SOMETIMES ONE PIC IS ENOUGH

FLOWER WORKSHOP AT H&M HOME

In the times of the pictorial glut it's even more important to understand the power of one photo. 

In July I had a chance to teach a flower workshop at H&M Home in Iso Omena for 2 wonderful groups of lucky members of H&M Club. This pic I styled and photographed for H&M for marketing these workshops. I also used it in my own Instagram feed and offered a chance to win 2 places in these workshops for my followers. I just love the idea of one photo but of course I had to take few and finally I used two pics in my feed. One when announcing the competition and one as a reminder pic.  ( and when I'm telling in IG about this post I will use the third one) 

Social media demands often more than one photo but there is a difference between enough and overload. Before I began my Instagram feed January 2014 I was very convinced that I don't need or actually the world doesn't need more of my pics but I was wrong. From Instagram I found very lovely community of people who I'm following now and we are having great conversations and plenty of useful tips have been shared and mindful thoughts too. I've got so many thankful comments and DM:s about my flower photography that it's been almost overwhelming.

Yes, my feed is full of flowers and (at the moment) Mama Haruki's kittens too. There are posts of food too but mostly flowers. I have over 14 000 followers and I'm very grateful of that and always happy to read all the comments. Maybe now I can call myself social media influencer. I've made few Instagram takeovers and I have to say I've enjoyed a lot making them. Love to tell this to you because I'm back at work and it's time to create something new and beautiful, don't you think? Something what we haven't seen before. 

One more thing. I was smiling today when I saw the cover of Vogue. There were huge flower headpiece and Beyonce. I had an art exhibition I See Color in January where I had huge floral headpieces. I taught flower crown workshop at Johanna Gullichsen shop in Helsinki in May and designed flower crowns for Supershe Island summer 2018 retreats. Flower crowns are made by Bukettmakaren. I guess we are not so far from each other anymore. The world and us.

xo

Kreetta

INSTAGRAM TAKEOVER

FLORAL POEMS - INFLUENTIAL SOCIAL MEDIA STORYTELLING

MUSTILA GARDEN

I think there is never too much beauty and luckily I have a chance to create and share it.  Yes I'm talking about flowers and I think there is a lot more to it than just beauty. Why we love flowers and plants? What do flowers, plants, garden and nature mean to us? They have many symbolic meanings (though less familiar nowadays) but I am more interested about what they give to us. 

MAGNOLIA "VANHA ROUVA" FROM MUSTILA 

I love to photograph flowers and work with them. It's not the easiest job in the world but not the hardest either. It's not the most important work in the world but I think you can make it important by how you use your talent with them. In a nutshell they bring joy and comfort and that's why I think they are very important. 

This spring I made Instagram takeover at Mustila Garden Instagram account. As a creative and artist I wanted to make best of it of course. In my case I believe in atmosphere and emotions. The pic have to somehow make an impact.

So let me tell you shortly about Mustila Garden. It is a fine Finnish garden shop next to beautiful Arboretum Mustila. Arboretum was founded 1902 and it is especially famous for its rhododendrons and azaleas. In Mustila they have had the knowhow for over 100 years. Mustila Garden grow for example different kind of Magnolias and plenty of different kind of treasures for your garden. They work for better and more beautiful garden so I think they grow food for our souls.

CORAL CHARM PEONY

We all have our own history and memories. Flowers are often present when something important happens - in different kind of celebrations. A lot of our memories connected to garden and flowers are from grandma's place or childhood home's garden or maybe a place where you made a trip you never forget. Maybe you stole a piece of pink flower from your favorite place and you keep it between your diary pages. Flowers have inspired many artists and creatives - there is no question about it - they nourish our souls. Not only by how they look but also how they have magical scent too.

CORAL CHARM PEONY CHANGES COLOR WHEN IT GETS OLDER

They say gardening is a secret of a longer life and it might be only a belief but there are reasons to believe it too. True or false - garden makes people happier and relief stress. Gardening is truly slow living and you have to wait a whole year to try again and I think the way we live our lives nowadays we might need a pause and that is what nature or garden offers us. A moment of connection with the world we are part of and where we are coming from. We are not made of iron or plastic.

GRANDMOM'S ATTIC

My final pic in Mustila Garden Instagram takeover was this pic of grandpa's and grandmom's attic. It's a picture of something important to me. I created it at my workspace and it's totally product of my imagination. But it's very connected to my childhood memories. I'm rooted strongly to a farm house, my mom's childhood home. 

I lively remember how I loved to spent my summer days following my grandpa and my uncle working with cows. Every morning I tried to wake up early to get to see how they were milking the cows and I was always a bit late. There are all things together in my mind: scents of cows and fresh cutted hay, small potato field and the feeling of warm soil under my bare feet, strawberry cake, wild summer flowers and midsummer roses with scent of cardamon baked roll and the funny sound of cuckoo clock that I still have at my workspace even though it doesn't work anymore. This attic is a symbol of all that. A secret place, full of old things and memories. This is what I think we all need - a safe haven. For me it was this picture for you it can be something else like a corner of your balcony with plants and flowers or your garden where you can jump off the running horse and pause your life for awhile. Because we all need it.

Storytelling can be powerful and affective but often it have to be a right story in the right place and that is the challenge. 

xoxo

Kreetta

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A SMART PHONE - COMPOSITION

LEADING THE EYE



I decided to continue writing about smart phone photography. In my last blog post I went through 6 tips about how you can make your smart phone photography even better. If you haven't read the previous blog post you will find it here. I decided to go through all the tips one by one. Explain it a bit more depth. Today I write about composition.

Last time I wrote shortly about it like this:

 

"This is very important. Rule of thirds, negative space, diagonals, leading the eye...there are plenty of things to consider but most important especially in Instagram is to simplify. You are looking either at someone's single pic or at someone's grid in small size on your phone. You will decide in matter of seconds, will you or will you not follow this feed. Not only one pic has to be good but all those pics have to be good as a grid. It is a good idea to keep things simple. Begin your composition with your main subject. Add or arrange things as long as you find the balance."

ODD NUMBERS 

I guess with this you are very familiar. When building an interesting composition this works very well. Amount of fruits, plates, ingredients etc. 1, 3, 5 looks better than 2, 4, 6 like you see above. 

GROUPING

Make groups from things you are photographing like above. I have group of two (herbs) and group of three (herbs, seeds, mushrooms). All together they are also odd numbers like seed pods are too.

RULE OF THIRDS

I think this one is the hardest for me to explain. Because I don't think about it at all. It is somewhere deep in my brain. But it means "the pic is divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections." (Wikipedia) In pic above my bowl of dried sage is in one intersection like mushrooms too. The linen napkin's edge is also in right upper intersection.

NEGATIVE SPACE

Nothing to look at? Very important area. It shapes forms around the subject. It's as important as the subject. Without it there isn't a rythm or direction in the pic. Above pic there are negative spaces between the two group, inside the frame, between subjects.

LINES AND CIRCLES

You can build your pic with help of thinking of shapes like triangle, circle, square, cylinder, rectangles, polygon etc. For us it is easier to follow familiar shapes. When we are talking about leading the eye the work is done by lines and shapes. In Instagram photography it is better to trust more simple way of buliding pics so they are often very flat and have quite simple composition. You can also lead the eye with technical camera things like depth of field. But when you are photographing with smart phone that is hard to do, that's why it is important to have a good composition to keep the pic interesting.

BREAKING THE RULES

After you know all these - you can forget them. See the pic below. Which rules I broke?

I hope you find this useful and interesting. I'm sure there are plenty of things still untold but I'm sure you will take a nice step ahead with your smart phone photography. These pics are all taken with iPhone and during this time of the year - we don't have so much light so that too makes this kind of photography more challenging.

I hope you have a great week ahead of you!

xoxo

Kreetta 

ps. These tips are useful in general when talking about photography.

HOW TO MAKE A BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHY FOR INSTAGRAM FEED?

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A SMART PHONE

Instagram is more popular than ever before. Are you there already? If not - should you? If you are - what kind of feed you have? If you feel you should do better you might like to read following tips I'm blogging here today. How to get a better looking Instagram feed photographed on your smart phone. I think it is possible, you don't have to have a real camera. 

The bottom line in every media is storytelling. What kind of story you want to tell? This time I'm not telling you how you should tell your story, I'm telling you how should you use your smart phone to take beautiful pics to tell your story.

I have iPhone and I use VSCO app and lately I've tried a bit of Afterlight too. All these pics in this post I've photographed with iPhone.

 

There are few ground rules to remember when working with smart phone.

1. Lighting

Avoid difficult lighting conditions. In other words too dark and too harsh light. I recommend shooting in natural light. Make sure you don't photograph in straight sun light. Smart phone isn't the best in difficult conditions so make them easy - you have a chance to succeed. So find a shadow, photograph on gray day or diffuse the light with white fabric, white paper or block the light with neutral color cardboard (white, grey, black)

Find the direction of light. Easy test is just to look at where the shadow falls from your hand on a surface. Usually I prefer that the shadow in the picture is somewhere else than above the subject but I have seen that done too. I think the rules are meant to be broken. (but before that it is good to know what you are breaking) Avoid the light that makes sharp shadow - we want soft light. We want soft shadow. The hand test tells you if it is a good place to photograph with your phone.

2. Location

Location is very important. If you don't have a good location where the light is good and surroundings are fine then you have to create it. You follow the light. I'm photographing mainly still life and food with my iPhone so the space I need isn't so big. I can build the place where I photograph on the table, on the floor, on the terrace, on the ground where ever I have a good light. Try to find a good place at your home, office, workspace, garden - wherever the light is good. Use that spot. You can make your pic there. I use same places at home and at workspace.

3. Time

Yup. You need time to make photos. You get faster the more you do it. But it also happens to professionals that nothing just happens...if you know what I mean. Well, it is important also to let go and try again later or next day. It might also help if you can work together with someone who is also interested about same subject as you are. Make something together and see what happens.



4. Style



Learning by doing is such a cliché but it is a very good way to get better. Also I recommend you to watch what other people are doing. You can learn a lot only by looking at other people's work. How do they do it? I trust odd numbers. Remember you have to be careful with colors. With styling you can build a certain feeling to your pics. Do you want to go with certain colors, composition, subject, cropping or angle of view.


5. Composition



This is very important. Rule of thirds, negative space, diagonals, leading the eye...there are plenty of things to consider but most important especially in Instagram is to simplify. You are looking either at someone's single pic or at someone's grid in small size on your phone. You will decide in matter of seconds, will you or will you not follow this feed. Not only one pic has to be good but all those pics have to be good as a grid. It is a good idea to keep things simple. Begin your composition with your main subject. Add or arrange things as long as you find the balance.

6. Edit

What do you do to your picture is very important. Cropping happens here. I recommend to try manual photo processing first and if you want to use filters, that should be the last thing to do, and I never use filter 100%. Just enough to make a difference. But as I said rules are meant to be broken - always.

I hope you haven't got too overwhelmed by all these things I've been telling you. One thing at a time. Forcing is never the right answer. Give time to your creative process.   

Here are a few beautiful instafeeds you might like to check.

Our Food Stories
Local Milk 
Fröken Skicklig 
Cannelle et Vanille  
Mimi Brune (only iPhone)


Most of all - have fun!

xoxo

Kreetta 

ps....I notice that all these tips could be worth writing a blog post. Have to think about it.

SPRING SPIRIT

BEGINNING

Fresh green.Who can resist it? I am so in love with this spring color. I had to cut a branch from our plum tree and make a photo of it because those cute and delicate flowers doesn''t last long. Today I'm going back to forest and continue the project that I started on this week's Thursday. I found so charming creatures from the forest that I have to photograph them again and this time with real camera. I took iPhone photo of them and you'll find it in my Instagram feed. I think pic of these creatures would be very nice on the wall. What do you think?

Yesterday I was testing also new paints. I painted a cut board. Beautiful paint and what a matt texture! I have a feeling that I will use these painting colors in our workspace kitchen.

Have a happy Sunday!

xo,

Kreetta

...AND THE WINNER IS

Patrice. Congratulations! I hope these postcards bring joy to you and your friends and family :) They are soon on their way to you!

Thank you all who took part in. I will do this again later this spring with different photo. I guess I'm doing it also in IG.

I have few blog posts in my mind at the moment. Like to show you my new big cupboard at my workspace and my painting spot. I love the light there and I have made soooo many Instagram photos there. If you want to see some, they are here.

Have a creative week!

xo
Kreetta

FLOWER POWER - EASY PHOTOGRAPHING WITH iPHONE

I've noticed that I have started to photograph even more with my iPhone. It's easier and faster and you get your photos in no time to Instagram. I've been in Instagram now for a one year and I have no regrets. I use to think that there are way too many photographs in the world and that is a great excuse to avoid IG. But...well no. It's a place with people. It's a place of community.

I use VSCOcam to photograph my pics. I've just use to it, so I don't use camera's own app to do it. I don't know which one is better but I've my habits and quite happy with them. You know the size of the photograph taken with phone is huge. You can get almost A4 sized pic with 300dpi so nothing stop you making a nice photograph print from your phone photos. I think that is amazing. Technology is here to stay and it is speeding forward and I just don't know where we are after next ten years. 

I surely believe that if you want to have a job and live good life, you can't step back and avoid all the technology. You have to go along but you can choose your way. Appearance in internet and social media can't beat the true value of friendship and family so there are moments that you just have to forget the whole world around you and concentrate to your real life. It's sometimes hard because it is so easy to just push buttons on your phone and make a digital foodprints one after another. 

What do you think?

Here's 3 IG accounts I love to follow: 

Cabinlove

Here you can find your perfect hideaway

Cannellevanille 

You can eat with your eyes and enjoy of beautiful photography

Indigo_mint 

Vintage vintage vintage - I love it!

...and my IG you can find kreettakreetta.

Have a lovely weekend!

xo

Kreetta 

ps. If you haven't seen my very first Steller stories, you can find it here. It's a story of Venice.

Flower LOVE

Good Sunday! Lazy morning. Lazy day. This is a bit "dagen efter" for whole Finland because yesterday we had Finland's Independence Day.  That is the day when everybody is watching the Linnanjuhlat from television. It is the Presidential Independence Day reception. It's THE big party in Presidential Palace, approximately 2000 invited guests. Everybody would like to be there even at once...so have to do something that President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö will invite us there, haha. But being honest it's fun to watch how people have dressed up for the party and of course there are many opinions about the dresses...

We had also planned to travel to visit our friends and celebrate but sad to say I got weird stomach flu so we missed the party. I had also planned that I will make a blog post about the flowers I bought quite cheap price this week but because I got sick I can only show you these pics taken by iPhone for Instagram by VSCO cam.

I think it's unbelievable what you can do with your phone nowadays. Of course you can see the grain but this time of the year we don't have so much light so it means grain. But I don't care about it. I think it makes pics even more real and grain has always been one part of the photography.

I have promised many things lately to make and show you here in blog but I have had quite a lot work - which is very good for starting businesswoman ;) I had planned that I have my web shop open before X-mas but...we'll see. I think I'm going to take a nap now.

Have a great Sunday and enjoy waiting for X-mas!

xo
Kreetta

I admit - I love Instagram

#vierastaloraska

I had thought it quite a lot that noo...I won't go there. Forbidden place. I thought it is too much - photo flow or flood. I'm already arounded by photos. So many pics going different directions...

#leftovers

But it had a plan. It waited me behind the corner and in the beginning of Jan and in the moment of weakness - I was caught. Suddenly bringing my life to you even more. More often. More closer. Even to more people...and it didn't feel so bad...and now I guess nobody can stop the train. There's nothing more to do now than enjoy it! I also found vsco so my photos just flow through it. At the moment I use only my phone to take instagram pics but will see what happens in the future. Never say never.

So I decided to have a theme every week. I always look for a purpose. So I chose a color. Blue, pink, yellow, moss green, chocolate brown. Oh, no. Routine. I don't like it so much. So last week I made differently - I chose vintage pattern. 

I believe that creativity comes from relaxed way of being and the most creative you are when you can feel yourself relaxed when doing. I feel IG at the moment quite relaxing. Even though I tend to feel new things quite strongly. I might be pushing publish button in IG quite often. I'm sure you have had your honeymoon with IG but I have just started mine, haha. 

#traditionalpattern - mittens by my mom

But important to remember is that IG - it's not all about me. It's about you too! I'm already following people and I think more is just behind the corner. I've found more interesting people. More pics. More communication with my blogger friends. More of everything. 

I'm also amazed of the size of photos that our phones can bring to us. I do want to print some IG pics and I've already done that once. It's just amazing!...I know...I'm so late with this but I'm going to enjoy of it! How is your IG life going?

I wish you a creative week. I had a little bit poor beginning today. Oh so basic Monday but I'm certain tomorrow I'll shine again. I hope you too!

xo

Kreetta

#coloroftheweek - Inspiring Yellow Lemon

 I got un idea of yellow. Lemon. This is how it turned out to be.

On Friday I had only two things in my mind. I want to rest and I want to photograph lemons. Today I had time to photograph lemons after long breakfast. I like instagram at the moment a lot and this idea is coming from that direction. I'm a newbie in IG. Started there in beginning of this year. But already hooked, haha. Every week I choose a color. Any color in your mind?

Have a lovely Sunday!

xo
Kreetta

I-N-S-T-A-G-R-A-M anno 2014

It's Sunday. My first week with Instagram is soon over. I'm so late with IG I know. But somehow I've felt it's too overwhelming - too many photos coming and going. Too much photo noise if you know what I mean.

But I did it. I saw Sandra's invitation to take part in IG challenge to take selfies. That was the final call to me. I took it and did it. I have had some troubles to accept phone as a camera. Forgive me. But I've thought you need a real camera. Well, I was so surprised when I opened a phone photo file in PS. Oh my god, photos size was so big 14,4M. I don't like to read manuals so I usually test and nowadays you can find so many good tutorials in YouTube. I think that's amazing. Sounds almost joke to say - watch a YouTube video. Or what you think?

These photos are taken with camera but not with any IG filters. I've noticed that VSCO is in big hype now. I haven't used it but so many does. Do you? Do you like it?

If you like to follow my IG you can find it here.

Where I can find you in IG?

xo
Kreetta  

ps. These silver shoes I found many years ago in Beyond Retro shop in Stockholm. I think they give quite nice sparkle to our winter Sunday. Have a lovely week!