The Quiet Picture

Another trip to Messlingen, with a mission. I’ve gotten over the disappointment from the last time, and I’ve actually made some significant process – I’ve found a reliable craftsman who can finish the cabin. Although it won’t happen until after midsummer, but I don’t have any vacation until July so that’s perfect. Today’s job was to do some cleaning and furniture assembly because I intend to spend my first night in the cabin in two weeks’ time and I wanted to prepare for it. No toilet or running water so I will have to rough it, the cabin is kind of a glorified tent at the moment… with solid walls and proper roof, and a microwave oven.

But I’m getting ahead of things.

Before I even got to Messlingen, I checked out the calypso orchid which is just a short detour. Normally they are in bloom in late May/early June, so there should be some buds by now. And yes there were buds, and also a number of individuals in full bloom so I reckon they will peak in about a week. I already have a lot of closeups so I will attempt some environment shots instead, like the one here.

When I arrived at the cabin, I set to work straight away. Out with all the junk, clean the floor and put together a table and a chair. The floor will take more work though, even after vacuuming and washing there was still a layer of dirt on it so I will have to take more cleaning equipment with me next time. While I was working on the furniture, I heard a knock on the door. A neighbour! I was really nervous, I had been avoiding to speak with any neighbours because they must be furious at me for letting this construction work go on forever and the place looks like it does. So I was absolutely amazed to hear that he had no grudge against me, he understood that my contractor was the problem here and told me that I should absolutely not worry about any neighbours, they’re all nice people. I can’t tell you how relieved I was about that conversation, I was almost floating on air! I have been so worried about what the neighbours think that I have been embarrassed to park my car at the cabin every time, just hoping that nobody would notice me. When I finally had finished the table and the chair, I was truly happy to sit down and have my first cup of coffee in my cabin!

Time was flying by and my choices were to put together more furniture, or go for a walk. So I went for a walk, and I didn’t even consider other alternatives than the Fiskhålsgraven ravine. It’s just a 3 km hike on a good trail, but about half of it ascending – about 200 m to the top of the ravine. I’ve been to Fiskhålsgraven many times before, but this was the first time I came from the Messlingen direction and the trail gave me a pleasant surprise, which in the future will make the ascend a whole lot easier. The trail follows a small brook which is of course constantly falling so you just need to take your pick which particular section you want to shoot. Because this is still early spring in the mountains, there’s nothing growing along the brook and it’s not looking very nice. But come summer and come the green, it will be a whole different story!

When I was walking up, I had an epiphany. It was a real feeling of belonging, something I rarely experience. Normally people would have that feeling when they’re at home, I mean that’s were you belong, right? But not me… my home is just a place where I live. I’ve never felt that I’ve grown roots anywhere, it seems like everything is just temporary in my life. Even if I’ve had the same job for years and lived in the same flat for years, it’s still somehow temporary (it’s very evident in my flat, it’s full of temporary solutions!). Never trust anything, because the moment you do the earth will cave under you. So I’ve never belonged. Until that moment walking through a naked forest… I belong here. Amazing. The cabin that has been killing me in the past year is now saving my life, if you please pardon the dramatic license!

Back at the cabin, I had another cup of coffee. Do I dare to trust?

Yesterday on the way home, when I looked up from my book I saw a glorious double halo around the sun. It’s a pretty desperate deal to shoot through the bus window, but I had to try – I can’t remember I’ve ever seen a double halo. I just kept hoping that the halos would still be there when I got home, and this time I had luck on my side. They were fading and the rings were no longer complete, but both of them were still visible so I hurried home, put the fish-eye on the camera and ran back out, trying to find a decent spot to shoot from.

I think that this is the first time I’ve wished for something wider than 24mm. I couldn’t fit both halos in the frame, so I had to settle for partials. Although come to think of it, since the rings had faded out on the right side, I guess I wasn’t missing out too bad. But at least I was able to document the phenomenon and this time it’s enough. Btw, I was shooting at f/16 but it was impossible to get a starburst because of the thin veil in front of the sun, dispersing the light. Which made it possible for the halo to happen in the first place…

Afterwards, I did some reading to find out exactly how rare this double halo is. I found out that the inner ring is called a 22 degree halo and it’s actually quite common, even if I’m sure that I haven’t seen quite as often as they claim it occurs. The outer ring is a 46 degree halo and that’s the rare one, although it seems like a 46 degree halo can sometimes be confused with other halo phenomena. But having read the documentation and studied the picture on the linked page, I’m fairly sure that this was a genuine 46 degree halo.

In the first picture, the parhelia is clearly visible (the ray that is shooting to the left from the 22 degree halo) and it’s also possible to distinguish the tangent arc (on top of the 22 degree halo). In the second picture, the halos were seriously fading out and you can just barely make out the circumzenithal arc on top of the 46 degree halo. There’s also a curious cloud formation that looks like sun rays.

Cool. I learned something today!

I was supposed to be studying last night, but at 8pm I couldn’t resist checking the aurora forecast and it looked like there would be a chance of some activity. So I packed up and left – I mean give me a break, I had been sitting in front of the computer for 13 hours straight already!

My usual spot (even if it’s not very good) is at the skiing track. We have the luxury of electric light on this track but hardly anyone ever skis there at night. Except tonight – it was lit. Horror! I had no chance but the walk a bit further; there’s a deforestated spot on the other side with an open view north. The only foreground interest at this spot is a lonely birch with hanging branches but at least there wasn’t a lot of wind so I got away with it. The sky was almost clear but I was looking at these things in the horizon and couldn’t quite make up my mind what it was. High cloud? Auroral glow? It all looked grey to me, but I knew that a long exposure would extract some colour in the scene if anything existed. So I took a shot and looked at the LCD and sure enough, it was greenish! (Yes I know that AWB and camera LCD is hardly a reliable source of information, but a comparison to the snow told me that there’s a difference.)

But now I had another problem. The clouds. And they definitely were clouds because they were obscuring the stars, even the bright star of Vega which at that point was in the northern sky disappeared from sight. So I kept moving about, changing my composition around this lonely birch, and glancing towards east where I could see this fairly consistent formation of clouds. I mean east, gotta be clouds, right? And I turned my eyes to north again, waiting, waiting.

I had been standing there for an hour, still trying to figure out the difference between cloud and aurora. At least the sky was starting to clear a little bit, but it was cold and I couldn’t decide if I should stay or go. And just when I was getting closer to leaving than staying, I saw something in the horizon… that must be it! I’ll stay.

Miracles do happen. For a brief moment, I saw the aurora dance in the sky and I was so happy I nearly cried.

All the while this was going on, that persistent cloud formation in the east was getting brighter. At one point it looked like two gigantic spotlights pointed towards the sky and I was starting to have serious doubts. How can clouds get brighter at night? They can’t. The light show was already fading so I took a few quick steps, pointed the camera towards the lights and hoped for the best. I hit the bullseye with the birch and by the time I had I moved into a better position, the aurora had visibly faded, just one minute between the frames and the difference is clear. Nothing to see here folks, go home.

Waiting pays off. I may only have a few noisy frames with modest auroral activity to show for it, but I don’t regret trading my studies for those hours in the snow. Magical, as always.

I had such a blast on Friday’s moonlight walk that I just had to do it again, even if the moon wasn’t quite full any more last night. I learned that the margins are very small when it comes to moonlight, and the moon phase is just one of the factors. There was a lot less light to go around last night, which meant that I had to make a lot of compromises with my exposures. When you’re shooting wide open and the longest shutter speed you can use is 20 secs (even that is too long, actually), the only thing left to change is the ISO and I really hate using a high ISO because the noise will be too evident in these low-light exposures.

So what had happened during just one day?

• Moon phase – 100% vs 97% full.
• Altitude of the moon – moonrise on Friday at 17:44, last night 19:28. When you’re out shooting at 22:00, it means that the moon is much lower in the sky.
• Clouds – it was clear skies on Friday, but now there was a little bit of high cloud which diffused the light.

This meant that I had no chance of taking pictures with such bright foregrounds as I did on Friday. At first I was a bit disappointed but looking at the pictures now, I think they worked out ok anyway. In a way they are more “natural” when the foreground doesn’t look like it’s the middle of the day. So maybe the light last night wasn’t any better or worse than on Friday – just different. But I can say one thing for sure, these late evening walks in the moonlight are just awesome, why didn’t I start doing them for a long time ago?

Thanks to the solar eruptions earlier this week, there was a fair chance of seeing some aurora. I was looking at the aurora forecast all evening yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t look like we would get any northern lights this far south. But since it was a full moon night and the snow cover was looking good, I decided to go for a walk anyway – if I didn’t see any aurora, I would still have all the stars and the moonlight on the snow. It was -20 degrees centigrade so I dressed up warmly, grabbed the snowshoes and set out. Walking through the snow, I was almost sweating under all the layers… even when I stopped to take some pictures, the cold didn’t bother me until I had been out for over an hour and spent more time on stopping and shooting than walking. But still, it was the camera battery that gave out first and I turned back home.

It is just amazing to be walking in the forest at night and not need a flashlight to see where you’re going. I’ve gotta do this again tonight!

Sometimes four seasons isn’t enough. When the sun breaks out from its winter hibernation and you feel it warm on your face while the landscape is still covered with snow, that’s what we call the fifth season. It’s that time of the year when you can go skiing wearing a t-shirt and when the sunglasses is a must or you go snowblind. Early February is still winter, but the thing is that I had a fifth season feeling when I was snowshoeing today. My clothes were too warm and I was missing my shades! To top it off, I heard the birdsong that I always associate with the spring winter.

As for the snowshoe hike, it was nice as always, but I’m really struggling with the pictures. I hoped that the fish-eye would inspire me, but nix. I blame the landscape though; even with all the snow we got this week, the trees are looking a bit scabby and in the end it didn’t matter which lens I had with me. Or maybe a little bit – I wouldn’t have been able to take this picture of a pine when the wind picked up the snow from the branches and blew it towards me. Serendipitous perhaps, but isn’t that what it’s about – being at the right place at the right time?

The weather forecast kept saying that last night would be completely overcast. The full moon and stars in the sky disagreed though and after all the snowfall earlier this week, the conditions were just perfect to try some night photography.

As I was peering up through the tree crowns I noticed that the sky wasn’t quite as clear as it had seemed at first – there was some very light cloud that dimmed the stars a little bit. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I like the effect of the clouds especially when they are blurred by the long shutter speed.

I wish we could have more nights like this. That feeling when you’re in a quiet snowcovered forest and the moon is shining bright enough so you don’t need a flashlight to see where you’re going… awesome!

I was really looking forward to enjoying the winter landscape today as well. Yesterday they were still saying that it would be around -15°C today but it was -22°C in the morning and now the forecast is around -20 degrees the whole day. Not sure if I enjoy the winter landscape quite that much… I hope the temperatures will rise a little bit in the afternoon because it kills me to miss the scenery as it is at the moment!

The weather has been very much overcast lately so I haven’t had a chance to try out my star 15 theory until tonight. Full moon is on Friday but there’s plenty enough light to go around already, I hardly needed my flashlight in the snow covered forest. It made composition easier as well because it was actually possible to see through the viewfinder, the only thing I was left wanting was a swivelling LCD because now I had to keep kneeling under the camera to look at the display… but that’s nothing. I had such a great time, the thermometre said 12 degrees below but I was warm and cosy as I kept walking around and pointing my camera up to the sky!

I found out that photographing Cassiopeia is easy enough. At this time of the evening, Cassiopeia is straight above your head so I was literally pointing the camera straight up for a bull’s eye composition. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other constellations of interest high up in the sky – Auriga, Cygnus, Gemini and Orion and even the Big Dipper are lower at this time of the year/evening. Photographing towards the horizon turned out to be a lot harder than straight up between the tree crowns. In a way though, I think it helps to have a fish-eye lens which exaggerates the convergence of the trees, so it becomes a feature in itself rather than an irritation.

The only thing left now is Orion, it had already risen when I was taking these pictures, but I just couldn’t find a suitable composition for it. So my beloved Orion will just have to wait for another evening…

When I started to photograph the night sky, I read that I should use a wideangle lens, high ISO, big aperture and bulb setting with remote. Unless of course I wanted to photograph the rings of Saturn or the Andromeda galaxy, in which case I needed a telescope, but I’m not an astronomer so I stick to the basics. It all sounds simple enough but it seems like there are as many settings to use as there are people giving advice. So in the end, the best way to learn is to not listen to the advice and make your own mistakes and it seems like every time I point my camera at the stars, it’s a new mistake (and a lesson)!

My interest in astronomy is pretty much limited to the stars visible with naked eye. I’ve never felt the need to invest in a telescope, but I frequently study star maps and try to learn the names of the constellations and stars. So when I photograph the night sky, I normally want to have a recognisable constellation in it. Star trail pictures can be really cool and I’ve done some of those, but in the end I found that I’m much happier with small dots of light instead of streaks and I want to top off the picture with a silhouette of something (trees are best).

So what I’ve learned is that you have to keep the exposure at max 15 sec in order for the stars to appear as dots. There’s ever so little streaking even then, but it’s only visible in the full scale original. And if you want real star trails, then you need a minimum of 15 minutes or otherwise those streaks will have an appearance of camera shake because they are too short to come across as genuine trails. That’s my star 15 rule – you know, sunny 16, moon 11 and now star 15!

Once you’ve decided which effect you want, there are other decisions to be made. Let’s say that I want to photograph the stars as dots and I’ve set the camera to 15 seconds. Now I have to decide how many stars I want to record (or how dark I want the sky to be). A wide open aperture is almost a must, so the only thing left to adjust is the ISO speed. ISO 200 is a starting point, it will give you the bright stars but you’ll probably end up going higher to get some of the fainter stars as well and more definition in the foreground (=better silhouette). You’ll want at least a little bit of moonlight to lighten up the sky, otherwise the sky will be just as black as your foreground which makes the foreground a moot point.

But let’s say that I want the star trail effect. ISO 100 is doable and you can stop down, anything to get a longer exposure. However, there’s a risk that the trails will be very faint with these settings because there just simply isn’t enough light hitting the sensor. With a long enough exposure you can bring out detail in the foreground, but those trails are stubbornly faint even for the brightest stars. I’m guessing it’s because the brightness of a star is kind of an absolute? The star will keep moving along during the exposure so it will not “collect” light the same way the foreground and sky does, thus you end up with faint streaks and only for the bright stars while the foreground and sky look correctly exposed. Just compare the long exposure on the left to the first picture which is much darker overall, but the stars are much brighter in comparison to the trails.

So for the star trails, the solution is to photograph on a dark night with maybe a moon crescent to lighten the sky ever so little. Then you can bump up the ISO and stop down without a risk of your foreground and sky becoming unnaturally light, all the while gaining enough sensitivity in the sensor to catch decent trails for even the faintest stars.

What did I say about learning by mistake? The next opportunity is in early December when the first quarter moon is up in the sky in the evening. Just no clouds and no wind…

Time to concentrate on other flowers than just orchids all the time. The logical place for flowers of all sorts is the Hamrafjället mountain, so I took the trail to the meadows and then up to the peak. This is early in the season and many familiar flowers like the fragrant orchid and moor-king are still in the bud stage, I didn’t see any open individuals yet.

Thus abandoning flowers for the day, I drove the toll road up to the Svansjökläppen mountain to spend the evening there. That’s the last time I will take this road… it was bumpy and steep and I felt very sorry for the car (but it held fine!). The road goes way above the treeline, and the very last part of the road was still blocked by snow. Regardless, there now was less than 200 vertical meters to cover to get to the peak, so it was considerably shorter than your normal ascent. The views were great, of course, although the scenery to the south was not at all what I had expected – it was rocky and barren, whereas I’m mostly used to seeing meadows and moors in this region.