about having the ability to shoot full 1080 HD video in 24 or 25 fps, using the good old canon lenses was just too tempting. The other day me and friend Martin Botvidsson took a stroll (or rather, stood still) in the central parts of Stockholm. Me with the 7D and Martin with his 5D mkII.
Now, the film is pretty boring in itself, mainly due to the fact that I didn’t plan anything but just tested the camera in low light conditions. Everything is shot handheld or ‘placed-camera-on-surface’ in 24p with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens (left wide open). Shutter speed is 1/50 and ISO set to 500. No grading/coloring altered in post. The soundtrack is something I whipped together some month ago in Logic 8 when being ill at home. The best part in the video is probably the last 3 seconds (the end-credits or whatever that animation is called). I made that in Cinema 4D & After Effects).
For the next 7D experiment I’ll try to think out some sort of script/storyboard, and *then* shoot video. Or maybe not.
A few months ago, me and Cecilia visited dear friend David Bicho and his utterly happy companion Martin Botvidsson in their studio to shoot some images. Cecilia wanted to try out the model business, and I wanted to learn more about studio photography. I’ve been very slow in actually doing something with the resulting images, but perhaps soon it’s time to tweak some levels in Adobe Lightroom.
Here’s a small wip-sample of how one of the images turned out.
My attempt to learn 3D is slowly making progress. Here’s a screenshot from what I achieved so far. You can probably see what the end result is going to be? No?
Yesterday evening I started to model a vehicle to learn another 3D-software – Modo 401. It’s far to early to tell wheter I’ll succeed in actually learning enough, but if inspiration and time merge in a fashionable way it might all be good. What kind of vehicle it is? You’ll see. Definitely maybe.
