Wow what a year I have had! Made it in Dubai!

Its hard to believe but 2014 is coming to a close. I have had the most amazing year to date in regards to how much my business have grown and all the fun photo shoots I have had the honor to work on.
I am having a  hard time to pick a particular moment because I have had so many totally awesome ones this year but if I would just mention a few that are topping my list I would say photographing Donald Trump for a magazine cover was a super fun photo shoot and to photograph the Majesty the Queen of Sweden was pretty cool for me as well being a fellow Swede :) It was also a total honor to be the chosen photographer to photograph some of the Al Maktoum children. When I got the phone call I totally thought I was on candid camera or something lol. Same thing when I drove up to the palace and the guard stopped me saying I must have gotten the wrong house and asking me do you know who lives here? -It is Sheikh Mohamed Al Maktoum! And my reply was yes then I'm at the right place thats where I am going. You should have seen the disbelief on his face ha ha. But a phone call later and the gates were opened for me. It was pretty awesome to say the least.
I also have had several nice article write ups about me in the press both here locally in the UAE and back home in Sweden, as well as several radio appearances in both Sweden and here in Dubai.
2014 was also the year I started photographing local Emirati weddings, previous years I have photographed European weddings where most of them being Scandinavian weddings either Norwegian or Swedish ones, but this year I also embarked on the Emirati ones and I am loving to be chosen to also capture them. I have photographed 11 local Emirati female weddings this year and I already have quite a few booked in for 2015 with my first one this Friday the 2nd of January in Abu Dhabi, so I am predicting the numbers will be at least tripled for next year easily.
I have had a very diverse and very fun year to say the least hoping for just an exciting and fullfilling 2015.
Do you have any new years resolutions?
I have one which is to learn how to film with my dslr. What is yours?
Happy New year to you all!!
Over and out for now.
Helen xx

#Selfie

Al Badia Golf Club

Darren Clarke

Donald Trump

Tiger Woods

#DubaiPhotoWalks

Rory McIlroy

Amelia Magazine. Swedens largest women's magazine

Helen and Donald Trump

Live on the radio

Miguel Angel Jimenez

Louise Larsson

Eduardo Molinari

Donald Trump

Lets Kick Start the Dubai Wedding season!

Hey!
Hope you are all great! I am super duper today. Very busy but that is always a good thing right? Having people asking for edited photographs right left and center almost a bit overwhelming but Hey I can do it right?!! Yesterday was a fun day I got three new jobs that are coming up shortly. It rarely happens to me that I get three jobs booked in on the same day so that was great news! One is already happening tomorrow thankfully its in the afternoon towards early Saturday morning because I had already another shoot booked in, in the morning, it will be a long day tomorrow for sure. That is when its good to be passionate about what you are working with then you don't really mind the long hours sometimes. :)
I will start my day photographing some jewelry with two models, I have been photographing the jewelry pieces by themselves all week and will continue next week as well its so many different pieces. But then the real fun start in Abu Dhabi in the afternoon with a local Wedding where 900 guests are expected to attend. I am glad they are not asking for a group shot :) since then I would probably have to be up in a helicopter hovering above them with a super wide angle lens ha ha ha. Which in it self would be great fun!
I am pleased that the Dubai or should I say U.A.E. Wedding season have started! I just love photographing a wedding everyone are so happy and its a great fun day.
over and out for now.
Helen xx
So Lets kick start the Wedding season!

Check out How I did my Front Cover Magazine Photo Shoot

Hi,
As I have told you guys earlier I photographed the cover for World Wide Golf Magazine a while back but could not yet share any images with you. The magazine is finally out so I can now show you guys some more details from the photo shoot.

As I mentioned before I was using Profoto Lights to light up both the background evenly as well as Mr. Donald Trump himself. I took a few over view images so that you can easier see my photography set up for this magazine cover photo shoot.
http://issuu.com/sportingpublications/docs/wwg_june_issue__lr

Here is my lighting set up, I had 3 D1's, I was at first thinking I should use the B1's since I was not sure if I would have near by access to a power socket but I had the chance to go to my location the day before for a quick look at the premisses to give me an idea of what I had available for me so in the end I opted for that D1's would work fine. I had two Profoto Strip Softboxes RFi 1x6' to make sure the background was evenly lit up. You can see part of my Profoto Octa Softbox that I used as my main light that I had positioned just above Donald Trumps head. On this photo it is lower down for when I was testing but you will see below that I put it higher up later due to that Donald Trump is a very tall man he is 1.91cm. ( I googled that in advance, so that I would be prepared of how I would have to position my lighting) When you know you have an extremely short period of time to photograph someone you should aim at having as few surprises as possible and to have as many facts as you can to speed up the photo shoot itself.  I had my back drop stand as high up as I possibly could and it was still not as high up as I would have liked it to be. I wanted more back drop space above his head than I actually had but hey there was nothing I could to about that there. I am quite tall (1.76cm) but I still had to stand a little bit on my tipi toes in order to create more background space above his head as well as not to photograph him from below :)

My assistant refused to step in front of the camera when I wanted to do a test shot lol so here is a shot of me testing how it would look if I gave Donald Trump a putter. You can see that I had put my main light  a little bit higher for this shot than in the previous one when I was just checking if they were all working at the same time :)

Here you can see an issue I had when Mr. Trump pointed the driver too far right, the end interfered with my background lighting, so I had to steer him more to the center to get a good shot. This is due to us being in such a small space, had we had a larger studio then this would have been avoided. But we had set up a studio in a small room next to where the press conference were for the Trump International Golf Course Akoya by Damac. Thankfully it was quite a high ceiling so that was to my advantage.

 To show you how the front cover was set up. My assistant Sherif Karas had put an X mark with tape on the floor so that we could easily tell Mr. Trump to please stand right there where we knew our light was set up for. I then removed it in photoshop on the images where it was visible.

I used a 2,75cm white paper back drop in case you were wondering. The white back drop was set up in front of a window.  With all this studio gear you can imagine my car was filled to the rim. I had to take the baby car seat out to be able to fit my camera bag lol. The camera I used of this job was a Canon 5D Mark 3 with the Canon 24-70mm lens f2.8. For most of the photographs I had my shutter speed on 160 and aperture was 8 and 9. I used 8 for most of the shots but changed in the end to 9 for some but kept my shutter speed the same and ISO was 100. I always photograph with the camera in Manual mode to make sure I have full control of all the elements.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask, I will try and answer as best I can.
Over and out for now.
Helen xx
www.shippeyphotography.com

Marhababy one of my lovely Dubai clients

I met up with the lovely owner and founder of Marhababy, Eveline a while back. They were just starting up at the time so were of course in need of lots of photographs to use on both their website and other marketing material. And hey presto there was I :) We started to plan straight away what kind of photographs she wanted and needed to capture for her website. We started a pinterest mood board so we both could pin by ourselves when we saw something that we thought was fitting for our photo shoot. Once we had all our ideas more or less in order I started to source models for our photo shoot we wanted everyday women that were pregnant and some children. It was fairly easy to get cooperating models thank fully all thanks to Dubai's very efficient social media network! I just love how great the social media platform in Dubai is, so helpful when you have a questioner need of models etc. It is absolutely brilliant. (If you by any chance want to follow me on Twitter you can find me as @hshippey on Fb you can find me as @shippeyphotography)
Here are some of the snaps that we captured on our first photo shoot together we have since sour first one had another rome as well, that I will share with you guys later because i have not yet edited those images :)
If you are pregnant or have small children then please checkout www.marhababy.com their company idea is to provide new mums with great product information of what products that are available to us here in the U.A.E. it cane quite daunting being away from family and not know where to find things and don't know who to ask either.

Here we wanted the look of two mums getting together for a chat at a cafe.

Here we wanted a paparazzi themed look what do you think did we pull it off? lol

Happy Ladies!

Here we made a baby shower theme with two pregnant mums one having a girl and the other a boy.

Thanks for reading!
Helen xx
www.shippeyphotography.com

Dubai night photography

Hi,
I had the pleasure to go out with 3 Swedish ladies and photograph out on the Palm Jumeirah the other night. We all met at the end of one of the outer palm leafs opposite Anantara Hotel. I have started to organize photography get togethers for the SWEA members in Dubai this was our third outing together.
We started a little bit too early but it was all nice to get together and have a nice chat only thing was its getting very hot outside in Dubai so at least I was quite uncomfortable just due to the heat and the humidity. There was absolute no wind out, well at least at our first location we swapped on the way back to another location and we had a slight breeze there.
We wanted to get the colors of the Dubai Skyline which we did in the end we just had to wait for it to get dark outside.

ISO 100 F 7.1 TV 1/80th of sec.

I shot this while we were waiting for the sun to set and it to get dark. 

The evening was not very clear unfortunately so I would like to go back to this location and photograph again another night when the sky is more clear and when its possibly cooler :)

 ISO 100 F 7.1 TV 6 sec.

 ISO 100 F 7.1 TV 6 sec.

This is our second location: So we saw JBR and Dubai Marina

 ISO 100 F 8 TV 6 sec.

                                                          ISO 200 F 6.3 TV 4 sec.

If you or your organization would like to take part in a photography outing with me please don't hesitate to contact me and we can set it up to suit you guys. Let me know what kind of photography it is you are interested in to take part of.  Just send me an email at info@shippeyphotography.com

I also do photography workshops if you are looking for more in-depth knowledge. 

Over and out for now.

Helenxx
www.shippeyphotography.com

Interior photography shoot.

Hey ya'
I have a client whom I love her name is Karla Seliman she is an Interior designer here in Dubai and such a great one too. So it is always so much fun to photograph her creations. I have photographed 3 of her designs so far and we have another one booked in soon as well. The first time we met I brought my daughter along and now she gives me grief every time I come to photograph one of her villas and I am not bringing my daughter, I leave her at home or at nursery mostly for my own sake since I am not sure how I would be able to concentrate with her running around in a designed house (my house does not look anything like the ones I photograph ever :( I wish it did lol )
When I photographed this apartment down in the Marina I used all natural light so I had my camera on a tripod and used a remote trigger to make sure I had no camera shake since I needed to use a long shutter speed on most of the photographs. I always photograph in Manual mode but of interior photo shoots i try to keep my aperture on around 11 or so if I want the whole room in that is not for a detail shot. I then adjust the shutter speed accordingly so that it matches up to my aperture setting. I also focus about a third into the room as well to make sure that you get the room sharp. You always have more depth of field behind your focus point than in front of it that is why you do not want to focus at the back of the room since then the whole room will look a bit out of focus.
There were of course more rooms than what I am showing below but I don't want to bore you :)  here is a sneak peek for you guys.
If you have any questions regarding how I captured these in more details or would like to book me for a photography job then don't hesitate to ask me.
Catch you all later.
/Helen xx

Karla's mum have painted this Art work I just love it don't you?

Cover photo shoot with Mr. Donald Trump

I had a very fun experience last week when I photographed the cover for World Wide Golf Magazine in Dubai. My subject was in fact a golfer but not one from the PGA Tour like I am used to photograph for them. This time it was none other than Donald Trump that was in town for  less than 24 hours. He jetted in early morning and set off again the same evening. Talk about a hectic travel agenda he must have. He was here to give a press conference about his new project that he is developing together with Damac here in Dubai. They are building Trump International Golf Course as well as housing developments around the golf course where his daughter Ivanka Trump is very involved in all the details from house layout to the bath room fixtures.
I was not sure what to expect of my photo shoot part from I knew that I needed to be quick and super efficient and clear with what I wanted him to do once he stood in front of my camera. All lights and everything needed to be set in advance. These things are of course a no brainer its what I do all the time but this time I knew there was no margin for error since we were all very pressed with the time we had with Donal Trump. He is of course by being who he is very used to being photographed so were probably the easiest subject to photograph but I did never think of it that way before hand. I was more worried about would he want to do what I wanted him to do in front of the camera? Well there was only one way to find out and that was to ask and show him what I wanted him to do. It all went according to plan very much thanks to my lovely photographer assistant I had on the day without him I am not sure I would have been able to pull it all off as smoothly as I did. So a Big Thank you to Sherif Karas for flying in from Cairo to help me out. As always when you never want anything to go wrong or not work according to plan it of course does but my assistant got everything up and running before Donald Trump entered the room Phew. I was slightly nervous for a few minutes but thanks to also having direct communications with Samir at Advanced Media we got everything sorted in time. This just shows you how important it is to know your gear inside and out because when something does not work the way you want it you need to know what to do or in this case who to call :)
The magazine wanted a plain white back ground so I had opted for two Profoto 1x6 light strips to light up the background evenly. I then had a Profoto Octa soft box as my main light just slightly above Mr. Donald Trump, and a plain white paper back drop. He is a tall man so even me that are tall had to stand a little on my toes to not shoot from too low as well as to make sure the back ground did not end just at his hair line. I had the background stand as high as it went but would have wanted it to go just a little higher to be perfectly happy. I used the Profoto Air remote control to control the lights separately straight from my camera which is very handy.
I can't really show you any of the photographs that I took on the day of Donald Trump since the magazine is not out yet but I will be sure to share it with you once it is out.

Here is a snap of me when i am testing the lights my assistant is holding my camera.

This is me and Donald Trump after the shoot which took 10 minutes all together .)

As a fellow golfer myself I am very impressed by Donald Trumps golf achievement on the tee I think it was on hole 11, he hit a ball for the press to see, straight down the fairway in his suite and tie.
Most people can't to that after a few golf holes and practice swings and wearing proper golf attire.

Hope you are all well. I am for sure! Feel like I am living the dream today at least lol :)

Over and out for now!
/Helen
www.shippeyphotography.com