Here’s a handful of photos taken from various assignments as of late.

A small store specializing in car racing books and miniature car models had a small Ferrari gathering at their store. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17mm, f/9 1/200sec, ISO160.

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Nicolas is a huge basketball prospect in Denmark. At the age of 17 he has been around the National team development system. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17mm, f/10 1/250sec, ISO100.

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Danish Band Big Fat Snake closed the one day music festival - Rockfesten. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM @ 120mm, f/2.8 1/400sec, ISO640.

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‘Greve’s’ Women’s Marching band performs at the annual city festival. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM @ 200mm, f/2.8 1/640sec, ISO200.

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A ferris wheel at the annual city festival. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM @ 200mm, f/25 1/320sec, ISO100.

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Students celebrating their final day in school with the traditional water and shaving foam fight. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM @ 98mm, f/2.8 1/1000sec, ISO100.

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Sometimes I can’t help but think what impact we have as a newspaper. Do we make a difference? I’d like to think so. Last week my thoughts were strongly proved.

An Iraqi family here in Denmark was about to be homeless. They could no longer stay in the house they rented. And with a father mentally ill due to torture from their time in Iraq wasn’t able to do anything about the situation. The family’s 15 year old daughter was basically who ran the show at home while attending school.

We brought the story about the family in our paper and within a day or two the Iraqi family was saved from a life in the gutter. Somebody called us telling that they could offer the family to stay at their house. There was plenty of room for the family. It’s so nice to see that some people are still concerned about others.

Here’s a photo of the daughter I shot for the story.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 27mm, f/4 1/1000sec, ISO125. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)

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Every now and then I track back through the past couple of weeks or months or work, just to see what I’ve been shooting. And maybe some kind of hope that I can see a progression in my work.

Here’s a few photos that never found its way to this blog.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17mm, f/4 1/160sec, ISO500. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)

Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17mm, f/4 1/60sec, ISO400. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)

Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17mm, f/4 1/60sec, ISO400. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)

I’ve been busy not updating the blog, so I figured it was time to spam you with a series of photos from recent assignments.

Every year the city and local track and field club arrange a race. This was the start of the 5km run. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f2.8L USM @ 200mm, f/2,8 1/500sec, ISO500)

Road construction resulted in a broken gas pipe, so the fire department and police blocked off a longer section the street. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 70-200mm f2.8L USM @ 70mm, f/2,8 1/800sec, ISO125)

Teachers might have to run faster in the future. A potential budget cut in the teachers budget, will not allow for payment for extra hours. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f4L USM @ 26mm, f/4 1/125sec, ISO250)

The Dane Mikkel Bodker was selected fifth overall in the CHL import Draft by the Kitchener Rangers who plays in the Ontario Hockey League. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f4L USM @ 33mm, f/22 1/250sec, ISO100)

A rally car blazes past spectators during a local Rally Sprint. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 17-40mm f4L USM @ 40mm, f/20 1/50sec, ISO100)

Skjold goaltender picks the wrong side on a penalty kick and can only watch the ball go in the net. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 300mm f2.8L IS USM @ 300mm, f/2.8 1/2500sec, ISO400)

A shakespeare comedy theater show. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, EF 300mm f2.8L IS USM @ 300mm, f/2.8 1/400sec, ISO640)

I local boxer won the regional championship today. I was assigned to shoot a photo of him. I wasn’t quite sure where I would meet him.It turned out to be at the gym so I was thinking maybe one of those sandbags would do. When I walked in I saw the end wall was mirrors from floor to ceiling and thought that maybe bouncing the flash into the mirror would give me some better and more dramatic lighting.Once I had dialed in the flash and camera settings for the correct exposure, I would still see the ceiling lights and the wall behind him was still visible. So I walked backwards having the mirrors to the left of me, creating distance to the wall behind the boxer.The ceiling lighting was killed and the aperture dialed up a bit and iso down along with a faster shutter speed. That would make the background go away.For the first couple of shots, the boxer had his gold medal around his neck. His right glove and arm (left from my view) was blocking the medal leaving the area it was in pitch black. That’s a no go. So I thought, “Hey, why not let it hang over his glove”?A little adjusting and it was right on.Mevaip Sabani won the regional Amateur Boxing Championships Sunday. He had only boxed 10 matches prior to entering the tournament. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, 17-40mm @ 17mm, 1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO100, Speedlite 580ex bounced into a mirror to the left)

A local kid is pretty close to being footballer/soccer star Ronaldinho’s double. This kid is 12 years old and can juggle and do tricks like you’ve never seen.He has been in commercials and has been in the major newspapers around the country.Being a local kid we ran a story on him, so I was assigned to shoot some photos of him. It was a potential cover story but was run somewhere inside the newspaper.Alexander, a 12 year old kid from Rodovre, Denmark is a pure Ronaldinho look-a-like and a big Barcelona/Ronaldinho fan. (Photo: Brian Poulsen)(Canon EOS-1D Mark II n, 17-40mm @ 37mm, 1/125sec, f/4, ISO640, flash fired)

Earlier today I was at an assignment to shoot pictures of a New Year’s concert which included a small speech by the mayor who later in the show handed over a music award which is basically a cash gift to somebody who has exceptional talent and is given the money to continue their hard work on music, without having to think about financial issues for a while.The lighting was not good. But surely not the worst I’ve seen. During the speech, the mayor was only lit by a stage light having almost right above him. I’ve seen light like this before, when shooting a dance show and I thought it would make a great portrait style shot of the Mayor which would most likely be a good photo for the archive for future use, instead of the same old boring desk pictures, or speech pictures.This was shot at ISO 1250, 1/320sec @ f/2.8.

Assignment: Shoot portrait of a volunteer firefighterThe paper is running a story on a volunteer firefighter from the local fire department. I was assigned to do a portrait of him.The main story of the article is how they have to be ready to roll in 5 minutes from the time they get the call until the trucks leave the fire department with horns and lights and everything.So I thought it would be fun to show the firefighter in his street clothes and dressed from head to toe in their firefighter uniform.On a side note. I’m working on doing a 24 hours stint at the fire department, shooting a photo essay of their life at the station.

Assignment: Shoot a portrait of an animal ambulance driverSo a couple of days ago I talked about a portrait style photo that really didn’t work at all.This one however I’m really happy about. Nothing really happens in the photo, but to me, this could be a text book portrait.The man is a former EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) driving an ambulance with the local fire department. Today he’s driving the “animal ambulance”. They use it to transport dogs that need to be put to sleep or injured. They even pick up road kill.For lighting, I used a Canon Speedlite 580ex which I bounced into the corner of the ceiling behind me.

Assignment: Shoot pictures from a local boxing clubI was assigned to shoot some photos from a local boxing club. There are some obvious shots that you would most likely expect to see. Such as this one:To me that’s a pretty standard boxing gym photo. Somebody putting handwraps on.The lighting in the gym was straight out horrible. I had to shoot a picture of one of the boxers as well for a side article. There were some huge mirrors in the gym and decided I would try to use the mirrors by bouncing the flash into them and that way get a different look or feel to the image.Before shooting that picture some girl was pounding on a bag and I used her to test it out before going over to the guy I had to shoot.Anyway one of the aspects of the story was that there is up to 40 boxers in pretty small gym that only has one boxing ring in it. That’s basically what I wanted to do something with. The standard picture showing as many people as possible shot a bit from above was my first approach.That photo was just too straight forward for me and I wanted to do something different. I went closer to the ring at ground level and explored my options.I came up with this:I really like the how that came out and I’m more excited about the paper actually bringing this photo. I like the different stuff and I like the fact that the paper would bring this.Anyway they are doing neck strengthening drills where the people laying on the ground would push their head back against the people standing in front of them, placing their hands on the back of their heads as resistance.