One of my brothers and his family live in Småland. I went there for almost a week, and came back to Stockholm yesterday with my laptop full of photos. It was great to see them again, hopefully I can convince them to come and visit me in Cambridge this autumn.
One great thing with my nieces is that they have just as vivid imagination as I have. Here is one of their versions of Atlas from the Greek mythology. I asked her to pretend that the exercise ball was the Earth. The photo of the Earth is The Blue Marble from 1972, one of the few photos taken of the whole Earth by human hands. I later showed her how to do her own photoshopping, and she made a jumping photo and put it on a background taken by the NASA Mars Rover with aliens running around her.Skype is good for keeping in touch, but it doesn’t compare to face to face time. Here Jonathan had just showed me their new beehive, and we are on our way through the forest. I like the composition and light in this photo. There is so much detail and texture in the trees.Exploring one of the dungeons under Brahehus Castle in Småland. My brother is checking his mobile phone reception in the background. Normally I would try and frame a photo so that the subject looks into the frame, but here I am breaking that rule.The oldest niece was away visiting her aunt and grandmother, so this is not a complete family portrait. Normally I would make sure everyone was in the air, but I liked this shot with the four-year-old not quite realising the first time that she should jump.A short water break in the shade. I liked how my niece was framed by my brother’s arm and leg. There is a tiny bit of vignetting added to the photo to emphasise her,We passed a big sports field on the way to the beach, the sun was setting, perfect photo opportunity. I’m lying down on the grass to get at eye-level with her, underexposing slightly to preserve the sky in the backlit photo. The original photo had a sun flare right over her face which I have tried to photoshop away. Hopefully you are not able to tell where it was.We went for a walk with the dog, and on the way he ran down into the stream and lay down in the water. I jumped down on the other side of the bridge, to try and capture the scene, and my niece followed which made the photo even better. I use the bridge and the shadows under it to frame my subjects.I challenged my nieces to a cookie eating competition. The task was to eat the entire cookie without using their hands. It was not really a fair competition as the whole cookie fit in my mouth, but it made for some funny faces.I showed one of my nieces the photos from the urban ballet post I made earlier, and she got inspired and wanted to do her own version. This makes it even more fun, as now we are bouncing ideas and creating something together.One evening we had to return to a lake to look for a lost mobile phone. In the end we found the phone in one of the beach bags that were already at home. I did not mind the extra trip, as it gave me a chance to photograph the beautiful twilight.My nieces are creative. Her one of them had painted her own MacBook on a piece of cardboard, the apple being replaced with a heart. If you looked on the other side you could see the screen with programs running, a keyboard and trackpad. We decided to incorporate it into her jumping shots.
On the last day after lunch my brother suggested we make another quick trip to the beach. I was a bit sceptical whether we would be able to make it there and back, but he did a quick estimate and showed that it was possible. We had first thought to leave the dog behind, but as we were heading to the car we saw him peeking out through the wide open windows on the top floor, and changed our minds. He got to join us, and boy was he happy! The girls had brought an inflatable crocodile with them, so Jonathan and I took turns to be engines, dragging it around behind us in the water with the two oldest girls on it to shrieks of laughter. The third one was happily building sand castles on the beach. It was a perfect ending to a great visit.
Next time I hope we get a chance to sail their new sailing boat…
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