The Quiet Picture

The big thaw continues, with sub-zero temperatures and a bit of snowfall forecast for Friday. The race is on - will the snow melt away before the freeze sets in?

I just went out to get some lunch. It’s raining. R-a-i-n-i-n-g.

Since it’s weekend, I went for a walk as usual. It’s been keeping warm so I didn’t need a cap, or thermal underwear, or winter boots, or camera… in fact, I didn’t even need the gloves. This is supposed to be January?! Not any January I have ever seen… we had better winter weather in England! So needless to say that I’m a little bit ticked off. Global warming sucks. Yes, I take it personally.Because of the weather, the weekend was set out to be a blank memory card. But in the morning during a brief spell of sunshine I got a flurry of activity at my bird feeder, and it wasn’t just the birds. A handsome squirrel paid a visit, as well. LOL!

This was the first time since the summer that I used my 300mm lens. Two concerns:
1) I didn’t get any tack sharp pictures. I know the lens is sharp so either I (=camera or the lens) have a focus problem, or then my long lens technique is bad. The shutter speeds were 1/500-1/640 so camera shake shouldn’t have been a problem, sometimes I used IS and sometimes not, too bad the EXIF doesn’t show that. I didn’t use a tripod, but held the lens on the window sill.
2) Waffle pattern bokeh. I haven’t noticed that before so I wonder if the spruce trees I had as a background could create the waffle effect, with all those needles going this way and that? If not, then the camera sensor is shite. But, this is just about the first time I’ve had to worry about a waffle bokeh so I hope it’s the spruce needles…!

I didn’t experience any major focus issues with the lens last summer. Sure I thought some pictures could’ve been sharper than they were and I often resorted to manual focusing (which is normal with close-up photography), but sometimes I have the same thing with my 70-200mm lens as well. In that case, the problem relates to the camera. But most of the time the images are sharp… so I don’t know what conclusions I can draw here. Crap! I hate having to worry about this. Although in the grand scheme of things, if camera focus is my biggest worry, then everything is fine. There’s that global warming stuff, you know…

Since the beautiful winter weather keeps, I thought it was time for a serious walk. So I took the shortest way to the camping area by the lake and crossed the lake and a narrow strip of forest to get to the big bog. On my way I noticed that they had just laid new ski tracks round the lake and also behind it, all the way to the bog. I wonder how I can find out exactly where this route reaches… With a little luck, we’ll have skiing weather next weekend so I can do a little tour.When I got to the bog, the going got seriously difficult. It was mostly knee deep and sometimes even more, and with this soft new snow it wouldn’t have helped with skis or snowshoes either. But I persisted and waded around looking for photo ops. A bit disappointing that I didn’t find many… but all in all, wading around in snow is fun, as well. Hard work, but fun. When I came back, I took a shortcut. Or what I assumed would be a shortcut. I followed an old snowmobile trail so I didn’t sink quite as much in the snow as I would otherwise, until I came to a ditch. Packed snow, I thought, and stepped in. And sank. I tried to pull out my foot but it was stuck. In muddy water. So I pulled harder and the ditch released its grip with a big slurpy sound. Once I was standing up again, I surveyed the damage. The water had gone in the boot from top but it wasn’t too bad as I had gotten out fairly quickly anyway. My toes were still dry and comfy but the mud-ice-water mixture formed a big crust around the boot and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get rid of all of it. So my left foot felt a bit heavier than my right when I walked on… every once in a while I had to stop to brush off the snow that kept sticking to the wet boot. I was careful to jump over the other ditches I came across!

At sunset I took my skis and headed to my “three pines” sunset spot. But, it figures that if we get sunshine all day, it will cloudy up from the west just before sunset so I froze my butt and camera batteries off while waiting for some light to happen. Bollocks to that.

Well, at least I got to use the L-bracket. Since I was shooting vertical, I got the real benefit of the bracket straight away - I don’t have to flip the head, so the tripod setup is much more stable and balanced than it would otherwise be. I do have a concern with the bracket though, and it’s that the remote control (TC-80N3) is a very tight fit. It feels like it doesn’t quite snap in place like it used to do because the rim of the bracket extends so far out from the camera body. Since these brackets are custom made for the camera model, I wonder why they couldn’t just simply cut a small notch in the metal for the remote cord. The good news is that the remote works anyway. I’m tempted to cut a piece out of the thick rubber at the root of the cord so it fits with the bracket but if it works as it is… I guess I should leave it well alone. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken, eh?

I have replaced the Ljusdal page with a Winter gallery on minnak.net. Since I don’t live in Ljusdal anymore, the page was getting a bit old… and the images weren’t that good anyway. I much prefer the snow filled pictures!

Just saw the news. They got 1m of snow in Hudiksvall today. Hudiksvall is on the coast, just over 100km east from Los. When I lived in Ljusdal, it was my closest “big” town (they have Åhlens). But really… 1 metre of snow?! What did we get here… all of 1cm? Well ok a bit more, but like I said, extreme this ain’t.Regardless of how our snowfall compares to other parts of Sweden, it sure is beautiful here. Definitely the best snow we’ve had this winter (considering that the snow has almost melted away 2-3 times already) and it’s starting to look like winter has started for real. Since it’s been very windy, I thought that the chances are good for finding some nice snow drifts and drove to the Lossjön lake. No drifts. So I drove a bit more, to the Dåasen lake. No drifts. So I wanted to check a couple of bogs further out east… no drifts. I was seriously frustrated by all the driving for nothing so I decided that one old trick has got to be better than a bag of new and drove to my favourite neighbourhood bog. Hooray! If I may still complain though, I would’ve needed a bit more open space. Finding an angle without cluttering the image with trees and twigs was a challenge. Hopefully we’ll have some beautiful snow next weekend as well so I can go searching for a bigger bog. This week is my on call duty week which means that my options are very limited.

In the afternoon I went out again and wisely left the car behind. I did my favourite hike to the Eagle Mountain and although I didn’t get many photos to show for it, I did enjoy the walk. There were some old snow mobile tracks I could follow so the snow wasn’t too deep, but I did get to wade angle deep most of the time. So I got a workout instead of photos.

Regarding the L-bracket, I didn’t get to try it. As soon as I started working on my first photo op for the day, I had to change from the 17-85mm to 70-200mm. Both my telephotos have dedicated lens plates attached to the tripod collar, so the L-bracket will really only be used with the wideangle zoom and 100mm macro (which is not seeing much action in the wintertime).

I got an L-bracket today. It must be the single most expensive piece of camera equipment I’ve bought in relation to what it does. Because, it really doesn’t do anything. It just sits there attached to the camera and then every once in a while I attach the gear on the tripod. It’s a precision crafted one-piece lightweight aluminium camera plate for the 20D body without the grip that only pros and dedicated amateurs buy… and the price goes up. I would’ve had to get an anti-twist camera plate anyway since the small Novoflex universal plate I have has driven me crazy from day one, so I thought I would splash out on the L-bracket instead. And let’s face it, the anti-twist plates are not exactly budget either.

* * *

We have a snow storm here. It’s not a snow storm in the scale of the northern America, and not even up to biggest storms we have in Sweden… but just about as bad as it gets in this region. We are far north from the deceptively mild winters in the southern Sweden and far south from the Arctic circle, somewhere in between the coast and the mountains. Extreme weather just doesn’t exist here. I know I should be grateful for that… but surely a proper snow storm every once in a while is not too much to ask? Anyway, I’m looking forward to tomorrow - my first chance to see the new snow scenery in daylight. I will be out shooting and enjoying myself and it will also be interesting to see how the L-bracket performs! Well, if L-brackets can perform, at all. They just are there.

1. Straight horizons
2. Rule of thirds
3. Depth of field
4. Angle
5. Flash
6. Sunsets and foreground
7. Coming up: Leading lines
8. Coming up: Body parts (cropping of(f)!)
9. Coming up: Filters

Some photographers like using flash. Other photographers don’t. When you choose not to use a flash even when using one would be warranted, it’s called natural light photography - you only use the light that is naturally available. That’s what I do. I don’t know anything about flashes, but I don’t have anything against them either. In fact, sometimes I consider buying a Canon ringlite for closeup and macro photography. But, what does make me a flash hater, is when the use of flash is very obvious. This is normally when you use the built-in flash in your camera in low-light conditions (the area that gets lit is very small so the edges of the image are very dark). Using the built-in flash for fill-flash in good lighting conditions is less obvious. What I think is really funny is when someone uses the built-in flash when shooting landscapes (without the intention of including foreground). Honestly, it won’t help!The problem with the built-in flash is that the light is so direct. If you think about the natural light around you, the beauty is that the light really is all around you - the sun might be far away but it’s sure is bigger in the sky than the tiny flash in your camera. If you want to take the next step in your flash photography, you would buy an external flash that attaches to the camera hot shoe. Yes, the light is still the same direction as you camera points at, but it stands out high above your lens and you can attach a diffuser element to soften the light. Or you can swivel the flash head upwards and bounce the light from the ceiling. And you don’t even necessarily have to attach the flash directly to the camera. You can use a cord to have the flash further away and thus create depth in your photo by using the flash as a side light. Or, you can buy two or more flashes and get even more creative with your lighting!

So flashes are good, but as a rule of thumb, they are not good for landscape photography and they are not good when all you have is the built-in flash in your camera. But of course, if all you want is to take those family snapshots, then by all means flash away!

* * *

I would’ve posted some examples but since I don’t use flash, I don’t have any… So you’ll just have to take my word for it. The built-in flash units are at their best when they are not used. Seriously. Unless you really really really know what you’re doing.

Last day of the long weekend. I was out before sunrise, walked up Furuberget again. That’s 3.5 times in 3 days… other people normally take the lift up… Anyway, I observed that the snow has melted away from the trees on the high hills, for example the tall pines on the Eagle Mountain are now bare. Strange… there hasn’t been any wind to speak of and it sure hasn’t been warm. Must be the sun shining on these trees all day.Then in the afternoon I went skiing again, and for the first time I had the camera with me (on skis, that is, obviously!). I wanted to check if there’s any sunset photo ops now that the forest has been cleared south-west of the tracks so there’s a clean view, with three tall pines in the middle of the clearing to provide foreground interest. When I was halfway the ski round, I met a local and as is the custom here, we exchanged a few words. Only it was more than just a few words, we talked about Los and the nature and skiing and I explained that I’m a bit less than gracious on skis since I only picked up the sport recently, but at least I have stayed on my feet so far. He consoled me by saying that he has a relative who has lived in England and South Africa and he usually ends wrapped around a lamp post when he tries to ski here. The conversation went on to the point where I was worried that I might actually miss the sunset, but, standing still in the cold air gets to you so we parted ways before the freeze set in. So I made it to my sunset spot just in time and struggled with the tripod because one of the sections had frozen so I couldn’t fully extend the foot. Just as well for the uneven ground so I could place the short foot higher than the two others and thus had a steady platform to shoot from. It turned out that I had been a bit too cautious in my estimate about the spot - it was just perfect, as the sun was setting right behind those tall pines (or right next to them, if you took a few steps in either way). Nice.

I watched the sun disappear behind the hills and started back. There’s a forest trail that I can take from my house to the ski tracks so I don’t always have to drive to the “official” starting point of the tracks. My sunset spot is only about 100 metres clockwise from the forest trail, so I had to ski in the reverse direction to get back to the trail. No big deal, you say, and so I thought, too… But there’s a reason people prefer to ski clockwise on the tracks. The downhills are nicer that way. And as it happens, the 100 metres that I had to ski anti-clockwise in order to get to the forest trail includes a fairly steep slope. That bends in the middle. And what do you know, I can’t turn in full speed! So I had a close encounter with a lamp post and crashed in the soft snow. Once I was on my feet again and looked at the tracks of my crash landing, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had to go and brag about having stood on my feet since I took up skiing?! Should’ve knocked on wood, LOL!