The Quiet Picture

Perfect day for some sightseeing! I drove south towards Orsa to check out the Storstupet and Helvetesfallet canyons. Been there, seen it, done that. No need to go back. But in case someone else is interested and has photography in mind, you might want to know that at Storstupet the view is more or less to the south (=to the sun) and at Helvetesfallet it’s to the north. But if you pick overcast weather like I did, then the direction of the sun is pretty much a moot point!

From the Emån river (which is what runs through Storstupet and Helvetesfallet) I continued to Boda to have a look at one more waterfall, Styggforsen. Been there, seen it, done that. It’s borderline that it might be more interesting in the spring when there’s more water… but it’s unlikely I’ll bother to go there again. But in case you want to go there, then you should know that Boda is 20 km north from Rättvik and Styggforsen is well signposted from the main road. Swedish signposting can sometimes be quite… random, so seeing those signs at every turn was a bit of a novelty for me!

Even if it sounds like I’m totally unimpressed with today’s trip, I’m actually not. I’ve had these places on my to-do list for years, and now I can finally tick them off. And even if I didn’t see anything which I think is worth seeing again, I think all of these three places were worth seeing – period.

Canon is going to release a follow-up to 40D just a year down the road, quick pace. The 50D is built on 40D so it’s not really a new model, I’m surprised they gave it a new model number instead of a “Mark II” tag they normally put on these enhanced models. But I guess it’s easier to market a new model than a new version.

Some new features:

• 15.1 megapixels
• higher resolution LCD
• higher ISO
• better noise reduction
• peripheral illumination correction
• Auto Lighting Optimizer
• Creative Full Auto (CA) mode
• better Live View

So is there anything I want? Nope. I haven’t needed to stretch the 10 MP of my 40D so the only thing 15 MP does is that it takes up more disk space. I’m happy with the LCD, I hardly ever use the high ISOs, I can do all my image editing in Lightroom so I don’t need these functions like peripheral illumination correction in camera, I only use the manual mode so this new CA mode will be lost on me, and I’ve only ever used Live View once on my 40D… so I guess the only enhancement I might be interested in is better noise reduction, but it remains to be seen how good it really is. I’m not really suffering from the 40D noise and this one feature alone is definitely not worth the money.

I reckon that Canon doesn’t really expect 40D users to upgrade (and indeed, 40D will not be retired but will be kept in production parallel with 50D), but the 50D is there to help Canon keep their market share. The other camera makers are catching up, and I think that if Canon wants to keep on top of things, they need to come up with something better than a “Creative Auto Mode”. How about proper weather proofing, for starters? Now that would get me thinking for sure!

It was such a great weekend, you’d almost be fooled into thinking it’s summer (if it weren’t for the fact that the temperature stayed in the ‘teens). Perfect for motorbiking, in other words!

Despite the bike, I’m not really a motor enthusiast. Actually, I’m not even a motorbike enthusiast – I just have my Tricker and that’s perfectly enough for me. But this old tractor, it was just begging to be photographed so I parked my bike and obliged.

And then afterwards, I fiddled with just about every slider in Lightroom to edit the life out of it!

It’s been over two years since my last visit to the Gröntjärn lake, so I was really looking forward to today’s trip. Gröntjärn is one of my all time favourite (photo) locations, and I used to enjoy every visit there. And there were plenty of visits, during those five years I lived in Ljusdal.

The most interesting thing about this little lake is the water level. I’ve seen it at almost flood level, and I’ve seen it shrink into small pools. Today, it was something in between, and as beautiful as ever! Judging by the shoreline, it looks like the water level hasn’t been very high in the past years. Plant life is decorating the shores with its greens and even trees are starting to get a hold on the slopes. But, come next flood, and the shores will be stripped bare again.

What a great day, visiting an old favourite and finally doing that long motorcycle trip I’ve been talking about. Lovely!

As wonderful as my motorbike is, it has one big shortcoming – it can’t carry any gear. There’s no package rack, it’s not suitable for side bags, and the tank is too narrow for tank bags. Of course, this is a trail bike and it’s not meant for long trips and hauling gear, so I had to get creative to figure out how I can attach a tripod and some other gear on it, and also carry a couple of 1-liter fuel bottles in case I wanted to go for a longer ride (because that 6-liter tank puts a serious limit to the range).

In the end, I was able to solve all three. There’s now a rack in the rear, a tripod holder on the left and a tank bag which holds the fuel bottles. Since the weather has been what’s been this summer, I haven’t needed the extra fuel yet, but the rack and tripod holder are in use. Not pretty, but it works!

The tripod holder and tank bag are genuine leather articles that were made to my order. They cost quite a lot, actually, so it’s a bit shame that I haven’t needed them that much. Maybe I get lucky and we get an indian summer which would allow me to go on that long road trip…

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[added 2009-04-01] I contacted my local Yamaha dealer to get the package rack. No problems with it at all, I got in within a week of ordering. The documentation is in Japanese though so I’m not sure what the part number is, but I’ll make a wild guess and say it’s YSK-038-E30 because that’s the filename of the PDF: Tricker package rack. Note that it’s not made by Yamaha directly, but by YS Gear – “Special gear & accessories”.

The bog star, or grass of parnassus (Parnassia palustris) is a flower that definitely deserves a closer look. It’s not hard to find if you are in an area where it grows (bogs, as hinted by the name) because it’s just about the only flower that is still in bloom this late in the season. The first time I remember I ever saw it, was in September a few years back. Now in early August, they have just started blooming and I could still see plenty of buds today.

The bog star is exquisitely beautiful, an absolute delight to see through the macro lens. The pattern in the petals is unrivalled and you’ll find to your surprise that this white flower is much more colourful than you’d expect at first look. Even the leaves are beautiful, as reflected in the Swedish name “hjärtblad” (heart leaf) as this flower is sometimes called here.

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The image is completely (well, almost completely) processed in Lightroom for web release, meaning that LR is increasingly becoming my one-stop-shop for all image processing. I tried the option to add a copyright watermark via the LR export dialog, but it’s not possible to change the font and I found the default style horrible. After some searching I found a plug-in that can insert a graphical watermark during the export process so I can now use my old copyright text, straight from Lightroom. The only thing I’m not happy with is that LR doesn’t seem to compress the jpg’s the same way as e.g. Photoshop does, so the file size is bigger than it should be. If I take down the quality, then the image just gets pixelated. So the “almost completely” I mentioned is that I export the image to Irfanview and just simply save it with a quality setting that gives me the right size without completely messing up the image. A couple of quick clicks and it’s done – and I’m waiting for better compression in Lightroom 3, maybe?

The opportunity to photograph the ghost orchid was so unique that I just had to get back there, this time with the zoom lens to capture the environment as well. I should mention that “ghost orchid” means different flowers in North America and Europe. Dendrophylax lindenii is the American ghost orchid, and Epipogium aphyllum is the Eurasian ghost orchid.

It was raining quite a lot but the Stormjacket came through for me so I think my camera is safe. But as far as Sundays go, well, I just can’t think of anything better than walking through a rain soaked forest in cool weather!

I only had one more orchid left to find in Loos – the ghost orchid (Epipogium aphyllum). It is probably also the most fascinating of all the orchids, as the English name implies. The Swedish name is skogsfru, literally translated as “wife of the forest”, the Finnish name metsänemä translates as “mother of the forest”. I think that the English name best describes the nature of this unpredictable flower. Now you see it, now you don’t – it comes and goes as it pleases, appears in one place this year and then is gone for ten years until the next time, or maybe it will never show itself again but suddenly appears some way on the side of the first place. It blooms only for a short time and then withers quickly and leaves no trace of its existence, it doesn’t even have any leaves to remind you that it once grew here. Just to show exactly how mysterious it can be, it threw in a surprise for us that even my guide had never seen before. We found a group of no less than 16 plants, and then nearby a group of 10 that was so tight it looked more like a ghost orchid bush. Normally you’re more likely to find groups of maybe 5, and even more likely just some lonely scattered flowers here and there on the forest floor. The orchid in the picture is one of the lonely ones, beautifully decorated with rain drops.

That large group of ghost orchids is still haunting my memory, if you please pardon the pun. It was an orchid encounter I won’t soon forget!

I’m normally not easily impressed, but I was absolutely floored when I was looking at this photographer’s work – Charles Cramer. Just awesome, the style is right up my alley and I only wish I could take pictures even a fraction this good!

I know that the gear doesn’t make the photographer, but I suddenly developed a craving for a medium format camera… Or why not large format while I’m at it. Phase One P45 is only three times the price of a small car!

It was a rather disappointing July actually, just marginally better than last year. Only the last week of July was really warm (warmest I saw was 32°C in the shade), otherwise it was rather cool with showers on many days. All in all, July was kind of like June inversed (June started warm but finished cool).

NB: Observations missing for 4 days. And as it happens, those missing days were some of the warmer days in between the cooler ones in early July.

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Temperature (High): 26°C
Temperature (Low): 9°C
Temperature (Average): 18°C

Barometer (High): 1020 mbar
Barometer (Low): 994 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1006 mbar

Total of sunny days: 1

Rain: 64 mm
Days with rain: 15

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