I ended up shooting couple of weddings during the past year, and although wedding photography isn't my main forté (I'd like to think), I have to say the shooting experience that I could gain from that kind of events is invaluable. 

Every wedding is different with its locations, lighting conditions, amount of guests etc. and you also have to be sharp with the changing situations and the schedule that fills wedding days. For the wedding couple, this could be the most important day of their lives, so you definitely want to deliver when it comes to photographs. Here's some of the wedding shots from the past year.

I wanted to share you one of the "new wave" photographers, who has his unique style of photography, but who also is eager to break some old school rules in the photography business. Free sharing, the active use of internet and social media, educating other photo enthusiasts and HDR (high dynamic range) photography are some of the things this man is well know for. He is Trey Ratcliff and I would recommend to look into his work, not just the great HDR images he creates, but also his versatile blog StuckInCustoms.com in general and the tutorials and videos he has put out for everyone of us to enjoy. Trey also offers a Free HDR Tutorial on his blog, so if you're interested in learning more about HDR shooting, this might be something you definitely want to have a look at.

Here's how Trey describes his work and himself: "I am known generally for the unique way in which I capture and process the world around me. I have my own “take” on HDR Photography, and you can see my free HDR Tutorial right here. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I view the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. Whatever that means."

This is a short behind-the-scenes video about one of his HDR landscape images from Iceland, just to give you an idea:

This is a bit longer video where Trey Ratcliff visits Google's Mountain View headquarters for an Photographers/Authors@Google talk:

I started this photoblog about a year ago and one of the first blog posts was a look back to the year 2010 with sort of a 'Best of' photo selection. So, I thought about doing the same this year as well, and although I feel very hesitant about making any kinds of 'Best of' lists, I think I could look at this as a flashback  or a quick coverage for the past year of 2011. I love visiting new places and countries, so even just by those standards, the last year was amazing.

I got to see a very very snowy winter and a hot summer (by our standards, that is) in my homeland, Finland, but I also had the chance to see The Alps in Engelberg, Switzerland, as well as the Bavarian region and German Alps in Garmich-Partenkirchen, Germany. I ended shooting some weddings, too, which added different kind of experience to my photography. On top of everything, I ended up moving to Sydney, Australia and also fulfilled one of my travelling dreams by touring a bit around New Zealand. So all in all, amazing places and amazing opportunities for improving my photography and I think I ended up getting couple of nice shots here and there. I don't want to view these images as the top selections for the year, but rather as  a photography collection that I see covering my year of 2011 pretty well and the way I personally see it.
All I can say is: The World Is Beautiful.

Here we go, the chosen 11 photos from the year 2011. Let this be a great start for the photo-rich year of 2012.

This is one of those videos I recommend watching. Yes, it's all the wonders of wildlife and photography, but photographer Paul Nicklen also has a bit deeper message behind his great speech which he held in TED Talks. 

"http://www.ted.com Diving under the Antarctic ice to get close to the much-feared leopard seal, photographer Paul Nicklen found an extraordinary new friend. Share his hilarious, passionate stories of the polar wonderlands, illustrated by glorious images of the animals who live on and under the ice."

Paul Nicklen Photography:  www.paulnicklen.com

So the last post was about some inspirational films and now I'm sharing some things that have given me a chance (and a change) to see and explore new views in this world. Namely, I left Helsinki and Finland for Sydney, Australia in August. I also left my full time day job in Helsinki and decided to take some time off for myself as well as, you guessed it, to explore now places with my camera. My current camera body, too, is pretty new - I got this Nikon D300s this past July and so far I'm really liking it. Solidly built and good quality, although it's not the newest models body Nikon has produced.

Overall, I've been taking various kinds of photos (as usual) during my time here in Australia, from landscapes and cityscapes to street photography and wildlife photography. My new The Sydney Blog Tumblr blog is kind of my photojournal from my time here.

I also bought a new Manfrotto tripod and have been practicing long exposure photography, which I haven't been doing much before. I've been doing some night/evening shoots here in Sydney, which is a beautiful big city right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The other long exposure technique I've been precticing is taking LE photos in the daytime, for which you need ND (Neutral Density) filters. Generally I've been doing much more urban and cityscape photography than before and it's been really interesting environment to walk around and shoot. Since you also find beutiful coastlines and beaches from right here in Sydney, it's not like you're just surrounded with dark brick walls, though. Below is some cityscape photography I've taken during the past few months.
Here's a link to my Behance Network project with more cityscapes from Sydney. I've also been updating my facebook page with all the latest photos. Oh, and since the Google+ has properly taken off now, I'm also using that one and it seems that at least the photographer community is very active in the G+.

So, it's been a really long time since the last time I updated my photoblog. Not sure what's the main reason to that, but I've decided to pick things up again on this side as well. I've been updating my Facebook photography page and also my Tumblr photo feed, but for some reason this blog sort of fell behind.

Anyway, many things have changed, one of the major changes being that I now live in Sydney, Australia. I dedicated a Tumblr photoblog, The Sydney Blog, for the general photography I've been shooting here Down Under. I'll update more on the things that I've been doing during the past few months later, but in the meantime, here's a couple of new and not-so-new films I would recommend as an inspiration for everyone.

The first is 'Home'. Many of you might be familiar with Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his 'Earth From Above' series. His exceptional non-profit film 'Home' is something worth watching. Amazing footage from this globe.
You can watch the whole film here, on YouTube (non-profit, free distribution film, mind you).

The next one is 'Oceans'. French nature documentary film by Jacques Perrin . The film explores Earth's five oceans and it was filmed in over 50 different places and took four years to film. Oceans is directed and produced by Jacques Perrin, director Jacques Cluzaud with producer Nicolas Mauvernay, editors Catherine Mauchain and Vincent Schmitt, art director Arnaud Le Roch. The footage, again, is amazing with extraordinary cinematography and instead of focusing on spoken words it lets you just watch in awe. Here's a short clip from the movie, 'Weathering the Storm'.

The last recommendation might be a bit obvious, but still a must, nevertheless. It's Sir David Attenboroug's (BBC) Frozen Planet series, which is currently running on TV here in Australia. No need for praising the quality more than just telling that you will not be dissapointed. The DVD will be a must buy for me. There you go.

Due to some questions about from where to get my photography, I have started to use RedBubble for my print sales. Here's more info about buying prints through RedBubble with some selected photos. This is the link to my RedBubble portfolio. Go and check it out and if there's some different photos you wish to buy then contact me personally and we'll try to sort it out.

Thanks to internet and digital advancements, there's more and more publications and websites that support creative people and give them a chance to display their work. Under Republic is one of them and they are here for "Establishing a network of Artists, Musicians, and Iconoclasts." Sounds really good to me. Anyway, they were kind enough and asked me some questions and displayed some of my photos in their latest #10 issue.
Under Republic is an e-magazine and you can read it in here. If you want skip to my interview, it starts from the page 42. You can tell from the funky layout that these guys want to do things in their own way and that's always a good thing. I surely appreciate that they have my photography nicely presented on spread sheets too.

More at: www.underrepublic.com

It's getting warmer in Helsinki and the days are getting longer. We went to do some landscape shooting with other amateur photographers this past weekend and here's a couple of photos I took. The location was the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, situated on a group of islands off Helsinki. Established Finnish landscape photographer Mikael Rantalainen, who is specialized in winter landscapes, was instructing us so we got to see how an experienced photographer goes on with his outdoor shootings.