Thomas Ljungberg – Bröllopsfotograf Stockholm: slideshow image 1
Thomas Ljungberg – Bröllopsfotograf Stockholm: slideshow image 2
Thomas Ljungberg – Bröllopsfotograf Stockholm: slideshow image 3
Thomas Ljungberg – Bröllopsfotograf Stockholm: slideshow image 4
Thomas Ljungberg – Bröllopsfotograf Stockholm: slideshow image 5

Blog

Calendar 2013 ExamplesFinally I can release the much requested Lightroom calendar templates for 2013. I’ve redone the structure in my master files and now use Photoshop variables and data sets to more easily create new versions. This remake took more time than expected, sorry for the delay. Hopefully I will get to harvest the fruit of this when creating next years templates :-)

Go and get the free versions in any of 12 languages. New for this year is Polish!:

  • Danish
  • German
  • Norwegian
  • Finnish
  • Swedish
  • Italian
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Portuguese
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Polish (new!)

Download them here and create your own 2013 calendars using Lightroom’s print module.

Or buy the fully layered psd-files and make your own templates. Change fonts, colors, etc using Adobe Photoshop.

Add to Cart View Cart

More information regarding the 2013 Lightroom Calendar Templates, free as well as fully layered templates, the ISO sized Lightroom Print presets and how to use them.

I’ll make a post in a couple of days with more detailed instructions on how to modify the templates using data sets, etc.

Calendar 2013 Examples

Many thanks to two great friends for letting me use some of their images in above examples (head portrait and ring image are taken by myself):

  • Chamonix/France based photographer Alexandre Buisse, a great mountaineering and adventure photographer.
  • West Kootenays/British Columbia/Canada based Ursula I Abresch, an art photographer whose creativity and photographic eye always inspires.

At our last visit at my sister in-law we received a big bag with delicious apples. So the other evening I adjusted a recipe I found and made my very own creation: Thomas spicy apple and pistage pie! It does not get better than this… :-)

As the pie did it’s thing in the oven, I set up my portable studio to test some food photography. So in todays post you will get two recipes: one for making the pie and one for lighting the photo.

Recipe, Thomas spicy apple & pistage pie

This will give you a delicious pie with much tast. The roughly chopped pistage nuts in the dough will give you a nice crunchy feeling

Ingredients, 4-6 servings

4 apples
50 ml (1/4 cup) sugar
5 ml (1 tsp) ground cinnamon
5 ml (1 tsp) ground ginger
1 ml (1/4 tsp) ground nutmeg

Pie crust:
150 g (5 1/4 oz) cold butter
100 ml (1/2 cup) pistage nuts (not salted)
300 ml (1 1/4 cup) wheat flour
50 ml (1/4 cup) sugar

Directions

Heat the oven to 225° C (435° F). Slice the butter in a bowl and chopp the pistage nuts coursly. Add these and the additional crust ingredients to the bowl and blend it roughly by hand.

Remove the seed housing and slice the apples in thin slices, no need to peel them. Mix the apple slices with the the sugar and spices and spread the mix into a 25 cm (9-10 inch) buttered pie plate. Spread out the crumbled crust on top.

Bake in the middle of the (preheated) oven for 20 -25 min. Let it cool a little and serve with cold vanilla ice cream or custard souce.

Lighting recipe

I wanted to take an image of my delicious pie and simulate a soft window light. Problem is that this was in the evening and I feared there would be no pie left to the next day… The top image is lit with two lights (Canon 580EX II), three if you count the faint light from the table light (see below). The main light is placed behind the subject, tilted down at about 45 degrees, facing the camera. The fill light is placed at camera right. On the main light I’ve used a 36″ Lastolite Hotrod Octa Softbox. It’s placed just above the image top, only 30-40 cm (1 ft) from the plate. This to maximize the size of the light source to give a nice soft light. Just the kind of light you would get from a window with no direct sunlight. On the filllight, used to bring up the shadows, I used a 40″ Lastolite Umbrella Box. See the image below right for the lighting setup.

I used Pocketwizard to trigger the flashes. A MiniTT1 on the camara as transmitter and a FlexTT5 on each flash as receiver. To control the flash exposure I use the AC 3 ZoneController. Super easy to control and set the flash ratios. And with full ETTL!

Started out with setting the base exposure to take away most of the ambient light. There is a tungsten light hanging just above the table and I set the exposure to keep little of it’s warm light in the image. An alternative would be to use CTO filters on the flashes. Exposure in the camera was sset to f/2, 1/30 s and ISO 100 which gave the basic exposure without flashes as in the image below left.

After that it was time to get the slightly cooled pie, spoon up some ice cream and turn on the flashes. Exposure was done using full ETTL and the ratio between the main and fill light was controlled by the AC3. Main light was set to 0 EV and the fill was dialed down to -1 2/3 EV.

Camera equipment: Canon 5D Mark II and Zeiss 100 mm f/2 Makro Planar.

November 12th, 2011 Blog, Weddings

I’m currently editing the images from the wonderful wedding of Jonas & Jana. I’m not ready to do a full post of the wedding, but I really need to share this one with you of Jana…

Jonas & Janas preshoot

September 13th, 2011 Blog, fp, Weddings

The Big Apple - New York
New York… The Big Apple… The city that never sleeps… Where all your dreams can come true… What a place!!!

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege to fly over to New York and photograph a wonderful wedding in Manhattan together with my good friend Markus Dagnell. Not the every day assignment so to speak… Flying in a couple of days ahead gave us the possibility to follow Ben & Katherine’s final days of preparations before the big day and create a imagery that hopefully will let them experience their wedding over and over again…

Ben and Katherine, it was a pleasure and delight to be with you these days. Thank you for sharing your special day with us!

The images are still resting on my hard drive for final treatment but here is a quick sneak peek post with some of the images from your big day!

Don’t forget to check out Markus images from this New York Destination wedding!

Last night before the wedding was of course shared among friends arriving from all over the place. Canada, Los Angeles, Germany, Australia…
The night before the big day!
The girls had their nails done for the wedding at Dashin Diva on 72nd st.
Nail done at Dashing Diva
Curly hair? No problem if you live in New York since it of course exists a salon that specializes in curly hair… Mike at Devachan Salon did the hair styling for Katherine.
Hair done
Make up
Final preparations
The wedding ceremony was held in the Church of the Good Shepherd in northern Manhattan, New York.







The reception was at the New Leaf Restaurant at Fort Tryon Park. And the party went on and on and on. And when it was over, the party left for the after party at Ding Dong Lounge. The city never sleeps you know…
Party all night long...
Besides following and documenting Ben & Katherine’s wedding day we did have time to experience the great city of New York. I’m ready to go back. Any day…


Meeting clients for pre-shoot sessions are so much fun! Today I met Jana & Jonas, who are getting married in August at Djursholms kapell. We met at Villa Pauli were they will have their reception, to get to know each other better, plan the wedding session and to try out how it is to stand in front of the camera. I am so much looking forward to August, can hardly wait be there on their big day. I know already that Jana & Jonas will look great…

 

 

May 24th, 2011 Blog, Family, fp

Adela is the daughter of some nice friends of mine. Such an adorable little girl who was only 14 days old when these images where taken. Joel and Jennie invited me to there apartment and we had a great time shooting these images. And they even treated me with a great lunch!

February 12th, 2011 Blog, Personal

Some personal images I’d like to share with you. We had some heavy snowfall the other day here in Stockholm, receiving more than a foot of snow. Everything turned crisp white and winter is back for sure. Today the skies were clear and we had an amazingly beautiful winter day, temperature dropping to -10° C (14° F). We had a really nice walk on the ice covering lake Mälaren in the afternoon, just as the sun set to rest for the day.

On the technical side, all images are shot with the Canon 5D MkII and Canon 50 f/1.2L. Processing is done in Lightroom, only using Photoshop for resizing and sharpening for the blog.

Update: Calendar templates for 2012 2013 are now available.

The other week I posted about some calendar templates that can be used in the Lightroom print module to create your own calendars. The original idea was described by Matt Kloskowski on his Lightroom Killer Tips blog.

I changed the original layout to make the weeks start on Mondays instead of Sundays, but only mad them available in Swedish.

I have now updated the fully layered psd-files to include a number of different languages. It is easy to select what language to use, the text layers that are language dependent are included in different layer groups. So if you want to make changes to the color scheme, change font, etc download the fully layered template files and go wild!

Below you can also download the calendar templates as flattened psd-files that can be used as described in Matt’s blog post above. I have also included a link to the Lightroom Print module templates I created for those using A4 paper size, as shown on the images besides and below, more on that in my original post.

Calendar Templates in Danish
Calendar Templates in German
Calendar Templates in English
Calendar Templates in Spanish
Calendar Templates in Finnish
Calendar Templates in French
Calendar Templates in Italian
Calendar Templates in Dutch (thank you Leendert van der Hoek)
Calendar Templates in Norwegian
Calendar Templates in Swedish

Download Lightroom Calendar Print Presets (A4 paper size)!
Note that print margins are dependent on printer type, the presets might need adjustments to fit with the printer you are using.
Download layered calendar template PSD’s! (Get the 2012 latest version)

Now go and print some beautiful calendars!!!

Here are some images from a portrait session previously this fall. I’ve had the privilege to take images of Oskar before, taking some portraits of him before Christmas last year. When Daniel and Ulrika contacted me again and asked my if I could come up to Uppsala again and portrait Oskar in the nice autumn colors, the answer was of course ‘yes’.

Oskar is a really nice little guy and we had lots of fun during the session. To play with colorful autumn leafs is of course an adventure for any kid in this age.


Julia and Patrik said YES to each other in beautiful Vaxholm. Preparations were done at Waxholms hotel, the ceremony at Vaxhoms church and the reception was held at Vaxholms Hembygdsgård.

Patrik & Julia, thank you for letting us share your most special day. It was a delight to photograph you both and we had such a great time together with you!

Makeup was done by makeup artist Jenny Möller.

The weather forecast was unfortunately correct on this day. By the time for the wedding ceremony, the sky opened and it started pouring down. One of the heaviest rains of the year past the Stockholm area. But as they say, rain on the wedding day i suppose to bring good luck…

Who needs babysitters when there are iPhones..? :-)

The photography session was, as many times before, done together with Markus Dagnell.

Here are some preview/teaser images from the family session I had with Samuel & Elisabeth and their beautiful girls this past weekend. We had such a great time, including breakfast pick nick, firetrucks, vintage radios, climbing oaks and chasing sheep… More to come!

We manage to take some classical portraits of Elisabeth & Samuel while the kids were running around investigating the surroundings…

I’m not sure if Erica and Mikael planned it, but it so happens that they had there weading the same day as the big royal wedding on the 19:th of June, in Stockholm, but out on Djurgården. The big challenge of the day was to get out to Rosendals Trädgård where the wedding and reception was going to be held. Not often I take the bike to a wedding photo session, but that was the solution of the day since half the city was shut down in all possible ways. So I and Markus, who I was photographing with today, biked down the official procession road all the way out to Djurgården.

It was so much fun shooting Erica and Mikael, it was smiles and laughter all the time. The sun and clowds chased each other all day, giving great light and wonderful conditions for photography. And the ceremony, that was held outside in the gardens, was perfectly timed. Just as Erica and Mikael walked out of the orchard after the ceremony, eighteen JAS 39 Gripen fighters from the Swedish Air Force flew over there heads to congratulate them on there great day!

Don’t forget to check out Markus images from Erica and Mikaels wedding.

Two of my many favorites from todays session. Erica and Mikael where very spontaneous and there was no problem in finding good photo opportunities…

Mikael will probably not forget his wedding day for a long time. But should he forget the date he only has to check the for the occation specially made cuff links… It’s all about the details!

After the mingle after the ceremony we joked with the bride couple and said “Now is the time to take the portraits”. The sun was setting giving a wonderful soft warm glow. “Sure thing, lets do it” said both Erica and Mikael! After sipping on the champaign and with the ceremony all done they could really relax and deliver some really cool poses.

The reception was held at Rosendals Trädgård.

I had the great privilege to follow and assist Linda at Lindísima when photographing Helen and Jonas wedding at Ulriksdal in the end of Maj. The weather forecast was not the best and it rained in the morning. My most important assignment for the day was to carry the four umbrellas during the portrait session. It is hard to believe from the pictures that the rain was not far away during the whole session, but just as we came back to Uliksdals Wärdshus it started to rain.

It was so much fun and a great experience to be able to follow Linda and see her work. I picked up many tips and small details on the way and there was some time for technical chats as well. And Linda could of course borrow the 50mm f/1.2 lens I had with me…

The gardens of Ulriksdals castle or great for photography and Helen and Jonas did a wonderful job in front of the camera. It was impressing to see how easy Linda got them to relax and how she with very simple and few instructions made them forget the camera and make great poses. And this shows in Lindas wonderful images from Helen and Jonas wedding at Ulriksdal.

Linda, a huge thank you for giving me the opportunity to follow and assist you this day!

Well, between the carrying of umbrellas and acting as a voice activated stand for diffuser panels I got the opportunity to take some images myself.

Helen was assisted by her bridesmaid with the last preparations at Ulriksdals Wärdshus

Linda showing how tip #43 of the day is done: During the session, show the bridal couple how fantastic they look on the pictures! It will increase their confidence and give new energy to the session.

Wilma

Togetherness

May 21st, 2010 Blog, Family, fp

Took these images of little Elias in our living room, only 12 days old. Baby portraits like this are best made when the baby is 10-14 days old.

It is all natural light from our large windows. We covered the window with a Lastolite SkyLite diffuser panel to soften it even more…

Elias 12 days - Sweet dreams

Elias 12 days

Elias 12 days

April 30th, 2010 Blog, Fine art

Spring Tears

When my friends Gustav and Malin asked if I could take some portraits of their daughter Alicia, I felt really honored and happy. We had a great time together shooting a wonderful autumn day out in Hummelmora, not far from where we live. Alicia is such a sweet little kid but had no plans on sitting still during the session. You don’t want to do that when you just have learned how to walk… We started of with a short pick-nick and then Alicia started to wonder around to explore the pastures.

This is one of my personal favorites from the session. We had been shooting for a while and taken a break when I noticed while talking to Malin that Alicia had found a plastic cup that she was exploring. I managed to get a couple of shots before Alicia lost interest of it after a couple of seconds and wondered of to explore new areas in the surrounding.

I had brought my soap bubble machine with me. We started it in the end of the session and Alicia was mesmerized.  After not standing still for more than half a second she now sat still for 15 minutes while trying to figure out what these strange things were flying through the air…

I got time to shoot some images of Gustav and Malin as well…

…but Alicia was not far away for very long. She wanted to be part of the action as well. I truly love this image. The love for Alicia really shine in Gustav and Malins eyes.

Annika and Peters Wedding was at beautiful Haga church north of Sigtuna. Annika’s bride’s bouquet was wonderful and very original. Peter was perfectly color matched in spring green colors, even the socks were matched!

Annika and Peter manage 32 Rum o Kök, a very nice hotel and restaurant in Sigtuna. Naturally the bridal party was held there with it’s great view out over the lake Mälaren.

As many times before I photographed this wedding together with Markus Dagnell. Don’t forgett to check out Markus images from Annika and Peters wedding in Sigtuna.

It is always an honor and privilege to photograph some ones wedding. When it’s another photographer that ask you, it is always special. And if the bride is your sister…

Charlotta and Markus wedding was held in Hälsingland on a beautiful summer day. The portrait session was made by a beautiful little lake in the woods.

Charlotta o Markus bröllop - Thomas Ljungberg

Charlotta o Markus bröllop - Thomas Ljungberg