Mormor Gun

Mormor Gun

Last I visited Gothenburg, I took the chance of sitting my Grandmother Gun down and posing her for a few photos, trying out flash arrangements and fiddling with my portraiture technique.

For this picture, the black and white treatment worked very well — while the color original was a good portrait, I feel that this ends up being more of a striking portrait. I tried to really show the texture of her skin, with lighting almost straight from the left; but possibly, it might have been a more flattering portrait with a fill flash, or a reflector, on the right. I do like this quite a bit, though — the side-lighting reminds me, almost, of Rembrandt's portraits.

In the mood

In the mood

At a jazz cafe, listening to the music, wearing my fedora, Susanne is intense, concentrated, in a phrase, «In the mood».

Focus is on her eyes, connecting you to her, but not very deep, bringing her neck, her shirt, even her lips and cheek, into a haze, fading into the distance. She looks, intensely, out of the frame, with the line of her gaze emphasized by the line of the brim of her hat. The entire image is comparatively low-key, a dark image, with the face the only detail visible, the texture of the hat just barely distinguishable from the completely blacked out background. While Susanne feels self-conscious about this image, it is one of my favourites. I love it to the extent that when looking for motifs to try to etch onto chocolate when I had access to a laser-cutter in February, I chose this image. Greyscale, and a very heavy-handed reduction in color depth, I ended up with the following image for the actual etching:

In the mood, etching copy

Susanne against the future

Portrait of Susanne

I'm not big on portraiture. I do it occasionally, but it's not a genre that comes easily to me. However, standing next to a monastery on top of a mountain in Greece with Susanne, watching the evening light fall in and soaking everything in its golden hues, I just had to ask her to stand in the light and pose.

And pose she did. After a number of decent shots, I asked her to shake loose her hair — and as she tossed it out — I snapped this.

A triangular composition, usually calming, here is filled with movement as the tossed hair flies, and the neck extends to sweep out her hair.

It shows off Susanne as a vibrant, happy, and beautiful woman, defiantly thrusting herself at her future, throat first. 

Sara, the mermaid

Portraiture: Radmila, backlit

Using the sun for lighting.

Portraiture: Radmila

My friend and colleague Radmila kindly posed in front of Utah's magnificent mountains.

Two generations

Mika and Gull — mother and grandmother of my best friend Jon Karlfeldt.

Mika and Gull

Mother and grandmother of my best friend, and best man at my wedding, Jon Karlfeldt.

Men who marry into my family

Generation gap

My father

My brother

Clara laughs

My brother and my father

Grandmother Gun in sepia

Gun, my grandmother

Susanne

Susanne in Chocolate (2)

Another chocolate etching, this time of one of Susanne's favourites among my renditions of her.

Susanne in chocolate (1)

Today I got my first session on the TechShop laser cutter. Great fun! Also, a LOT of fiddly bits that need to be Just Right for everything to work.

One of the coolest things with a laser cutter is that it can actually etch some food stuffs nicely. Here, a Lindt Sea Salt (Susanne's favourite chocolate) etched with a portrait of Susanne (this one, a simplified b/w version of this one) and her favourite poem:

Var inte rädd för mörkret
ty ljuset vilar där.
Vi ser ju inga stjärnor
där intet mörker är.

I ljusa irisringen
du bär en mörk pupill,
ty mörkt är allt som ljuset
med bävan längtar till.

Var inte rädd för mörkret,
ty ljuset vilar där,
var inte rädd för mörkret,
som ljusets hjärta bär.

In the mood

Many people look good in Fedoras. I certainly hope I look good in one. But few people I know carry them as spectacularly well as Susanne.

Here, in a close-up portrait I took to try and get used to my new flashgun.