The Quiet Picture

I’m sitting on the ferry on my way back to the mainland, time to kill. So here are some miscellaneous observations from Gotland.

It has been a great trip, and I’m well pleased with myself to have overcome the winds so I don’t have a feeling that I missed a picture because it was blowing too hard. I even did some extreme closeups, with a little help from the Wimberley Plamp. And the Stormjacket got me through the rain. Regarding the pictures themselves, I’ve been looking through them but there’s nothing that really sticks out. Most of them are just straight portrait shots, but then again, that’s what I’m comfortable with and I think I succeeded in that respect. The most important thing is that I’m not feeling that I missed out on something, that I didn’t take a picture that I would’ve liked to. I don’t even regret that I didn’t do more sightseeing, or more effort at landscape photography. This trip was always about the orchids, and it’s not possible to squeeze in 19 orchid excursions (or 20, if the unscheduled search at Klinteberget is included) in 5 days and still have time (and energy) over for scouting for good landscape ops in the best light. I know I missed a couple of sunsets, but honestly, I was too tired to be disappointed for more than just a few seconds.

I really only have one nag, and it’s with one of the hostels - the Lärbro hostel is nothing I would recommend. Paper thin walls and the dining area is just an extended corridor where the rooms are, so there’s no sound isolation whatsoever. And the echo in the dining area/corridor was horrible. For a sound sensitive person like myself, it was a nightmare. Stay at Tingstäde instead, one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed in!

The Swedish they speak on Gotland is very special. It’s almost a language of its own, I think it exists even in written form. I struggled to understand it, reminded me of when I was in England and spoke with Scottish people. I don’t know why some dialects are so much harder for me than others!

My first Gotland post included a mention of cycling. It was evident everywhere, and the island is really built to be bicycle friendly, not just by nature but I mean road planning also. With what everyone relying on their muscle power to get around, it figures that obesity is probably not such a big problem on Gotland as it is elsewhere (I don’t have any statistics to support me, this is just based on visual observation). Good for them!

To wrap up my Gotland story… Gotland is not only a botanist’s paradise, but it’s excellent for birders as well. Sometimes I wished I knew more about birds because I struggled to recognise a fraction of what I saw. It was along the lines of “oh look a bird… and a big bird”!

* * *

Now it’s back to the mainland and the mountains - a different and exciting flora awaits!

My last day on Gotland, time for some sightseeing since my orchid hunt is over. I was actually completely unprepared for sightseeing so I hadn’t done any research on what would be worth seeing - I had expected to spend my entire visit with the orchids. So I just looked at my roadmap which had some points of interest marked on it, and headed for one which was advertised as bronze age cairns. I should’ve known better - a cairn is just a pile of rocks, and that’s exactly what this was. A big pile of rocks. But the name is very cool though, “Uggarde rojr”. Worth a visit just for that.

The southern Gotland is home to Sweden’s biggest wind power plant. I drove to Näsudden to take a look, and eh… a lot of windmills, yes. I decided that I’m better off with pure landscape, so I followed the coastal road up north and stopped at some viewpoints to take a look at the Lilla and Stora Karlsö islands in the distance. If I’d had more time here, I would have included a visit to one of these islands. They have very interesting profiles, cliffs rising up from the sea. Apparently interesting flora, as well.

While in search of a better viewpoint, I ended up at the Klinteberget mountain (peak at 52 metres). The light was all wrong for the landscape shot I was hoping for, but just by a coincidence (and I swear it was a coincidence), this mountain is home for some very rare white helleborine, which I didn’t have on my wish-list so I hadn’t noted down where it grows. I tramped up and down the mountain in search of them, and found none - I did however find loadsa dark-red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra). This is only the second time I’ve seen any, and this location was far better than the first one. But still, no white helleborine so either I’m too late for them, or they are another no-show.

I then continued up to Visby to have a look around the town. I was well impressed with the old town and the ringwall surrounding it. Definitely worth a visit in the evening light and do some urban photography for a change - I’m no architectural photographer by any means but I do have a bit of a soft spot for old buildings. So while I was waiting for the light, I drove to the Lummelunda caves. I’m not interested in the caves themselves, but the area around the place was supposed to be nice. They even had a marked nature trail, which I happily followed - and found pyramidal orchids, but I had of course seen them elsewhere already so they only got a footnote on my orchid trip as being the last orchid I saw. Which was nice, I had seen enough of the ubiquitous twayblade! I did a photo session though, I had seen this purple flower lining up the roads in great numbers but I hadn’t seen it elsewhere so I could photograph it, not until here, so it was just in the nick of time.

Then it was back to Visby and wait for the light for happen, good plan except the light went out instead. A bank of clouds had appeared all of a sudden, so my Gotland trip ended in a bit of an anti-climax.

There are two more orchids on my list that I might be able to find - burnt orchid (Orchis ustulata) and marsh orchid (Orchis palustris). On my way south, I stopped at every place I had marked as a potential site for the burnt orchid, but came up empty each time. I think I’m too late for it, it’s supposed to bloom in june but I’ve seen in many places that the orchids seem to be ahead of the schedule (marsh helleborine being a good indicator of this). So now I have to give on it, if it were in bloom I would surely have seen it already.

So only one more orchid, and it’s a very rare one. There’s a couple of likely places further south, but I wanted a break from orchid hunting so I played normal tourist and checked out some “rauk”s at Ljugarn.

And then the hunt was back on… first stop, Mästermyr. No marsh orchid. This was supposed to be a wet place, but there wasn’t a drop of water in sight. The marsh orchid loves water, so it looked hopeless. I was only wondering how the other orchids survived here… for example, plenty of marsh helleborine. You’d expect it wants a lot of water as well. But I did manage to add one more species to my list - dark-red helleborine (Epipactis atrorubens). Granted, with a the narrowest of margins, because the flower hadn’t fully opened yet. I have seen dark-red helleborine buds in many places, but this was the first time that a flower had even started to open, and I don’t want to add a species to my list unless I can say that I’ve seen the flower. So it’s a miss for narrow-leaved helleborine, completely withered but positive id. A near miss for Gymnadenia odoratissima, mostly withered everywhere I saw it but I was lucky to find a couple of blooms on one individual. I know there’s a place about 100 km south from Loos where the dark-red helleborine grows, so I wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t find any blooming individuals yet.

Now I only had one place left. If I didn’t find the marsh orchid at Krakvät/Sävvät, then that’s it. It turned out that this area which the book advertises as “being covered in water at the end June” is also suffering from the drought. Even the canal that runs through this area was dry. So unless it starts to rain a lot, and soon, I don’t think that the marsh orchid will show themselves anywhere at all. But again, despite the drought, an unbelievable number of marsh helleborine. Hats off!

When I checked in at the hostel, I had a brief chat about the drought. It turned out that this is just about the worst ever - they have received 5.5mm rain since April! That rain that came down in the north, apparently they just got a few drops down south so it didn’t even register.

It’s amazing that any orchids survive the conditions… most of the orchids like wet or damp and/or shaded places, and still I was seeing them in wide open dry places. They are hardier than you’d think.

Since my orchid hunt is now over (tomorrow is sightseeing only, and I’ll get the ferry back on Friday morning), I can summarise the results. I found 13 new species!! (The number includes the slightly questionable lesser butterfly orchid subspecies, and barely-in-bloom dark-red helleborine). This exceeds my expectations by far, I didn’t even dream that I could find that many.

I knew that Gotland is a good place for orchids, but I had no idea it was this good. And this is apparently a bad year, at that. It’s not just the number of species, but it’s also the number of individuals. In some places you can’t take a step without risking to step on an orchid. Unfortunately, such abundance becomes a bit…. boring after a while. From a happy laugh when I found my first new orchid, I just smiled a little when I found the last. The “wow” had become an “oh”. Even the marsh helleborine that I think is so beautiful… when you’ve seen it in 5 different places, you don’t even bother to take a closer look to find that beauty. Back home it’s always a pleasure to see an orchid, even if it’s as common as the heath spotted orchid (which by the way doesn’t seem to be the most common orchid here). I wonder how the local people consider the orchids? In Slite, there’s a jogging trail that is surrounded by butterfly orchids, fly orchids, marsh helleborine, and apparently even the occasional narrow-leaved helleborine, plus some other orchids I can’t even remember right now. So you don’t have to travel far to see them… they are right there. Does familiarity breed contempt? Do the locals even see them anymore?

Personally, I think I prefer to keep the joy of discovery. Not even a discovery of new, but a re-discovery of old. When you’re not surrounded by them, you have to work harder to find them. And for me, that’s an essential part of the experience. I’ll have a go at the false musk orchid (Chamorchis alpina) and black vanilla orchid (Gymnadenia nigra) in the mountains later on… and if I find either, I know I’ll be laughing as happy as I was when I saw my first fly orchid on Sunday!

The day dawned rainy. And windy. Definitely not a flower photographer’s dream weather, but I wasn’t discouraged. It just takes a bit more work, that’s all. I drove to Kallgatburg in search of the narrow-leaved marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza traunsteineri) and I was happy to find them - except now that I looked at one and confirmed the id, I realised that many of those early marsh orchids I was cursing at yesterday were also narrow-leaved marsh-orchid. But now that I was sure of what I was looking at, it was surprisingly easy to tell them apart. That’s learning the hard way, but these are the lessons that I’m sure to remember. Much more efficient than someone just pointing out the flowers to you.

Weather-wise, I had a lucky break at Kallgatburg. When I was walking to the car, it started raining and it kept raining on my next stop, the Alvena lindaränge meadows. It was so bad that I had I not found a new orchid, I wouldn’t have risked getting the camera wet, but as it happens, I did find a new orchid - military orchid (Orchis militaris). And a bonus orchid in a form of a half withered Gymnadenia odoratissima, and now I knew the species for sure. The ones that got me wondering yesterday were not Gymnadenia odoratissima, they were hybrids at best.

The Stormjacket came up the champ, it kept my camera dry and I got my pictures.

Since I had now ticked off two new species, my list was getting short. All that is left are the rarest ones, so now I was just checking my notes to see where those elusive orchids grow. I read that narrow-leaved helleborine (Cephalanthera longifolia) and fen orchid (Liparis loeselii) would grow in Ar, so that was my next stop. I was stunned when I got there - pyramidal orchids growing by the roadside, in large numbers! This is the first time I saw them since that one individual I found two days ago. And then I was also seeing early marsh orchids and ssp. ochroleuca, plus lesser butterfly orchids and marsh helleborine… all in greater numbers that I had seen anywhere so far. As for the flowers I was looking for, I found a withered narrow-leaved helleborine, so now I can stop looking for it - I’m hopelessly too late for it. The fen orchid was nowhere to be seen.

On my way back south, I stopped at Vitärtskällan. It wasn’t on my list, but the entrance to the reserve was right by the road so it was too easy to miss. Nothing new there, just some cows.

The next location to find my elusive orchids was at Slite. Again, it was a miss but there was plenty of other orchids. Can’t believe these numbers… back home there’s one bog where you can find 5 different species of orchids. That’s the most I know of anywhere in that region. Here, 5 species seems like a poor orchid place. At first on my excursions, I kept a count of the number of orchids I saw. Now I don’t even bother… The last time I counted was 8, and I’ve read that there are some places that host no less than 15 species. They are obviously not all blooming at the same time, but still! And the most common orchid? Twayblade, no doubt. Can’t remember a place I’ve visited where it didn’t grow.

Time for one more excursion before I called it a day. Having given up on the narrow-leaved helleborine, I was now hunting for the burnt orchid (Orchis ustulata) which is actually quite high on my wish list. But I missed it again, I did however find mosquitoes. Got my first mozzy bites on this island!

There’s a couple of good orchid places close to hostel, so it was natural that I would start my morning there. Except, I had a slight disagreement with the book again so I skipped the first one, it just wasn’t worth figuring out why they want to me park all the way over there and then walk back on the road to… whatever obscure point they thought I should take over the barbed wire fence. Anyway, it was considerably more easy to find the second spot, and now I made a new discovery - the early marsh orchid ssp. ochroleuca (Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp. ochroleuca). I was also happy to see more of the marsh helleborine, it really is one beautiful orchid.

After Grodvät, I continued up to the northern tip of the Gotland main island. The wind was really beating the flowers and I had to stretch my patience almost to the limit to get a picture of something that may or may not have been an early marsh orchid. With hindsight, it was. And it was everywhere - I’ve never seen so many. Sadly, not many other orchids to be see, I think I was half blind because of all the purple flowers.

My feet were already starting to get tired, I guess I hadn’t quite recovered from yesterday and I’m a little bit out of shape (or a lot). So I decided that I will only do one more excursion today, and it had to be something that doesn’t require a long hike. Checking my notes, I found a promising spot and sure enough, it produced right away - a serendipity if there ever was one. Already when I got out of the car, I saw two people scanning the ground. So I walked up to them and asked if they had seen anything interesting, they confirmed what I had already noticed myself, it was very dry so the flowers are not so plentiful. As I was talking with them, I saw something bright green in the corner of my eye and we bent down to take a closer look - musk orchid (Herminium monorchis)! It had to be the smallest orchid I had ever seen, must be one of those flowers that are more common than you think because most of the time you just walk right past them without noticing.

I kept walking around the place and found lots of fly orchids and a surprising amount of marsh helleborine. Surprising, because it was bone dry, but this place apparently collects water if there’s a big downpour and then dries up again. Which you could see on the ground, it was dry mud. Just look at the background in the musk orchid picture above, that grey is natural - OOF dry mud.

Then I started having some doubts about the fragrant orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) I was seeing everywhere. This place also hosts Gymnadenia odoratissima and I couldn’t remember how to tell them apart. So when I saw fragrant orchids that looked a bit different than what I’m used to seeing them, I just simply put my nose to use - I remembered reading that they smell different. And I thought I had found the other species, but then later on when I was reading the orchid book I found out that you can also tell them apart visually and I think I missed it this time. Maybe I came across a hybrid…

Tomorrow will be tough, especially the morning. The wind is really bad at the moment and it will keep up until tomorrow afternoon. And apparently it will also be raining. Not really made for flower photography… or landscapes either, for that matter.

(Warning - this will be a long post. It was a long day!)

I had been studying books and maps since the winter to get an idea of which places to visit. My plan is to drive north and stay there for three days, then make my way down on the eastern coast, one night in the southern Gotland and then back to Visby for the ferry on Friday.

The first stop of the day was Brucebo just north from Visby. Plenty of orchids, that’s what the book said - all I saw was some withered ones. I walked around the nature reserve, but only came up with the twayblade and then some more withered orchids. There’s plenty of other flowers though, most of which I’ve never seen before. I guess the problem is that there really are so many flowers in such abundance, that I just develop a tendency to walk past rather than to settle down to photograph. Blasé in a bad way.

I had a list of 15 orchids (new species to me) that I could theoretically see on Gotland this time of the year. I made up a pessimistic target of finding five for the whole trip and everything else would be bonus. Except now that Brucebo was looking the way it was, five suddenly seemed very optimistic.

I continued driving further north and stopped at the Grausne nature reserve. The first orchid I saw? The number one on my wish list - the fly orchid (Ophrys insectifera)! It’s not the prettiest orchid around, but I think it’s as fascinating as they get. When I saw it among the grasses, I had to close my eyes for a few seconds and then look again, just to make sure that I got it right. I even laughed out loud… The feeling of discovery is unbeatable! And then, just a few steps after the fly orchid, a lesser butterfly orchid (Platanthera bifolia)! It was already starting to wither, but there was no doubt about it. It is strictly speaking not a new species to me because we have the ssp. latiflora growing in Loos, but all that depends on which flora book you’re reading. My spirits considerably lifted up, I continued strolling around the nature reserve because the book had said that it’s home to many other orchids as well. I had all but given up on finding any more, when suddenly this red thing poked out from under a spruce - red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra). Suddenly five new orchid species seemed pessimistic again!

The next place was the Gräne nature reserve. The instructions to find it were clear in the book, but I think it’s time for a re-write - the place where they claimed you can park your car was anything but fit for a car. Too many trees.

But I did fid the trail, and I also found the greater butterfly orchid (Platanthera chlorantha) right next to it! Things were sure starting to look up, but I was not expecting it would be as good as the next orchid, marsh helleborine (Epipactis palustris). I was truly stunned to see it, for three reasons really. Firstly, I’ve always thought it’s one of the most beautiful orchids there is. And secondly, I thought this was too early in the season for it so I didn’t even have it on my list. And thirdly, it was a lot smaller than I expected. But size doesn’t matter, what matters is that I was looking at this gorgeous orchid!

I also managed to squeeze in some pictures of viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare). It grows all over the place here, much like lupines back home. Which reminds me, I haven’t seen any lupines here, and I hope it stays that way.

And then at long last I saw a blooming bird’s-nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis) - just about the ugliest orchid there is, I had to get touchy feely with it to assure myself that it’s a fresh flower and not a dry and withered one. I had already seen many withered bird’s-nest orchids but since they’re brown either way, you have to get close to secure the status.

The island is relatively small, deceptively so - even with a map at hand, I still have a hard time accepting how short the distances are. The short distances mean that I have to plan my excursions differently than what I’m used to. Normally when I travel, I go to the mountains and I’ll make one excursion a day, meaning that I pick a mountaintop that I have the energy to reach in a day (and back again). Here, it’s a matter of how many excursions you can squeeze in a day!

So after checking in at the hostel, it was time for the 4th and last excursion of the day - Stigmyr. I found that the fragrant orchid was already in bloom but since we have it back home, I wasn’t terribly excited about it. But the butterfly orchids on the other hand, I was still checking out them to see if they were of the greater or lesser variety. And twayblade… everywhere! I shouldn’t overlook it though, I don’t have any good pictures of it but I figured that since it’s so common here, I’ll photograph it some other day.

Then all of a sudden - a pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) appeared next to the trail. How lucky am I that the only individual of a particular flower I find grows right next to the trail? I looked around but this one I found was all alone.

The orchid list for the day was rounded up by heath spotted orchid, early marsh orchid and ssp. cruenta. That’s a lot of orchids for a day.

So what does that make… 7 new orchids? The lesser butterfly orchid can be discussed. In any case, I’ve already gone over my target so I’m now in bonus-land with 4 days left to explore. Hopefully I can spend some more time with the other beautiful flowers on this island as well, and maybe, just maybe, do some landscape work as well (light permitting). Today’s sunset was a non-event in any case.

I’ll spend the first week of my holiday in Gotland - never been there before, but I just couldn’t resist it now with what all the orchids. So I drove to Nynäshamn to catch the ferry, an easy cruise of just over 3 hours to Visby. I arrived at 18:00 and I checked in at the hostel (not as easy as it sounds - there’s no reception there), got some food and then drove to Högklinten to check the view and admire the sunset. I felt like Alice in Wonderland…. already I was overwhelmed by all the flowers! But I just took my scenic pictures, flower time begins tomorrow.

My first impressions of Gotland: High cliffs, haven’t seen such since England. But once you’re up that cliff, very flat. Haven’t seen such since Denmark. The preferred mode of transport around here is a bicycle, hardly surprising.

And it’s windy - very windy, by flower photography standards. Patience will be an essential tool. Patience and a Plamp.

The island may be small but the flowers somehow look bigger… I swear the poppies are twice the size we have!

Holiday. Now. I have been sooo tired lately, chronic tiredness that no amount of sleep or coffee can cure. My brain is tired, my body is tired, I even fell asleep on the bus. And I never sleep on the bus (or train or airplane or anything that moves, for that matter). For the past weeks all I’ve been wanting to do is to scream “I don’t care” to everyone who comes asking for anything. I didn’t quite scream, but I think my colleagues heard me say it a few times or many. That week’s holiday I had in May, it didn’t even make a dent. But now I have three weeks (and one day)!

I kicked off my holiday by searching for bog orchids. The book said that they are plentiful on this marsh, so I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. As it turned out, it was. I didn’t find any. Plentiful? That’s just mean. I wasn’t seeing any orchids at all, just a few early coralroot in a forest next to the marsh and nothing else. Until this white thing poked out from the grass. The first white early marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata) I’ve ever seen! My disappointment at missing out on the bog orchids was immediately swept away. I had a look around but this was the only orchid I could see. A bit later I came across a normal coloured early marsh orchid, and then a bud of the same, but that’s really all I could find.

In the image, I experimented with the foreground. Instead of weeding out everything, I left some grass between the lens and the flower that created a texture around the orchid. I figured it works ok as long as nothing stands out, but I’m not entirely sure if I like it or not.

I’ve mentioned a few times how I don’t like HDR (High Dynamic Range). The problem I have with it is when the effect is taken out of proportions, and when it’s done so bad that the halos show (can’t believe that the people can’t actually see the massive halos when they create their HDR image??). So I don’t have anything against the technique as such, it’s just a matter of using it in moderation.

Last week I mentioned how I tried Photomatix with one of my images and failed miserably to produce any good results. Now I started reading an article on Naturescapes.net and decided to have another go at HDR, because obviously I hadn’t played around with the settings enough on my first try. But instead of taking that sunset image, I wanted to start with something a bit easier - one of my Canada images where I had made just two exposures to get enough dynamic range. I was never able to merge these images before, but I’ve kept them in case one day I could figure out how to create a complete image and it appears that the day is today. Photomatix merged my exposures with ease and I opted to pull back the effect because I wanted to stay true to the conditions on that day; overcast, cold and murky. A bright and saturated image just wouldn’t ring true!

Happy at the results I was now getting, I threw the Högforsen sunset image at it and this time I was actually able to get something reasonable in return. But either I’m still not able to fully grasp the finer adjustment details or the image just simply is not suitable for the Photomatix treatment, because in the end I kept my original merge. But it was a close call, and definitely an encouragement for me to continue learning the HDR technique - not for the sake of the technique itself, but as another tool in my photography bag.

* * *

I also tested another HDR programme, Dynamic Photo HDR. Initially I was pleased with it and and was about to ditch Photomatix, but then I noticed that it was having a lot of trouble with colour gradients, seen as nasty jaggies across the sky. The same image processed in Photomatix had much smoother gradations, so I think I will stick with it for now.