We Are Studio Hofstad

Dedicated filmmaker, photographer, and colorist based in Bodø, Northern Norway. I also write music, and have a background as a performing singer and musician, and further with experience in sound engineering and computer science.

I have always been a perfectionist with an eye for details, aesthetics and with a talent for finding narrative and emotion in seemingly ordinary material.

Artistically I lean towards the organic look, which I could describe as placed somewhere between the digital and analogue world, perhaps as the best of both worlds. You will see intentional and controlled softness in a lot of my work, chosen deliberately over digital sharpening, while at the same time utilizing the strengths our current technology provides us. I select my gear intentionally with this philosophy in mind, the FX6, the Contax Zeiss lenses, the lights, the music and others, are all tools that complement the aesthetic image, and the mood of the stories I like to create.

Rather than locking myself down to a specific genre or niche, which seems like the popular ideal these days, I try to learn as broadly as I can, capturing anything beneath the sun. I believe my experience as a Northern Lights photographer improves my work in other fields, and vice versa. There’s so much to explore, and so many moments and stories waiting to be captured. Beyond chasing the perfect capture, there’s an infinite depth to the art of imagery, that continues to inspire me.

Expertise & Professional Workflow

My work combines professional equipment with workflows developed through extensive testing and practical experience.

• Cinematography & Photography: Experienced with Sony Cinema Line and Alpha systems across commercial productions, interviews, portraiture, events, wildlife and low-light work.

• Northern Lights Specialization: Capturing the northern lights is a science in its own right, and I have over the years developed very specialized workflows for capturing and processing real-time and timelapse videos of the northern lights with both Sony Cinema line cameras like the Sony FX6, as well as Sony Alpha cameras including the Sony A1 II. This also includes subtle lighting techniques for northern lights portraits, that aim to avoid the typical flood light that is commonly seen in this type of portraiture.
  My goal is to achieve cinematic images that share the northern lights as we experienced them in person, keeping the night looking like night, and not over processing something that is already so spectacular and beautiful.
  
  I offer training in the craft of northern lights photo and videography for both beginners and fellow professionals.

• Color & Image Development: I build camera- and project-specific workflows, and especially my work with the northern lights has forced me to develop a broad technical understanding of low-light image processing and the challenges of working with footage that in essence needs careful restoration. This is valuable experience that translates into the rest of my work, whether I am balancing sunlight or shooting in difficult conditions, and is instrumental in shaping the visual character of my work.

• Optimizing content for Social Media: Social media compression can severely degrade technically demanding footage, particularly northern lights video and other scenes containing subtle gradients, movement and fine detail. I treat social media delivery as part of the production process, testing rendering, dithering, encoding and processing workflows to preserve as much image quality as possible after compression. This specialized approach is one of the reasons my northern lights footage maintains an unusually high level of detail, colour and clarity from capture through to final delivery.

• Audio Engineering: My background in music, studio engineering spans over 30 years, and ensures that dialogue and music in my video productions are handled as carefully as my visuals.

• Custom Soundscapes & Music Composition:
  Beyond capturing the visuals, I am a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a broad musical background. I started at a very young age as a drummer, but if you call me a singer, pianist or guitarist, you’re not entirely wrong. This background eventually grew into writing and producing full orchestral scores from scratch to add a cinematic touch to our films. But my preference in music is as broad as my preference in visuals, meaning I can produce anything from ambient textures to pop music, progressive rock and jazz.
  In essence, this gives me the flexibility to create music specifically around a film, rather than having to shape the film around existing licensed music.