2009 - Reviewed

After finishing the final pictures of the year, sending out the last invoices and paying off the few remaining bills, I felt that a good way to finish off 2009 for my blog is to make a post that sort of sums up the year.

I can't deny that it has been a very good year professionally. I've been busy more or less the entire year with just some weeks after my summer holiday being somewhat quiet. I've been assigned to a lot of great jobs with a lot of challenges both on the creative side and in the pre and postproduction aspects of the job. I feel like I have improved very much as a photographer this year and as a working photographer with everything that come along with the profession that has nothing to do with taking pictures and I feel way more secure while working with advanced retouching than I was in 2008. I believe the reason for this is that I have put in a lot of hours to improve myself this year.

Some of my work never saw daylight, some jobs were turned down by the client even though the ad-agency loved it, some work I'm not too happy with what I managed to come up with but fortunately enough most of my jobs made the client, the ad agency and myself feeling happy. I guess I can't expect every job I do to be better than the last, even though that is my goal. I won't quit even though I might have to take a step or two backwards every now and then, as long as the finishing line is miles ahead of where I started I'll be happy.

All in all this has been a truly fantastic year, hopefully next year can be equally challenging, funny and rewarding.
I'd like to thank all the creatives out there who believed enough in me to hand me work, hopefully I didn't let you down so we can keep working together further on into the future. Hopefully I'll get some new people to shout out "Heia Espen" and hand me some exciting work as well. I'd also like to thank my mum, my dad, my girlfriend and the man upstairs. Love you all.

Cheers everyone, I wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year. See ya all in 2010.

Feel free to take a trip to my portfolio and check out my work - Heia Espen.

The Last shoot

of 2009 was completed yesterday. Evolved into a rather stressful day as the time flew by us, fortunately we managed to finish not long after scheduled. Barely had time to get back to Oslo and take a shower before it was time for the annual christmas party with the photographers and assistants at our studio. It was a great night. I'll finish this last shoot with postproduction on monday and tuesday and then it's holiday. Wheeee.

My assistant checking the lights, he'll be with me fulltime 5 days a week next year. Hopefully I'll get to keep him busy.

Finito

With the job I did for Statoil today, might be some changes after the client has seen it but hopefully that will only be some minor details. I have some postproduction to be done for Agrodata and a shoot on thursday and then I'll be hanging out with father christmas for a couple of weeks. Sweet.

Here are the still images from the Hansen & Dysvik shoot, these will be used in DM's and on their website and such.

Dodge & Burn

Spent about 8 hours on tuesday to get ready for yesterdays shoot. Used 7 lights to get the look that I wanted. Had two assistants with me to make it effective, cleaning the cars and taking care of everything that needed to be done. Because of the very thorough preproduction the shoot yesterday went rather smooth. Today I've been working at my mac, lot of work left and I have to deliver all the pictures on monday. Because of the extensive postproduction I had to cancel the lunch I had scheduled with Will Smith and Obama, guess I'll have to reschedule so I don't hurt their feelings.
This is Gabbe filming some behind the scenes footage, slight size difference between us.

Huuuge studio

Preparing tomorrows shoot, a couple of cars, several people and looots
of equipment!

Christmas @ Hansen & Dysvik

My last film for Hansen & Dysvik is currently showing on norwegian television. So if you need something new for the bedroom head over to the nearest store. :-)
Just like the other films I have made for H&D the job was assigned to me by Los & Co ad agency and the postproduction is done by Toxic.

Hansen & Dysvik - Christmas from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

Here are some behind the scenes footage from the shoot in my studio.

Behind The Scenes - Hansen & Dysvik from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

FreeDay

Things are starting to get sorted out for the Statoil shoot I'm having next week. That's good and hopefully I'll be able to relax this weekend. My mind is not too good at relaxing while there is work to be done, always pondering and thinking about everything. Even though I'll not be able to do a thing about it until Monday anyway. Bad habit that one.

Some more pictures for DFDS is out now. Here they are.

Married Couple

Hopefully I'll get to marry my beautiful girlfriend one day like my beloved friends Guro & Victor did this summer. I took some pictures of them in my studio with a pink backdrop. I think it suits them both as persons and on this picture. Ebony & Ivory. Love you both.

More Work

After a couple of intense months I decided to take it quite easy last week. Some work on monday and then almost taking the rest of the week off, just a couple of hours in the studio on friday. It felt great to just relax, sleep a bit longer and recharge my batteries. And while taking it easy I got assigned to two new jobs, one of which is probably my biggest one yet, at least considering it might be used in several countries. I got assigned by McCann to do a rather large shoot for Statoil and TBWA wants me to take a couple of pictures for Helsedirektoratet, with celeb-models.
Fancy. :-)

This will be a perfect ending of an insane year.

Behind The Scenes - Freeze

Here is some behind the scenes footage from the shoot with the freezing people.

Behind The Scenes - Freeze from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

Sølve Sundsbø

By far the greatest photographer to come out of Norway of all time is doing a very rare interview to ShowStudio, check it out. He has some really nice thoughts about photography.

Interview

Check out his incredibly fantastic portfolio.

Portfolio

Making Of - Freeze

2 days shooting, 3 days with postproduction, 170 layers, 5,8 gigabyte file, 1 picture. Here is the Making Of video of the former image. Hope you like it. :-)

Making Of - Freeze from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

Unpublished Work #1

This is one of the jobs that will never get published. Personally I think it might be my best job so far, at least the most advanced image I've had to make. Later i'll be posting a video showing how the image has been made in photoshop.



closeup

Depressed

I'm sad, what happened to my karma? My last two jobs will not be used for reasons I can't say. What I do know is that it is not because of what I delivered. But politics within a large company can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. The sad thing is that I'm really happy with both jobs with one of them being one of the best works I've ever made. I would love to see it published. I'll probably be able to publish it on this blog as long as I remove all info about the client and such but it still sucks. My work means very much to me and if I could choose to have these jobs published and not get paid instead of getting paid without having it published the choice is too easy. I would be a poor photographer with images all across town any day.

Agrodata Portraits

These are some of the images I took recently for Agrodata with Making Waves. They will be used as ads, on their webpage and whenever they are promoting their company in some way. Most of my work consists of lots of lights, lots of retouching etc. so it's quite a challenge to photograph with nothing but the camera. In some ways I think it is much harder actually.

post-postproduction

I'm stuck at the mac. As always.
I wonder what the analog photographers do during working hours, they have to have an immense amount of spare time. I wish my machine had some kind of clock to count how many hours it has been used during 2009. Still a couple of hundred hours of work on it before it's christmas. Finished three jobs at the moment with the one for Ernö being quite the time-consumer. I do think it will turn out nice though and then it's worth all the hours. Easily.
I changed the header on my blog today, felt it represents the blog better than the black and white nature picture that was up there before.

Untitled Sunday

I've had a very nice weekend, thanksgiving dinner on friday with classmates from Norsk Fotofagskole, it's a couple of years between each time we see each other so that was very nice. I have managed to take some time off as well so that my body could rest a bit but I didn't manage to stay away from the studio the entire weekend. So now I'm sitting at my office working a bit, doing some paperwork, paying a whole lot of bills, sorting out the pictures from my latest jobs etc. etc.
Heading home in a bit just wanted to publish another DFDS picture, this was featured as a doublepage ad in A-magasinet on friday.

Tiiiired

The shoot is finished. People are happy. I am tired. Weekend. Yeah.

Farmers

Went on another trip today shooting farmers for Making Waves. Brought my friend Marius with me as an assistant even though all he did was filming and driving. Still though, more fun with two than traveling alone. After a full day shooting we spent a couple of hours setting up the lights for tomorrows shoot. Just a bit renaming and backing up of my files now before I head home. I have a very challenging shoot ahead of me tomorrow, can't wait.

There is a new dog in town

his name is Walter and he is the meanest, scariest dog you've ever met. He is 8 weeks old and is already settling in in the studio. About time we got a dog to watch our and our equipments back.

Sicko

I've been laying in bed with fever and headache since sunday and I should probably have taken it easy a couple of more days as well. One should think that when working on your own it's no problem to be ill, it's so the opposite. On average I've probably sent 30 mails and taking 15 phonecalls each day and today I've been in the studio working, hopefully I'll stay healthy for a week or so so I can finish all the ongoing projects.

I'll be heading down southeast tomorrow shooting more portraits for Agrodata and then I'll have a big shoot with Ernö on friday.

Here is another image from the DFDS campaign.

DFDS

This is the first out of the 8 ads I did together with Suddenly Oslo for DFDS. My assistant sneaked around with a camera as well that day and I've put together some behind the scenes footage. The music is made by my dad's favorite ensemble, Kraftwerk.

Behind The Scenes - DFDS from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

More Work

Jeez, I feel like I have been working 12 hours a day since the very beginning of September. It's been just totally insane amount of work. Shooting, doing pre-production, meetings, booking models etc. at daytime and doing photoshop work after normal working hours and out into the late evening. It feels great though, to be so busy, I guess I'm doing something right. After a really difficult shoot for Ruter and another film today for Hansen & Dysvik with all the complications involved with having the camera attached to the roof it seemed as if the next weeks would be easier, but nooo. Got assigned to another big and complicated shoot today with Ernö. The results can be very nice if I manage to work my magic. ;-)
Tomorrow I'll head out southwest for another shoot with Making Waves before I take an early weekend on friday.

Cheers

Merry

Christmas in the studio, I'll be shooting a new commercial film for
Hansen & Dysvik today.

Terra

I did some pictures with Schjærven ad agency for Terra in September. Now the images are out and here they are.

Huuuge picture

I've been sitting for a couple of days(including sunday) with this huuuuuge picture I'm making for Ruter. It consists of 142 layers including adjustment layers and the file is 4,2 gigabyte. It's by far my most comprehensive photoshop-image and I can't wait to show it and publish a Making Of movie showing all the steps. I'm really pleased with the result and hopefully the client likes it as well. But now I'm rather tired so I'm heading home before continuing tomorrow morning.

Shooting sunset

I'm shooting the sunset for the picture to be taken tomorrow. Crazy
beautiful.

håårs

Had a lovely day down in Vestfold today, shooting portraits and more for Agrodata with Making Waves. At least two more days with the same recipe at different locations. Probably next week. So now I can concentrate on the image I'll be doing for Ruter and all the details that need to be shot for the composite to work. I'm feeling the pressure, have I got the skillz to pull it off?

Shitloads of work

In addition to 3 days of shooting with Making Waves, 8 pictures to be finished for DFDS, pre-production for another Hansen & Dysvik film to be shot next week I also got a job for Ruter with a loooot of pre and post-production. So I'll be living in the studio for the next two to three weeks. Take care.

Photographer of Friday #1

Inspired by the great guys over at WORK I'll start a weekly tradition presenting work from some of my favorite photographers each friday. Starting off with the highly talented Dimitri Daniloff working out of Paris. You can also check out a interesting interview with him at F-Stop.

Here are some of my favorites.

Flust.no

I got assigned by Toxic to shoot some still images for them to use in two commercials for Flust.no. Here they are.

Flust.no - #1 from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

Flust.no - #2 from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

DFDS

Had a rather hectic shoot today with 5 adult models, 5 kids, 5 parents/clients, 1 art director, 1 stylist, 1 assistant and myself.
A lot of people involved but a very funny day indeed, the results turned out pretty great as well. Have some interesting details that need to be solved in photoshop but hopefully I'll manage.

Got assigned to another job today that has been in the making for a couple of months almost. Will be shooting a bunch of portraits with Making Waves.
The christmas-themed film for Hansen & Dysvik with Los & Co finally got settled as well so that will cover up my next two weeks with work.

Todays rather simple set-up.

http://www.heiaespen.com - videos

The superb guys over at Upstruct has incorporated videos from Vimeo so that they can be featured on my website. I'm very happy with the result. Check it out.

Canon 1d mkIV

I'm shooting some images with Los & Co for Hurtigruta today. But who cares, what amazed me today was this brand new video shot with the brand new Canon camera not even released. The entire film was shot on iso6400 and no external lighting was used. It's insane. No noise. Jeeez.

Nocturne from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

Fooooood

I'm attending a 3-day food course and it is extremely cool. Effective
but attentive to details, learning a whole lot.

The pig is back, in todays D2.

CanCam

I got assigned to a new job today, will be shooting for DFDS with Suddenly Oslo next week. I have another interesting job in the waiting as well, hopefully I'll be able to do it.

Bought the new Canon G11 a couple of days ago, I haven't had a decent compact in years and with this I'll always have a camera with me, the files look promising as well.

Elephant

UPDATED:
Got some nice feedback about the shadows beneath the elephant, I have now worked with that so the elements feel more attached to the ground and less floating. Here is the updated image. Better?




I have created another image with an animal that follow the trend I started with the horse. The goal is to create 6 images in this, can I call it a series? This time I came across an elephant residing somewhere in Telemark.

Here is the final image, the original images and the Making Of video.

Making Of - Elephant from Espen Nersveen on Vimeo.

All over the place

My images are pretty much everywhere as far as I can tell. Looks good too I think. I'm happy.

Ventelo Boards

These are the ads I did for Ventelo with Grey. The wireframe and the robothead is made by SuperRune. These images will be on adshells, boards, at airports and in newspapers/magazines.
So hopefully you'll spot them on your way.

Behind The Scenes - Ventelo Launch Campaign

Ventelo this and Ventelo that

Ventelo has been relaunched and I've done all their pictures. 20-something portraits of the employees of the company and 5 ads to be shown all over the country. Here are 6 of the portraits that I took for them. The ads will be posted as soon as I get them from the agency.

Ventelo

Doublepage spread in todays DN. Ad for Ventelo.