• Julius Koivistoinen is a young Finnish student passioned about photography. He's mostly self taught but has already been working as a photographer for a couple of magazines published not only in Finland but worldwide, and his photos have reached to become the cover shots of those magazines for plenty of times. In addition to commercial work, he loves to work on personal projects and with smaller clients. Currently he's available for assignments near Helsinki and Lahti.
    Be sure to visit his portfolio and Flickr page!

    Woah, I’m even bigger now!

    • August 24, 2010 9:07 pm

    “I’m even bigger now … A lot!”

    That’s what my blog said today as I upgraded it to support even bigger images. At the mean time it ment a big headache to me, as change means work, and what one hasn’t been doing for a long time means relearning on top of that… But were here to learn anyway, aren’t we?

    This is what the blog looked like before and the same image, which is as small as the former images were, shows from how tiny pictures did one actually have to suffer. And when I just compare it with the capability of this blog today, the huge amount (30 hours+) of work and confusion was definitely worth it!

    Follow the red arrows downwards and maybe you’ll agree with me. :)

    Photo: Kevin Wilbur, of Tucson Balloon Rides supervises the filling of his hot air balloon before a sunrise flight Easter morning Sunday, April 4, 2010 in Tucson. Arizona. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (link)

    This blog is still powered by WordPress so you may ask: “What is that theme used on this site?”

    In that my answer is that I designed the layout myself, but I indeed had to use some help too. After the design was completed on Photoshop I started searching a WordPress theme which would match with mine. I chose to build my blog on top of a theme called ZenLite by Black Widow.

    The reason for this was its single column design, which is a perfect solution for me. Instead of having a menu for navigation on the side of the page, this way the site supports showing bigger imagery as well as works with every monitor resolution commonly used on websurfers’ (that means You) computers.

    Because this is a brand new and a unique design it of course may also have some bugs, which I haven’t noticed, in it. So please let me know if you come across with any! Thanks

    Sidenote:

    I have upgraded my website before for dozens of times but also have written about it twice. If you’re interested to know more, these articles found from this same blog’s archives may actually be worth a watch:

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    News on my life

    • March 17, 2009 1:57 am

    Oh dear how long has it been since the last time I wrote to my blog. My website has been dead-quiet for such a long time you might even think I’ve stopped taking pictures. Well that is not the case – it’s quite the opposite actually!

    I have been handling so many irons in fire for the last few months that even updating my portfolio has had to wait – and it still does. Working on magazine covers, editorial assignments, on field…Preliminary assignments for (hopefully) my further photography education in college, school exams (I’m graduating from high school this spring), travelling (New York!!!)… Even my future military service has recently been a lot in my thoughts – and for a reason.

    Last year I decided to apply for Finnish airborne (paratrooper) forces. After sending my medical papers and other certifications in I got an invitation to tryouts in Utti consisting of various physical and psychological tests. There they made us run, jump, crawl, swim, ski, fill in answer sheets containing hundreds and hundreds of questions etc.

    It seems that the months of intensive training were definitely worth it though as I actually received an approval to the paratrooper school just a few days ago! There were 265 applicants in total and only 51 of us got through and managed to claim an invitation to ourselves. My one-year-long training in Utti Jaeger Regiment begins in July 13th.

    But enough of this babbling. Here are a couple of teasers on coming updates on my portfolio (I’ll try and actually write about some of my recent photo shoots in my blog so stay tuned.):

    Still working on the website

    • December 3, 2008 9:13 pm

    New portfolio under construction

    Yes, I code everything manually :)

    (Yes, I code my websites manually… ; )

    Hi ya all!

    As you have probably already recognised I’m working on my main website where this blog is contained also. (If you haven’t seen the work under construction yet feel free to follow this link: JULIUSPHOTO) Previously I didn’t have much more than just this blog and before even that I was coping with just some pretty links to random galleries and bit of silly biography. (I actually made a post about that update back in the beginning of this blog.) Now I have been really revisioning the whole design of my web page and have put a lot of stress on making it functional, easy browsable and most importantly: enjoyable to view! No more small thumbnail-sized imagery or long waiting for images to be downloaded as image galleries are now scrollable.

    Oh, and by the way, I would really like to know how you people like it viewing those galleries in that way actually! Feel free to post your rating of this system by leaving a comment in this post. The image galleries are located here. Thanks in advance!

    So where was I …?

    Did I already mention there will be 900 pixels wide and 600 pixels high pictures in my future portfolio! That’s a huge improvement over previous situation when one had to squint his or her eyes to see anything, I can tell you that! And may I also highlight that every picture published in my portfolio will be totally reprocessed exclusively for that matter.

    And to make my point even clearer I’ll show you one photo from my upcoming portfolio and its stages of post processing. The first picture is straight out of the camera and quite a lackluster as you can see, but it has real hidden potential. The second one is what the photo looks like after I have given it a Lightroom treatment and in the last image I have polished the photo in Photoshop and it’s ready to go!

    (By clicking the images you may open them in separate windows for easier comparison.)

    An image straight out of camera. Photo by Julius Koivistoinen

    An image had its treatment in Lightroom and came out like this. Photo by Julius Koivistoinen

    Last stage of post processing in Photoshop. Photo by Julius Koivistoinen

    So obviously there is something worthful to wait coming and I promise you I’ll be gradually updating the new content online as soon as its finished (as I have done so far too) so keeping an eye on my website may be a good idea. ;)

    Thanks for reading and take care!

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