Tag: girl

Behind the Scenes – ‘THE STORM STARTER’

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Behind the Scenes – ‘THE STORM STARTER’

A late summers day I gathered a fantastic team to make an image for my conceptual portrait series ‘Parallels’. I had been inspired by Rania’s (previous studio portrait) dreadlocks and her dark features for some time…

“…I wanted to create a portrait alluding to greek mythology characters and their features, like Medusa and her hair and the sirens and their manipulative powers. Being from the windy southwestern parts of Sweden the image was created on the concept of the ocean and storm, and the power to control it.“

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Photographer | JENNY JACOBSSON
Make Up Artist | MARTINA SÖDERLUND
Model | RANIA RÖNNTOFT
Assistant | ANDREAS SKOGLUND
Behind the Scenes footage | JENNY, MARTINA and ANDREAS
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Martina got the task of keeping Rania’s natural beauty but at the same time turn her into a vicious sea creature. I had the task of making Ranias dreads stand up like they were floating and moving by her powers. To do this I needed to twist steel wires round every one of her approx. 40 dreadlocks and then sew sewing threads to the tips that we later connected to a wire ring crafted by Andreas.

onceptual, portrait, make up, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
onceptual, hair, portrait, make up, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
onceptual, portrait, make up, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
onceptual, portrait, make up, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology

We attached the wire ring to a long stick that Andreas used to lift up the dreadlocks above Rania’s head. Thank you so much Andreas, for patiently performing the odd task of standing out in the cold wind holding a stick attached to hair.

onceptual, portrait, hair, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
onceptual, portrait, hair, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
conceptual, portrait, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, storm, ocean, beach, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
conceptual, portrait, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, storm, ocean, beach, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
conceptual, portrait, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, storm, ocean, beach, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology
onceptual, portrait, hair, Medusa, siren, dreads, dreadlocks, tentacles, Göteborg, Rania Rönntoft, mythology

A huge thank you to you Rania for your radiantly positive attitude, even when getting wet and cold. And to Martina for your creative vision and also shooting BtS footage. We sure had a fun time, fighting against the sunset!

conceptual, portrait, Parallel worlds, butterfly, snow, winter, landscape, angel, death, jar, woman, trees, Sälen

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If you enjoy the Behind the Scenes videos, you should take a look at this freeeeeezing one…
 
 

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IF YOU LIKED HER PORTRAIT, GIVE RANIA SOME LOVE ON FACEBOOK!

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Picture Of The Day at One Eyeland

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Picture Of The Day at One Eyeland

I was happily surprised, and proud, to have my piece “The fall” chosen as Picture Of The Day (October 19th) over at the fantastic One Eyeland! Not everyday that you see yourself next to a portrait of John Malkovich…

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A great way to learn more and see selections of images, and if you’re interested in me getting fried for answers, is to check out the features and interviews in the Features & Publications category!

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‘THE REFLECTION OF AUTUMN’

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‘THE REFLECTION OF AUTUMN’

Here are a few behind-the-scenes images from the making of “The Reflection of Autumn”.

October 30th… a cool autumn breeze rattles leaves fallen to the ground. The world is a mixture of red and yellow. A forest pool of water is quietly hiding secrets of the summer past. Sunken down into the cold depths. There are two persons on the bank of the pool, a boy and a girl. They look from the mystified water at each other and a question is lingering in the air.

Would anyone freely wade out to that log on that pool bottom, barefooted, bare legs against the icy water?

 

The answer to the question… is yes! Just bite the bullet and get in 🙂

The first attempt of trying to raise myself up on to the log from the water was in vain. The feet got sucked down into the bottom. So up I went up on solid ground again and approached the log from above. Playing leapfrog. The idea of getting on to the moist log without getting the dress and myself all dirty just had to be forgotten.

After a rather nice and actually not so cold shoot on the log, it was time to go in again. At least I got to play around a bit in the water, trying to splash Andreas who was assisting on land…

And I promise you, it was rather nice to get dressed again. And it took some time before I could feel my feet again. I hope you enjoy the final result of this shoot 🙂

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To freeze a little for the greater good

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To freeze a little for the greater good

View it on Flickr

“I had my doubts before doing this shot.”

First of all it’s been the coldest start of a winter I’ve experienced since I moved to Gothenburg/Göteborg. With weeks of -10°C (already in November) I lay in my bed at night thinking about maaaybe putting on a summer’s dress and make good use of that cool tree a few blocks away… but then again… naaaah… let’s do that when the weather gets warmer… AND when there is a greater amount of snow. AND when both those things happen on a weekend so that I’m off work and can actually perform the shot in daylight. Yeah, right, like that combo was gonna happen any time soon.

“This weekend, it did.”

-1°C and two days of snowing. Off I went! Can’t let myself down now can I. This time I had my beloved Andreas with me as an assistant. Like he said: “How could I ever miss an opportunity like this, to watch you walk around barefooted in snow with a dress on in December, and with a chance that someone will see you!?” Aaaww he is nothing but helpful.

So trudging through knee high snow to get to the tree, setting up the equipment and trying not to get the tripod to fall over and drown my camera in wet snow, waiting for some curious people to walk away (no way I’m starting with them there), taking off my warm comfy clothes behind the tree hoping no new people would come by, climbing the tree in a pink and really short dress and big fluffy winter boots, placing my behind on a big snow covered branch and ooooooh my little hiney that was cold!!!!!! Quickly pulling off the fluffy boots and placing them behind the trunk, posing crazily to quickly get a behind-the-scenes-photo and then WHAM. Seriousness. Pose. Pose. Pose. Move flowers around. Pose. Pose. Flip the hair around. Pose. No, not like that, stretch the toes. Pose. Pose. Tilt head the other way. Pose. Done. Quickly pulling on boots again and crazy out of happiness getting stuck on another behind-the-scenes-shot. Jumping down from tree and get dressed quicker than Superman. And then I get the good news that another couple had very intensely been studying us from the road….

Ah, well *shrug*. That’s another day in the life of a “52 weeks” photographer 🙂

Placing out flowers

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Levitation

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Levitation

And so it was time to answer the next question from my dear readers, and this one is from the delightful Anders Bergkvist, who wrote me a comment in You ask, I tell – The Force of Nature where he wondered “How did you create the levitating impression of your first Flickr Explore image?” (above).

THE PROBLEM

 If you’ve ever tried to make a proper jump you probably noticed that it’s difficult to get some distance from the ground at the same time making it look relaxed and without pulling your face. Unless you are perhaps a trained dancer or gymnast. And trust me… I’m certainly not…

LEVITATION AND MONTAGES

Levitation can of course be created in several ways. Like in all photography a good goal to create a realistic effect is to always capture as much as you can in camera, and try to avoid unnecessary manipulation. Since our mind and eyes are really good at noticing if something fishy is going on and if light and shadows don’t add up, it’s quite hard to put a montage together and there are a lot of things to be considered (more about that in a future post).

If I had been graceful enough (and believe me, I’m not) I would have performed this little jump and at the same time managed to pose and turn my torso slightly to create the body shape I was after. I tried, but I can assure you you wouldn’t be pleased with the result.

IMAGES NEEDED TO BE SHOT

Although for this shot I was a bit lucky, or at least I made it quite easy for myself since I didn’t want to levitate beyond belief. I just wanted to take off a little from the ground, like I was floating away. So I needed to shoot images with:

1) stretched legs and pointed toes

2) the shadow on the ground created by the jump

3) the upper body, relaxed and twisted the way I wanted with the face also relaxed and eyes on the ground

PHOTOSHOP PROCESS

After having shot two kinds of shots, one where I took a little jump trying to create good legs, and one kind where I was happy with my upper body, I opened my files in Photoshop. The two images that I’d chosen was put in two different layers on top of each other. Since the upper body layer needed to be placed a bit higher to match my waist, I moved this layer upwards until it fit (you can see how much I moved it in the 2nd image below if you look closely, on the line between the floor and the wall).

When this was done, I hid the “bad legs” from the upper body layer by painting black in my layermask, revealing the jumping legs from the layer below. So that you can this see better, in the 3rd image below I lowered the opacity of the upper body layer so that you can to see the two images together at once (I look a bit like a ghost).

To finish there were a few details that needed to be clone stamped or patched to make everything seemless in the dress, but that was about it for the levitation effect.

So by adding two or more different images into one, you can create the most incredible effects. Give it a try and have some fun with it!

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The Force of Nature

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The Force of Nature

Every now and then I get questions from my beloved blog followers, Flickr contacts, and/or friends about how I did something, why I did another thing, what my inspiration was, if I got caught doing that incredibly embarrasing thing… And I now think it’s time to start my You ask, I tell! And it’s just as simple as it sounds. You ask. And I will tell. Hopefully not too many embarrasing things 🙂

First up is a question I got from Hanna Jakobsson, the amazingly charming author of the blog Fröken Jakobssons Vänner, who wonders

“What did you do with the leaves in the tree image?”

And I’m pretty sure she is referring to The Force of Nature and how I processed the image to create the effect of the tree.

To leave an exact description of how I edited the tree would make this post far too long and I don’t want to bore you to death. It involved a lot of blurring, curves, levels, saturation changes, brushing, masking, and a few textures. And since I’m all about the visual, I’ve decided to show the process in 16 images.

The difference may be hard to see between some of the images (especially since they are quite small), but it’s there. It might be e.g. the color or saturation of the leaves, the color of different parts of the trunk, or a vignette. And since this image is not only about the tree I included the entire process, also showing the processing of the girl (me). Also, take a look at To surrender to the Force of Nature for a Behind the Scenes of the same image.

xoxo,
Jenny

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In da club – Birthday celebration!

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In da club – Birthday celebration!

And so it was time once more. Getting a year older. Some people say they no longer care for birthdays since they are now “so oooold”. Now THAT does not apply to me!! Well.. maybe the “so old” part, but certainly not the caring part. I just love birthdays! And my own is not exception. I’m told that I start talking about my birthday about a month in advance, not letting anybody miss that it’s coming up and behaving like a ten year old. Maybe I do, and I’m enjoying every little moment of it *giggle*. There is a Swedish saying, and it sure applies in this case, approximately like:

“You have as fun as you turn it in to”

So last weekend Andreas and I threw a party and thank you so much guys for coming and making it a fabulous time! It was a mixture of my and Andreas’s friends and you are all so adorable, kind, and fun! And on Sunday, “the big day”, I spent my birthday with an american brunch at Egg & Milk, a long autumn walk in the beaming sun and crisp fall air, and enjoying a gorgeous dinner, all in the company of my beloved Andreas. It was a beautiful day to remember, even when I turn 85 😉

As a celebration I created my latest Flickr self portrait, which appropriately is called In da club (see above). And I think you understand why. Creating it I certainly got my groove on, putting on some awesome music and shakin’ ma booty until I was scared the neighbours were gonna knock on my door.

And after all that fun I had to be a bit more serious and place out the rest of the disco balls (unfortunately I only had one that I had to turn into several) that were going to be in the main image. It didn’t take that long actually. The long part was the post processing. But I just thought about the birthday and I did it with a happy face 🙂

To end this post I just would like to say A very happy birthday to the people out there having their birthdays today! I hope you all will have a wonderful time.

PS. I got a new brain with a memory from Andreas as a birthday present, and some power to go with it.

Really, I did!

He had stuffed a plastic brain with a 16 GB memory card and a new battery for my camera 🙂

THANK YOUUUUU!!! <3

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To surrender to the Force of Nature

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To surrender to the Force of Nature

“Sometimes you find the most remarkable creations out in the wild. And sometimes they look like something you’ve only seen in the movies.”

One summer’s day not that long ago I took my usual walk around my neighbourhood. When passing by a group of trees that I’ve always admired the branches of, being a bit unusual hanging down like vines, I all of a sudden decided to take a look if I could use them in any of my shots. And as I walked through them like passing green curtains, this remarkable tree appeared. With a huge trunk and gnarled branches it reminded me of a tree from a fantasy movie, and when I saw that it had a strange part of the stem stretching out like a long funnel I knew I was hooked.

“I got a flash from a scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when the Whomping Willow tries to drag Harry and friends down under it, and decided that I had to surrender to the force of nature. The tree funnel just had to suck me in…”

Although it was interestingly big for being a tree funnel, it didn’t really seem big enough for me to really fit in it. And also, I must admit that the content of the hole didn’t look inviting. At all. So after measuring it in my head and balancing pros and cons, I decided NOT to get my bare legs all muddy, scratched and yucky. And not to mention getting in contact with the rich habitat of insects living in there. With that decision I also had appointed myself to several hours more behind the computer for post-processing. But that would be worth it.

The first time I was there I was wearing a white dress. I knew it was going to get really dirty taking the shot, but I decided I didn’t care. Crawling around the stem trying to find the right pose, it sure did. I took some shots (or a lot) with my remote and headed back home.

Going through the shots later on I wasn’t happy with the light, it was far too bright in spots, creating blown out areas on my arms and hands. Meaning that I had to walk there again a few days later to redo the whole thing.

Then it took me quite some time cutting myself out correctly in Photoshop. Then I just moved the cutout into the right position, decreased the size of myself a bit to make it look more realistic and so that I didn’t look like a giant placed in front of the hole, and melted the images together.

And voilá!
Nature won 🙂

The force of nature


Update November 6th 2010: The processing of this image is also covered within the Educational category. Go have a look!

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