The Quiet Picture

I have another mini-holiday this weekend. And there’s only really one place where I can spend it – the mountains.

Today’s hike was at Ramundberget. I’ve read about the waterfalls of Tvärån and because the day was going to be overcast, waterfalls were just the right thing to shoot. Problem is… the waterfalls weren’t as photogenic as I had hoped for. However, I was impressed by the surroundings, especially up towards the tree line. Another place which will look just simply spectacular in autumn colours! But it’s a long hike there, 5 km just to get from the car to creek and then about 2 km upstream. The waterfalls are bigger downstream but it’s difficult to find a good angle, maybe it will be easier in the autumn where the insects aren’t quite as numerous. They can be a real inspiration killer!

And to be honest, the waterfalls further up were a little bit less exciting. It’s clear that the volume of water is very low at the moment, but I’m not sure if more water would help. But I wasn’t disappointed as such, I was just so happy to be there. Always. Hiking up to the alpine tundra cheers me up like nothing else!

And while I was up there, I also got a close view of Skarsfjället. It’s an impressive mountain at over 1500m, the highest peak of the massif is bit like a round-sided pyramid which is easy to recognise. Because it’s the highest mountain in the neighbourhood, it means it’s visible from a lot of places around here. When it’s visible at all – it seems like has its own climate and the peak is often hidden in the clouds. But not today, even if it was a bit of an overcast and dull day.

So what did I forget then? I forgot the macro lens and compass at home. I forgot the map in the car. I forgot to check the reserve batteries for the GPS (which I wanted to keep operational when I don’t have a compass and a map!). It turned out that the spare battery holder I grabbed when I left home contained used batteries which I obviously had forgotten to throw away back when the batteries were used! But no harm done, there was just enough juice to keep the GPS powered up so I could see when I was back at the car that I had hiked over 15 km. Not bad… but I think I will do a shorter hike tomorrow!

But most importantly… I forget all my worries!

A while back I was being a bit sceptical about the new Photoshop CS5. Then I found out that there’s one feature that might actually be quite interesting for me, the improved HDR processing engine. HDR in CS4 was quite bad, actually, but this new version (HDR Pro) promised an option to remove ghosts that sometimes appear in your HDR pictures when something has moved between the frames, for example tree branches in the wind. I had one such HDR that I’ve been trying to fix on and off since last September, so of course I had to test if I could finally get it done in CS5.

In short – no.

If you look at the picture, the first sample shows the ghosting that appears when the image is processed normally (samples are not downsized or processed otherwise than the HDR, just cropped from originals). I then applied ghost removal and used the medium exposed frame as the base for it. And it actually does a pretty good job, but only with some of the branches. On the right side, things look fine. In the lower left corner, it’s a total disaster.

So I loaded the same HDR but using the under-exposed frame as the base for the ghost removal. Now it looks acceptable (let’s oversee the serious CA, it’s not the point of investigation here), but instead of the ghosting, there is now some weird pixelated splotches all over the place. Look at the tree trunk, there are some black dots that are not happening in the other samples. And on the right in the brances, some green dots.

I tried to adjust all of the processing settings to see if I could get these artefacts to disappear. But nix, it can’t be done.

This particular HDR could work with just two frames, but the ghost removal option is not available for a two frame merge. It probably wouldn’t help anyway because the un-needed overexposed frame is not used for the branches anyway.

Maybe this particular picture is just too much for HDR Pro. Let’s not forget that this is the first version of ghosting removal and first versions often just give you a taste of the tool. Just like the HDR tool in CS4 was crap and now it’s good, so there’s a reason to expect that ghosting removal will be improved in CS6!

But until then, I have to decide if I will keep this HDR or finally trash it after spending hours on trying to make it work. Currently my only option seems to be to combine the best bits from the two HDR versions with ghosting removal applied. After a while, I’ll probably decide that the picture wasn’t that good anyway!

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?

So, I set out to photograph water with the film camera as planned. At first I was cursing at the sun but I guess I shouldn’t have, because it started raining. Not a lot, and normally it wouldn’t be a problem but with the Tamron 28-300mm lens it is. I have to use a step-up ring to fit any filters, which means that the lens hood that would otherwise protect the front element from stray drops is now useless. And photographing running water without a filter, I’m not sure if I can do it, at all. I got a few frames though (with filter!) so we’ll see how I did with the exposure. I’ll find out in a few weeks…

When I got home, the rain had stopped of course. So in the afternoon I went to the Kvarnsjön lake and it didn’t fail me (it rarely does), I found these old wooden boats. You don’t often see wooden boats anymore, it’s all plastic and shiny colours these days. At first I was annoyed at the boat in the foreground because it was blocking the best angle to the untied boat in the background, but then I realised that I would get a much better composition if I used both boats in it. The boat in the background, there’s a chain hanging from the bow but I doubt it’s an anchor, I’ve never seen a rowing boat anchored offshore anyway. When the wind picks up, I wonder if I’ll ever see that boat again!

Very exciting day – looking for the ghost orchids (Epipogium aphyllum)! I really had been looking forward to seeing it, because these mysterious small pale orchids have become my favourites. Last year was spectacular for them so we didn’t dare to hope it would be equally good this year, but I think it turned out to be pretty close anyway. Last year we found a few groups with many orchids, this year the concentrations were much smaller but there were individuals scattered over a larger area, it was such a treat to be walking around the place and spot the flowers among the mosses and ferns. We checked out four ghost orchid locations in total, and found them in each – which wasn’t guaranteed at all, considering their nature. They can disappear for many years from a location and then suddenly pop up again when the conditions are right.

* * *

I have been itching to go back to the Svartån location we visited last week, so I did that tonight. The volume of water had gone down considerably, just as predicted. Now it was possible to follow the creek on the cliffs surrounding the water, instead of making detours in the forest. I followed the creek up to where it finally levelled off, the next time I think I will follow it downstream. This visit confirmed the feeling I got the last time, the place is full of opportunities and even after 2.5 hours I had still only just scratched the surface. It’s not just the waterfalls but everything around them as well. You can use a wideangle to cram in as much as possible or you can concentrate on a single detail, and come back some other time and do it all over again because it will have changed. Marvellous!

* * *

SVT Gävledala hade ett inslag om Hamra NP i måndags. De hade filmat vid Svartån, men jag kan inte avgöra om de filmat precis här eller hittat mer klipphällar annanstans längs Svartån… i så fall, var var det?

I had more waterfalls in store today. I drove to Ramundberget and took the lift up the mountain (the aching leg was a perfect excuse) and then walked around a bit, checked out a lovely view across and along the valley. I wasn’t interested in going any further, the leg was not killing me but I’m not masochistic enough to enjoy it either. So I found my way to the stream that falls down from the Kvarnsjön lake. The waterfall was a disappointment – kinda like the Lillrånden waterfall earlier, this one also falls in a ravine so at best you can only get glimpses of it. I found only one photographic spot, but it was a sunny day and the scene was backlit so I could forget all about it. Ironically, the best view you get to the falls is from the road – far away, but at least you see the whole thing.

So I was hoping that my next waterfall was going to be better. Something I had come across on a Fotosidan forum, I couldn’t find any pictures of the actual fall so I didn’t have any expectations, I just assumed that it would be small-ish. The Sångbäckfallet (Song Creek Fall – nice!) is close to Klövsjö, it’s easy to find (when you know that the parking is opposite to the road towards Storhågna) and the hike there is only 400m. The very last bit to the foot of the fall is steep though, the kinda steep where you’ll happily grab hold of anything to keep you from tumbling down. Once you’re down there, getting a clean view of the falls is difficult but it doesn’t really matter because there are really nice photo ops both downstream and upstream from the falls. The waterfall was bigger than I expected, but size doens’t matter, it’s what’s around the actual waterfall that makes or breaks the place for me. And Sångbäckfallet is definitely among my favourites!

Now I’m looking forward to spending a day in front of the computer, sorting through 3.3 GB of pictures. I kinda like my aching foot… it’s not so bad, but it’s enough to give me an excuse to rest!

I was supposed to have vacation the whole week, but I couldn’t come up with anything to do so I shortened it to two days.

I had done some research and found a waterfall south-west from Sonfjället, Lillråndafallet. From Rånddalen, there’s a forest road towards the canyon where the Lill-Rånden creek falls. The road wasn’t very good to start with, and soon it got worse – much worse. All the raining in the past days had left a big puddle across the whole road so I stopped the car to take a closer look. It wasn’t the water that worried me – it was the muddy bottom. I poked at it and it felt soft, so I didn’t dare to drive through it. If I couldn’t go forward, then the only was back. Except that there was no place to turn. The closest turnaround was 5-600 metres behind me. On that rough road that was bumpy enough driving forward when I could see the obstacles. Oh dear me… And then of course, since I couldn’t drive to the trailhead I had to walk instead, I figured I had stopped about 2 km short. But now I got a little bit lucky, after reversing only about a 100 metres I came to a wider section of the road, not possible to turn the car around but certainly possible to park it without blocking the road. Ironically, just after the mudhole the road got better, no big rocks to drive around like it was before it.

From the trailhead, the sign said it’s 2.5 km to the falls. The trail follows the east side of the canyon and the sound of the falling water could be heard somewhere beneath all the way to the actual falls. When I got down to my photo shoot, I heard a thunder rumble right after I had taken the first picture! Very lucky that there’s a shelter next to the falls, so I quickly made my way to it because it had also started raining – a lot. While I was sitting there and waiting for the rain to pass, I was trying to figure out why I was feeling so uneasy. Although I really liked the place, I wasn’t as eager to photograph it as I should’ve been. Something was nagging my mind… the car. I was worrying about having to reverse 500m on that rocky road, and I was worrying about the tyres for all the punishment they’ve been getting today, first the Fågelsjö road which is under construction… then the gravel road from Linsell to Rånddalen… and finally the rocky road towards the trailhead. Having something like that nagging my mind prevents me from being inspired to photograph. But it’s not all bad. Having to worry about flat tyres, mudholes and thunderstorms takes the mind off work, very quickly! Instant vacation mode.

When the sun came out, my mood improved. I just tried to be positive; I can drive in reverse, it’s never been a problem for me, so what if the road is bad, I’ll just take it slow! I took some more pictures but I kept feeling that I had not made the most of my visit. It’s like I just wanted to get done with the car and get out of there. It’s a real shame though, because the place definitely deserves more attention, the big fall itself is un-photographable as it falls in the ravine, but the falls upstream and the side-falls are fine. I think this is the part where it sucks to be alone. You get too trapped in your own thoughts and can’t find a way out so your worries take the better of you. So I don’t think that I’ll ever go back there, not alone. Consider this an invitation – if you want to see the Lillrändåfallet falls, just drop me a line. I know the way!

On the way back, I saw two guys standing a way down from the trail. They asked me if there’s a shelter, I said yes… just follow the trail. “What trail?” Huh? How did they get here? “The trail I’m standing on…” They happily made their way up to the trail and continued towards the falls. When I got to the trailhead, I found a car there. Those guys had driven a car – a normal car, with ground clearance no bigger than in my little Yaris! If they had made it through the mudhole, then for sure I can do that, too. That would certainly spare me all the reversing. When I passed the mudhole, I took a stick and poked at the mud all the way through. And for sure, it didn’t feel as bad as it had done at first, most of the bottom was hard and the softer mud only covered small areas, not big enough for a tyre to sink in. So I drove through, no problems!

When I was back at the tarmac road, it was such a relief! And it wasn’t just the joy of a proper road, but I also found out that the summer cafe at Nysätern was still open, so I could go there and have a cup of coffee and a waffle. All I had eaten since breakfast was a few peanut M&M’s… I was starving! I had a sandwich with me but I hadn’t felt like eating with what all the worrying I was doing instead. Stupid I know, but it’s a very hard habit to break. Anyway, the crispy waffle, whipped cream and cloudberry jam hardly fulfills the nutrional requirements of a meal, but I couldn’t care less. When I was back on the road, I was euphoric. No worries! I couldn’t stop smiling, it was such a great feeling that everything had turned out ok. Yes!

I checked in at the hostel and then drove to Ljusnedal to photograph the Tevåfallet waterfall. It’s not a big waterfall by any means, but it’s the way there that’s nice. Small falls all the time, so it was just stop shoot and go. And the best part – no hiking required to get there. If you take the “back door”, it’s something like 50m to the bridge and you can start shooting right there. And then follow upstream as far as you feel like.

I took a lot of pictures today, but nothing that feels special. The special feeling I have from the today is my car surviving the ordeal unscathed… well, unless I have a slow puncture and a flat tyre in the morning…

I’ve no special plans for this year’s vacation – just mountains. I started with a de-tour to Klövsjö, I wanted to check out the Fettjeåfallet waterfall. It was a sunny day so not really ideal for waterfalls, but at least I’d get to see the place. It’s a relatively short hike – about 2 km – but very rocky. But there’s also plenty to photograph along the way, and it’s this “along the way” that makes Fettjeåfallet one of the better waterfalls I’ve seen.

I had made the radical decision of taking the film camera (and the G10) on this excursion. The contrasty light in the forest is a nightmare for any camera so every time I wanted a picture I waited for a cloud to drift in. With the G10, I was able to use bracketing for HDR. And I must say I struggled a great deal with that. Every single time I’m on the field and need the bracketing function, I forget how to use it! And what kills me is that it’s not difficult, but I just can’t remember the combination of buttons to press. Because there’s that bracketing function, I can set it, I can even choose the interval… but the darn camera totally ignores my settings. So I’m missing some crucial last step in the process. Which leaves me doing manual bracketing, which takes too long, when the clouds are moving fast and thus changing the conditions of shadows and light in the composition. When I get home, I’ll have to check the manual and write down some notes and put them in the bag. I refuse to let a compact camera beat me.

But the film camera then. Not enough functions to get confused! The only custom function I need is the mirror lockup, but just in case, I carry the manual in the bag. You know, the good old days when you actually got a hardcopy of the manual. When I was walking back to the car, I was wondering why I’m not a least bit bothered about whether or not the slides will be any good. All too easy to botch the exposure in these conditions, and I didn’t even bracket. And I realised – the final picture is not that important! I’ve always said that the journey is more important than the goal, and it truly is. Good pictures are just a bonus. Sweet!

LR/Enfuse is a HDR plug-in for Lightroom for merging your HDR pictures without leaving LR. You just select the images and tell Enfuse to merge them and import the result back to LR. Couldn’t be simpler! I wish I’d known about this plug-in a few months ago when I was doing comparative tests with HDR software. This little snippet of programming can do the job much better than Photomatix, so I’ve re-done many of the Photomatix HDR’s that I wasn’t happy with and LR/Enfuse came up with a winner every time.

LR/Enfuse doesn’t have as many settings as Photomatix does and the HDRs lack much of the “pop” that Photomatix creates so at first look it may seem like Enfuse isn’t that good. However, what really matters is how the dynamic range is handled and this is where Enfuse shines and you create that pop yourself, it’s no different than any post-processing you with your images. I’ll much rather have a perfect “raw HDR” that needs post-processing than a half-baked HDR with generous contrast and saturation. LR/Enfuse even succeeded with the reflection images that Photomatix completely messed up.

The first image above is Njupeskär, a 4-image HDR. Compare it to the Photomatix HDR, where the sky looks like it belongs to a different image. The second image comprises of 3 exposures, where the Photomatix HDR left a nasty grad filter effect in the birch. Both of these new HDRs are done with the default settings in LR/Enfuse and required post-processing in LR, but nothing extravagant – saturation and curves for the most, and a grad filter in the second image to add some more drama in the clouds.

The trial version has a size limit which I think is way to small (500 pixels) for any reliable evaluation, for example, it’s impossible to say how the alignment works. So after some hesitation I paid to get the full version and now that I know how well it works, I only wish I could get my money back from HDRsoft so I could give them to Timothy Armes instead. If you’re a Lightroom user and looking for HDR software, I can warmly recommend LR/Enfuse!

I always make an effort to photograph the full moon every time the moonrise or moonset coincides with sunset or sunrise. I’m more of a landscape photographer than moonscape ditto, so I leave the moon closeups to the astronomy buffs and try to create landscape pictures with the moon in them instead, which requires some light on the landscape. Today’s moonrise was well before sunset though so I had hedged my bets on photographing the sunset, but when I got to my location (I didn’t have much choice with that since I was coming from work), I saw that the moon didn’t actually appear too high in sky from that point along the road. So I was torn between the sun and the moon, but it became quickly obvious that the sunset wouldn’t be nearly as nice as yesterday’s red clouds (as seen through the bus window), so I hurried up to find a place for framing the moon.

I bracketed with hopes of putting together an HDR in Photomatix. It turned out that Photomatix is hopeless with this subject matter, for one thing it doesn’t understand the concept of “reflection” but insists on making the reflection lighter than original and that’s a big no-no, and secondly it kept overexposing the moon no matter how I tried to adjust the sliders. Photoshop to the rescue, and this is how I did it:

Out of the dark, middle and light exposures, the dark exposure had the moon and its reflection, the middle one had the sky and the light one had the foreground. I copied the middle exposure on top of the light one and then selected the moon and its reflection from the dark exposure, copied them to the base and carefully erased around the moon until it fit seamlessly to the sky (you have to make sure to get rid of all the dark sky around the moon, and careful not to erase too much which will leave you with a bright ring instead). Then I started erasing the middle layer by using a large soft brush with low opacity to reveal the lighter background below. Again, important not to overdo it or the halos around the treetops would ruin the effect, also have to watch out for the reverse where the treetops are too dark in relation to the rest of the tree. The result is darker than my original RAWs would allow (it probably looks too dark on some screens, but is reasonably ok on my LCD), but it’s miles better than the Photomatix mess. I wasted an hour with Photomatix trying to fix it, and when I finally gave up it took only 10 minutes in Photoshop. A bit of a rush job, granted, so there’s room for improvement. Anyway, whether it’s done in Photomatix or Photoshop or wherever, you need some trick up your sleeve to put together a landscape photo without an overexposed full moon. Now you know my secret!