The Quiet Picture

It’s the coldest day of the winter so far, around -20°C. It was  -22°C when got up and the strange thing is that unless my memory totally fails me, it’s colder than it was last winter. Last winter was special in that the cold period lasted such a long time, but up here in Loos the temperatures never plummeted as seriously as it did in the lowlands. It happened a number of times that when I went to work, it was about -20°C in Loos but when I got to work, people were saying they had temperatures all the way down to -30°C. Warm air rises up… It’s not unusual that it’s 5 degrees colder down at the lake than it’s at home.

Anyway, as much as I like skiing and as little as I mind cold weather, I draw a line at -20°C. No point in risking my lungs. So today I will concentrate on indoors activities and I started by playing around in Lightroom. I created a collection of all my unprocessed pictures to see if I could find something worthy of working on and I was shocked to see that I had almost 3000 unprocessed photos… I had no idea it was that bad! I expected they would all be from my pre-Lightroom era but there were hundreds of pictures even from recent years.

In the end I decided to take something really old and see if I could make anything out of my first year of digital shooting (with the 3MP Canon D30). There was this special day in Järvzoo in May 2002, I got to witness the birth of two moose calves. I shot a lot of pictures just to document the event, but obviously it’s difficult to make anything photographically outstanding of such an event (say what you may about giving birth, but it’s really very messy!). After the calves were born, I did my round in the zoo and on the way back I visited the moose enclosure again and found the calves on their feet, nuzzling up against the new mom. Sweet!

May is a good month for other animal babies as well. The ural owls are cute, they leave the nest while they’re all fuzzy and they stood all lined up on the branch. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera ready when all five of them were sitting in a row, but at least I caught three. The light was difficult and I couldn’t fade out the net with the Sigma 170-500mm lens I was using back then so I just simply underexposed the background in Lightroom until I got rid of the net, and concentrated the light on the owls.

Spring is almost around the corner…

Snow leopard.

Snow leopard in the Orsa Björnpark Zoo.

I’m so there! Snow leopards are my favourite felines and I really, really wanted to see one. The last time I saw a snow leopard was ages ago back when I lived in England and it was love at first sight.So on this visit, I hoped I could at least see a snow leopard and maybe with some luck, get some pictures as well.

Since we’ve already had good opportunities to see wolves and lynx and other Nordic animals at Järvzoo, we walked right past the “domestic” enclosures to get to the tigers and leopards. I found the tigers a bit difficult at first, just couldn’t get a good angle, until this one tiger was kind enough to sit down on top of the hill with some forest far back in the distance. It’s probably my favourite picture from this trip, even if it required some editing because there was small tree sticking up from behind the tiger and I needed to get rid of it.

So what about the snow leopard then? It was starting to look like I wouldn’t get any pictures of it. It has a hideaway in the middle of the enclosure and it wasn’t in any hurry to come out. The closing time was approaching and half of our group had already headed back to the exit, but we still had a few minutes until closing time so we made a last effort at both the persian leopards and the snow leopard, neither of which I had any pictures of so far (I’m not counting the snow-leopard-in-the-dark-hideaway frame).

And so our persistence was rewarded – the snow leopard made an appearance!  I could hardly believe my eyes. Then of course I found out that my 300mm lens was too long to fit the snow leopard and its long tail in one frame, so I had to try stitching. I thought I had it, but then at home when I attempted the stitch, it didn’t work at all – it turned out that the leopard had moved right at the moment I reframed for the second picture so nothing was matching in the pictures! But this cat is sure worth the effort, so I took those two pictures and at first I matched the backgrounds. Then I just simply extracted half the animal and re-fitted it in the background and quite amazingly, it actually works. It’s still not a good picture by any means, but it wouldn’t be a good picture even if the stitch had worked straight-out, that background is nothing to cheer at. But honestly, it’s a snow leopard. I’m happy!

Yesterday was about as un-interesting as it gets, photographically speaking. Today would’ve been ever worse, so a visit to the zoo was just the ticket to lift up the weekend. I was hoping to get some pictures of the wolves, it’s almost three years since from my last wolf pictures and that’s just too long for my favourite animals.

Since the snow was looking rather ugly with the recent weather, I figured that I should use the 1.4 teleconverter to be able to isolate the animals from the background. When I was at the wolf enclosure, I discovered quickly that 300mm times crop sensor times TC equals too much reach – I could barely fit the animals in the frame! The first wolf pose is full frame and it’s tight. So I removed the TC and framing was easier, although that 300mm x crop sensor can still be a bit much. Especially when you meet friendly wolverines who’ll happily come right up to you to check if it’s a taste bit of meat or a camera in my hand. Since I had very little margin for composition error, I managed clip off the tips of the tail hairs of the sitting wolverine. I had to do some serious post-editing to add some pixels on the left and then try to fake the tail end. I can see it’s fake, but I’m not sure if it’s so obvious when you don’t know what was done?

At feeding time, the keeper was kind enough to put a piece of meat on a branch of the pine. I just had time to flip the camera vertically but it when it came down to it, I failed with it again – just couldn’t fit the fully stretched wolverine in the frame. This one worked because the tail is hidden, although to be honest the face suffers a little bit of motion blur. But I just can’t delete my only tree climbing wolverine picture!

All in all a nice visit in good company, the pictures aren’t stellar but at least I learned that I do not need to use the teleconverter in Järvzoo!

At long last, I finally thought I’d print out some pictures in poster size. It was fairly easy to select the pictures because I honestly don’t have very many pictures which I feel would look nice on a wall, I find the whole concept a little bit odd. So I went for the minimalistic flower closeups, plus a tiger (I just have to decide between this or the one presented here).

The real problem lies in the presentation. I don’t want to have a picture which completely fills the frame so I just tried to use some lines for an artsy effect. I remember a few years ago I saw a big print where the use of white space around the picture was taken to extremes, I kinda thought it was a bit funny that half the price of that print is just empty space, really… But joking aside, it was a very effective presentation. You don’t need a physical frame when you create a print like that, all you need is a backboard and a sheet of glass for protection (and hanging up).

I’m reasonably happy with the frame now, but I don’t know what to do with the text. I want to have the title of the picture and I also want to squeeze in my name somewhere in there. But I just feel that the main text and my name are conflicting… maybe it’s a font problem, I can’t find anything that would work together and I don’t think it’s a good idea to the same font for both, unless I find a nice font in small caps so I could include both the title and my name under the picture. I’m sure I used to have a suitable font but I never remember to back them up when I reinstall the computer! I have one week to sort this out before the print offer goes out, so I guess I’ll have to do some font hunting again.

It was raining today. I waited patiently for the raining to stop so I could train my camera on the lily of the valley buds and wood sorrel, but of course it doesn’t always help that the raining stops. It was still overcast and the wood sorrel didn’t like it at all and stayed closed. But there are other things to find in the forest – I came across this huge black slug. Everything is relative… slugs are supposed to be slow but when you’re working with a shallow depth of field, they move really fast!

Yesterday I mentioned the lesser butterfly orchids, today I had a look at a place where I know there’s always heath spotted orchids. Sure enough, found plenty of leaves, I didn’t even try to count them because they grow in a kind of a cluster so the leaves were all entangled. It provides some nice opportunities when they’re in bloom because you can fill the frame with the flowers. That would be in about one month…

The more I use Lightroom the more I like it. I’m not an expert user but I’m learning, and it seems like my vision is changing in sync with my processing skills. What I thought was perfectly processed a year ago needs re-processing now.

When I was working on Monday’s zoo pictures, LR really proved its worth. I’m totally in love with this tiger at the moment, maybe I’ll grow tired of the picture soon but right now I’m just patting myself at the back for a job well done. I don’t often get to feel like this about my pictures, if I get one such every year I’m happy.

I think what attracts me about the picture is the intensity. At first it’s of course the intense look, but then as I started processing the image to get rid of the grey film that the fence created, I also started to intensify the colours and the tiger’s stripes. Everything has to “pop” – the look in the eye, the colours, and the pattern. All the while trying to minimise the effect of the fence, which is still visible in the background, at least if you know to look for it.

When I was finished with the processing and looked at the before/after comparison, I was impressed that it could all be done in Lightroom with what really amounts to basic adjustments (just quite a few of them). I didn’t even use the clone/heal tool! And like I said, I’m not an advanced user, I haven’t explored the full potential of LR and I don’t know any fancy processing tricks. But I’m learning and maybe a year from now I will come back to this picture and find that it needs to be re-processed because my vision has been re(de)fined along with my LR skills!

I know I’ve talked about about zoos before and I think I might have even said that I will never visit one again, but I now solemnly swear that I will never promise I will never visit another zoo. The issue of captive animals, for and against, it’s been discussed already and now I just want to write about these animals at Orsa Björnpark. Specifically, polar bears and tigers which were the animals I was really keen on seeing in the first place.

But I’ll just say a few words about the zoo first. It’s a bit like Järvzoo, with all the domestic predators (brown bear, wolf, lynx, wolverine) but they also have some “foreign” animals – kamchatka brown bears, polar bears and siberian tigers. They will add leopards in the summer, but even so, the number of species in this zoo is low. The enclosures on the other hand are very big, which is nice for the animals but not so nice for the photographers. The chain link fences don’t help either; they’re good for keeping the animals in and people out, but a photographer needs to use all the tricks in the book to eliminate the distractions.

My secret weapon was the 300mm f4 lens. Shooting wide open of course, so no margin for error. The weather was on our side because it was overcast, otherwise the chain link fence would’ve been impossible to fade out. It turned out that 300mm was a tad too much at times and I had to make most of my compositions in vertical format, otherwise I didn’t stand a chance to frame in an animal without cutting off any important body parts. The tigers were so close that I ever struggled to get a whole head in the frame! But other than the photographic dilemma, it was pretty amazing to be so close to the magnificent animals. And just when I thought that they were looking really cuddly, one of them yawned right in front of me and revealed a sharp line of pearly whites, complete with 4-inch fangs. So that chain link fence was kinda nice, after all…

The polar bears were in a playful mood. They have an open pool of water that still has some ice cover left, and these two bears decided to reduce the ice cover and started hopping on it until a big raft of ice broke off, making a nice new plaything for them. It was non-stop action with the polar bears so it was hard to keep the pace, especially when I had to nail the composition because the bears were close enough to leave me with a tight framing. Normally I like tight frames, but I would’ve been happy with less of a challenge to nail it in camera… however, it was very nice to see the polar bears, this is only the second time I’ve ever seen them.

I think it counts as a good visit. Out of those two species I wanted to see and photograph, I saw and photographed both. I even got some pictures I’m really happy with, I would’ve settled with one good picture of each but I got much more than that!

We’ve got plenty of the roe deer around here but they’re really shy, so I can just forget about approaching them in full sight, they’ll be long gone before I get to photographing distance. I’ve only really had one reasonably good opportunity to photograph them, that was over two years ago. Since then I’ve of course seen roe deer a-plenty, but never right for the camera. That is, until today. I was watching tv when I saw a roe deer buck approach my bird feeding site. I’ve seen a lot of deer tracks around it so I know they like to stop by and eat the seeds, so I quickly grabbed the camera and mounted the 300mm lens and then carefully opened the window. And oh joy, the buck didn’t mind! It knew I was there because it reacted to the sound of the shutter, but it obviously didn’t mind it and kept eating.

And then… another buck came by! I could not believe my luck. It was so close that a head shot was all I could do, EXIF says that the subject distance is 7.65 m. And it was all possible because I was shooting from my living room and the animals were approaching me, not the other way around.

The bucks soon got female company but this is of course not the mating season for roe deer, so nothing much happened. In fact, they just settled down to sleep but unfortunately a bit further out so that photography got complicated. I can still see them though, just by reaching out a little bit from my chair as I type this.

I’m just so happy that the roe deer finally gave me this opportunity, I’ve waited for five years!

Compact cameras have quite awesome closest focusing distances. I mean, how many SLRs with macro lenses can brag with CFD of 1cm? So compact cameras must be really good at macro, right?

Pur-lease. Honestly, what’s the point of focusing at 1cm when you have to do it at wide angle? But I’m sure everyone who’s never shot macro with an SLR and a real macro lens are absolutely convinced that their compacts are far superior.

To be fair, the extreme focusing distance might be good for something. But to use a compact camera to create good macro pictures probably requires more from the photographer than using an SLR with a macro lens and I have to confess that I was lost with the G10 today. Try focusing to 1cm with a live toad – I didn’t.

I’ve just one thing to say – shallow DOF rules! I want my 40D back.

* * *

The 40D is actually already on the way back to me. It’s just that UPS are not able to deliver it to me at home and I haven’t found out how to tell them that I’m at work during the day so they can divert the package to Ljusdal. Frustrating.

Since there’s been some talk about me being a photo purist who doesn’t like manipulate pictures, I thought I should confess to some photo fixing every once in a while. The real issue I’ve been preaching about is disclosure – manipulate all you want, but I think it’s only fair that the manipulation is disclosed. Except, if you’ve done the manipulation before you took the picture, so I’m letting some double standards show through. And let’s not forget one very important thing – sometimes in nature photography it really is better to do the manipulating on the computer than in the wild because you should never try to bend nature to your will… well, except gardening out some grass straws. I mean, we mow lawns, right? Oh well, anyway, I’ll try to get to the point now.

When I took this picture of the bear cub, I knew that it was going to be a close call to fit it in the frame. The 40D viewfinder doesn’t have 100% coverage so I hoped that although the paw was clipped in the viewfinder it would be whole in the actual picture and indeed it was – except that the claws just touched the bottom edge. This is no good, but I didn’t want to throw the image away because I didn’t have any good bear cub images in my catalogue and this one was otherwise the best frame I got in the session. Then I noticed that I had another image where there’s more rock visible at the bottom, so I just simply took a slice of the rock and added it to problem image and then with some careful cloning and erasing made it fit seamlessly. Then I cropped the image to 5:7, added vignetting, adjusted curves, selectively saturated and de-saturated and used a gradient…

So what you see is not what I got, but thanks to Photoshop I got a keeper of a bear cub anyway!

With that said, I do strive to create the image in the camera. But if I fail, I can cheat!