The Quiet Picture

During my excursion yesterday, I found some potential motifs that I chose not to shoot but I felt deserved a second chance. They are really close to home so I didn’t even pack the bag, just took the camera and tripod (and a generous layer of mosquito deterrent) and had a closer look. Glad I did, because I had a really good time shooting the twinflowers and green-flowered wintergreens.

Next weekend I will be shooting flowers in the mountains. Just five working days left, and I have vacation! The other day I calculated that I have had 17 days of holiday (besides the bank holidays) since July 2009. Add a year-long stress about the cabin and some significant changes at work and I can honestly say that I need a vacation! Ok I hear you asking, why didn’t I take out more vacation… I tried to. I had a lot more scheduled last year, but then the cabin got delayed, and delayed some more, and I kept cancelling my holidays with every delay. Shooting myself in the foot, in other words. On the upside, now that I can use the cabin, I will be wanting to take out every day of vacation I can!

Time to explore the local forest again. I remember there should be a spot with a lot of ferns not very far from home, previously when I’ve walked past I was looking for other plants but I was almost sure I would find some ferns there. I hadn’t gone more than 20-30 m from the house when I came across a lesser butterfly orchid! I’ve walked this way countless of times but never saw a butterfly orchid. Now that I know it’s there, I can even see it from my living room window! It was in a good position at that, so of course I had to take some pictures. Then I checked out my regular lesser butterfly orchid spot and again had to stop and take more pictures. Not far from that, I came across a freakishly big heath spotted orchid. Maybe it’s not big in height, but the flower cluster was as tight as I’ve ever seen.

Still on my way to the fern spot, I finally decided to take some pictures of the bird’s foot trefoil. Every year I think about taking pictures of this wonderfully yellow flower, but every year I don’t – I mean, it’s growing everywhere, I’ll take the next opportunity, right?

Finally I reached the humid fern spot and found all the mosquitoes as well. Been wondering where they were when I was able to do all the shooting so far without the pesky devils. Anyway, my bug spray was working so I just tried to ignore them and concentrate on the ferns. It turns out that the compact camera is my best ID aid. I can take quick shots from above and below and then overall for later study, so I don’t have to rip off any plants and carry home. The macro lens is less convenient for that, and using a 150mm lens for an overall shot of a meter high plant would be too much of a challenge anyway!

I have to say, the ferns are fascinating. There’s a whole lot of geometry in them with regular and repeating patterns. Maybe it gets a bit boring after a while to take similar compositions with minute differences between species, but they are an absolute treasure for studying the plants afterwards. There’s so much to them that I didn’t see on the spot, but that’s one of those things you learn to look at when you keep at it for a while. An exciting new world!

On the way home, I passed by the skiing track. I had heard that the storm a few weeks ago had felled a lot of trees here and indeed it was a sad sight. Some trees had fallen on the power line, so I’m wondering if they have enough money to fix it. Not that it’s really a problem for me, I didn’t need the illumination last winter at all. Instead, I was a bit irritated when someone had turned the lights on, because they stopped me from shooting the aurora!

The official opening of the expanded Hamra National Park has been pushed off until September (it was supposed to be opened last year). They have done most of the work with building the entrances and making new trails, so I was curious to see what it looks like now. There are three entrances to the park – the main entrance is at the old part of the national park, and new ones at Svartåmyran and Svartågrenen where the creek falls falls into the Voxnan river. I was really interested in the one at the Svartåmyran bog because I’ve wanted to explore this bog since a long time ago, but it just never happened for whatever reason.

I actually like what they’ve done there. I mean it’s nothing out of the ordinary, just your normal information boards, toilets and waste disposal (bear proof I hope!) and a picnic area. But I just like the way they’ve done it, it somehow fits the environment quite well and it’s all very solid work. Reading the information board, I discovered that there are four hiking options in the park. Three roundtrips, about 3 km each (trailhead at each entrance), and then a long trail which goes right across the whole park from the main entrance to Voxnan. I doubt I will ever do the long trail, but today’s mission was the explore the shorter ones.

The trails at Svartåmyran and the main entrance are new. There’s only a very short stretch at Svartåmyran which follows an old trail, as I saw from the rotten duckboards at one point. I think they have some work to do with the trails, I saw some signs that are waiting to be set up and then they have to do all the trail markings. Currently there’s only some ribbons hanging from the trees and there were times where the next ribbon wasn’t even visible. When the trail is not worn out yet, I had no idea which way to go, had to circle around the spot until I saw the next ribbon.

It was a rainy day so I was happy to see that they have some covered picnic tables at the main entrance. It was such a delight to sit down and drink a cup (or two) of coffee, listening to the rain pound the roof. Now that’s luxury… not the street cafés with their cappuccinos and lattes, all I need is a roof over my head and hot coffee in the thermos!

The weather considered, I skipped the last trail at Svartån. It’s an old trail anyway, I’ve followed it up until it disappears into the forest… I assume that they’ve improved it though so now it actually leads to something!

För några år sen klagade jag om brist på fotomagasin för naturfotografer. Men nu till min stora glädje har det kommit ett som motsvarar mina förväntningar och det är dessutom helt gratis! Detta är möjligt tack vare Internet, så hoppa över till Naturfotomagasinet och läs och njut.

We made an excursion to one of the best – or the best – botanical places in Loos. We were there a couple of years ago but it was rainy and cold and my fingers were frozen, so it didn’t make quite such an impact on me as it should have, because the variety of life is just astonishing. All kinds of rare or rare-ish plants have a home here, and even the common plants were special – they were growing in freakishly large sizes. At first when I saw a common butterworth (Pinguicula vulgaris), I thought it was a different species of butterworth because it was twice the size they normally are (and let’s face it, we only have three species of butterworth in Sweden and the other two are smaller and don’t grow here anyway). Lily of the valley leaves were so big that I had to double check them because they started to look like lady’s slipper leaves (which we also found). And the twayblade grows with three leaves. I felt like Alice in Wonderland!

We had two specific plants we were looking for, besides of just generally admiring the plant life (which the bears seem to appreciate as well, judging by the frequent tracks). First one was the rare mountain bladder-fern (Cystopteris montana). It took us a while but we finally found it, unfortunately there were fewer of them than the last time and they were much smaller as well. The second plant we wanted to find was the wonder violet (Viola mirabilis), and when we found it I understood why it would be called like that – it was enormous! Well that’s not really the reason why it’s called a wonder violet, the name really refers to the self-pollinating flowers that don’t open up in the summer. The flower kind of has two lives, first it blooms in the spring with the typical violet flowers and size, but then instead of disappearing like the rest of the violets, it just keeps growing until it reaches this gigantic size. I had read in the book that it would be big… but when I first saw the leaves, I thought “funny looking marsh marigold leaves” until I realised that it was the plant we had been looking for!

Despite all this abundance, I didn’t really take any pictures to speak of. I could easily spend a day there just shooting and come back the next day for more, but now I just settled with the visual input. Besides all the natural wonders, I also found that I am increasingly attracted to ferns. I’ve always liked them but I’ve never made any particular effort to either shoot them or learn their species. But this time when we were looking for a fern, I paid extra attention and… I think I have to start learning them. They can be difficult to tell apart and sometimes you need a loupe and observe the spores on the underside of the leaves to id them, but the benefit of doing that is that the spores develop late in the summer when you no longer have so many flowers to look at.

So… ferns. Only 20 pages in Den Nya Nordiska Floran, piece of cake! Not.

Cold and rainy day, but not too rainy for checking out some flowers. At first I drove towards Älgsjön to check a bog which I had heard would have orchid potential. Well, either it’s a bad year or there’s not much potential, because I only found a few early marsh orchids. But at one point when I was in the forest, I heard something growl very close by. I could swear it was a growl… or someone revving up a motorbike in the distance. Either way, I stopped and pulled out the compact camera. I figured, if it’s a bear and it will attack me, I’m done with for sure but I’ll have the coolest pictures ever. If it’s a bear and it will not attack me, I’d still have a chance for some cool pictures. And if it’s not a bear, I’ll take the shortcut over to the open bog anyway…

Having come back to the car empty handed, I viewed at the landscape and made a mental note to come back in the autumn, it looked nice. I then drove to one of the rare early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta spots and had a hard time finding any at all. Last year they were abundant but now I found only three in bloom and 5 non-flowering plants, all in a very small area. So I guess this fits with the lack of early marsh orchids earlier. Last year was the best orchid year I’ve ever seen, so a slower year now makes sense.

I was determined to get some pictures in any case, so I came home and checked out the flowers behind my garage. I found a huge patch of twinflowers, I mean they really were growing like a pale pink carpet! So I tried to get a picture which gives an impression of the abundance but there’s a risk that my favourite is the version where I isolated one twinflower… but I’m posting the abundance version anyway.

And if that wasn’t close enough to home, I then noticed a beautiful oxeye daisy with rain drops right under my kitchen window. So I could’ve saved myself the trouble and stayed at home all day!

After the huge disappointment last year when I found someone had cut all the lady’s slipper orchids in one location, I decided I have to do something. I can’t stand watch there every day, so I ended up creating a sign where I pointed out (in a gentle manner, no accusations!) that all orchid species are protected. I offered one of my pictures as a print as a trade-off for anyone who had planned to pick the orchids this year as well.

I put up the sign a couple of weeks ago and today I visited the location to see how the orchids are doing. My sign was still up and so were the orchids! Although to be honest, I don’t think anyone has been there at all, even to look at them. The local folks normally check another location, which is exactly why I’m now visiting this place instead because I don’t want to add to the wear and tear. I started to wonder if these people who pick lady’s slippers have possible also selected another location… but I can’t check them all.

So in this location anyway, the orchids were safe. It turned out that they are early this year, they are already starting to be over bloom and there were no buds at all. They were not as numerous as some other years and I noticed something interesting. I’m almost sure that they are smaller this year than they normally are. I noticed this with the calypso orchids as well, they were definitely smaller than normal. So I’m wondering what could be causing it. Maybe the really warm period in the spring which made them spurt too far ahead considering the season… The next orchid in bloom will be the lesser butterfly orchid, I saw a couple of individuals today which had just started to open up. So let’s see if those will be smaller than normal as well.

I also found some creeping lady’s-tresses orchids in early stages of bloom. But it is such a small orchid anyway that it’s impossible to say if it’s bigger or smaller than normal.

Exciting times anyway – I need to adjust my head to think that this really is summer now, because the flowers are popping up everywhere!

Regular reader(s) know that I have an ongoing quest to find a camera backpack that really works for me. I’ve tried with normal backpacks and customised them for carrying gear, and I’ve tried with several dedicated camera packs. My most recent camera pack is the Lowepro Flipside 400 AW which I’ve had for two years, which is actually a relatively long time for me to use the same pack… which I guess means that it has been serving me well. There is however one major failing with the Flipside and it’s the space reserved for non-photography items such as lunch and extra clothing. The front compartment that should hold all that extra stuff is flat and I can only put a small thermos it in. Despite this shortcoming it’s a good pack and there are many things to like about it as well.

Over time though the small nags start to build up, and I came to the point where the lack of extra space made me go on the lookout for a new solution. There are more and more camera packs on the market and it’s especially delightful to see that many manufacturers create packs for the outdoors person in mind, for example F-Stop and Clik Elite. Unfortunately neither of these companies have any representation in Sweden, but Dakine also make camera backpacks which are based on the same principle, i.e. a padded camera protection unit inside the backpack. But even then I hesitated, as much as I read about the pack I still wasn’t convinced that it fulfills my requirements.

So I started looking for normal daypacks instead. The skiing backpacks in particular are interesting, because all those strap systems give you plenty of options to attach a tripod. However, most of the hiking/skiing etc backpacks share a common problem – they are top-loaders. It just doesn’t work with camera gear plus clothing plus food, because then you would have to pack the camera at the bottom and the rest on top and how much fun will it be to take out your camera then?

The requirements I have for a photo hiking backpack:

• room for camera equipment (normally one body plus one or two lenses plus accessories)
• relatively easy access to the camera (“relatively”, because something has to be compromised)
• room for extra clothing
• room for food (with a way of packing the food and thermos that there is no risk of squashing the sandwich and no risk of any liquids leaking onto the camera gear)
• good tripod carry system
• comfortable on the back, without feeling lopsided when the tripod is mounted on the side of the pack
• not too big so there isn’t too much empty space even when going on a lighter hike
• front or back access (absolutely not top-loader)

I have a small camera bag which swallows the 40D with a lens attached, so after reading about these adventure backpacks with their separate padded units, I decided to use the small bag as the camera unit, and if I need any additional lenses, I can use my neoprene wraps to protect them.

Now it was just a matter of finding a backpack that would fulfill all my requirements while being the right size to store the small camera bag. When I came across the Bergans Birkebeiner, I saw the potential – it is the right size, it is has a “hatch” at the bottom, it has a front pocket big enough to store my filters, and a roomy top pocket for accessories. If I store the small camera bag upside-down, I can use the hatch to access the camera gear while the bottom of the small bag acts as a divider for the sack so I can put the clothes and food on top. I didn’t have the small bag with me but a quick measurement told me that it fits. Then I tested the tripod attachment and it felt good, even if I don’t dare to use the mesh pockets because I don’t think they can hold the weight. To be honest, I don’t know how much the side compression straps can carry either, but they should be stronger than the mesh anyway.

When I got home, I moved everything from the Flipside to the new backpack. There are two problems that I can see at the moment:
1) Accessories. I used a small bag for the spare battery and memory card and lens cleaner etc but it still feels a little bit unorganised. The Flipside may have flat pockets, but it has many of them and they are just big enough to separate all those small things from each other. So I have to think about it and see if could find something a bit more structured, but if the backpack otherwise works then those accessories are a marginal problem.
2) Camera hatch at the bottom in front. This means that I have to be careful where I set down the pack (luckily I’ve never had the habit of setting down gear in pools of water) and it also means that the pack will do a lot of time lying down on its back. This will be an issue in the winter and the risk of getting snow into the pack is also bigger like this. But if it becomes a problem, then I will just use the Flipside instead. I got this new backpack primarely for summer anyway, for those long hikes in the mountains!

That was all the theory. Now I need to go hiking!

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about my cabin, but here’s a couple of new pictures from the first weekend that I spent in the cabin. It was quite nice actually, if a bit basic. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when you get it clean and orderly, have a radio in the background (even if P4 is the only station with good reception) and the room is filled with the scent of pizza straight out of the microwave…

I’m not sure how much more disappointment I can handle, so I sure hope that the guy who promised to fix the rest after midsummer really will do it. I don’t have to cancel my planned vacation in July even if he doesn’t fix it, but two weeks is too long without hot water and a fully functioning toilet!

The rest is up to me though, I need to get some furniture in. Then there are some issues that I need to solve, caused last year when the layout of the cabin was changed without my knowledge. My separate bedroom and guest rooms were merged into one and the plan I gave to the electrician isn’t really compatible with reality… for the most part it works, but for example the ceiling light I wanted above the dining area is now on the wrong side of the room. So I don’t have any light in the kitchen/dining area at all, it’s not a problem in the summer but I have to sort it out before autumn!

Would you believe, I was cleaning again. Not inside the cabin this time, but on the outside. It looks godawful, there’s a big pile of junk next to the stairs and bits and pieces scattered around the cabin. It was easier to remove those bits and pieces, but that big pile of junk is another matter. I decided to create two piles instead, I put all the wooden material (planks etc) under the cabin and all the other junk in a pile which I covered with some sheets of plywood to make it look less disgusting (just barely) and stop the lighter junk from spreading around the cabin again.

I had been waiting to see if the sun would come out but it wasn’t quite the sunny day I thought it would be. I wanted to do my hike anyway, I was planning a longer one into unknown territory so I didn’t want to leave it too late. I drove to the Kappruet parking lot, this is a small alpine skiing centre with just one lift and it was up this lift corridor where I started. The trail I was going to take would take off after the lift and the first thing I noticed about the trail is that it’s no summer trail for sure. I was not going to walk through the wet bog so I had find a way around, and that was followed by another bog and another and another… on the map it looked like an easy A-to-B but in reality is was an A-to-B-to-C-etc-to-Z with what all the detours I had to take around small wetland areas. It got a lot easier when I reached the actual foot of the mountain, now I just had to ascend to the top but no more detours. Until on the way down – since I was not following any trail and I didn’t have a GPS because I thought I could rely on SportsTracker which I couldn’t do because my phone battery was dying and I didn’t have a charger… anyway, absolutely no risk of getting lost. Just aim for the radio mast next to the ski lift (the same radio mast by the way which is apparently the reason we don’t get a mobile phone signal up at the cabin).

Well, no matter how much extra hiking I had to do. What matters is that I “collected” another peak, had a great day and even was lucky enough to catch a sunny break!

* * *

As you can see in this picture, the sky was very dull. I just wanted to take the shot because of the cairns, there’s 3 in the picture but there were 5 at this spot. Now, I understand that the cairns used to have a specific purpose historically speaking, but I find it hard to believe that all these cairns here are built for practical purpose. Which means that hikers like myself have built them, and now I really want to know why. Is it like the scribbling you find on toilet walls? Kilroy was here? Why do people pile up rocks (or scribble on toilet walls, for that matter)? But the really funny thing is that all these cairns are not even on the real peak of the mountain. The real peak is that little nipple in the background, and yes, there was only one cairn up there. So the way I see it, people cheat. They climb up the mountain, notice that they have some way to go before reaching the actual peak, and instead of taking the trouble to reach the top they pile up some rocks instead. Is this some normal social behaviour that I completely miss?

Take only pictures, leave only footprints. I ain’t gonna pile no rocks.