The Quiet Picture

I’m back at the cabin to spend the week and a half of vacation that I have. To be honest, I’m still not sure what to do with all that time because of the conditions (those being, no autumn colours). But in the very least, I have a comfortable couch to sit on… no TV or Internet, but some DVDs. I’ll manage.

When it was time to decide what to do with the day’s hike, I ruled out everything with water. It’s very windy and overcast so the peaks were out of the question as well. The obvious thing that remained was ravines – time to check out the Evagraven ravine that I have spoken of rather dismissingly this summer.

Although it was supposed to be overcast, the sun made some welcome appearances on occasion. As I was looking down on the ravine, I saw a yellow rowan that was lit up in the distance and it attracted me like a moth to a flame, because it was really the only tree with any colour on it. While I was walking down to it, I got a good look at the ravine and I had to admit that maybe I’ve been overly harsh on Evagraven. The sheer size of it makes it interesting and the photo opportunities are not as hard to find as I had experienced on previous visits. On the other hand, it’s been many years since my last visit and I’ve learned a few things since then… things like using a wideangle lens, for example! I’m still having a blast with the Tokina and it’s pretty much permanently set on 16mm and I’m already wishing I would’ve gotten something wider.

On the way back, I stopped at the little brook and finally checked if I could use any filters with the Tokina. I had high hopes about the Cokin B/Y polarising filter and sure enough, it works! Since it’s made for the filter holder, it has a square shape and because the filter element itself is round, it leaves me generous corners for holding the filter. I can then place it against the petals (the built-in glare guard) of the lens without needing to worry about scratching either the lens or the filter. The crop factor of the camera allows me to use the filter like this even at 16mm without any dark corners. I also have a normal Cokin polariser but for some reason it has a round shape which makes it harder to hold properly and it’s also too small to be safely placed against the petals because there is no margin of error between the edge of the filter and the petals. Slip it one mm in any direction and there’s a risk it will touch the front element of the lens. So I have to settle with the B/Y filter but it’s better than nothing, especially this autumn because the golden end of the filter can add a touch of colour to an otherwise colourless scenery!

It’s been a windy day but I was determined to do some flower photography today, perfect time to test my new wind box. But my first target was the marsh marigold in a spot which is surrounded by forest and thus less susceptible to the gusts, so I left the windbox in the car (it would be too small for the tall flowers anyway). I didn’t have any ideas what to do with the flowers so I just walked around, waiting for something to catch my eye. The marsh marigold always blooms late in this somewhat shaded spot, so there were still a lot of buds around and in the end it’s the buds that inspired me.

The problem with the marsh marigold is that the leaves are almost always bug-eaten and even when you find some which are nice, you have to deal with a lot of glare. So I put on the polariser which I almost never use with flowers (it kills so much light that I can’t afford it when there’s a slightest bit of wind) and it actually worked pretty well to cut the glare. But then as I was working on different compositions, the sky became covered with clouds so I had to lose the filter in order to keep my shutter speeds at reasonable levels. I’ve posted the second picture to illustrate the grey sheen of glare, it’s a matter of opinion if it distracts or not.

It seemed like it just kept getting darker. I had a few other ideas what to shoot, but I felt my inspiration disappear along with the light. I normally prefer overcast weather for shooting flowers, but I guess the wind was too much for me, windbox or not. But the good thing about a hobby is that you can also choose not to do it, so I turned back home, no regrets!

This winter I found a waterfall. Obviously, it was under snow and ice at the time, but I promised myself to get there at first best opportunity in the spring and today was it. In the winter you get there following the snow mobile trail, but in the summer there are two roads that take you close and leave about 1 km to do on foot. My choice of roads was perhaps not the best possible today, there was a point the road was so bad I considered turning back, but then I thought, nothing ventured nothing gained… so my car gained a few new scratches after a couple of ground hits. My next car will have higher clearance!

Besides the obligatory photography equipment, I had also packed a gimmick and a pair of sturdy rubber gloves. I knew that there would be a lot of wood debris lining the waterfall but because it’s such a small brook, it would be easy to clear out the small stuff. And sure enough, it was – I got it looking quite nice, apart from the trees that had fallen across the brook. If you look at the first picture, you can see some of that stuff in the lower left corner and on the right but it looked a whole lot worse at first, many of those small waterfalls were broken by small branches and dead leaves. In the second picture, you see the fallen trees but this is not even the worst spot, one section of the falls were almost completely blocked out of view by a fallen spruce.

This waterfall is such a nice little treasure, I will come here in the summer for sure when everything is growing, for example I saw some ferns coming up and what could be a nicer decoration than ferns? The height of the fall is also impressive, of course it’s not continuous at all but I reckon overall it must be the highest one in Loos.

The gimmick that I had packed was my blue/yellow polariser. It’s been ages since I’ve used it, and to be honest, any gimmick filter is best used with care and seldom. The last time I used it was in the winter a few years ago so using it now in the spring and in the forest was new for me. It was a useful experience because I discovered that the polariser works magic on the bland looking mosses. Just compare the first picture with the third one, there’s a world of difference in the moss. The white balance in both pictures is set by picking a custom balance from the white water. So I was thinking, in the future, I could take one picture with a normal polariser for the water, and a second one with the b/y polariser for the forest and then combine them to get rich green mosses and natural looking water.

Other than that, the gimmicky nature of the b/y polariser is obvious. The way it paints the rocks golden can be nice (to a limit) but the blue version looks awful. Maybe the blue end of the polariser will be useful under some circumstances that I can’t think of right now, but I’m already looking ahead to the autumn because it feels like the golden effect would be perfect then!

Had a busy day yesterday. Busy in a good way – one day trip to the mountains, I was in desperate need of a break. The last time I had any vacation was September! Of course, we can debate how relaxing it is to drive hundreds of km in a day and hike up and down two mountains… but I’ll much rather have a tired body than a tired brain.

Anyway, I started with Stor-Mittåkläppen. There’s a special flower I knew might be growing there, it’s the glacier buttercup (Ranunculus glacialis), however I had no confirmed reports about it but I had to start from somewhere. This flower likes the tough conditions next to snowfields and there’s one on Mittåkläppen that doesn’t melt until later in the summer. When I got to the foot of the mountain, I saw a herd of reindeer gracing above and below the snowfield. There were a couple of hikers ahead of me and the reindeer didn’t like them (reindeer are not wild animals as such, just extremely shy of people) and ran off, so all I had to do was to avoid the reindeer droppings on my way up to the snow. Very soon after I arrived at the snowfield, I found some leaves which I thought would be the glacier buttercup. To be honest, I’m still not 100% if I’m right, I’ve compared my picture with four different sources and sometimes the leaves match and sometimes not. But it’s gotta be a buttercup of some sort, not that it helps. In any case, it wasn’t flowering yet so the question is if I can go back there in about two weeks to confirm the species. Oh well, it took me 4-5 efforts to find the alpine chamorchis so I can’t expect to find the glacier buttercup so quickly!

It was a warm day and initially it was overcast so it didn’t look promising for photography. When I arrived at the peak of the mountain, the sky had cleared enough for the sun to shine and it got hot. Wind normally brings some relief and today the wind was heavy, but it was the warmest wind I’ve ever experienced on a mountaintop. Strange experience. But at least it kept the mosquitoes at bay!

When I came back from the mountain, I had a waffle at Djupdalsvallen. They are so incredibly good there, there’s probably a few thousand calories in one but who cares! I really recommend it, not just for the waffle but the whole experience of hiking up this special mountain and then having a coffee in the beautiful surroundings.

By now it was mid-afternoon. I drove to Messlingen to check out the Mittån delta where the creek runs into the lake Messlingen. It should be a botanically interesting place but I would disagree, I reckon you’d need to be interested in grasses and half-grasses to find anything exciting there. So after walking around for a while, I took the trail up towards Kappruskaftet because I wanted to see if I could get a view down to the Anådalen valley from there. I didn’t find the view of the valley (or maybe I didn’t walk far enough) but the landscape was otherwise interesting. Kappruskaftet isn’t high enough for alpine tundra even if it looks like at first. So it’s a bit strange seeing all these big old pines there, some of them growing all alone on the borders of the big marshland.

When I got back to the car, it was past 7pm and all I’ve had to eat all day was one small sandwhich, energy bar and a waffle. I calculated that I had hiked about 15 km up and down mountains, so I was hungry – I was halfway home when I finally could stop eating, LOL!

I came home after 11pm and it seems like the day had been even warmer here because it was still 21 degrees. But today it will be raining, which is just as well – I think I will do nothing today. Watching a movie sounds like the kind of activity I want to take on!

I shouldn’t have complained about the light yesterday. Today was worse. And the wind was bad, too. Just the dullest circumstances possible for photographing the autumn colours, but I tried. Just needed to avoid having sky in the composition, or large areas of water. But one thing that works fine on days like these is  long shutter speeds. So on with the polariser and ND64 and watch the 20 sec exposures smooth our those nasty wind movement details!

Today I found a new route for my local hikes in Loos. There’s a new road which provides me with a shortcut to Österhocklan east from the Eagle Mountain, I used the route already late last winter actually but I had no idea that it was passable during the other seasons. The road ends kinda in the middle of nowhere, but then you just have to cross over to the snowmobile trail, the trail is not all pleasant to walk on but it’s only a few hundred meters before you reach the bridge over the creek. And by bridge I mean the new bridge which is very solid under the foot, not this old bridge which has finally given in and split in two. And after that, you can take the road which leads back home via Loossjön. A nice 9 km trip in all, took me 4 hours today but it did include quite a few photo stops despite the less-than-photographic weather.

The best part of the whole thing was that I found a new tarn, it’s very close to the road but it’s kinda hidden behind a small hill so it’s not visible from the road. It was a total surprise, it felt like an oasis of wilderness with dead trees lining up the little lake and then forest all around that almost looked natural (=no obvious signs of logging). I’ll be back, light permitting!

The other day a friend of mine asked if I could take a look at his dSLR because it was having some exposure issues. We went outside to the parking lot and I took some test pictures of the sky because it was an easy and neutral subject. Suddenly this guy comes along and is well impressed by the prosumer camera and the 70-300mm zoom attached to it – never seen such, he says.

Umm, ok then.

So I point the camera at the sky again to take some more test shots. Unfazed by our lack of interest in his show of interest, he asks if I’m using a sky filter.

Sky filter? Umm… no. (He was speaking English so it really was “sky filter”, not skylight filter.)

Yes, well I just thought since…

Well, you know you don’t really need a sky filter for photographing the sky. In fact, you don’t need a skylight or UV filter at all – as a protection for the lens at most, but otherwise it’s not really much use.

Yes well ok… (guy fades in the background)

I turned to my friend in amazement and couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I know it’s very rude because the poor guy was probably still within hearing distance… but honestly…?

I couldn’t let go of a good thing, so I drove back to Össjön to take a closer look at the old boats. The wind had picked up from yesterday and there certainly wasn’t any lack of light, so I had a perfect opportunity to try the new ND filter. Stacked with a polariser, I still maxed out at 8 sec but it was just enough for the effect so the filter proved useful – the ND8 would’ve left me short of a few secs.

BTW, the new ND filter is B+W’s Neutral Density 1.8, which is 6 stops. If Hoya made a 6-stop ND, it would be called ND64 – the ND8 is 3 stops.

When I came back home, I saw that my bird feeder was very popular. Time to see if the birds would tolerate me out in the open, because the way I’ve set up the feeder I have no place to hide. I counted on the birds to keep feeding as long as I don’t make any noise or sudden moves, and the gamble paid off – it works! I must confess that the bird images are heavily cropped, for example this one is cropped from horizontal to vertical so I’m losing a lot of real estate, but I don’t care – I’m so bad with moving subjects that I’ll happily back down on my normal target of “making the picture in the camera”. My main concern is to get a sharp eye in the picture and today’s birds had that, so I probably just doubled up my all time critically sharp bird pictures! Anyway, cropping serves another purpose as well – I get a bigger bird in relation to the frame. Even at 4-5 metres distance, using a 300mm lens (times 1.6), it’s a very small bird. Not gonna take any frame fillers for sure, so I’ll just keep concentrating on getting that sharp eye and a catchlight!

In the previous post I claimed that our lakes are too small to create any real wave action to allow smoothing out the water with long exposures. Well, sometimes it pays to challenge the conclusions I jump into without having any real facts at hand, so today I headed to one of my favourite locations (or as I decided after I came back, the favourite location) while the wind was blowing at its best. I was right on the money about the one second shutter speed though, but I was able to go slower by overexposing to the point of blowing out the highlights and trusting Lightroom to recover them for me (which it did).

So, the discovery I made about the waves is that size doesn’t matter. All you need is a long enough shutter speed to smooth out whatever kind of waves are going about. But today’s exercise wasn’t really about the waves though, because I was more interested to see if I could get the reeds – or grass – to blur out. So all I needed was some fixed point (a rock will do nicely) and then a lot of grass. And would you know – it worked! Lesson learned, I only wish I had tried this before.

I mentioned that this place is now my #1 favourite. It’s good for flowers and landscape and works in any kind of weather, and today I found out that if I had the patience and/or inclination, I could even try wildlife photography there. I saw something in the water, it could swim and dive and it wasn’t a bird. Could I be so lucky that it was an otter? Or maybe a beaver. Or maybe it was something smaller, it was too quick to make it out properly. In any case, it didn’t make this place look any worse in my eyes!

Since it was a windy day yesterday, I wanted to try some long exposures with wind blown objects. I had just the place in mind, a lake with a small island and a rickety old bridge inbetween. It was overcast weather and quite dark, so the polariser and ND8 filters stacked gave me a whopping 25 sec exposure at f16. I was a bit surprised to see the result – the water surface is smooth, but there wasn’t quite as much movement in the reeds as I had expected. The biggest problem with this whole concept is of course that the wind doesn’t pick up speed in these small corners quite the same way it would do in more open spaces. For example if I wanted to smooth out some serious wave action – which I’ve wanted to do for years now – we just don’t get that here. Small lakes.

When I was driving back I noticed that the sky was opening up in the west, just perfect for sunset. It turned out to be just as fine as I had hoped for and I took a whole lot of pictures, although having said that, I was also bracketing with HDR in mind. So many pictures in fact that I had no chance of processing them last night, thus a belayed post. Photomatix had a lot of trouble with these images though, it helped with the sky but the reflection in the water was a nightmare. Completely oversaturated and way too bright in relation to the sky (the reflection is always darker than the thing that is being reflected). So I took the Photomatix HDR creation to Photoshop and added a reflection from one of the original images, then erased with low opacity to reveal just a little bit of the saturated colour in the HDR beneath.

I had hoped to get some more long exposure wind pictures today, but not sure how it will work out now that it’s sunny. The pol and ND filters won’t kill enough light, one second is probably an optimistic target. I’m thinking about getting another ND8 filter for these occasions… I wish there was an ND12 or ND16 though, because I don’t like the idea of stacking three filters. Vignetting is not an issue because I’m using a crop factor camera, but that’s a lot of extra glass in front of the lens. I guess I just have to make sure it’s quality glass, so the Hoya Pro-1 ND8 will probably be in the shopping cart shortly!

Another cold (relatively speaking) day and I didn’t want to drive to the same old creek again, so I drove to another creek – river, even. I was driving on the small forest roads, it was sometimes icy but the snow wasn’t a problem for sure…

My first stop was at the Högforsen rapids (or waterfall) at the river Voxnan, but it turned out to be impossible to get to the whitewater. The water meanders through rocks and now that there was some ice and snow, I had no way of telling which would be a safe route to the open water so I turned back and continued driving. I stopped at some other rapids but I didn’t find anything to suite my taste so the camera stayed in the bag, until I got to Storlugnet (translates to “great calm”). There’s actually a dam and a power station at Storlugnet, with signs telling me that I shouldn’t be there. I figured that the risk of getting caught was next to nothing (please don’t tell anyone I was there!), so I happily set up shop by one of the many small waterfalls. So it turned out to be another photo shoot by water… I’ve always liked shooting moving water, but I don’t think I’ve ever really done it quite as much as I’m doing this winter!

I thought about the polariser thing and I can only say that the use of a polariser depends… on a lot of things. A straightforward water scene like the one above works better when polarised, in my opinion anyway. And if in doubt, use the B/G filter, LOL!

Oh and I obviously have a lot of problems with colour balance in these images. You’d think it’s easy to set the levels when there’s snow in the picture, but I struggle!

Oh (2) and by the way, the picture is not leaning. It’s dead straight, but the pine is tilted.