The Quiet Picture

So the exhibition is now open for public! I’d lie if I said it was a crowd magnet, but the (very) positive thing is that the few people did come also liked the pictures. Co-incidentally, the Ljusdal camera club was holding an open-air exhibition in town which was a lucky break for me, because the club members made out a large portion of my visitors. If I’m going to have another exhibition, I have to advertise more or it will be downright embarrassing with the lack of visitors!

A few times I listened to the visitors without them knowing I was the photographer and they were still saying nice things. I didn’t keep score but I got the feeling that the nuthatch picture drew the most comments. I’m not surprised… it’s probably my favourite as well!

Since I had some time in between visits, I had a look around Rosehills. It’s a garden market so there were plenty of flowers, even if it’s a late season and a lot of shelves were already empty. I was going to have the camera with me anyway because inevitably, some people will want to talk about the technical side of photography (especially the camera club members), but obviously it was useful for shooting the flowers as well. I didn’t want to complicate things with a tripod so I was missing the stabilised version of the 150mm macro… I’m trying to resist!

There’s a gravel pit along the road between Funäsdalen and Mittådalen. In one pile of sand which has been there for years, a flock of swallows have dug out nesting holes so the pile looks like swiss cheese. The birds don’t mind people so it’s possible to stand right next to the pile and photograph the swallows. The nests are high up on the pile though so they are well out of reach and I guess that’s the whole point – the birds can feel safe up there and there’s safety in numbers as well. My problem is that I keep forgetting to take my 300mm lens with me so this morning I was standing there with my 150mm macro. But at least it gave me an overview of the nests and a lot of birds flying around, although I do have to get there with the long lens before the birds leave the nests!

We continued to Anderssjöåfallet because it looked like we would be spared from the rain that was forecast for the day. At first it even was sunny, which dampened my enthusiasm to shoot the water while I was walking up the falls. But then, higher up after the last big fall, I finally got the shade I needed so I was able to start shooting.

Mr S. drove back home in the afternoon, so I needed to find my own inspiration for the evening’s photography. It was going to be a calm evening with a good chance of sun, so I drove to Måns-Erstjärnen and this time I had a 300mm lens with me, because the swallows’ nests are on the way there. It was overcast when I got there so I didn’t have a lot of light to work with, but I tried anyway. It looks like the young swallows are flight-ready because I’m sure I saw some of the young leave the nest and then come back again to beg for food from the parents.

When I got to Måns-Erstjärnen, there was a little wind so I didn’t get the calm water I had hoped for, but maybe with a little bit of luck it would calm down (before the wind would pick up even more, because it was going to be a windy day tomorrow). This is the second time I was following the shoreline and I was even more impressed than I was the first time. There are photo opportinues almost after each turn, all I needed was the light and the calm water. But no such luck… so I looked the other way and found this little brook meander through a bog with the peak of Ånnfjället in the background. I had to wait for a while before the sun came out again but it was great when it did! The light lasted all of one minute and when I looked back towards west, I saw that the group of clouds had only increased. So my chances of getting that wonderful evening light were reduced, but at least I could do some scouting. At one point there was a ridge with not many trees on which got me curious so I walked up to see what’s on the other side. A small lake, that’s what – and this one was calm! But still, no light. So I walked back to the bigger lake and continued my hike around it. When I had walked a long stretch without any photo potential, I was going to turn back but had second thoughts and continued ahead anyway. It turned out to be a bad idea, because of course the sun would come out now when I didn’t have any use for the light. I half ran to the small lake with the calm water and just when I had the tripod set up and was ready to take a picture, the light disappeared again. I only caught the last of it, but now I wanted to wait instead of walking around and missing the next opportunity. I waited for half an hour and the clouds in the west persisted, so I decided to give up. And about half a minute after I had put the camera in the bag, the sun came out. I swear. And I swore. But instead of setting up the gear in the same spot, I made the fatal mistake of getting back to the bigger lake and try to catch those spots that I had scouted earlier. But by now the wind was picking up again so nothing worked and I just walked back to the car feeling very crossed with myself. I mean… I had waited at the same spot for half an hour. Why couldn’t I wait for one more minute and actually get the picture?!

By the time I got back to car, I had calmed down. I will have another opportunity here, and it will be even better and it will not be down to one minute either!

It’s another sunny day in mountains. We decided to head to Mittåkläppen and explore the cliffs which have a rich flora with a good chance of finding some rarities, although I mostly interested in finding some ferns up there. I was really happy when I found one that I hadn’t seen before, obviously I couldn’t identify it on the spot (I didn’t want to add the weight of a flora guide in my bag) so I just took enough pictures to ID it later. But then… I found another fern. And a third one! The pictures may be just snapshots, but the important thing is that I’m making progress with these plants.

Time flies when you’re photographing plants in varying light and windy conditions (=wait, wait, wait) so we got back down with just a few minutes to spare so we could have a waffle at Djupdalsvallen (deja vu – didn’t I just make it in a nick of time a few days ago?). But down here, the wind wasn’t as bad and the light was nice and we were happy to continue photography, nothing special but just walk around and follow the brook and see if anything nice catches the eye. It was really good for me, a relaxing afternoon that finally had me shooting some common flowers that I’ve been thinking about shooting for days (or years) but never do because “I’ll take the next one”.

We continued photography until sunset. We checked out a couple of locations near Messlingen but in the end we drove up to Flatruet to see if the evening sky would be interesting. The cloud cover was a little bit too thick in the west but as we were standing up there with cameras at the ready, a herd of reindeer ran by us.

It’s rare that I keep on shooting from morning to sunset, so it was nice for a chance. Thank you for the company Mr S.!

I read in Härjedalens kärlväxtflora (as mentioned yesterday) that there’s a very rare dandelion (Taraxacum crocodes) growing on the eastern shore of the lake Messlingen. Now, all dandelions look all the same to me, but the book assured me that this particular dandelion is different.

I found some dandelions. They all looked the same to me. I snapped some shots of them anyway for later analysis (at home with proper Internet connection).

In the afternoon I drove to Hamrafjället. Whenever anyone starts to talk about flowers in the mountains, Hamrafjället will come up sooner or later in the discussion. To be honest, I’m kind of over it by now – sure, there’s a lot of flowers there that I’m not familiar with yet, but my interest in botany is not going in that direction. I’m more honed in on some particular species, I feel better when I have a clear target of what I’m looking for, like the ferns now and before them, orchids. So the reason I went to Hamrafjället is that I wanted to get to the top of Småhamrarna. It’s the lower of the Hamra peaks, I’ve been on top of Hamrafjället 2 or 3 times already but it’s only now that I’m kind of collecting the peaks of “60 toppar” that the lower peak caught my attention. And the reason I am only “kind of” collecting them is that I have no intention of conquering all 60. Some of them just look like too much trouble so I won’t bother get there just so I can claim an achievement that was only created as a tourist attraction. I have some opinions on which peaks were selected among the 60 anyway… But like I mentioned about the plants, I need some targets so the 60 toppar is as good as any, until I come up with a better plan.

It was an overcast day with the clouds hanging low, even the Småhamrarna peak was shrouded in mist when I started my hike. But gradually the clouds were clearing away and when I was back at the car, the sun was shining. But by now I had done two over 7 km hikes today and the idea of making something out of the evening light wasn’t appealing to me at all. If I had some company who would tempt me otherwise, I would probably have gone along, but alone as I was, tiredness was my main motivator and I just wanted to go home (=cabin) and have a cup of tea and look at the new pictures.

Speaking of the pictures, I was carrying the macro lens again while the Powershot served as the landscape tool. I was halfway back to the car when I realised that I hadn’t used the macro at all, so I was in a hurry to find something to do with it because I just hated the idea of dragging that heavy gear without using it. Since Sunday, I had also planned to take pictures of plants that I hadn’t photographed yet, so the common butterwort (Pinguicila vulgaris) was just the ticket. It’s a common plant and we have it in Loos, but I’ve never taken the trouble. Because trouble it was – the darn thing is swaying like crazy in the wind, even when there’s so little wind that you hardly feel it on your skin. And it’s also a painfully 3D plant, meaning that the lower petal is pointing straight out so it’s not physically possible to stop down far enough to generate the DOF required for it. So shallow DOF it is, I have my common butterwort picture now. Next!

I’m on vacation. Two weeks! Amazing luxury, I don’t even want to hear when was the last time I had such a long a vacation. The cabin is ready enough to be my home for the whole period, I have hot water and the toilet ventilation works. The biggest problem I have with the cabin is the lack of furniture, the lack of storage space is driving me crazy. I have my things spread all over the floor (well, nothing new there, I have things all over the floor at home as well…) but it’s the kitchen area in particular where the lack of storage space is a problem. I’m waiting for Ikea to deliver my order, I was silly enough to think that the 5-7 working days delivery time mentioned on their home page would cover the whole country but I’m not so lucky, it takes them 10 days which means that I will only get the furniture on the 11th. Unless it’s delayed, of course.

I spent the Saturday mounting the furniture I already had. The weather is nothing stellar so it’s not like I’m missing out on anything major if I skip a hike and I also just realised that two weeks is a long time – there’s a lot of hiking to be done yet!

So the hiking started today. I drove to Rockvallen, it’s great for orchids and other flowers and then up on Kariknallarna you have the waffle cabin (even if their waffles are nothing special, what I really miss is Djupdalsvallen) and from there, it’s an easy hike to Hästkläppen so I can claim a new peak.

There’s really nice alpine forest on the way up. I was delighted to see all the ferns, the season is still early and the ferns are bright green. The early season was evident up on the alpine tundra as well, there is some snow left and in one place the trail was blocked by a big snowfield. I reckon some spots are only a month away from becoming glaciers – the snow is probably gone in August and in September it could already be snowing again. But of course it varies from year to year and somehow I get a feeling that the season is late this year.

When I started climbing up to Hästkläppen, I found a lot of dwarf cornel. It’s not a rare flower but maybe I don’t visit the places where they grow because I don’t often see them. So I made the most of the opportunity and picked a younger individual which still had a pale green colour, normally those bracts are white. And note, the actual flower is only the black cluster in the middle!

And something very cool happened when I was approaching Knallen. There was a huge bird in the sky, so I grabbed my binoculars (which I’m finally carrying with me, after years of cursing that my binos are in the car) to take a closer look. It was still only a dark dot against a white sky, but the size was obvious – must be a golden eagle! After following it for a while with the binoculars, I finally decided to try and take a picture. I only had the 150mm macro lens which is no bird lens for sure, but it was able to focus on the small dot without hunting at all. The crop is ridiculous but the silhouette is clear. Further in the distance I saw another big bird but it had a white tail, so I wasn’t sure if it was the same species. But when I checked the bird guide later, it turned out that juvenile golden eagles have white tails. This was the first time I saw a wild golden eagle, and I got two of them at once! And you know what, during all that time that I was observing the eagle, it didn’t flap its wings at all. Not once. What a cool experience!

* * *

Towards the end of the hike I was developing a bad headache that started from aching shoulder muscles – either I hadn’t been drinking enough, or the backpack is too heavy. I now have a hydration system in the pack which is very nice, I can sip water without stopping but it’s difficult to say exactly how much water you’re drinking. Although I thought I was sipping often enough, it turned out that it wasn’t a lot anyway, I had one liter in the system but I had only drunk 1/3 of it. Not good. The backpack weighs about 9 kg with the stuff I had in it in today (9 kg!! I didn’t even have a spare lens in it, where does the weight come from?) and although it feels good and balanced on my back, it does wear me out after a trip up and down a mountain. But I’ll survive. What are painkillers for anyway?

During my excursion yesterday, I found some potential motifs that I chose not to shoot but I felt deserved a second chance. They are really close to home so I didn’t even pack the bag, just took the camera and tripod (and a generous layer of mosquito deterrent) and had a closer look. Glad I did, because I had a really good time shooting the twinflowers and green-flowered wintergreens.

Next weekend I will be shooting flowers in the mountains. Just five working days left, and I have vacation! The other day I calculated that I have had 17 days of holiday (besides the bank holidays) since July 2009. Add a year-long stress about the cabin and some significant changes at work and I can honestly say that I need a vacation! Ok I hear you asking, why didn’t I take out more vacation… I tried to. I had a lot more scheduled last year, but then the cabin got delayed, and delayed some more, and I kept cancelling my holidays with every delay. Shooting myself in the foot, in other words. On the upside, now that I can use the cabin, I will be wanting to take out every day of vacation I can!

Time to explore the local forest again. I remember there should be a spot with a lot of ferns not very far from home, previously when I’ve walked past I was looking for other plants but I was almost sure I would find some ferns there. I hadn’t gone more than 20-30 m from the house when I came across a lesser butterfly orchid! I’ve walked this way countless of times but never saw a butterfly orchid. Now that I know it’s there, I can even see it from my living room window! It was in a good position at that, so of course I had to take some pictures. Then I checked out my regular lesser butterfly orchid spot and again had to stop and take more pictures. Not far from that, I came across a freakishly big heath spotted orchid. Maybe it’s not big in height, but the flower cluster was as tight as I’ve ever seen.

Still on my way to the fern spot, I finally decided to take some pictures of the bird’s foot trefoil. Every year I think about taking pictures of this wonderfully yellow flower, but every year I don’t – I mean, it’s growing everywhere, I’ll take the next opportunity, right?

Finally I reached the humid fern spot and found all the mosquitoes as well. Been wondering where they were when I was able to do all the shooting so far without the pesky devils. Anyway, my bug spray was working so I just tried to ignore them and concentrate on the ferns. It turns out that the compact camera is my best ID aid. I can take quick shots from above and below and then overall for later study, so I don’t have to rip off any plants and carry home. The macro lens is less convenient for that, and using a 150mm lens for an overall shot of a meter high plant would be too much of a challenge anyway!

I have to say, the ferns are fascinating. There’s a whole lot of geometry in them with regular and repeating patterns. Maybe it gets a bit boring after a while to take similar compositions with minute differences between species, but they are an absolute treasure for studying the plants afterwards. There’s so much to them that I didn’t see on the spot, but that’s one of those things you learn to look at when you keep at it for a while. An exciting new world!

On the way home, I passed by the skiing track. I had heard that the storm a few weeks ago had felled a lot of trees here and indeed it was a sad sight. Some trees had fallen on the power line, so I’m wondering if they have enough money to fix it. Not that it’s really a problem for me, I didn’t need the illumination last winter at all. Instead, I was a bit irritated when someone had turned the lights on, because they stopped me from shooting the aurora!

We made an excursion to one of the best – or the best – botanical places in Loos. We were there a couple of years ago but it was rainy and cold and my fingers were frozen, so it didn’t make quite such an impact on me as it should have, because the variety of life is just astonishing. All kinds of rare or rare-ish plants have a home here, and even the common plants were special – they were growing in freakishly large sizes. At first when I saw a common butterworth (Pinguicula vulgaris), I thought it was a different species of butterworth because it was twice the size they normally are (and let’s face it, we only have three species of butterworth in Sweden and the other two are smaller and don’t grow here anyway). Lily of the valley leaves were so big that I had to double check them because they started to look like lady’s slipper leaves (which we also found). And the twayblade grows with three leaves. I felt like Alice in Wonderland!

We had two specific plants we were looking for, besides of just generally admiring the plant life (which the bears seem to appreciate as well, judging by the frequent tracks). First one was the rare mountain bladder-fern (Cystopteris montana). It took us a while but we finally found it, unfortunately there were fewer of them than the last time and they were much smaller as well. The second plant we wanted to find was the wonder violet (Viola mirabilis), and when we found it I understood why it would be called like that – it was enormous! Well that’s not really the reason why it’s called a wonder violet, the name really refers to the self-pollinating flowers that don’t open up in the summer. The flower kind of has two lives, first it blooms in the spring with the typical violet flowers and size, but then instead of disappearing like the rest of the violets, it just keeps growing until it reaches this gigantic size. I had read in the book that it would be big… but when I first saw the leaves, I thought “funny looking marsh marigold leaves” until I realised that it was the plant we had been looking for!

Despite all this abundance, I didn’t really take any pictures to speak of. I could easily spend a day there just shooting and come back the next day for more, but now I just settled with the visual input. Besides all the natural wonders, I also found that I am increasingly attracted to ferns. I’ve always liked them but I’ve never made any particular effort to either shoot them or learn their species. But this time when we were looking for a fern, I paid extra attention and… I think I have to start learning them. They can be difficult to tell apart and sometimes you need a loupe and observe the spores on the underside of the leaves to id them, but the benefit of doing that is that the spores develop late in the summer when you no longer have so many flowers to look at.

So… ferns. Only 20 pages in Den Nya Nordiska Floran, piece of cake! Not.

After the huge disappointment last year when I found someone had cut all the lady’s slipper orchids in one location, I decided I have to do something. I can’t stand watch there every day, so I ended up creating a sign where I pointed out (in a gentle manner, no accusations!) that all orchid species are protected. I offered one of my pictures as a print as a trade-off for anyone who had planned to pick the orchids this year as well.

I put up the sign a couple of weeks ago and today I visited the location to see how the orchids are doing. My sign was still up and so were the orchids! Although to be honest, I don’t think anyone has been there at all, even to look at them. The local folks normally check another location, which is exactly why I’m now visiting this place instead because I don’t want to add to the wear and tear. I started to wonder if these people who pick lady’s slippers have possible also selected another location… but I can’t check them all.

So in this location anyway, the orchids were safe. It turned out that they are early this year, they are already starting to be over bloom and there were no buds at all. They were not as numerous as some other years and I noticed something interesting. I’m almost sure that they are smaller this year than they normally are. I noticed this with the calypso orchids as well, they were definitely smaller than normal. So I’m wondering what could be causing it. Maybe the really warm period in the spring which made them spurt too far ahead considering the season… The next orchid in bloom will be the lesser butterfly orchid, I saw a couple of individuals today which had just started to open up. So let’s see if those will be smaller than normal as well.

I also found some creeping lady’s-tresses orchids in early stages of bloom. But it is such a small orchid anyway that it’s impossible to say if it’s bigger or smaller than normal.

Exciting times anyway – I need to adjust my head to think that this really is summer now, because the flowers are popping up everywhere!

I had a walk around the forest to see what’s happening with the flowers. I was particularly interested in the lesser butterfly orchids, they are already growing but will probably take a couple of weeks to bloom. Most things in the forest seem to be in the same stage and I saw a lot of buds of different kinds. A week or two and it’s the high season!

There is one spot in the forest which is covered by a green mat of ferns. I’ve always eyed this spot and tried to find out ways to photograph it, but even when it at first looks wonderfully light green, at closer look you find that the mat is a little bit “broken” so I never created any pictures here. Until today, when I saw the half grown wood cranesbill break up the fern pattern and this one leaf with a young fern nested on it. It really was like that when I found it, not sure I could’ve come up with the idea myself!

I tried to clean up the leaf before taking pictures and it looked ok in the viewfinder, but on the monitor I could see the leaf was full of little spots of different kinds, some kind microscopic debris that’s really easy to miss in the nature. So I did a great deal of healing to get rid of the worst, but when I realised that there were probably a hundred of these smaller spots, I gave up and used negative clarity instead. Which is a little bit ironic, considering that I shot it at f16 to get enough depth of field to keep the fern sharp!