The Quiet Picture

So it’s finally here, the snow. Looks like it’s only temporary though, so I made sure to enjoy it today. When the snowflakes were falling big as mittens, I was all smiles. Then it started raining instead, and I was slightly less happy and desperate to get some pictures before it all would be gone already. But then it started snowing again and… oh well. I came back home and realised it was colder up here than down where I was, so there’s more snow on the ground. So much for my plan to find new scenery for my “first snow” pictures, instead of walking the same old routes in the village that I’ve done in previous years.

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As mentioned yesterday, I did a hike up the Svartån creek. I took the new trail for the expanded national park, something I’ve been meaning to do all year but never got around to. Glad I did it now, because I was pleasantly surprised. Svartån close to Voxnan is hard to photograph because there’s a lot of vegetation at the water’s edge, but I found out that it gets better upstream. Basically, once you reach the bridge, the landscape around the creek starts look like my favourite spot further upstream, meaning that it’s a lot of cliffs and rocks and pine forest. I found a whole bunch of photo opportunities that will require better conditions and a bigger lens; I had the Canon 24-105mm in the bag but considering the season, it wasn’t worth switching lenses. I must come back here in the summer and/or autumn, it was good enough to endure the mosquitoes!

I’ve noticed that lately (=past few months) I’ve been doing a lot of  (=a few more than usual) black and white pictures. It has gotten me wondering if something has changed with me, because I’ve never really had any appreciation for b&w pictures. Which is kind of strange actually, because if my goal is to simplify my pictures, then wouldn’t it be logical that I would also eliminate the colour from them? But the answer to that is that I’m a nature photographer. Most of photography (if you don’t like the generalisation, then read it as “most of my photography”) is actually documentary; what sets photographers apart from each other is how we document it. For me, colour is an essential part of nature. I don’t think I’ve ever even considered converting any of my flower pictures to b&w, because what is a flower without its colour? The botanist in me wants to portray the flower, the only tricks I will use are a careful selection of background and foreground, DOF and composition. That’s flower photography 101.

So back to this b&w issue then. Since colour is so important to me, the only times when I’ve converted a picture to b&w, it has happened out of necessity, not out of inspiration. In other words, I’ve had a picture I’ve otherwise liked but where I just can’t make the colours work. Use greyscale, problem solved. So why are so many of my recent favourite pictures b&w? Just a coincidence of having a lot of colour issues recently, or a shift in my thinking?

I decided to put this to a test. I couldn’t have picked a better day for it for sure, a typical November’s day with sleet, rain, drizzle, fog, low clouds, icy lakes and creeks and low light. I drove to one of my favourite places, the Svartån creek with old pine forest, rocks, cliffs and all kinds of mosses and lichens. Normally I visit this place to shoot the waterfalls, but this time I was set on exploring the forest instead. A good choice, because I found that the cliffs around the creek were covered with wet ice; it would’ve been stupid dangerous to venture on them when they were so slippery that you couldn’t even stand still on the cliffs without your feet starting to glide. So there I was in the forest, with a goal to find b&w pictures – not something that I will convert to greyscale as an afterthought, but something that I know even beforehand that I want in b&w. It was a good exercise and I spent a lot of time exploring the place, which gave me a great opportunity to reflect on this b&w issue. I came to the conclusion that my photographic preferences haven’t really shifted. I think what has happened is that I have learned to accept b&w as a creative option, so it has become a tool in my photographic toolbox just like DOF or background control or the shutter speed. But one thing hasn’t changed – I still don’t think that b&w is a “one size fits all” option. The best way (only way?) to use it is when it brings out something in the picture that colour can hide. But let’s face it, how often does that happen in documentary style nature photography?

Since there isn’t any snow yet, I haven’t given up on the ice patterns. I drove to a small lake that I’ve visited a few times before but never photographed, maybe it doesn’t make much difference with the ice but I also wanted to check out the forest around it. It hasn’t been very cold since yesterday so the frost was gone in most places but the most shaded ones, which of course meant that the ice was nice and clear with a sheet of water on it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was, when I saw that the ice was at least 5cm thick. For new ice, it means that it would’ve carried me if I just dared to walk on it, but I’m the kind of person who’s nervous about crossing lakes in January! The weird part of the ice is the sounds it makes. In the dead of the winter you can hear the ice crack, but right now it sounds completely different. A bit like playing a saw, except deeper and muted. Many times when I stepped on the frozen moss on the shore, the vibrations planted into the ice, making it sing. In my ears, it was saying “stay out of here”…

It was another cold night so frost and ice was guaranteed. I wanted to shoot some ice bubbles and formations, kinda like those I shot last year. So I drove to the same lake as last year, but I found that all ice is not created equal. For one thing, there wasn’t as much ice on the shore as last time. And the little ice I did find was totally uninteresting so I decided to check out a smaller lake, because I knew that the small ones have full ice cover by now. Well, I still struck out on the ice patterns, but I found something else. The shaded part of the shoreline was still covered with frost while the frost on the other side had melted during the sunny periods (half overcast today), creating this nice contrast. White pine here, green pines over there. Although the picture I posted on Google+ illustrates it better than this one, but I don’t want to post the same picture in both places…

The weather forecast said it would be -4°C degrees in the morning. Bah. It was -8 when I got up, and -5 when I left. Not that I’m complaining, because it meant that there was frost everywhere. In some places the frost was so thick it looked like snow.

I had a plan, at first check out Svartåmyran because it was open enough for the sun to reach it in the morning, and it was a sunny day – no a cloud in sight. It didn’t quite work out though, I took quite a few pictures but in the end I deleted almost all of them. All hope was not lost though, the second part of my excursion was my old favourite, Svansjöbäcken. I haven’t been there all year but I was really hoping to find an icy lining to the water… but it turned out that there was quite a lot more ice than that. It wasn’t just a lining, it was a full ice cover everywhere but in the waterfalls.

So you’d think that I was disappointed, but no such worries. What makes this place so great is that there’s more to it than just the water, so I turned my eyes towards the forest instead. There’s a lot of old fallen pines around and now that they had a frost all over them, it wasn’t hard to find something interesting to shoot.

But all that standing around in the frozen moss, my toes were freezing. Seriously. The kind of thing that hurts when the circulation comes back. Note to self: the hiking boots are not rated for four seasons!

Been a warm autumn. Despite the cold nights we had in October, and the little bit of snow that came and went, there’s not a sign of winter yet. The days are just getting darker, that’s all. Even in the mountains it’s warmer than usual, the first cross country skiing race should go off in Bruksvallarna next weekend but I reckon the only way they’re gonna pull it off is if they had stored some snow from last year (they do that in some places you know). The only snow I saw was on top of the higher mountains and even that was melting, it was patchy and not very pretty. I walked around in some boggy areas and felt that the moss pillows were hard under my foot, so there has been some colder periods to freeze them. There was also a little bit of ice left on the small and shaded tarns. The kind of thing I’d expect in September, really.

But at least the weather was nice up there, with a little bit of sun. At home it’s just foggy and damp and the day was too dark for photographing the birds, but what else is there to shoot these days anyway? I had to go up to ISO 800 to get any decent shutter speeds, not a favourite thing to do but since the fog was providing a light background, it was possible to pull of some pictures like the squirrel closeup. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to flip the camera for a vertical (the squirrel would’ve been gone long before) so I just barely got the ear tufts in the frame and was happy with that. Added some canvas afterwards, no problem with that when the background is so even. And the crested is a bonus, nothing spectacular but I’m still just a little bit thrilled for getting any pictures of it at all. The crest says it all – it’s damp in the forest.

I’ve never done a hike in the mountains in October before, so it was exiting to see what the day had in store. It turned out that it was all good – the first snow had fallen in the tundra and apart from the occasional snowfall that flew past in the heavy wind, it was a sunny day which allowed us to see the landscape in all its glory. The colours were muted under the thin layer of snow and all the features of the landscape were highlighted, giving it a very graphical quality that you normally don’t see.

We hiked up to the Lill-Skarven fell because there’s a road that takes almost up to the tree line, thus sparing us from wasting time and effort on climbing up the boring part through the forest. Once you’re up there, it’s easy going until you’re at the foot of the mountain but it’s not such a bad climb anyway. It was cold though, so much so that the water in the tube leading out from the water bladder in my backpack was frozen! The October weather is nothing to toy with, the wind was biting through my supposedly wind proof clothing but by the afternoon the sun was sufficiently warm to melt the snow on the ground and the ice in the water tube. But the slight discomfort aside, it was an amazing hike. There’s nothing like the first snow in the mountains!

I didn’t have any hikes planned for today, just prepared the cabin for winter and then left. But I did drive via Funäsdalen instead of taking the gravel road to Hede, because I was hoping to see some snowcapped mountains along the Mittådalen road. What took me by surprise was to see that the lakes were mirror calm, even though the morning was late. We’ve had a lot of these calm days on this vacation, it seems like either the wind is blowing very hard or then it’s totally calm; there weren’t many days when it was something in between. Would it be too much to ask to get these calm days next year when we hopefully have proper autumn colours in the mountains?

It’s been a week and I only have one waterfall picture. That must be a record… I was going to fix that issue today, the idea was to locate and shoot Kvarnbäcksfallet which is south from the lake Storsjön. Finding it was easy in the end, it’s signposted from the road and the hike is given as 1 km. I could hear the water falling nearby already, so this sounded like a very promising trip. Empty promises, as it turned out – I have never seen so many waterfalls with so little to shoot. The main fall is at 1 km just like the sign said, but the hike up there is steep uphill so the the water is constantly falling. And upstream from the main falls, it’s the same thing for about 1 km until it starts to level out. So we’re talking about 2 km of waterfalls and I only found one spot and even that wasn’t very good! Unbelievable. The brook is surrounded by spruce forest so for every fall that looked half promising, there was at least one thing preventing me from shooting it. Either it was impossible to get close enough to the water, or the branches were blocking the shot, or there was too much fallen tree material in the water to spoil the view. Really, the only thing I achieved on that trip was to get my jacket dirty when pushing through the forest.

But don’t let me discourage you. If you’re a waterfall aficionado, by all means check out the Kvarnbäcksfallet falls. And please take a lot of pictures and show them to me so I will know what I missed. Because I sure missed, a lot.

On the way back, I took the small road that follows the river Ljungan on the south side. I found one nice spot and I felt considerably better after that, although I guess it’s not fair that I should be disappointed if some place didn’t turn out to be as good as I had hoped for. It’s just impossible that every place is good, this is why we do scouting in the first place. I’ve been thinking about these falls for a couple of years already and now I’ve been there and can put it to rest!

Spent the weekend at the cabin, and managed to waste most of it on putting together Ikea furniture. 8 hours on a wardrobe, and we were two people working on it! It would’ve been impossible alone. But… there was this one photo session that was worth the trip alone. Full moon rising just before sunset!

We did some scouting in the afternoon, but the first place wasn’t anything special. The second place was something I had figured out should work; I had been there before and felt that it has potential although of course I’ve never used the spot for a moonrise before.

We got to the spot a little bit too early. Moonrise was still about an hour away and to our disappointment, sunset was looking like a dud after a warm and sunny day. So that was a long wait ahead of us while the temperature was dropping, making the waiting all the more difficult. We welcomed any respite from the boredom and even I was happily shooting a distant reindeer with my short zoom, all the while knowing how hopeless it was. Then when I started feeling the cold bite through my clothes, I did some running up and down the plateau we were standing on. When I reached the lower end, I saw an opportunity towards the sunset so I gave up on waiting for the moon to appear from behind the mountain and set up shop at the new spot instead. I made sure that I still had a free view towards east (moonrise) so I would be able to switch shooting direction quickly. Just as I was trying to figure out what shutter speed to use to prevent blowing out the bright blob of the sun that was visible through the clouds, a glance behind my back told me that the moon was actually visible! I abandoned the sunset without hesitation and then realised that my lens was too short to properly compose the moon as it was rising above Blåstöten. But then, sometimes you’re lucky. To my absolute amazement, the sun came out and I found the dwarf birch glowing bright orange right in front of me! I should say that this is how I had planned it, but it really was just pure luck. With this foreground, it was easy to compose when I switched to vertical and zoomed to the max and I was glowing just as happy as the dwarf birch was glowing (unseasonally) orange. So imagine my disappointment when I discovered at home that I didn’t have enough DOF to keep both the foreground and background sharp… the mountain and the moon were soft. It almost broke my heart when I deleted these images.

But then I thought… are those images really beyond rescue? With some resizing and clever sharpening, I might be able to rescue something. With this in mind, when I was reviewing the failed images, I realised that they weren’t even as good as I had thought at first that they were. The sunlight hadn’t reached the mountain yet, I had been so concentrated on the foreground that I missed the light on the mountain. By the time the light did reach the mountain, I had switched camera orientation and zoomed out, which gave me a smaller moon and inferior composition but all-around sharpness as well.

So I’m thinking, what’s wrong with me when I miss something as elementary as checking DOF? If I don’t have the discipline by now to use my knowledge even when the situation is changing fast, then I will never have that discipline… I just have a lot of theories and more regrets. With that said, it was an awesome evening watching that moonrise. It was another awesome evening on Friday on Flatruet when we saw seven (7!) short-eared owls fly around us. And when it comes down to it, it’s these experiences that makes life interesting!