The Quiet Picture

I’ve been thinking about photographing the sunrise from the Eagle Mountain lookout all winter. But sunrise requires getting up early – or anyway, earlier than I normally do on a day off, so I just haven’t gotten around to hiking up the mountain until now. Today’s sunrise was at 9.19 so I can’t claim I’m terribly sleep deprived, even if I got there over an hour before because I wanted to catch the wonderful dawn colour gradient which is at its best about an hour before sunrise.

When I saw the images on the computer, I got a minor shock – photographing a clear sky with a small aperture revealed a whole lot of dust specs on the sensor. I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the dust prevention in the 40D… Besides dust specs, I also cloned out some pesky birch branches that invaded the frame on the right. The Eagle Mountain lookout isn’t really ideal for photography but the view is great, warts and all.

Since it’s the last day of 2008, I made an issue of catching the sunset as well. But sunsets don’t know the calendar so it had nothing special to offer and in the end I preferred these radiating clouds in the west and deleted all the actual sunset images I had taken. Can’t win ‘em all.

So much for 2008 then.

Venus is by far the brightest “star” in the sky these days (nights). Its magnitude is a whopping -4.5, compare that to the -1.5 of Sirius which is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere. In February they can both be seen in the evening sky for comparison, but for now I was just stunned to see Venus right after sunset. The picture is taken about 1.5 hours after sunset though.

The sunset wasn’t otherwise special, but a few mother-of-pearl clouds were a nice surprise.

I spent the Christmas week in Finland this year, came back last night. It was quite nice, photographically a bit of a downer but I was expecting it and only had the Canon G10 with me and it turned out to be the right decision.

I had been most anxious to see my mother. She had her spine operated two months ago and now she has to wear a special back support and walk with crutches and the doctor gave her a long list of other complications to normal life. I was happy to see that she was coping fine now, but she’s obviously frustrated with the situation and she’s only half-way towards recovery, provided there’s no setbacks. And we can still only hope that the surgery fixed the problem. Fingers crossed.

* * *

This visit confirmed one thing that I’ve felt for a few years now. Every time I visit Lappeenranta, something has changed there. For one thing, the city is growing, and secondly, the Russian tourists are taking it over. There is very little left from the time when I lived there, it seems like our house is the only thing holding steady (minus a few trees in the garden). Everything’s changing – houses, shops, streets… it’s not my home town anymore. From now on, when people ask me where in Finland I’m from, I’ll tell them that I’m from Savonlinna. And it’s also true – I was born there, I spent all my childhood summers there, and it was also my home for five years when I studied there. The best part is that Savonlinna won’t change in any such extent that it would feel alien to me. Its geographic location makes it impossible! So Savonlinna will be my safe haven in Finland, unfortunately this time I didn’t have time to visit the town other than a quick cup of coffee at my aunt’s but she lives outside the centre and a visit to Savonlinna without seeing the Olavinlinna castle doesn’t really count.

All these years I’ve lived abroad are really starting to show. It’s not just Lappeenranta, but it seems like the whole country is changing. The most familiar thing left is the language, although some new words have cropped up of course, like the skräppääminen word monster (from “scrapbooking”) that I came across in a book title. The language is shaped by the people who use it… the Research Institute for the Languages in Finland can’t keep up anymore!

No, I can’t see myself moving back to Finland anytime soon. I’m proud to carry my Finnish passport, but moving to Finland would be like moving abroad all over again. I’m at home in Sweden now.

Early in my photography “career” I had great doubts about abstract work. I just felt that photographs should be transparent, i.e. it should be instantly obvious what the photograph was about. Abstracts were way too fluffy and I tended to avoid them. But then as my photographic vision started to form, I started making some experiments with abstracts and I suddenly found myself at home with them. I like it when a picture is stripped of everything unnecessary and it doesn’t often get more stripped than in an abstract.

An abstract photograph is an intellectual challenge for me while an abstract painting normally has to be approached on an emotional level – well, that’s at least what I remember from my art lesson back at school when our art teacher had us look at an abstract painting. All I could see was white canvas, black lines and some coloured blobs, while the teacher saw a great piece of art and a rainbow scale of emotions. So I have a tendency to rationalise my art and when a rational approach leaves me wanting, there’s not much left in the photograph for me too look at. In other words, in order for a photograph to reach my emotional level at all, it has to pass the technical filter first.

The way I see it, abstract photography goes hand in hand with minimalism. A minimalistic picture contains a minimum of elements while still being recognisable, while an abstract can at least momentarily make you wonder exactly what you’re looking at. In the natural world, an abstract image is almost by necessity also minimalistic because abstract art should “exist independently of visual references to the world“. A painter can create something that doesn’t exist, but a photographer has to create on the terms of the natural world. In order to do that with nature photography, you really have to get creative and I reckon the macro specialists have the upper hand here while landscape photographers are out of luck.

I once called snow the “big equaliser“, meaning that snow covers all distractions in the landscape, making it easy to compose a minimalistic landscape photograph or an abstract close-up (or black&white, another style I often struggle with). That’s just another reason for me to love winter! With that in mind, I have put together a gallery on my snow pictures, found on minnak.net.

I got my snowshoes back in 2003. Snowshoeing was a very marginalised sport in Sweden back then, and it was difficult to find any snowshoe information when I was trying to decide which kind of snowshoe to get and which size I needed. Since I had trouble finding that information, I wrote a page on my homepage describing the selection process I went through but I will now retire that page because the information is getting a bit dated, so here’s an updated and less technical version of the old page.

The snowshoes I ended up with were TSL 217 and I’m happy to say that I despite all the problems I had with the decision process, I made the right choice.

All snow is not created equal. When I did my research back then, one thing that no one ever seemed to mention about snowshoes is that they will not help you much with soft snow. When you’ve got 50 cm of powder, you’d need wings to float on top of it. But having said that, a passage which is impossible without snowshoes becomes merely difficult with them, so you just need to be realistic about their ability to carry you.

Snowshoes are also good on packed snow like snowmobile trails. Normally the trails will hold you even without skis or snowshoes, but the snow always glides a little bit under the foot and the worst part is that just when you think that the snow is hard enough to carry, it gives in and your foot sinks. Often it feels like you’re working twice as hard, going one step back for every two steps forward. This problem doesn’t exist with snowshoes, the hold is good and they even out all small gaps under the snow, allowing you to find a steady rhythm to your walk.

When you are buying your first snowshoes, it can be tricky to find out which way to go. It’s not just the size, but there are different shapes to choose from as well, and materials of course. And if you’re only ever planning to walk on packed trails, then you can get away with smaller snowshoes that allow a natural gait than those big things that would allow you to go off-trail. I chose my TSL 217’s based on the size/weight ratio (and weight means my weight, not the weight of the snowshoes), and partly also because I figured that a solid plastic shoe is less at risk to be broken than leather suspended on a frame. The 217’s help me maintain a natural gait and they are not overly heavy so the extra weight doesn’t tire you. I also like the option to raise the heel which helps a lot with steep uphills. No problems in the five years I’ve had them, although to be honest, I think they’re more like to break from old age than wear and tear. Maybe now that I’m thinking about giving up skiing, I can finally put the snowshoes to heavy use!

Snowshoeing is increasing in popularity in Sweden. Many ski resorts now have snowshoe rentals and even dedicated snowshoe trails, but it will never catch up with skiing, which is traditionally the most popular way of getting around on snow. But I do hope that snowshoeing is more than just the “in-thing” to do right now, because it’s a lot of fun and for someone like me with a serious ski boot disability, it’s the only way to access the beautiful winter scenery!

I’ve been going on about how beautiful it is with all the snow. It’s not all good though, for example the trees are starting to suffer under the extra weight. The birches in particular are having a tough time and I’ve seen a few trees that have already given up the fight and cracked under the weight. Nature is resilient though… most of the trees will bounce back up once the weight is gone. One of my amusements is to shake a bent tree so the snow will fall off, then when you let go the tree springs straight up. It’s not advisable to do this with big trees though, LOL!

It was clear skies already in the morning and I didn’t waste any time going out, I wanted to catch that pink light after sunrise. And not only the light, but also the moon which was full yesterday, and a very special full moon it was too. So there I am, just got my first peek of the moon, when the phone rings. I could not believe it… work. Two servers that are not responding, there was nothing else I could do but walk back home while cursing the servers to the darkest reaches of the deepest ocean. I just can’t stand it when work interferes with life (and yes, I know I should just be grateful for having a job in the first place these days!). Anyway, by the time I had the servers back online and responding normally, the pink light and the moon were all gone. Consolation prize is that the light is good even at noon, I mean we’re just over a week from the winter solstice. It wasn’t all blue skies though, the conditions were just right for every passing airplane to leave contrails in the sky, and by the looks of it we have busy skies over Loos.

With all the ski boot problems I’ve been having, I decided to go snowshoeing instead. The trails are not prepped yet, but there’s always a few snowmobilers ready to jumpstart the season so I had some tracks to follow. It was very pleasant, actually, so I made a lot longer walk than I had planned to. I’ve done this same trip on skis and I’ve been exhausted afterwards, but now I could easily have gone much longer. I’m sure it’s the blisters… the pain and discomfort tax the energy resources, but I had no such problems now. Very liberating!

But the snow… gorgeous. Just gorgeous! I can’t imagine winter could look any better than it does right now.

I got home and had time to grab a quick lunch when it was already time to see if I could catch that big moon rising. I drove to Dåasen which I figured would give me the best view towards the moonrise, but the clouds were already starting to arrive and blocked the horizon. I waited just in case though, but then I got to a point where my fingers and toes and face were freezing too much to care about the moon anymore. -10°C on snowshoes is warm, -15°C standing still is cold. That’s the kind of day it was.

* * *

After a busy day of photography, I was naturally very curious to see the pictures. As I was sorting through them in Lightroom, the computer suddenly died – I mean, really died, like someone had pulled out the power plug. Worried that I might have a problem with the power pack, I booted up again and decided that it’s time I back up some pictures on DVD (they are already backed up on one internal and one external drive, but both are connected to the PC obviously). In the middle of the DVD creation, the PC died again. But this time I noticed that the lamps flickered as well, so the PC is not at fault here, we’re just apparently experiencing some power fluctuations. Got me wishing for a laptop though… or a MacBook Pro!

Please no more IT problems this weekend, please?

The weather has been very much overcast lately so I haven’t had a chance to try out my star 15 theory until tonight. Full moon is on Friday but there’s plenty enough light to go around already, I hardly needed my flashlight in the snow covered forest. It made composition easier as well because it was actually possible to see through the viewfinder, the only thing I was left wanting was a swivelling LCD because now I had to keep kneeling under the camera to look at the display… but that’s nothing. I had such a great time, the thermometre said 12 degrees below but I was warm and cosy as I kept walking around and pointing my camera up to the sky!

I found out that photographing Cassiopeia is easy enough. At this time of the evening, Cassiopeia is straight above your head so I was literally pointing the camera straight up for a bull’s eye composition. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other constellations of interest high up in the sky – Auriga, Cygnus, Gemini and Orion and even the Big Dipper are lower at this time of the year/evening. Photographing towards the horizon turned out to be a lot harder than straight up between the tree crowns. In a way though, I think it helps to have a fish-eye lens which exaggerates the convergence of the trees, so it becomes a feature in itself rather than an irritation.

The only thing left now is Orion, it had already risen when I was taking these pictures, but I just couldn’t find a suitable composition for it. So my beloved Orion will just have to wait for another evening…

Can’t complain about the weather, it’s certainly looking like winter now. I only wish it would be like this all winter through…

Since none of the trails are open yet, I decided to take the car and search for photo ops. I soon came across a flock of black grouse that didn’t take flight when I drove by, they normally do but now they endured me even when I reversed my car and opened the window to take some pictures. After a few frames they finally took off, but I did get my first black grouse pictures, even if it was with a landscape lens.

It was a very dark day, I had the camera on ISO 400 and I struggled to get shutter speeds fast enough to freeze the falling snowflakes. The days are also very short now, so I did some evening photography to make the most of the wonderful conditions. Unfortunately about half of the streetlights in Loos are orange so the snow takes on a funky colour, I can’t decide if I like it or not. The dark blue background is courtesy of the last remaining “daylight”.

We might be getting a little bit of sunshine tomorrow, that is also something to look forward to!

November 2008 was very much like November 2007, which I think is a good thing considering all the snow. And just like last year, December started with more snowfall so it’s looking good so far.

I got my barometer back in the middle of the month, for what it’s worth.

Temperature (High): 4°C
Temperature (Low): -10°C
Temperature (Average): -3°C

Barometer (High): 1007 mbar
Barometer (Low): 977 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 993 mbar

Total of sunny days: 3

Snow cover (High): 23 cm
Snow cover (Low): 0 cm
Snow cover (Avg): 6 cm
New snow: 32 cm
Days with snowfall: 13

Rain: 10 mm
Days with rain: 3

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008