The Quiet Picture

Ever since last year when we did some driving around in Orsa Finnmark, I’ve been wanting to go back to explore the places. Last year it was late autumn and the weather was a bit iffy so I didn’t really stop anywhere, just made mental notes about the places we drove through. Well today, the conditions were going to be better so we had made plans for a day-trip to see if these places were hiding any photogenic spots. The weather perhaps still not ideal, but most of the rain came down when we were driving anyway and then, with a little of waiting, we got those sunny spells when we wanted to shoot something.

The first stop was at Trollgraven at the Vässinjärvi power plant. It’s a man-made ravine for the water run-off, the photogenic qualities can be debated but it was worth checking out, especially because we were going to drive past it anyway so no de-tours required. I was more interested in the next stop, the Korpmäck mountain. It’s over 700m high, although you can’t really appreciate the height as such because the road goes at over 500m altitude. However, the eastern side of the mountain is steep so it provided a great background for whatever we could find as foreground.

From Korpmäck we continued to Majkölen, it’s a large mire at an altitude of about 600m so you can see some sub-alpine character in the forest. But I have to say, from that drive-through last year I had the impression that this would be a great place… it wasn’t. Sure, it’s nice to look at, but when you have a camera in your hand, you find your options are quite limited. So this was a disappointment.

Then we headed back north and stopped at the Sundsjön Nature Reserve. A couple of years ago I drove past here, saw a potential good spot and kicked myself for not stopping to take a closer look. Remedied.

By now it was late afternoon and we finally arrived at what I considered to be the main attraction of the day, the St. Gönsjön lake. Unfortunately the wind was blowing a lot harder than I thought it would do today, and the surface of the lake was completely whipped up. Using a long shutter speed, you could create an illusion of calmer waters but then you have the moving clouds to deal with, and there was even a moon in the sky and that doesn’t tolerate any long exposures without blurring out. So it was a kind of a lose-lose situation. Use a short shutter speed to keep the moon and the clouds sharp and you’ll have ugly water. Use a very long shutter speed and water is nice and the clouds are blurred but the moon is just a streak. Use something in between… and nothing really works. But I’ll say this – St. Gönsjön is a great place and deserves more visits, just during calmer waters. Later in the evening a bank of clouds moved in and we lost the light so there was no point in exploring the lake any further, so there’s still plenty to see for new visits.

Looking at my pictures now, I didn’t get anything that I’m completely happy about. I’m a little bit disappointed, to be honest, I had a lot more expectations. But having said that, I’m not disappointed at the trip as a whole – I think it was a great day of exploration, it answered all those questions I had in my mind. Most importantly, it gave me St. Gönsjön, I definitely I have to get back there!

Finally taking a closer look at my vacation pictures. Found one HDR which needed processing, did it manually because I didn’t like the result that any HDR software produced. It still needs some work but I’m undecided if it’s worth the trouble. I was waiting on Flatruet for the sunset to happen with glorious colours, it didn’t do it but a herd of reindeer came running by. In the low light, I got some serious motion blur but it was a concious choice, I wanted to see how it works out.

It was nice to see the pictures from the unforgettable evening at Måns-Erstjärnen. I’m well pleased with some of them, but they all remind me of what a wonderful experience it was. I can still feel the warmth and hear the eerie cry of a loon echo from the distance… just amazing.

In fact, I think I’m still basking in the glow of the vacation. My shutter finger isn’t itching yet, although it did feel good to shoot the white waterlily today. One thing I wonder though, where are all the mosquitoes? There weren’t any at the lake. But… I’m guessing I will find them in the forest. I have some orchids to shoot there and I also need to find some blueberries and raspberries to pick… and I need to get my exhibition ready, it opens on Saturday. Nervous!

The other day I lamented how I lacked patience and missed out on nice evening light. I speculated that it was no big loss though, there will be new opportunities. And guess what, I already had that opportunity and it was better than the one I missed! The evening was so calm that even the big lake provided reflections so I didn’t have to settle with the small tarn next to it. It didn’t start too good though, just when I got to my first spot a small cloud drifted in front of the sun and with so little wind, it took a while before it disappeared. In the meanwhile, I was looking at the sky quite frustrated because there was a really nice cloud formation above Ånnfjället. By the time I got the light, the formation had changed already. I almost wished that I had a real wideangle though, so I could contain the foreground and enough of the sky to show the remains of the nice cloud formation. So I used stitching instead, three verticals and it still wasn’t quite enough…

But after that initial wait, it was all good. It was quite an incredible evening, it was warm and the light was great and the water was calm and my mosquito proofing worked, didn’t get bitten once despite the clouds of insects surrounding me every time I stopped. It was already close to sunset when the next cloud drifted in front of the sun, so I had to wait again. But by then I already had a lot of pictures so I decided that I will wait just this one more and then call it quits, it was a perfect evening as it was.

I really can’t describe what a feeling it was to experience an evening like this. My head was full of the impressions and I was wondering if my pictures would do any justice to the scenery. But it turned out that it wasn’t over yet – I had barely driven 50 m from the parking when I looked towards the sunset and saw the mountains silhouette against the warm sky. I quickly pulled over and grabbed the camera one more time. Imagine, I even got the peak of Sylarna that I missed yesterday!

I’m almost thinking that this should be the last picture from my vacation. Wouldn’t it be a perfect ending?

* * *

My furniture arrived before noon, so I spent the day putting it all together. It worked out nicely, because it left me plenty of energy to do this evening excursion. Not like some days when I’m so tired that I’m just hoping that it would be a windy and overcast evening!

* * *

I came back so late that I didn’t have time to do any proper post processing and now that I’m posting this, I’m sitting in daylight which definitely is no good for evaluating pictures (the post is back dated, obviously). I will have to go through all of my pictures next week at home, so there’s a risk that I will be posting more holiday pictures later…

I paid a quick visit to Messlingen yesterday, I had to check the cabin. In case you’re wondering why there hasn’t been any updates about it, it’s because I don’t want to talk about it! Trust me you’ll find out when it’s ready, I’m still hoping that one day it will be…

Anyway, I got some time left over for some skiing. I was going to the take the snowmobile trail but when I got there, a snowmobile just drove by so I waited for it to pass. But then it stopped and the driver told me that I shouldn’t ski on the trail because snowmobiles will be coming by at great speed. Huh, so what’s new?! You can hear the machines from a good distance, there’s plenty of time to stop and step aside and wait for them to pass like I always do. But no, this wasn’t good enough, I should only follow the ski trails and stay out of the way of the machines. Somewhat perplexed about this new information, I picked the closest ski trail and followed it as far up the mountain as it goes. At one point it crosses the snowmobile trail again and I saw a skier coming up on it. I waited for her and asked if it’s ok to follow the mobile trail and she confirmed what I thought all along that it is perfectly legal to follow the snowmobile trails on foot (allemansrätten!).

When you self-appoint yourself a police, the least you can do is to check the law before you start enforcing it!

If yesterday was bit of a grey day, then today it was blue skies galore. Just a few degrees minus, almost no wind, perfect snow, and the sun was already warm on my face. Just perfect. It felt so good that I did a few km extra just for the joy of it. And imagine, it will only get better now. There’s plenty to look forward to in March!

I’ve been in desperate need of a vacation, and now I finally have it – one week in the mountains in the autumn colours is just what the doctor ordered.

In preparation of the vacation, I had been studying the maps quite intensively. After all these years, I’m still finding new things, like this oddly name lake Uggtjärnen north from the Ånnfjället mountain. My maps told me that there is no trail to the lake, but satellite images told me otherwise – I could even see the sharp lines of duckboards in some places. After some more investigation, I finally found an old map where this trail was marked so I plotted it in my GPS to make sure I could find my way even if the old trail would disappear in the forest.

The trailhead to Uggtjärnen is marked from the road, it’s a small sign but if you just pay attention you can see it. And the trail itself was just fine, there was absolutely no need for the GPS so I really don’t know why it’s not in any of the current maps. When I got to the lake, I even found a wind shelter which is also not on the map. Very strange. Both the trail and the wind shelter were in good condition, no signs of decay that you sometimes see in trails and constructions that actually are on the map.

I had some great expectations about this lake. I figured it would give an opportunity to shoot Ånnfjället with the lake in the foreground, it would only work later in the day when the sunrays would reach the northern side of the mountain. It was a null point today, because as calm as the day was (when driving here, I saw that the big lake of Lossen was dead calm, I’ve never seen it like that!), there was just enough wind to break the surface of the water. And it was overcast anyway, but it looked like there would be some sun later so all hope was not lost.

It’s only about 3 km to Uggtjärnen and I had plenty of time, so I continued hiking north-east from the lake towards the Anåkroken peak. It was absolutely lovely to hike up there, my chosen route (there was no trail here, marked or otherwise) took me along the tree line so sometimes I was walking among the crooked mountain birch and sometimes out in the open. The sun was coming out just as predicted but the light was moving fast, so normally the light was gone by the time I had set up the tripod and camera for something that had looked perfect the moment before. No complaining though, my new mantra is that experience comes first and pictures second, and there was certainly nothing wrong with the experience!

The Anån creek starts from the slopes of Ånnfjället and I needed to get over it. I thought it would be easy so high upstream, but it wasn’t and I suck at long jumping so I found it a bit tricky. I had to walk up and down for a few times but I didn’t find any easy spots, so I had to pluck my courage and make the jump. It was either that or wade over, which I didn’t find an appealing option either as the water was surprisingly deep and flowing fast. But even before I got to Anån, I came across some water which I didn’t understand at all. It looked like it was flooding because there was certainly no waterbed here and water was flowing over grasses and bushes that I’m sure were growing high and dry earlier this summer. Very unusual, because everything else I’ve seen indicated that water should be low, I saw many dry waterholes and dry brooks on the way. But then when I was walking upstream in search for a place to walk over (it was not very deep, just very wide), I found a small pond and a beaver hut. Never expected that – the pond was above the tree line and the nearest trees were further downstream. Live and learn.

And here’s some more trivia. The peak I reached today, Anåkroken, literally translates to “The An creek hook” (where “An” is a name!). I never quite figured out what the hook is (well, never really thought about it), until now that I was crossing the creek (or brook as it still was up here). It flows east at first, then swings north and finally turns west to the Anån valley. And the Anåkroken moutain is there where the creek makes the big turn.

The light continued to be as shifting as it was earlier but by the time I was back at Uggtjärnen, it had become almost completely overcast. It looked like there would be little chance of a nice sunset, and I was actually genuinely hoping for a dud because my feet were killing me and I was absolutely starving. So my options were to wait for the sunset and suffer the hunger pains, or drive to the hostel and get something to eat. My stomach won, and I was relieved to see that the sunset was indeed a dud so I didn’t miss anything.

But oh what a great day it was!

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!

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!

I was reading the latest Suomen Luonto (Finnish Nature) magazine that I brought with me from Finland. They had polled a number of Finns to find out what Finnish landscape they think is most beautiful, and the landscapes on offer ranged from seascapes to mountains and old industrial towns to farming. The winner was a winter landscape from Oulanka with the river still running open while the forest around was covered with snow. The only human trace in the picture was a bridge across the river in the distance.

While I don’t disagree with the results, the photographer in me started to wonder how much the people’s choices were affected by the pictures themselves and not the landscape as such. Some of the pictures were good, and others weren’t, but at least they were all taken by the same photographer. The winner was a good picture. Maybe it would’ve been would’ve been more fair for the sake of the landscape to present four pictures of each, from each season? Or show the same landscape but pictures taken by different photographers?

And some of the pictures weren’t representative of the place at all, for example the picture from Punkaharju showed a trail going through a pine forest. Yes there’s a lot of pine forest in Punkaharju, but the place is really known for the narrow strip of land that runs between lakes. Not to show any water in a Punkaharju picture is letting it down a little bit, especially when the viewer has to use the picture to decide if the landscape is beautiful or not. Likewise, Olavinlinna was photographed from a strange angle. The picture shows the entire castle, but it’s the view from the lake that most people never see when they visit the castle or drive by. The towers have to be prominent in the picture, otherwise it just isn’t Olavinlinna as we know and love it!

On the other hand, maybe I missed the point. Maybe the emphasis wasn’t as much on the geographic location than the landscape for the sake of itself. Pine forest is pine forest is pine forest. But in that case, why pick out the 27 “national landscapes” and take unfavourable pictures of them?

As for myself, I would say that the most beautiful Finnish landscape is the alpine tundra in Lapland in the autumn, even if I don’t have any personal experience of it and it doesn’t really even represent typical Finnish landscape. What is typical Finnish landscape for me is forest and lakes and the particular landscape that I mostly identify with is the above lake scenery as seen from my parents’ cabin. Every time I talk about growing up by a lake, this is the scenery I’m thinking of. It is not grand or out of the ordinary, but it is forever etched in my mind from all those summers I spent at the cabin as a child…

I’ve finally finished processing the pictures from my trip. Some of them worked out better than I expected, and some turned out to be not as good as I had hoped for. An acceptable average! The pictures in this blog post are not related to the text, other than that everything is related to my vacation trip.

As a Finn living in Sweden, it’s inevitable to make comparisons between the countries. As it’s been 15 years since I moved from Finland, a lot has changed and in many ways the country is not the same as the one I remember. So now when I visit, I can look at Finland with the eyes of a tourist and some of the things I’ve seen are quite surprising. The following “comparison” is very subjective and based on a limited sample (northern Sweden, central/eastern Finland), and even if I keep saying that this or that is better in the other, please do not count the votes in either direction. All in all, I’m happy to be a Finn and I’m happy to live in Sweden so I wouldn’t seriously complain about either!

• Roads are better in Finland. Much better. Much, much better! *
• There are more people in Finland. In Sweden you can drive 50km with hardly any signs of human activity. Apart from the road, obviously. In Finland you always see something, if nothing else then speed cameras (see the point below).
• There are more speed cameras in Finland (a lot more – I didn’t see any from Gäddede to Haparanda, but in Finland I lost the count of them by Oulu).
• There is more birch forest in Finland.
• Finland is flat. I was relieved to reach the inner country because the flatlands in near the coast were driving me crazy. It’s unnatural not to have any hills.
• There are more lakes in Sweden. Finland is supposed to be “the land of thousand lakes” but there was very little water in sight. The roadside scenery in Sweden on the other hand is dotted with lakes, creeks and wetlands.
• Commercial (pop) radio is better in Finland. My car radio picked up Radio Nova before Haparanda and never had to re-tune during the trip. Is there a law in Sweden that forbids commercial radio to broadcast outside urban areas? I’d be fooled to think so because the signal fades as soon as you leave any major city.
• There are more bypass roads in Finland. You hardly ever need to drive through a town or a village. Until you come to Savonlinna, of course!

* * *

* Swedish roads. I imagine a Vägverket boss say something like this:

“Hi Sven, we need to patch up the Loos road. Why don’t you take this coin and toss it to see which holes to fix? And Sven, take care to do a sloppy job at it so we can go there next year and patch the same holes all over again.”

Now, it’s possible that the work order isn’t exactly like that. But the result sure is! I can understand that they don’t have the money to fix the whole road, but instead of fixing all of it badly, why not use the little money they have to fix one part of the road well? And then next year, fix the next hole. And then next. Instead of coming there every year and fill a hole there and a hole here and not even bother to even out the tarmac for a smooth surface. So the car jolts over the new tarmac edges instead of the hole that used to be there. Same difference, just money wasted.

The same thing applies for a lot of other roads. The Loos road is small, but I know a lot of highways which are only marginally better than the Loos road.

I needed to make some preparations for my cabin in Messlingen and that was just the perfect excuse to take out a day to do some photography in the mountains as well. I checked three different weather forecasts and they all said different things, it could be anything from rain to sunshine and in between but changing weather can also bring with it some wonderful light so it wasn’t all bad.

The first photo op came up at the Väster-Storbäcken brook near Mittådalen. I always make sure to check it out when I drive past but it’s been years since I’ve stopped to photograph it. I was wondering if I could do anything I hadn’t already done here, but it was easy in the end – on with the ND64 and polariser and I was able to get down to 20 secs to get that silky smooth water. Add a small stitched panorama and I was happy!

I had a plan for the day but a lot depended on the weather of course. We had barely started when the rain came, but it was only a local shower and we could see in the west that the sky was getting brighter. Which was just as well, because I had planned to drive west anyway to Mittåkläppen and Djupdalsvallen (any excuse for a waffle). When we got there, the promise of rain was still in the air so we had our waffles and waited for it to clear. After a while it did look better, so we set out on foot and as if by magic, the sun started to break out when we got to the ridge! It was absolutely fabulous with the afternoon sunshine and dramatic sky, which got us into a photography frenzy because the light could disappear at any moment so we’d better make full use of it. I can’t claim that I spent a lot of time contemplating over my compositions but this was such a gorgeous place that it didn’t really matter, it was looking good in almost any direction. The intensive clicking of shutters stopped abrubtly though when we heard something that sounded very much like thunder, accompanied by a big dark cloud. The top of an open ridge is not a place where you want to be when the lightnings start striking, so we packed up quickly and made our way back into the relative safety of the forest and hoped to reach the car before the raining started. It turned out though that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first, so a few drops of rain is all we got and a few pictures along the way as well, because we couldn’t resist stopping when we came across an opportunity, darks clouds or not!

There’s a nice little tarn next to the Mittåkläppen road with great views towards Skarsfjället. In the right light and calm weather it would be a great place, but this time we only really got one out of  two – it was calm, but the sun didn’t want to show itself again. Very dramatic skies though, a worthy subject in itself.

Since it looked like the cloud cover was lighter in the east, we decided to drive back to the Ånnfjället view instead of waiting and hoping for the light to happen at Mittåkläppen. Chasing the light this way is a bit risky – you can’t really ever be sure that the light is still there when you are but this was a calculated risk on my part. The weather fronts often get stuck in the mountains between the Norwegian and Swedish border, so further in the east your chances improve for good weather. Well, that’s my theory anyway and stick to it, because the light was indeed still there when we got to our spot! Frantically I unpacked the camera and set up the tripod, all the while hoping that the light would last a few more seconds so I could get at least one frame. The light did last, a whopping 20 minutes that gave me the best pictures of the day!

This is the first time I’ve visited the mountains in August. I was surprised to see the signs of autumn everywhere, this is quite clearly a time of transformation when the summer ends and the autumn begins. With the weather as it was today, it all made for a few memorable minutes of magic light that proved beyond any doubt that changing weather is a photographer’s best friend!