The Quiet Picture

Another quick visit to the mountains yesterday to fix one last detail before letting the cabin hibernate over winter – I’m not planning to use it until March. There was plenty of time for photography as well, but in these days when daylight is at a premium, time is a relative concept. We thought we would wait out for the sunset at a scenic spot, but when there was no sign of gaps in the cloud cover we decided to drive back home. Only problem was that only a few kilometres on, there was an orange glow in the clouds. The closer to Funäsdalen we got, the better the glow but now we really had no time left to scout for the best spot. We took our chances and caught the glow and as we continued the drive home, we had the nagging feeling that it would’ve been even better if we had driven all the way down to Funäsdalen. But the important thing is that we got some pictures, instead of going for the big win and miss out on it completely!

The sun sets pleasantly early in September, giving me nice opportunities to try to catch a nice sunset. I mean, go out for the sunset and come back for the evening tea… works perfect for me. But there’s a lot more to sunsets than just finding the right spot for shooting it!

Attempt 1

I was looking towards west but the sky was almost clear so there was nothing to shoot, but in the south there was this one cloud that looked perfect in relation to the trail, so I was in a hurry to set up the gear and shoot it before the light faded.

Attempt 2

Nothing. Zero. Zilch.

Attempt 3

It was a clear and sunny day which tempted me to drive out to make use of the evening light. I got the light, but what I really need is some nice clouds instead because the lack of autumn colours are not doing any favours to the light.

Attempt 4

Now we’re talking! I was really happy that my efforts were finally paying off, but then when I saw the pictures on the screen they just didn’t feel as nice as the sunset was when I was looking at it happening. I need more clouds.

Attempt 5

I got too much clouds. Above the horizon it was just right, but those clouds at the horizon obscured the sun so the sunset was so colourless that it was almost black and white anyway.

Attempt 6

Another nice evening that was looking very promising for the sunset, but then the light faded behind a bank of clouds in the western horizon.

Attempt 7

I would’ve converted this to B&W but I’ve already used that trick.

Attempt 8

I was out on the road and didn’t have time to find any nice sunset spot. Not that it mattered anyway, because once again the sun set behind some clouds in the horizon. But in the north, the high clouds were catching the last rays.

Attempt 9

I gave up. No matter how nice the day was, in the evening those pesky clouds in the horizon made the sunset a non-event again.

And that was it. If I didn’t catch a great sunset, it sure wasn’t because I wasn’t even trying!

Spent the weekend at the cabin, and managed to waste most of it on putting together Ikea furniture. 8 hours on a wardrobe, and we were two people working on it! It would’ve been impossible alone. But… there was this one photo session that was worth the trip alone. Full moon rising just before sunset!

We did some scouting in the afternoon, but the first place wasn’t anything special. The second place was something I had figured out should work; I had been there before and felt that it has potential although of course I’ve never used the spot for a moonrise before.

We got to the spot a little bit too early. Moonrise was still about an hour away and to our disappointment, sunset was looking like a dud after a warm and sunny day. So that was a long wait ahead of us while the temperature was dropping, making the waiting all the more difficult. We welcomed any respite from the boredom and even I was happily shooting a distant reindeer with my short zoom, all the while knowing how hopeless it was. Then when I started feeling the cold bite through my clothes, I did some running up and down the plateau we were standing on. When I reached the lower end, I saw an opportunity towards the sunset so I gave up on waiting for the moon to appear from behind the mountain and set up shop at the new spot instead. I made sure that I still had a free view towards east (moonrise) so I would be able to switch shooting direction quickly. Just as I was trying to figure out what shutter speed to use to prevent blowing out the bright blob of the sun that was visible through the clouds, a glance behind my back told me that the moon was actually visible! I abandoned the sunset without hesitation and then realised that my lens was too short to properly compose the moon as it was rising above Blåstöten. But then, sometimes you’re lucky. To my absolute amazement, the sun came out and I found the dwarf birch glowing bright orange right in front of me! I should say that this is how I had planned it, but it really was just pure luck. With this foreground, it was easy to compose when I switched to vertical and zoomed to the max and I was glowing just as happy as the dwarf birch was glowing (unseasonally) orange. So imagine my disappointment when I discovered at home that I didn’t have enough DOF to keep both the foreground and background sharp… the mountain and the moon were soft. It almost broke my heart when I deleted these images.

But then I thought… are those images really beyond rescue? With some resizing and clever sharpening, I might be able to rescue something. With this in mind, when I was reviewing the failed images, I realised that they weren’t even as good as I had thought at first that they were. The sunlight hadn’t reached the mountain yet, I had been so concentrated on the foreground that I missed the light on the mountain. By the time the light did reach the mountain, I had switched camera orientation and zoomed out, which gave me a smaller moon and inferior composition but all-around sharpness as well.

So I’m thinking, what’s wrong with me when I miss something as elementary as checking DOF? If I don’t have the discipline by now to use my knowledge even when the situation is changing fast, then I will never have that discipline… I just have a lot of theories and more regrets. With that said, it was an awesome evening watching that moonrise. It was another awesome evening on Friday on Flatruet when we saw seven (7!) short-eared owls fly around us. And when it comes down to it, it’s these experiences that makes life interesting!

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!

It was a rainy and overcast day on Saturday, it didn’t clear up until right at sunset. Which gave me some nice clouds to shoot, it must be the first sunset I’ve caught since… since… apparently quite a long time.

Sunday morning on the other hand was as bright as it gets in September. Maybe the sunny weather made it easier for the birds to find food in the wild, because I didn’t have quite as many of them at the feeder as I did yesterday. And numbers is a good thing – if there’s only a few birds, they have enough space at the feeder so they don’t need to stop at any of the branches I’ve set up for photographic convenience. But as soon as the number of the birds increases, they’ll use my branches for queuing. However, it was almost a moot point – shooting in sunlight just doesn’t quite work. Yes it’s nice to have a fast shutter speed and low ISO so I get sharp and noiseless pictures, but it’s impossible to get a nice background when some background trees are lit and some are shaded and the camera is barely able to contain both shadows and highlights. So it’s just a mess and a lot of luck is needed to get the bird to sit at a spot where the background at that particular moment is even. It was much more fun to take those noisy pictures yesterday!

The rest of the Sunday was supposed to be as sunny as the morning, but they got it oh so wrong. I had been looking forward to shooting beautiful autumn colours in warm sunlight, but got dreary overcast skies and dull light instead. On the other hand, we also got calm lakes for some sweet reflections and that wasn’t supposed to happen either!

The landscape looks a bit scabby at the moment with these odd clumps of snow on the trees, so I’m not really inspired even if it was a gloriously sunny day. Just when I got out in the afternoon though, the clouds started to drift in and I ended up doing my hike in muddy light and was about to write off the day photographically speaking. But then, right at sunset, the sun came through a gap in the horizon and although it didn’t create any nice lightshow in the clouds, I did get to catch the last light on a snowcovered pine.

Wasted day off… the sunrise disappeared behind clouds and the snow disappeared from the trees by the gusty winds. I couldn’t have been less inspired to do anything but I finally forced myself out to scout for a certain location. Having done that, I just hoped that the sunset would be interesting because the sky was partly clear. So I went out about an hour before sunset, only to find out that it had started snowing while the sun still shone through a gap in the clouds. It was surreal… I had hardly any time at all to find a spot, so I settled with any composition. At first the sun was still too bright and I tried bracketing for HDR but after a minute or so the sun had faded enough to get it all in one frame. Creating a HDR with these big snowflakes flying around the frames would probably have been impossible anyway (I didn’t even try, just ditched everything but this last frame which worked on its own). It wasn’t really even a sunset… it was just an orange globe quickly fading behind the clouds.

A completely forgettable day, but a few glorious minutes to remember.

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.

I had made a lot of plans today but as it often happens, I didn’t do everything I had planned. Despite this it turned out to be a very productive day, I got squirrels and birds and landscapes and close-ups, all in glorious sunshine and then sunset and dusk. I even did some scouting for an idea I have, we’ll see if I can make anything out of it tomorrow.

So the squirrels are back, this is good news because so far I had only seen a glimpse of one so I was getting worried that they don’t like the new setup. I didn’t get any keepers from the new perch though but the winter is long so I’m bound to have a photo op some time in the next few months.

The crested tit also paid a short visit, unfortunately I didn’t have a camera at hand right then and by the time I was ready, the bird was gone. I hope it will stick around this year.

Since it’s been clear skies all day, the sunset wasn’t going to be anything special but it’s always worth trying for the starburst effect when the sun is disappearing below the horizon. But the colour gradient you get after the sun has set is even better – the colours really pop out when you underexpose a little bit, all you need is a good silhouette and then compose around it.