The Quiet Picture

With the landscape looking like it does, I decided to concentrate on the birds this morning. I struck out, the birds just wouldn’t settle on the perch, nothing I can do about it. But to my great surprise, the squirrel turned up. I mean, this is me standing in full view without any camouflage, and still the squirrel came down to eat. Must’ve been really hungry! It even allowed me to change the camera orientation from horizontal to vertical and shift my position a little bit, never happened before. But then I started moving more and more, checking the limits of the squirrel’s tolerance, and it finally had enough and fled.

While I was waiting for the birds, I looked behind me to check the sun’s position. I saw that the distant hills were layered nicely in the morning light, so I turned the camera around and did some landscape photography with the 300mm lens, and wished that it would been even longer so I could’ve gotten a tight horizontal composition on the hill.

I liked the way the sky changed colour from orange to blue, so I went for a vertical stitch. When it was time to put the pictures together, I just couldn’t make the transition from orange to blue work properly (not an issue with the stitch itself, but just the way the natural gradient came out) so in the end I sampled both the blue and orange colours and used an artificial gradient instead. Since the colour is an exact match, almost the only difference between the original sky and the fake one is that the muddy transition part in the original is now clean. Would you miss the muddy transition if you didn’t know it was removed?

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?

It seemed like there might actually be a sunrise today. I mean the kind of sunrise that you can see – with colour and all, you know. So I made my way to a new spot I had found, the viewpoint is a bit too low to actually see the sun come over the horizon but if there’s any colour in the sky, it should be good. And I guess it is, but there really wasn’t much colour to go around today. A little bit of a pink glow in the fast moving clouds so I put on a filter to get a 6 sec exposure and then in LR just generously under-expose and saturate to bring out the colour. And it’s still not much. But the 6 sec exposure turned out to be a good idea, because the blurry clouds work much better than the short shutter version with sharp clouds.

When the wind quieted down yesterday afternoon, the snowing took on. So we now have a new layer of fluffy snow, it’s past knee deep as I found when I took a short cut through the forest… but despite that, it’s fairly easy to walk through because it really is airy and light. And then I came across some strange holes in the snow, figured it must’ve been a bird because there were no tracks leading to or from the holes. Until I found a hole which hadn’t caved in yet and saw grouse droppings at the bottom – it’s as good a snow cave as I’ve ever seen (=the first snow cave I’ve ever seen)! With the snow as fluffy as it is, it must’ve been easy for the grouse to create the cave and then break it open in the morning to fly off. You can just make out the wing depressions in the snow.

Just goes to show. Even if there are no great pictures to be had, there’s always a chance to see and learn something new!

Full moon tomorrow but the weather might not co-operate, so I wanted to catch the moonset today as it coincides nicely with sunrise. Only problem was the solid bank of clouds in the north-west so I didn’t stand a chance. But since I was already out and about, I went for the sunrise instead and now I got seriously lucky – cold mist. By far the best sunrise I’ve photographed this winter and to think that I would’ve completely missed this orange mist had I not been out in search of the moon. You win some, you lose some.

When I got home, a surprise was waiting for me. I have seen very little of the squirrels so far, but now one of them had finally come for brunch. So I just swapped the zoom lens for 300mm and got some keepers even if the light wasn’t ideal. I hope I will soon see more birds as well… they are only making short visits so it’s no point even setting up the tripod.

In the afternoon I had high hopes of catching a nice sunset to go with the nice sunrise. Just a little bit of cloud that might provide additional colour, but the colour never really materialised. While I was waiting for something interesting to happen with the sunset, I glanced behind me and saw the moon rising (moonrise already at 13:30, but it takes a while to work its way high up in the sky). Now I was racing the time to find a good spot for the moon before the sky got too dark, and I got lucky – again. A row of spruces on the edge of a clearing so I could put the moon right above the treetops. The picture is a bit misleading, really – the moon was much much higher on the sky than it appears here, but who cares. I got my moon.

I had hoped for a moonset and sunset… but I got a sunrise and a moonrise instead. And you know what? There’s no way I could’ve done anything better even if my plans had played out perfectly!

* * *

The post title is a kind of a play on words, a private joke. You’ll need to watch Soapdish to get it…

I’m trying to apply a new strategy to my weekends. Normally I always have a slow morning with an extended breakfast, then go out on an excursion and spend the rest of the day wasting time. It means that I’m always missing the best light (althought in the dead of winter, every light is good light) so I thought I should now try to be out at sunrise, spend the noon at home and then go out for the sunset. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve sort of succeeded – there’s been more sunrise and sunset images in this blog than usual. But now I have a problem with the weather, it’s just simply too good. With all these clear skies, every sunrise and sunset is identical and the only difference I can make is to find a new location. Honestly, can you even tell the difference between sunrise and sunset if I didn’t say so?

It has also been the coldest day of the winter so far. Even the tripod was frozen and I struggled to operate the leg locks. And every once in a while I had to stop to rub my face to get circulation going again, it was -17°C when I got home, but in some cold spots while I was out I’m sure it was below -20°C. So at long last, proper winter temperatures so I shouldn’t complain. It’s just that photography becomes a very complicated procedure and I quickly decided that there was nothing about the sunset worth staying around.

Another “new” thing I tried today is skiing. I haven’t written anything about skiing this winter, for the simple reason that I haven’t skiied much – just one short trip early in the season to discover that my blister problem hasn’t miraculously disappeared over the summer. But now I found a new blister-prevention method so I wanted to try it, unfortunately it didn’t work though. The heel was already hurting after 2 km. By the time I got home, I knew I had a blister there and the worst part was that it had developed under the tape. I wasn’t looking forward to removing the tape, but somehow I managed to do it without tearing out the loose skin in the process.

It’s official now, I’m done with skiing. It’s a real shame because I really like it, but not enough to endure the pain. The good news is that I have found an alternative (painless) method of taking me around the trails, I will write more about that in the future!

I’ve been thinking about photographing the sunrise from the Eagle Mountain lookout all winter. But sunrise requires getting up early – or anyway, earlier than I normally do on a day off, so I just haven’t gotten around to hiking up the mountain until now. Today’s sunrise was at 9.19 so I can’t claim I’m terribly sleep deprived, even if I got there over an hour before because I wanted to catch the wonderful dawn colour gradient which is at its best about an hour before sunrise.

When I saw the images on the computer, I got a minor shock – photographing a clear sky with a small aperture revealed a whole lot of dust specs on the sensor. I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the dust prevention in the 40D… Besides dust specs, I also cloned out some pesky birch branches that invaded the frame on the right. The Eagle Mountain lookout isn’t really ideal for photography but the view is great, warts and all.

Since it’s the last day of 2008, I made an issue of catching the sunset as well. But sunsets don’t know the calendar so it had nothing special to offer and in the end I preferred these radiating clouds in the west and deleted all the actual sunset images I had taken. Can’t win ‘em all.

So much for 2008 then.

The road I take to work runs in east-west direction, so now in the autumn (and again in the spring) I get the morning sun in the face when I drive to work, and setting sun when I drive home. It can create some dangerous moments when the sun completely blinds you so you can’t see where you’re driving, but it can also provide some very beautiful moments like this morning mist which was coloured orange by the rising sun. I stopped the car and started to look for some more photogenic spots than the road and luckily there’s marshland on both sides of the road at this place. So there I was, running around the half frozen bog with my feet getting increasingly wet while I was desperately trying to get the same light on the fog as what I saw on the road.

I couldn’t find any more orange mist, but I did catch the play of light. Good thing I had left home earlier than usual, I had a hunch that the morning would turn out photogenic. And you won’t find me skipping around bogs at 7am during weekends anyway!

(These images are actually from yesterday morning. I had an image processing backlog (for some strange reason) and didn’t get around to these until now.)

This is it – the day I have been waiting for!

My requirements for shooting the full moon are very specific. I’m not interested in the moon for the sake of itself, I mean when you’ve seen one moon frame-filler, you’ve seen them all. What can you say? “Nice composition”? Nope, that just doesn’t do it for me. I want the moon to be a part of a landscape, and it immediately raises the level of difficulty – expensive long glass is not the tool for that trade. My ideal moon landscape photo requires a moonset/moonrise that coincides with sunrise/sunset, so there’s nice light everywhere. Unfortunately, those opportunities are very rare. The moonset/moonrise times don’t always coincide with sunrise/sunset, and even when they do, there’s always the issue of weather. Not to mention the time of week. The full moon has a bad habit of happening while I’m sitting in the office!

So, that’s the preface to my actual story.

I left the cabin after 8am and drove to my selected moonset spot with a view towards Skarsfjället, Mittåkläppen and Stor-Axhögen. When I arrived, the moon was still high above Mittåkläppen but it was making its way down between the mountains, which forced me to create veeeery long panoramas. Yesterday morning the moon was setting right next to Stor-Axhögen, but like I mentioned earlier, the clouds spoiled the opportunity.

The biggest panorama I have is 20×175 cm (@ 300 dpi), this version is cropped short from the right so you make any sense out of it at all. The only way I’ll ever be able to admire the full size is if I have it printed in some specialist print shop!

After the moon had set, I had another skiing trip. I actually took the same trail I did yesterday, and now the mystery of the half prepared, uncharted trail was revealed to me – it’s not a snowmobile trail at all, but it’s used by the snowcat that brings up skiers from Funäsdalen! But I still don’t know why it had made a U-turn in the middle of nowhere, I guess they didn’t like the weather and turned back.

All I needed to do now was to drive to Flatruet and wait for moonrise/sunset. It was biting cold, I mean not the temperature as such (-10 degrees centigrade), but the wind that made it twice so. I didn’t care. The wind was blowing right through my supposedly windproof clothes, but I was finally witnessing – and photographing – the full moon rise on Flatruet and I was able to close that ugly chapter from three years ago when I had made a right old mess of a rare photographic opportunity. How lucky was I to have one of the finest days in January to fall on the full moon?

* * *

As it turns out, today was indeed my lucky day.

I had cruise control installed in my car last year. It’s not a very smart cruise control, so I’ve learned to disconnect it under some circumstances when I know it will just go crazy. So I was cruising along when I got close to one of those cruise-control-will-go-crazy stretches so I disconnected and the car started to slow down because I didn’t step on the gas right away. And right then – a moose crossed the road in front of me.

Where would I have been in relation to the moose had I not disconnected the cruise control and the car slowed down?

I thought I was unlucky yesterday to drop and break my GPS unit on the ski. Well, you win some and you lose some. I won.

Four days’ weekend… I’ll take it.

We have just the tiniest bit of snow, but the lakes are iced over. I don’t trust the ice cover, but the shoreline is enough for me anyway. I drove to Loossjön before sunrise, hoping that there would be enough colour for some nice pictures. There wasn’t. After waiting for an hour for some light to happen, I turned my camera 180 degrees and shot the shoreline instead, in an effort to try and salvage something from the session.

As I was saying… an hour of waiting on the icy shore, for nothing

Just as well I bought the entire series (7 years) of Star Trek – The Next Generation. If the rest of the Christmas weekend is like today, I’ll have something to do…