About Ole Henrik Skjelstad

Norwegian math teacher and landscape photographer who fell in love with photography after receiving his first camera as a birthday present in 2013. You can follow his work on 500px, IG and Flickr.

A quick guide for using Pixel Shift in Lightroom

February 17, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad Leave a Comment

Pentax Pixel Shift is a fantastic feature when it comes to boosting the dynamic range, increase the level of detail and reduce the noise in an image. Many product photographers employ this feature for increased detail, but it can also yield great results for landscape photography. That said, the technology still faces some challenges when there is motion in a scene.

Now, Lightroom can handle Pixel Shift images, but it’s really lost even with the slightest blur. Think moving foliage for example. Pixel shift technology captures four images, so it takes the camera four times as much to take an image. This can add up to quite a bit of movement. Both Silkypix and RawTherapee have developed an algorithm to deal with movement. RawTherapee is even free. If you have the time, RawTherapee does a fabulous job with Pixel Shift and motion, but it has a steep learning curve.

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These autumn squirrels photo series will put a smile on your face!

February 17, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 2 Comments

It was last fall that Dick van Duijn and a friend headed out to the Brabant forests in the Netherlands. The aim was to shoot squirrels. They took shelter in a hide where they waited for the squirrels to show up. It actually took them a couple of days to get everything perfect with the squirrels sharp against the right backdrop of autumn colors.

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2019 Landscape Photo of the Year contest winners will put you in awe of nature

February 16, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 2 Comments

There are plenty of photo competitions around. Some are free, some are paid. Some offer prizes and some only bragging rights. Our World in Focus is a site that aims to be cheap to enter, but still offer a worthy prize.

Their latest Landscape photography competition got some amazing entries, but the winners are nothing short of breathtaking. Hit the jump to see the top photos and get some insights on why each of the winners was selected.

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Photographer captures the cutest bear cubs dance in a circle

February 15, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 1 Comment

Valtteri Mulkahainen is a physical education teacher from Sotkamo, Finland. When not teaching he is frequently out with the camera to capture the Finnish wildlife. He is also a very gifted landscape photographer. Valtteri’s winter images from the Finnish forests are magical.

It was a morning in June 2013 that Valtteri headed out to capture some of the wildlife around the town of Martinselkonen. A bear with some cubs suddenly arrived at a clearing. What then ensued caused the photographer to wonder whether he was dreaming or not. It seemed like the cubs began to dance in a circle.

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Photographer captures the cutest squirrel embracing and smelling a flower

February 12, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 8 Comments

You know that humans enjoy smelling flowers, its not a big surprise. A squirrel enjoying an intimate moment with a flower is way rarer. In June, Dutch photographer Dick van Duijn had a close encounter with a squirrel smelling a flower. He was both prepared and in a position to capture this beautiful moment.

It was during a journey to Vienna, Austria, that Dick captured the squirrel which walked over to a flower and began sniffing it. It even gave it a hug, it seems like. That capture by Dick while the squirrel closed its eyes is absolutely priceless. Interestingly, Dick visited Vienna to shoot and observe ground squirrels, so only half a coincidence there.

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You may get sued big time if you aren’t careful with what you upload to Unsplash

February 12, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 8 Comments

Unsplash has in a short time become a major player in the photo-sharing industry. 174,000 photographers have uploaded images to the site. The platform this month boasts 5,000 views and 27 downloads per second. (PER SECOND!) People download images for blogs, classes, and other purposes, but also for commercial use. There is a big debate in the industry asking if Unsplash is good or bad, but it is not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about the legal risks you face when you upload work to Unsplash. Not as the end-user, but as the photographer.

Photographers use Unsplash for exposure because of the enormous traffic the site generates. A company may hire a photographer for commercial assignments or simply want to license a high-resolution version of an image it found on Unsplash.

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How to focus stack landscape photos in Photoshop

February 11, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 2 Comments

“One of the most appealing attributes of landscape photographs is sharpness from front to back. Everything is in sharp focus in the foreground, middle, and background, allowing the viewer to be pulled into the image as if they were standing right there.” – Max Foster

Generally speaking, sharpness throughout the image, that is from foreground to background, is far easier to achieve with an ultra-wide-angle lens (UWA) than with a tele. However, even wide-angle lenses have their limitations. If you place a UWA lens only a few centimeters from the foreground object, you can get it in focus. The background, however, will fall outside the depth of field and be blurred. The same goes if you focus on a very far object.

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The winners of the world’s largest photo contest: Wiki Loves Monuments

February 10, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad Leave a Comment

Wiki Loves Monuments is the world largest photography competition. Wikimedia states, “It’s also a platform for global collaboration in making beautiful, significant photos of monuments freely available to anyone, anywhere.” When photographers join the competition they simultaneously donate their images to Wikimedia Commons, “the free repository that holds most of the images used on Wikipedia, to ensure that the world’s most visible cultural heritage is documented and held in trust for future generations.”

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The winners of Flickr’s Best Shot 2019 are absolute stunners

February 9, 2020 by Ole Henrik Skjelstad 9 Comments

More than 17,000 photos were submitted to Flickr’s contest. The five winners received a $200 gift card from Blurb each. This isn’t a lot of prize, but there is quite a bit of bragging rights involved, I guess. Flickr invited five photographers from the community to assist with the nominations and appointed three in-house judges from Flickr staff to select the winning images.

There are a host of very talented photographers on Flickr. The five winning images showcase some of the diversity uploaded to the platform. The judges have exemplary carried out their duties and awarded five deserving winners of the competition. One thing is for sure, it cannot have been easy to pick out the winners among the many submissions. Here are the winners:

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