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!

Rock The Goat Catalog Photo Shoot

Hi,
While I was in Sweden I had so many fun photo shoots. The weather was nice most of the time started off a bit on the cool side but made up for it in the end with being on the very warm side. But not as warm as in Dubai of course but without AC you do feel slightly handicapped in the heat :) I will show you a couple of the photo shoots here for sure but today I want to start with the one I did for a new up and coming children's clothing line. All the clothes are made out of 100% cashmere in Italy with a Swedish designer. The brand is called Rock The Goat So please check them out. They have some very cool stuff for kids. ps. I have had a sneak peek of their upcoming collection and it looks super funky so stay tuned for our next photo shoot that will take place in November in Dubai.
I had some great Swedish models all around 5-6 years old when we photographed the pre-collection. All the models were super good listening to what I wanted out of them so we finished the whole shoot 2 hours ahead of time! So client was super happy as was I.
Just to make the photoshoot slightly more challenging I used colored powdered sand for some of the shots. I can tell you how I did it all in the end another day that could be a whole blog post by itself lol. I had never photographed with such a powder before so felt I needed some practice so I invited a few friends by asking can I please throw some sand on you while I photograph it? Surprisingly I had two people saying Yes to that. Must be proper friendship then don't you think?
Not sure I would be able to pull that off here in Dubai... don't think I have enough close friends lol
Here are some of the snaps that I captured on the day for the catalog.

Me behind the scene explaining to my model what i want him to do next.

This is the final catalog. 

I was chatting on the Swedish radio about taking a chance in life!

Hi,
I was live on Swedish Radio on Thursday the 17th of July 2014 on the channel Sveriges Radio Vastmanland P4.
Click on the link below to listen to it. Disclaimer It's all in Swedish !! :) You can fast forward to about the 59th minute thats when I come on.
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/395468?programid=2985

I had a great time chatting with the radio host Ida about taking the big leap and moving abroad, curate to do it and would I recommend it and tips about expat life! In short Yes I would recommend moving abroad if you get the chance to experience life a bit differently for a little while, you don't have to do like me move and then stay but it is definitively fun to experience for a little while gives you perspective of life and the world for sure!
Catch you all later.
Helen xxx

Dinner Time Dubai

Hi,

I had the great pleasure to work with a company called Dinner Time. Their staff are the greatest so bubbly and very fun to work with and to have around you. I have actually worked with them twice on two different projects. This is the first one where I photographed from their distribution center which is Choitrams super market, every thing looked spick and span and super fresh.

The company idea is that you book a box with food where they have prepared for you 4 meals with easy to follow recipes and the ingredients that you need for it. They also have a gluten free option which is quite unique. They use organic vegetables when they can. I can say it all looked very nice so I will shortly be one of their customers as well. It is hard working full time and finding the time to go to the grocery store their box of food comes straight to your door super convenient. You also won't buy all that unnecessary stuff you see when you go shopping or if yo have a little mischievous one like I do that tries to help you shop and definitively do not put in the things you want in the basket but some how end up buying, bless her :) So I bet its cheaper ordering it to your door than going by your self ha, ha. You also do not need to come up with what to eat by yourself someone else have decided for you that to me sounds so convenient and are worth a bit of money in my book. Sorry did not mean to try and sell you on Dinner Time I just like the idea its a great one. I think I have heard they have the same concept in Sweden as well maybe also in other places in the world.!? 

Any how here are some of the snaps I took for them.

Helen live on Dubai Eye 103.8 Dubai Radio station

Hi everyone,
Not sure I have told you guys but I was invited back to talk on Dubai Eye 103.8 radio station again. And of course I never say no to an invitation like that :) This time I was not invited to talk about my photography but to talk about my country Sweden on their travel show. I was very quick with answering yes of course I can do that! Then I started to think oh dear what do I know… I have lived outside of Sweden for I think its 17 years now so I was thinking wonder if anything have changed :) I do go back home (I still call it home) to Sweden every year for at least a month so I should be fairly updated about things lol
Anyway here you can have a listen to how it all went when I was chatting about my wonderful country Sweden!
https://audioboo.fm/boos/2086461-the-spotlight-1-17-04-2014

Lucy Taylor Radio Presenter

Mark Lloyd Radio Presenter

Stephanie from Sweden residing in Dubai

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