There weren’t really time for any photo excursions the last weekend, but at least I stepped outside at the mansion and shot a dahlia which I then played around a little with in Photoshop. Adding the original image unedited as well, all that has been done to that is cropping.
As of right now I am an active ambassador for Christian Lawson, this is my first promotional photo for the purpose shot by my trusted assistant and one of the few that will be of me.
This morning I finally got my very own Swiss quality watch from Christian Lawson. It’s a really sweet time piece that goes beautifully together with my usual black style of clothing. Please feel free to visit their website and look around, there is without a doubt a wrist watch that’s to your taste as well (link in bio). I’m giving you a 30% discount on any watch in their webstore.
Christian Lawson
Some shots I am more proud of than others, this one shot today is one of them. Even though the bumble bee is taken from behind it’s awesome.
Imagine people banging on the windows of your home eight hours a day every day. This is what animals at the zoo will have to endure, the other day I witnessed and endless stream of children and adults alike doing just that and you’d think the adults would be enlightened enough to refrain from doing this.
When you visit a zoo, please do not bang at the windows to the animals, you are stressing them out. If there at least had been signs notifying people to not engage in this behaviour.
A sign found across the zoo was one asking people to not feed the animals, something I find frightening that it is needed. Still, good of the zoo to at least put these up.
“Make sure it is only the animal care takers that feed our animals”
On Saturday we went on a family outing to visit Parken Zoo in Eskilstuna, Sweden, and I must say that I was rather disappointed with the zoo. Sure, it’s a smaller zoo but still there were a lot of things they could have done much better.
To begin with they could have made it easier to actually see the animals, some of them were nowhere to be found and others could hide away entirely. The pygmy hippopotamus couldn’t be seen anywhere, the red pandas hid themselves entirely in the foilage of large trees and the mane wolf could totally obscure itself from view just to mention a few. When I visit a zoo it’s to actually see the animals.
The facilities left a lot to be desired as well. Many of the compounds where separated from us humans by acrylic glass and in some cases they actually had real glass, but none of them were non-reflective glass making it quite difficult to see (and photograph) what was behind. Not to mention how dirty the glass panes were, there were a lot of hand smears obscuring the view and it wasn’t just a couple of hours of smears but days worth of it.
One of the main reasons for me to visit and shoot was the great cats, but in all but one compound they were just laying flat down motionless. In other words, no tigers, lions or cheetahs were captured which rather annoys me. If they at least had somehow made it a little easier to overlook the compounds it wouldn’t have been so bad, maybe an elevated vantage so the view wasn’t obscured by the topography
I’m sorry to say, but I’m not so sure I’ll visit this zoo ever again.
Keeping animals in captivity at a zoo may not be ideal, but I don’t have the means to go galavanting all over the place to shoot wildlife so for me this is the only way. Yesterday we made a family trip to visit to Parken Zoo in Eskilstuna, Sweden, and I got some nice shots which I will be sharing at Instagram so follow me there and keep an eye open.
MetalPhoto at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/metalphotosweden/
Nope, I haven’t given up on street photography. This is from the local market square when there was the first annual fair after the restrictions of the plandemic. Cotton candy is a must when you’re a child and at the fair.
Some people are truly idiots and turn down free services just out of arrogance and possibly also ignorance.
As it happens, in my neighborhood there is a retired man who happens to like American cars andd have a couple. Among other vehicles he’s the owner of a really nice Chrysler, a convertible in mint condition that would have been awesome to shoot which I communicated to him some time ago and he agreed. Not only would I get to extend my portfolio a bit, he would get (for free) professional photos to use when advertising a coming sale of said car.
Well, the following week when the weather was perfect for such a shoot and I sent him a message. A shoot like this would take less than 30 minutes to get done. But no, he was busy this Wednesday with selling another car and would be the next day too. He said that next week we could get it done.
Next week came and went and not a peep from this retired man with all the time in the world at his disposal. And still not a word the week after that either.
To be perfectly honest, there are loads of cars around to shoot with owners who would be thrilled to get their beauties shot. When it comes photographers that would give them access to high definition images, not so much. The loss is his, all his.
In the mean while other cars have been shot, for instance this nice Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.
There has been very little happening here at the MetalPhoto blog, but that is about to change as my workload has changed and I have more time to spare. Naturally there will be a lot of nature coming as well in addition to everything else that’ll be photographed and published.
To get going I’ll give you a nice little longwing butterfly shot just the other day, please enjoy and make sure to come back often to check for more great images as the blog from now on will become a lot more active. This is quite possibly the most versatile photo blog around.
Portrait photography really isn’t my thing, but I do train on shooting those whenever I get a chance. Finally my unvilling model, my beautiful step daughter, have become a little more relaxed and actually allows me to take a photo every now and then. Sometimes it’s not enough being beautiful and photogenic, the model need to have som trust in the photographer as well, but with the right photographer anyone will look great in a picture.
As part of my new position as ambassador for Christian Lawson I will attempt to get my unwilling model to become more sympathetic to being photographed when shooting images for marketing purposes, perhaps it’ll be easier to get her to play nice when she’s getting paid.
