The Quiet Picture

So the exhibition is now open for public! I’d lie if I said it was a crowd magnet, but the (very) positive thing is that the few people did come also liked the pictures. Co-incidentally, the Ljusdal camera club was holding an open-air exhibition in town which was a lucky break for me, because the club members made out a large portion of my visitors. If I’m going to have another exhibition, I have to advertise more or it will be downright embarrassing with the lack of visitors!

A few times I listened to the visitors without them knowing I was the photographer and they were still saying nice things. I didn’t keep score but I got the feeling that the nuthatch picture drew the most comments. I’m not surprised… it’s probably my favourite as well!

Since I had some time in between visits, I had a look around Rosehills. It’s a garden market so there were plenty of flowers, even if it’s a late season and a lot of shelves were already empty. I was going to have the camera with me anyway because inevitably, some people will want to talk about the technical side of photography (especially the camera club members), but obviously it was useful for shooting the flowers as well. I didn’t want to complicate things with a tripod so I was missing the stabilised version of the 150mm macro… I’m trying to resist!

Ever since January when I agreed to put together an exhibition, I’ve been in pains to select the images to use. I decided to go with my blog name, and then tried to select the quietest pictures of the bunch to represent the style that’s closest to my heart. But now it’s all done, the pictures are hanging on the walls and the exhibit opens tomorrow! I must admit I’m a little bit nervous, it’s my first real exhibition and the lack of self-confidence I was suffering from during my younger years is rearing its ugly head. By “real exhibtion” I mean the kind where you actually care about how you present the pictures… the one I had in Loos a few years feels really sloppy in comparison. Maybe it was fine for our small village, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned now is that if you’re going to present your best work, then the work deserves nothing less than the best presentation you can give it. Pinning unframed pictures to mobile walls is not it!

So I hope I’ll get at least a few visitors so it’s not going to be completely embarrassing to stand there. It’s going to be nice weather in any case so I hope it will be a nice day all around!

Finally taking a closer look at my vacation pictures. Found one HDR which needed processing, did it manually because I didn’t like the result that any HDR software produced. It still needs some work but I’m undecided if it’s worth the trouble. I was waiting on Flatruet for the sunset to happen with glorious colours, it didn’t do it but a herd of reindeer came running by. In the low light, I got some serious motion blur but it was a concious choice, I wanted to see how it works out.

It was nice to see the pictures from the unforgettable evening at Måns-Erstjärnen. I’m well pleased with some of them, but they all remind me of what a wonderful experience it was. I can still feel the warmth and hear the eerie cry of a loon echo from the distance… just amazing.

In fact, I think I’m still basking in the glow of the vacation. My shutter finger isn’t itching yet, although it did feel good to shoot the white waterlily today. One thing I wonder though, where are all the mosquitoes? There weren’t any at the lake. But… I’m guessing I will find them in the forest. I have some orchids to shoot there and I also need to find some blueberries and raspberries to pick… and I need to get my exhibition ready, it opens on Saturday. Nervous!

It’s the last day of my vacation, then it’s the weekend and back to work on Monday. I decided to do one last hike, then do some cabin maintenance on Saturday and head home early on Sunday.

It was not intentional but it seems like I finish the outdoors part of my vacation in the same place where I started it – at Rockvallen. I wanted to get to the peak of Stor-Skarven, it is 1260 m but it’s one these flat-topped mountains so from whichever direction you look at it, it is always seen as a big round mountain. It has a steep wall towards east, but the rest of it is very gentle and thus hiker-frienly. Except in the beginning, there was a zone of willow bush that was driving me crazy because your feet get tangled up in it. But once I was over this zone, it was one of the most pleasant hikes up the mountain. Either I’m in better condition than I was for two weeks ago or then it was my light backpack, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten up a mountain this easy!

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t too bothered about getting any pictures today so I only carried the little Powershot with me. I wasn’t missing the SLR at all, the light was boring with this high cloud covering the whole sky and veiling the sun. I got one nice opportunity though when I came a across a reindeer and calf and they kindly ran past me with the valley in the background.

On the way down I was able to get a better overview of the willow zone so I found a way through the maze without getting tangled up again. It was a very nice hike to finish the vacation with, a kind of boring hike because nothing much happened but I guess I’ll rather have one these than do something stupid… even if it’s the stupid things I’ll remember best afterwards!

In the evening when I was processing the pictures, I saw a strange light in the window. It had been raining all evening but it turned out that there was a gap in the clouds where the sun was setting, so I had a huge rainbow in one direction and bright orange clouds in the other. The problem is that I’m not familiar enough with my surroundings to know which way to find the best foreground and I was out a little bit too late anyway, the sun was dipping below the horizon and the rainbow disappeared with it. The glow in the clouds stuck around a bit longer but even so I missed the best of it, because I ran in the wrong direction at first and wasted precious time. When I found a better spot (not perfect, but better), it was too late already and all I had was the last rays. Last night it was the kind of sunset where you wanted to keep the light at your back and shoot the scenery lit by the sun. Tonight it was the kind of sunset where you wanted to shoot right into the light!

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I think I’ll spend Saturday on my new couch and maybe watch some of the Frasier episodes I brought on DVD. I’ve only had time to watch one episode so far… I sure don’t need a TV here! The days have been filled with hiking and photography and I’ve barely had time to go through my pictures and write the blog posts. On the other hand, I’ve also been lucky with the weather. It has been a few rainy days, but only one day when it has rained from morning to evening. I’ve also had a few days with warm sunshine to get that summer feeling, but otherwise it’s been perfect for hiking. Perhaps a little less ideal for photography but those few moments when the light worked to my advantage far outweigh the times when it didn’t. There’s only one day when I didn’t get any pictures and that’s the day I drove to Östersund for shopping. Maybe some days I didn’t get any nice keepers, but I also have a “documentation mode” – just grab some shots of the places I’ve been to so I can remind myself of them later on. And this is what I’ve been doing with the blog as well, write the stories and use the pictures as illustration. I know the stories have been a bit on the long side, but thank you anyone who has taken the time to read through!

The other day I lamented how I lacked patience and missed out on nice evening light. I speculated that it was no big loss though, there will be new opportunities. And guess what, I already had that opportunity and it was better than the one I missed! The evening was so calm that even the big lake provided reflections so I didn’t have to settle with the small tarn next to it. It didn’t start too good though, just when I got to my first spot a small cloud drifted in front of the sun and with so little wind, it took a while before it disappeared. In the meanwhile, I was looking at the sky quite frustrated because there was a really nice cloud formation above Ånnfjället. By the time I got the light, the formation had changed already. I almost wished that I had a real wideangle though, so I could contain the foreground and enough of the sky to show the remains of the nice cloud formation. So I used stitching instead, three verticals and it still wasn’t quite enough…

But after that initial wait, it was all good. It was quite an incredible evening, it was warm and the light was great and the water was calm and my mosquito proofing worked, didn’t get bitten once despite the clouds of insects surrounding me every time I stopped. It was already close to sunset when the next cloud drifted in front of the sun, so I had to wait again. But by then I already had a lot of pictures so I decided that I will wait just this one more and then call it quits, it was a perfect evening as it was.

I really can’t describe what a feeling it was to experience an evening like this. My head was full of the impressions and I was wondering if my pictures would do any justice to the scenery. But it turned out that it wasn’t over yet – I had barely driven 50 m from the parking when I looked towards the sunset and saw the mountains silhouette against the warm sky. I quickly pulled over and grabbed the camera one more time. Imagine, I even got the peak of Sylarna that I missed yesterday!

I’m almost thinking that this should be the last picture from my vacation. Wouldn’t it be a perfect ending?

* * *

My furniture arrived before noon, so I spent the day putting it all together. It worked out nicely, because it left me plenty of energy to do this evening excursion. Not like some days when I’m so tired that I’m just hoping that it would be a windy and overcast evening!

* * *

I came back so late that I didn’t have time to do any proper post processing and now that I’m posting this, I’m sitting in daylight which definitely is no good for evaluating pictures (the post is back dated, obviously). I will have to go through all of my pictures next week at home, so there’s a risk that I will be posting more holiday pictures later…

I was supposed to get Ikea deliver my furniture today, but they called me in the morning to say that the car is broken so they will have to postpone it for tomorrow. My cabin is cursed, for sure. So I had to come up with a plan B, and quick. No vacation is complete without a trip abroad, right? So I drove to Norway.

My first stop after the Norwegian border was just before Brekken to have a look at the Ryfossen waterfalls that I discovered last year and thought were fabulous. The weather was overcast, so it was ideal for waterfalls. But last year when I was there, I was with my sister and I was only half concentrated on finding the best details. Now that I was fully concentrated, I didn’t think it was as good as I thought it had been and I only really found one detail I was happy with. I got the impression that the water level was quite high though and it looked like it would be possible to jump across with just a little less water in the stream, so maybe there will be more ops then.

I continued my journey to the Syldammen dam. It’s a bit funny driving the last bit to Syldammen which is on the Swedish side of the border, because for a moment the road curves in and out of the countries. So in order to reach something in Sweden, I had to drive to Norway and then in Sweden, back to Norway, and once again back to Sweden. No customs to drive through, though!

The reason I drove to Syldammen was to find the glacier buttercup. I had a description that there would be hundreds of them just 200 meters downstream from the dam. What the description didn’t say was which side of the river, but with only a couple of hundreds of meters, I’ll easily do both. So I started from the near side, and very soon had a couple of birds of prey circle above my head, screaming an alarm. I saw that on the opposite side of the river, there was a steep cliff so I assumed that the birds had a nest there. So I moved further away from the shoreline, I didn’t see any possible location for the glacier buttercup anyway. Since I didn’t have a GPS with me and SportsTracker doesn’t start tracking without a connection, I couldn’t really say how far I had gone but surely it was more than 200 meters. With no buttercups of any kind, I turned back and made sure to walk even further away from the assumed bird nest (but still the birds sounded their alert above my head). But this was a problem – if they reacted like this to me when I was on the opposite side, what would they do when I was approaching the cliff from the same side? So I decided to try it and turn back as soon as the birds got agitated. Said and done, I probably got just as far as 200 meters but no buttercups here either.

Now what? Had I completely misunderstood the description? While I was walking on the far side, I had spotted a patch of snow behind a group of buildings. So what if the “dammbyggnad” (literally, dam building) referred to these buildings and not the actual dam? And glacier buttercups love the late patches of snow. So I felt good about that, I figured it must be it. Except… no glacier buttercups, nothing that even hinted at their existence. With nothing better to do, I decided to climb up on the nearest peak (not high!) and while doing it, I got those birds of prey on my case again. Either the birds hate me or then there are two pairs of them but I was seriously doubting about my nest theory now. Maybe I could walk further on that other side of the river anyway… but it felt hopeless, I figured my best chance of finding them had been this patch of snow. All I wanted now was to drive back, I had some blue sky already and metre by metre the clouds were creeping up on Sylarna so maybe I could see the peak from some nice viewpoint along the road.

No new furniture, no glacier buttercup and no mountaintop on the way. Still, it was a good day. Weird, huh?

When I woke up in the morning, I had to remind myself that it was July. It was cold, rainy and windy and easily the kind of weather we would have in October. I wasn’t in a hurry to go out so I spent some time in Lightroom to properly process and keyword my pictures from the last few days.

In the afternoon I drove to Flatruet. Probably not the smartest thing to do if wind is an issue, but it’s not blowing storm and the raining has also stopped, so it was not a problem (at first, anyway). There are two ravines which are easiest to reach from Flatruet, Öjegraven and Torrgraven. Walking across Flatruet is really easy, there is almost no vegetation and the few scattered juniper bushes provide no hinder. At the same time, it’s quite boring – the landscape doesn’t change much and unless you’re have spectacular light with you, there’s really nothing to shoot up there. So I just walked on with the wind on my back and just barely kept myself warm enough, even with the windproof clothing I was wearing. After about 4 km I finally came across something interesting. The landscape changed character and signalled to me that I was approaching the ravine. There was this area with huge slabs of rock rising diagonally from the ground (not sure how to explain it, so please check the picture for illustration), so while it’s not perfectly photogenic, I still had an appreciation of the geology of it. This area was surrounded by a small ridge in the west and east and once I got over the eastern ridge, I found another area with some smaller slabs of rock and a little bit more wetland, but absolutely no problem to get across. And again, there was a small ridge on the other side and once I got over it, I was at the ravine.

I figured that I had reached Öjegraven and Torrgraven should be almost right behind it but possibly lower down in the forest so it’s not immediately visible. Now I got a problem though – I couldn’t find a place to cross over the brook that runs through Öjegraven. It’s not a big brook but I’m absolutely worthless at jumping and although I considered a few spots to jump across, I didn’t want to do it with the backpack on. I walked upstream hoping that I would find a narrow passage but after a few hundred meters I gave up and headed back downstream instead to have a closer look at this one ravine I did find. It was a disappointment compared to the stunner that Svartmorgraven was last week, but all things considered it was almost what I expected. The deep part of the ravine was very short, but if you follow the brook upstream you’ll find a ravine in mini-format with cliffs about 3-4 meters high at best. So I wouldn’t describe Öjegraven as photogenic or even interesting, but I will probably have to pay a second visit because I still have to find Torrgraven. I also realised that if the hike is done from the Flatruet parking, it would be possible to visit Öjegraven, Torrgraven and Svartmorgraven during the same hike. It would be shorter than hiking up from Messlingen to Svartmorgraven and then cross over the peak of Svartmorhöjden to the other two ravines.

Anyway, having given up on the second ravine I had planned, all I had left was hike back to the car, in strong head wind and slightly uphill all the way. But now at least I had no problem at all to keep myself warm!

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EDIT 2011-09-25: The ravine which is described here is Storbäckengraven. I forgot it even exists when I wrote this post but now I’ve visited the real Öjegraven and it sure is a lot bigger and less disappointing!

There’s a gravel pit along the road between Funäsdalen and Mittådalen. In one pile of sand which has been there for years, a flock of swallows have dug out nesting holes so the pile looks like swiss cheese. The birds don’t mind people so it’s possible to stand right next to the pile and photograph the swallows. The nests are high up on the pile though so they are well out of reach and I guess that’s the whole point – the birds can feel safe up there and there’s safety in numbers as well. My problem is that I keep forgetting to take my 300mm lens with me so this morning I was standing there with my 150mm macro. But at least it gave me an overview of the nests and a lot of birds flying around, although I do have to get there with the long lens before the birds leave the nests!

We continued to Anderssjöåfallet because it looked like we would be spared from the rain that was forecast for the day. At first it even was sunny, which dampened my enthusiasm to shoot the water while I was walking up the falls. But then, higher up after the last big fall, I finally got the shade I needed so I was able to start shooting.

Mr S. drove back home in the afternoon, so I needed to find my own inspiration for the evening’s photography. It was going to be a calm evening with a good chance of sun, so I drove to Måns-Erstjärnen and this time I had a 300mm lens with me, because the swallows’ nests are on the way there. It was overcast when I got there so I didn’t have a lot of light to work with, but I tried anyway. It looks like the young swallows are flight-ready because I’m sure I saw some of the young leave the nest and then come back again to beg for food from the parents.

When I got to Måns-Erstjärnen, there was a little wind so I didn’t get the calm water I had hoped for, but maybe with a little bit of luck it would calm down (before the wind would pick up even more, because it was going to be a windy day tomorrow). This is the second time I was following the shoreline and I was even more impressed than I was the first time. There are photo opportinues almost after each turn, all I needed was the light and the calm water. But no such luck… so I looked the other way and found this little brook meander through a bog with the peak of Ånnfjället in the background. I had to wait for a while before the sun came out again but it was great when it did! The light lasted all of one minute and when I looked back towards west, I saw that the group of clouds had only increased. So my chances of getting that wonderful evening light were reduced, but at least I could do some scouting. At one point there was a ridge with not many trees on which got me curious so I walked up to see what’s on the other side. A small lake, that’s what – and this one was calm! But still, no light. So I walked back to the bigger lake and continued my hike around it. When I had walked a long stretch without any photo potential, I was going to turn back but had second thoughts and continued ahead anyway. It turned out to be a bad idea, because of course the sun would come out now when I didn’t have any use for the light. I half ran to the small lake with the calm water and just when I had the tripod set up and was ready to take a picture, the light disappeared again. I only caught the last of it, but now I wanted to wait instead of walking around and missing the next opportunity. I waited for half an hour and the clouds in the west persisted, so I decided to give up. And about half a minute after I had put the camera in the bag, the sun came out. I swear. And I swore. But instead of setting up the gear in the same spot, I made the fatal mistake of getting back to the bigger lake and try to catch those spots that I had scouted earlier. But by now the wind was picking up again so nothing worked and I just walked back to the car feeling very crossed with myself. I mean… I had waited at the same spot for half an hour. Why couldn’t I wait for one more minute and actually get the picture?!

By the time I got back to car, I had calmed down. I will have another opportunity here, and it will be even better and it will not be down to one minute either!

It’s another sunny day in mountains. We decided to head to Mittåkläppen and explore the cliffs which have a rich flora with a good chance of finding some rarities, although I mostly interested in finding some ferns up there. I was really happy when I found one that I hadn’t seen before, obviously I couldn’t identify it on the spot (I didn’t want to add the weight of a flora guide in my bag) so I just took enough pictures to ID it later. But then… I found another fern. And a third one! The pictures may be just snapshots, but the important thing is that I’m making progress with these plants.

Time flies when you’re photographing plants in varying light and windy conditions (=wait, wait, wait) so we got back down with just a few minutes to spare so we could have a waffle at Djupdalsvallen (deja vu – didn’t I just make it in a nick of time a few days ago?). But down here, the wind wasn’t as bad and the light was nice and we were happy to continue photography, nothing special but just walk around and follow the brook and see if anything nice catches the eye. It was really good for me, a relaxing afternoon that finally had me shooting some common flowers that I’ve been thinking about shooting for days (or years) but never do because “I’ll take the next one”.

We continued photography until sunset. We checked out a couple of locations near Messlingen but in the end we drove up to Flatruet to see if the evening sky would be interesting. The cloud cover was a little bit too thick in the west but as we were standing up there with cameras at the ready, a herd of reindeer ran by us.

It’s rare that I keep on shooting from morning to sunset, so it was nice for a chance. Thank you for the company Mr S.!

Today we were a group of four photographers, my old photographer buddy and fellow botanist Mr S. had come over for the weekend and my regular photo companions from Ljusdal had driven up for the day. I had tried to plan a day that would provide the best chances with little effort, but that would require the weather to co-operate. The forecast said it would be sunny, but that doesn’t always mean that it’s really sunny in the mountains because the highest mountains tend to maintain their own climate. We started from Torkilstöten which is my favourite flower mountain and the view from top towards Helags is great as it’s so close. As just as I was afraid of, Helags persisted with its own cloud cover so it was shaded and the view was effectively ruined.

A funny thing though – as I was walking across the top plateau, I kept an eye out for the alpine chamorchis. I didn’t see it, but I figured that I was on the wrong side of the trail anyway (I had gone left from the trail, while the alpine chamorchis I found last year were to the right from the trail). I had to wait for the company to catch up, so I sat on a rock to rest my feet. I looked around to kill some time and what would catch my eye… if not this littlest of orchids! A closer look revealed six individuals in this small patch. And that’s all the alpine chamorchis I found on this trip.

When the sun just wouldn’t properly come out, we gave up on Torkilstöten and I thought we should try with a waterfall instead. Silverfallet is the obvious choice once we were on this side of Flatruet anyway, but there’s just one little problem with it – it’s very wet to get there. Previous experience had taught me to wear wellingtons but the others only had hiking boots, and for those to keep your feet dry you need a very good waterproofing. And as if the risk of getting wet feet wasn’t bad enough, there was also the millions of mosquitoes to deal with. With my wellingtons and mosquito repellant I was actually quite comfortable, but I think I was alone with that… I hope they found the waterfall worth the effort though. Personally, I struggled with the light because by now of course the sun was properly out, when I really didn’t need it. I still have trouble working with waterfalls in sunlight and Silverfallet was side-lit, so there was a lot of contrast to deal with.

I guess mountains are a little like a box of chocolates. You never know what you get…