The Quiet Picture

I talked about the Moose Lake hike a while back. Another favourite hike I have is north-west to the Kvarnsjön lake, then south to Ryggskog and home via Gäddtjärnen. I used to do it a lot when I was still skiing, but not so much now that I’m snowshoeing because it’s a tad long for that. But when you’re on foot, it’s possible to take the road from Ryggskog back to Loos so it was easy to make the decision today to do this hike.

Photographically this route is not quite as good as the Moose Lake, but yesterday I went to Älgsjön and had very little to show for it, so today all I wanted was to have a nice hike and maybe take a few snapshots along the way. And the hike certainly started well, I got a real kick out of the wide open spaces and the new snow. It was snowing and there was almost no contrast at all, so the trail is barely visible in the picture.

When I got to Kvarnsjön, I had a look at the Storryggsån brook that runs into the lake from the west. During milder winters this brook is almost always open, but now it’s been covered with ice since December. I found a great opportunity for a panorama though, and there aren’t a lot of places around Loos that would work as a panorama quite as well as this. It was still snowing but the sun was starting to come out, which provided an interesting light on the landscape. I found a few other opportunities as well, but they would have required digging my way through the deep snow. I had already done one 50m detour and my legs were screaming for oxygen afterwards, I’m really not cut out for hiking knee deep… but following my own tracks back was easy. I can see the benefit of snowshoeing in a group – people can take turns in doing to the hard work. Anyway, I missed those other opportunities I speculated about because my legs were still shaking from the first effort and I had to leave some energy for the hike to Ryggskog.

The trail from Kvarnsjön to Ryggskog is not used a lot. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen a snowmobile here, but they do drive the route occasionally because the tracks are there. Except now of course, nobody’s done the trail since the snowfall started this week, so I had to pulse through the new snow. It’s uphill almost all the way to Ryggskog, but I love the forest that this trail runs through. It’s a fairly dense forest, mostly pines but a good dose of spruces as well (which is the norm around here). Because of the closeness of the trees, you’ll often see snow here when it’s already fallen down from the trees everywhere else. I haven’t found a way to photograph it so I could do it justice, but as an experience to hike through this forest it’s just simply wonderful. For me it’s a mile of pure winter bliss! And today it felt like it was better than normal… I don’t know if I was stopping so frequently to catch my breath or to enjoy the sight and silence!

Sometimes four seasons isn’t enough. When the sun breaks out from its winter hibernation and you feel it warm on your face while the landscape is still covered with snow, that’s what we call the fifth season. It’s that time of the year when you can go skiing wearing a t-shirt and when the sunglasses is a must or you go snowblind. Early February is still winter, but the thing is that I had a fifth season feeling when I was snowshoeing today. My clothes were too warm and I was missing my shades! To top it off, I heard the birdsong that I always associate with the spring winter.

As for the snowshoe hike, it was nice as always, but I’m really struggling with the pictures. I hoped that the fish-eye would inspire me, but nix. I blame the landscape though; even with all the snow we got this week, the trees are looking a bit scabby and in the end it didn’t matter which lens I had with me. Or maybe a little bit – I wouldn’t have been able to take this picture of a pine when the wind picked up the snow from the branches and blew it towards me. Serendipitous perhaps, but isn’t that what it’s about – being at the right place at the right time?

The weather forecast kept saying that last night would be completely overcast. The full moon and stars in the sky disagreed though and after all the snowfall earlier this week, the conditions were just perfect to try some night photography.

As I was peering up through the tree crowns I noticed that the sky wasn’t quite as clear as it had seemed at first – there was some very light cloud that dimmed the stars a little bit. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I like the effect of the clouds especially when they are blurred by the long shutter speed.

I wish we could have more nights like this. That feeling when you’re in a quiet snowcovered forest and the moon is shining bright enough so you don’t need a flashlight to see where you’re going… awesome!

I was really looking forward to enjoying the winter landscape today as well. Yesterday they were still saying that it would be around -15°C today but it was -22°C in the morning and now the forecast is around -20 degrees the whole day. Not sure if I enjoy the winter landscape quite that much… I hope the temperatures will rise a little bit in the afternoon because it kills me to miss the scenery as it is at the moment!

Keep It Simple, Stupid! The winter is full of opportunities to simplify your images. In a very basic form, all it takes is a few lines. Or a lot of lines, like the frozen web on the left. It wasn’t just frost, but proper ice crystals that made the threads look like a band of pearls.

The slight dusting of snow we got earlier in the week together with the frost provided me with some nice subjects and I could stop kicking myself about the missed opportunities yesterday. I even found something that was very much like the “Arches” picture that failed miserably as taken with the mobile phone. But already as I was taking pictures of this small bush (or a small birch), I realised that it will be very difficult to bring out the lines when there’s almost no natural contrast at all. So it took a surprising amount of effort to process a simple picture in Lightroom, the trick is to deliberately underexpose a little and then boost the contrast and curves and finally I even used the adjustment brush on the branches to lift them from the background and finished off with a vignette. And it still doesn’t work.

But then I found an easier way to photograph the same subject. The flipside. On the opposite side of the bush (yes, it’s the same bush), the branches were visible so the lines were clearly defined. Processing was easy – deliberate over-exposure for a high-keyish effect with a boost in blacks and clarity and then I just had to clone a small distraction in a corner. And add a slight vignette of course, I’ve taken the habit of routinely add vignettes to almost all my pictures.

Keep it simple. On a wonderful winter’s day as it was today, it was easy. In the immortal words of Frank Drebin in Naked Gun: I love it!

Not sure if I’ve mentioned that I have pictures at a stock agency. I’ve mentioned it on the front page of my homepage but here in the blog I’ve kept quiet about it… mostly because there’s nothing to say. I average about one sale per year, it’s a numbers game and I only have a few hundred pictures at the agency. I’d need a few thousand to get any income out of it! The funny thing about the stock pictures is that they accept pictures that I wouldn’t have thought were up to scratch, while they reject pictures which are my favourites. So what makes a good stock picture? I still don’t know, so I send them a wild assortment and let them figure out what works and what doesn’t.

So these few pictures that have been sold through the agency, I never find out how they have been used. The information I get is only which picture it was, who bought it, and for what purpose. For example, the latest picture sold through the agency was bought by Nordstedts and it was used for an advertisement. It could be published anywhere, I would never find out. It’s a winter landscape picture from the mountains, lonely ski tracks heading towards the tundra. Nothing special in my eyes so I had completely forgotten that I had ever taken such a picture.

Yesterday at the library I noticed that they had a freebie magazine out for grabs. “Fjällsäker” (Safety in the mountains) is an annual publication intended for tourists to educate them on how to dress warmly, watch out for the changes in the weather, avoid avalanche prone areas etc. Since I read everything about the mountains I can get my hands on, of course I grabbed a copy of this. Page 17 is dedicated for maps, and in the lower right corner there’s an ad for Fjällkartan (mountain map). Click here for the PDF, and go to page 17. I thought the picture looked very familiar. Hmm.. a winter landscape from the mountains with ski tracks… it’s an ad from Norstedts… could it… yes it is! That’s my picture!!

Talk about a coincidence! I have most of the mountain maps on my shelf (two copies of some of them), so having one of my pictures used for advertising Fjällkartan makes me very proud!

And what’s more of a coincidence is that this happens hot on the heels of the book. At the rate of which I normally have my work published, I’ve already exceeded my annual average and it’s only January. I don’t need a crystal ball to predict that I can now look forward to 11 very lean months… So don’t worry, the gloating will stop here!

I did a quick trip to the mountains yesterday, had to check the cabin site because they’re almost finished with the groundwork now (more about that in another post). Since I didn’t have much choice in the date, I was lucky to have somewhat reasonable weather so I could do some photography while I was there.

And the photography started before I even got to the mountains. Road 84 follows the Ljusnan river and there’s a few spots along the way which are quite photogenic in the right conditions, and nothing beats the lay-by just before Hede. I’ve driven past a few times without stopping although the scene was looking incredibly good, so now I’ve made it a habit to slow down before the lay-by in case it’s a worthy opportunity… and this time it was. The river is normally open during the winter, so there’s plenty of potential especially in cold weather.

When I was finished at the cabin site, I still had a few hours of daylight at my disposal so I put on the snowshoes and followed a snow mobile trail. It hasn’t been snowing lately in the mountains either, so the snow was old and had crystallised in the cold weather. By crystallising I mean that the top layer of the snow had frozen and these crystal structures were sticking up… the phenomenon itself is not unfamiliar to me, it happens every winter, but what stunned me was the sheer size of these crystals. They were formed like birch leaves and were easily the size of them, so I started calling them ice leaves. The wind was picking up and the “leaves” were falling at every gust of the wind, you could hear the faint tinkle when they hit the ground. Amazing thing!

One of my favourite mountains is Ånnfjället, it has a very characteristic profile that looks good from any angle. It’s also visible from much of the road between Mittådalen and Funäsdalen, so it was the obvious choice to concentrate on during my short trip. The setting sun was fading behind the clouds, but there was just enough light to provide some contrast for the clouds of snow that the wind was whipping up on the mountain. I was hoping for the sun to come out for a glorious sunset, but that didn’t happen so I gave up and drove to Funäsdalen to get a good cup of coffee and drive home.

* * *

It has taken me half a day to process the HDRs (all of them from that lay-by in Hede). I didn’t use a tripod (lazy, lazy and more lazy) so I relied on quick shutter speeds and IS to keep the picture reasonably steady for processing. But it turned out that none of my four different HDR programs were able to align the pictures correctly (even if they were off by only a few pixels) so I had to manually align everything and then run them through the different programs to see which one gave me the best result, because I wasn’t happy with anything I was getting out of them. In the end I settled with LR/Enfuse or otherwise I would still be processing them. The worst part is that I needed to process every series of shots to be able to determine which ones were worth keeping, and when I finally had the results I threw away half of the work I put into them. Oh well, what are Sundays for anyway?

Last spring I was asked if I could take some pictures for a local book project. I was a bit hesitant because the motif wasn’t my normal stuff and experience has taught me that I don’t do well “on commission” – I’m only at ease when my inspiration to photograph comes from inside me. But, I’m also not very good at saying no so there I was at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård, shooting interiors and trying not to break any of the fragile old handicraft pieces from the 19th century while setting them up for close-ups.

The book is based on the diary entries of a local farmer. He lived on the estate that is now the Fågelsjö Gammelgård old farm museum, so his life is preserved not only in the words he wrote but also in the buildings, interior decorations and assorted household items. He was a skilful craftsman and it’s fascinating to see all the things he had manufactured himself, it seems like he was even a bit of an inventor because some of the artefacts were very creative.

The book was supposed to come out already last summer, I was asked well ahead in time but then the time ran out and suddenly they were in a hurry and I had to jump in with a short notice. And then as it happens so often, life intervened and the project got delayed anyway, but now the book is finally out and it looks great! Much better than I expected, and I mean the book as a whole. But the strange thing is… all of my pictures in the book look better than I expected as well. I’ve often heard photographers say that pictures look better in print than on screen, and I think that this book proves it. For all the hesitation at first, I’m really happy I did the job because now I have my work published in a book I can be proud of!

The book is called Min hand är icke begåfvad att föra en skikliger penna – Fågelsjöbonden Jonas Olssons dagbok 1851-1892 and it’s edited by Eva Heggestad (ISBN 978-91-633-6003-9, published by Fågelsjö Hembygdsförening). It will be available in the Ljusdal bookstore and I’m sure that it will be prominently displayed at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård museum in the summer.

Musings on photo editing, part 2

Part 1

My question is, is a photograph a representation of reality, or is it the photographer’s interpretation of what they think reality should be?

When the picture is edited to no longer reflect the reality, I’m not sure if I want to call them photographs anymore… seems like they’ve gone beyond a photograph, in the traditional sense of the word (read: analogue). The dictionary definition of the word “photograph” is pretty all-encompassing though, because the word means “drawing with light”. Photography is a form of art, so a photo must be a work of art, and a heavily edited photo is… not a photo? But a work of art in any case. And such, neither wrong or right. And whatever I personally feel about photo manipulation, I am not going to condemn anyone else for doing it. To each their own! My only problem is when somebody presents a photo to me as a reflection of reality, when in fact the photo is edited to longer represent reality.

The beauty, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. If you’re ready to accept a heavily manipulated picture as a photograph, then that’s what is – even if it ends up on Photoshop Disasters. But as all the pictures on the PS Disasters blog witness, a photograph does tell a big fat lie sometimes. The laws of physics are bent and the human anatomy likewise.

Maybe the issue is really about linguistics. Could we have a word for a non-edited image (where no physical elements are changed) and another word for a “photoshopped” image? Both are photographs at the moment, whether you call it an image or a picture it’s all just semantics. But I’m talking about the difference in content!

So this brings me back to the new tools in CS5, which is actually what gave me the spark for these musings in the first place. While the content-aware fill tool is very cool indeed, you can hardly call the result a representation of reality. The ease and extent of removing elements in the photo is almost scary. Don’t like the factory in the background? No probs, remove it. That’s looking at the world through a pink filter: everything you find wrong with it will be fixed.

My challenge lies in finding that rose-tinted reality in the world around me so I can portray it with my camera. The challenge is not about changing the reality to fit my ideal of it.

Same difference I guess.

Musings on photo editing, part 1

Remember when they used to say that a photo never lies?

Well, they may have been a bit too blue-eyed even in the old days of analogue. There was a lot more going in the darkroom than simple film development. But by and large, a photo didn’t lie. Those darkroom wizards aside, the majority of photographers (pros and home snappers alike) settled with reality as it was, warts and all.

Then came computers. Then came digital cameras. And now, Adobe is prepping Photoshop CS5 with some really cool new tools that takes manipulation to whole new heights and it’s not like the photo editing tools have been bad so far either.

Regular readers of this blog (yes, I mean both of you) know that I have a very conservative stance on a photo manipulation. I just simply prefer to make my images in the camera, that’s all – it’s a personal challenge, but it’s not an absolute and I’m prepared to venture out if the occasion calls. Dust spec removal, levels adjustment, saturation etc have always been part of my toolbox and I don’t consider those any more manipulation than choosing the composion, aperture and shutter speed in the camera. Manipulation to me is when you start adding or removing things in the picture – physical things like buildings, radio masts, trees etc.

It seems like I’m getting a bit more relaxed about my attitude towards editing (manipulating) my pictures, so I guess it’s just a matter of giving it time. I try to keep Lightroom as my one-stop shop for photo processing and the clone/heal heal tool has its restrictions. In any case, I’m gradually doing more retouching in my pictures, beyond Lightroom. Nothing drastic, but removing occasional stray branches or grass blades is not the moral dilemma it used to be. White lies… bending the truth a little bit?

* * *

An un-edited version of the above picture is here. And yes, it’s a zoo animal, another thing that requires disclosure. Just take a look at what happened with the winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. A stunning picture whether it’s a tame wolf or not, but if it is tame… then I would sure like to know it. The end result doesn’t count if you’re not honest about it!

I have a “Photo Of The Month” collection in Lightroom. Every month I pick a favourite picture from that month’s crop, so each POTM is not necessarily among the best pictures of the year because not all months are created equal. Some months I have more – and better – keepers than others, but selecting pictures like this is a nice way of looking back at my years of photography.

Some of the pictures I’ve already posted in the blog, but here’s a recap of the whole year and the reason why these are my photos of the month:

January
January 2009 was a good month, but my favourite has to be one of the sunrise pictures where the cold mist was coloured orange by the rising sun. I arrived at my location just before the sunrise but the thing is that I got there in order to catch the moonset and was disappointed at first when I saw a bank of clouds in that direction. But then when I looked towards the sunrise and saw the mist, I was awestruck. An unexpected but magical moment!

* * *

February
It seems to be a tradition for me to take a mini-holiday in the mountains to catch the full moon. On this particular trip I had major issues with my car and not so much luck with the moon either, but all of it just makes the trip that much more memorable. And it’s true that bad weather can be the photographer’s best friend – I love the simplicity the snowfall creates when it blocks everything except the closest objects.

* * *

March
March 2009 was a surprisingly quiet month for me, I would normally expect the spring winter to provide more opportunities. Or maybe I just didn’t make use of them. My favourite of the month is thus a snapshot I took when I was bored while waiting for a squirrel to appear on a feeding site I had set up. Snowfall during the night had covered the forest and I got an intimate landscape picture with my 300mm lens.

* * *

April
April is always a slow month for me, only November is worse. While the rising temperatures are nice, the landscape is anything but and it’s too early for flowers, too. But in the mountains there’s a good chance of catching good light and beautiful sceneries, so I drove to Lofsdalen for a snowshoe exercise in the Easter. The pictures were disappointing, but the day wasn’t!

* * *

May
Things really start looking up in May and by that I mean that the macro lens is back in active duty, having stayed on the shelf all winter. The choice of flowers is not very big though so year after year, I try to come up with a new idea to play with. This year it was high key – white flowers on white background. Not something I normally do, but the results were rewarding.

* * *

June
The flower season is in full swing and the biggest problem is to decide which flowers to concentrate on – there’s too little time to get them all. The lady’s slippers are hard to ignore though so I keep coming back to them but this year I came back with something new – budding slippers, or “baby slippers” as I also called them. This particular picture is probably my favourite of the whole year!

* * *

July
July is normally the busiest month of the year. There’s flowers and landscape a-plenty, and a summer holiday in the mountains is a big deal for creativity. So rather surprisingly, the photo of the month for July 2009 is a white waterlily picture I took close to home. White waterlily is a favourite flower of mine and I never get tired of them!

* * *

August
Despite visiting the mountains many times a year, I’ve never been there in August, until now. Autumn is already in the air and the landscape starts to turn colour and then if you’re really lucky, you get a break in the clouds at sunset and all that scouting and chasing the light finally pays off. A few minutes of pure magic.

* * *

September
During the summer of 2009, I found a lot of new places around home. Some of them were great, others were a bit disappointing, but then there’s this one place which became an instant favourite. The little brook is running over red cliffs, surrounded by rocks and pine forest, and it’s easy to reach. If there’s something else I should ask for a place, then I can’t think of it at the moment. It’s not grand landscape by any measure, but it is as beautiful as it gets in my eyes!

* * *

October
Having mentioned this new favourite of mine in September, it was definitely worth visiting in October as well. It was a sunny morning but the night had been cold, as witnessed by the frost. When I saw the log, I just had to shoot it. Maybe it didn’t turn out quite as well as I had hoped for, but the moment was very special, just like the whole day.

* * *

November
My photography is dead in the water. November is just a long wait for the snow, but this year I was saved from the boredom by the little birds that visited my new bird feeding site. The birds get to eat their fill and I get to photograph them, I think it’s a good deal for all! This particular day was foggy and it obscured the trees in the background, leaving me just the bird and the branch. Black and white seemed to be the right way to process this, which is a rare thing for me.

* * *

December
The winter took off for real. A snow front had left the landscape completely covered and my biggest problem was to be out in time before the rising temperatures would start stripping the trees bare. I drove to one of the new locations I had found in the summer, and was deliriously happy to be walking around in the winter forest, even if I did sink in some small water holes on occasion…