The Quiet Picture

One mountain that I’ve meant to explore for a few years now is Ormruet. It’s a sub-1K peak but it’s located in a nice place, for one thing it’s close to the road so it’s only a 2km hike to the top (even shorter, if you’re prepared to climb a vertical cliff wall) and secondly, I’ve speculated that it will provide a nice view towards Ånnfjället, since it’s practically just across the road. Ormruet has a very similar profile to Funäsdalsfjället, which means that it’s ugly to look at but interesting to be at. Instead of one distinctive peak, the top is flat with several ridges with a tarn nested in between two of the ridges. I had a thoroughly enjoyable morning walking around the tarn and checking out the ridges and now I’m determined to come back next summer with a tent and camp out for a night. In the evening you can shoot Ånnfjället and then catch the sunrise and shoot the mountains in the west bathed in the morning light (unlikely that I will catch the sunrise in the summer any other way than camping out…). With such a short hike and relatively easy ascend to the top, it doesn’t matter if you’re lugging heavy gear so it’s a perfect location.

This is probably the sunniest day of the vacation. It can’t get any sunnier in any case! Perfect day for a hike, so I drove to Bruksvallarna and left my car at Rockvallen. I hiked up to the Skenörsfjället peak and it was a real treat. It’s right smack in the middle of the massif between Fjällnäs/Tänndalen in the south, and Bruksvallarna/Ramundberget in the north. It is also higher than the surrounding fells (except for Skarvarna) so the view is spectacular. Yes I know, I say that about every peak… but Skenören really stands out. You can see all the plus-1500m peaks of the region; Stor-Vigeln, Skarddöra, Skarsfjället, Sylarna and Helags. And even Härjångsfjället in the distance. It’s a real primer for Funäsfjällen and fairly easy to get to, if you’re prepared to do the legwork. And today I was treated to special offer with some snow on the high peaks, Skarddöra and Sylarna were particularly nicely decorated.

On the way up there, I found quite a few reindeer antlers. I picked up the best one and strapped it on the backpack to shamelessly use it at first best opportunity. It wasn’t easy… I was in between the sun and the snowcapped peaks, which means that my shadow was falling in the foreground. I had to find an elevated spot for the antler and then lie down on the ground in the lemming droppings to avoid getting my shadow in the shot. Is it cheating to move the antler like that? I don’t know… but at least I didn’t steal it from somebody else’s picture and paste into mine! I leave that to the pros*, LOL!

When I sat down for a cupe of coffee, I saw a lot of lemmings go about their business in the slope below me. One of them appeared just a couple of meters from me, it settled down to eat some grass and totally ignored me. I was thinking that this must be a veritable smorgasbord for hawks and other predators… and would you believe, as I was sitting there, one of those birds starting circling above the spot! I couldn’t resist turning my head to see where it was flying, and maybe it saw the movement because it flew off. It would’ve been too cool if it had swooped down to catch a lemming…

I also saw a sea eagle above the mountain. I think it’s a sea eagle anyway, I don’t have a history of getting my birds of prey right… it was a big bird in any case, like the one I saw in the summer, harassed by three smaller birds of prey (that I won’t even try to ID).

In the evening I made an effort to shoot the sunset. Unfortunately, it’s pointless – you can paint the birches any colour you want and they will still be naked. The only way sunset will be interesting if there’s any cloud and then shoot into it. Considering that this was the last sunny day according to the forecast, I might still have a chance.

*go to your favourite search engine and search for “terje hellesö” and “fusk”

I was on a brief visit to the cabin this weekend. My parents came over so I got to show off the cabin and the landscape that I love, and I think they were impressed so I hope they understand why I’m not in no hurry to move back to Finland any time soon. Or ever.

We got lucky with the weather on Saturday, but even the sunshine couldn’t change the fact that the landscape looks less than spectacular at the moment. The birches are really suffering from the fungal infection and in some places the leaves were completely gone already. I didn’t see any birch at all that looked normal, because even the birches that still had leaves were clearly infected.

Sunday’s weather was a perfect match for the bare trees. The clouds were hanging low and you couldn’t even see through the length of the Fiskhålsgraven ravine.

Mom & Dad are now on their way back to Finland (through the storm) and I have the rest of my two week vacation to myself. To be honest, I still don’t have any ideas of what to do. But let’s face it – if I have nothing to do, then I’ll rather have nothing to do at the cabin than at home!

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’s the last day of my vacation, then it’s the weekend and back to work on Monday. I decided to do one last hike, then do some cabin maintenance on Saturday and head home early on Sunday.

It was not intentional but it seems like I finish the outdoors part of my vacation in the same place where I started it – at Rockvallen. I wanted to get to the peak of Stor-Skarven, it is 1260 m but it’s one these flat-topped mountains so from whichever direction you look at it, it is always seen as a big round mountain. It has a steep wall towards east, but the rest of it is very gentle and thus hiker-frienly. Except in the beginning, there was a zone of willow bush that was driving me crazy because your feet get tangled up in it. But once I was over this zone, it was one of the most pleasant hikes up the mountain. Either I’m in better condition than I was for two weeks ago or then it was my light backpack, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten up a mountain this easy!

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t too bothered about getting any pictures today so I only carried the little Powershot with me. I wasn’t missing the SLR at all, the light was boring with this high cloud covering the whole sky and veiling the sun. I got one nice opportunity though when I came a across a reindeer and calf and they kindly ran past me with the valley in the background.

On the way down I was able to get a better overview of the willow zone so I found a way through the maze without getting tangled up again. It was a very nice hike to finish the vacation with, a kind of boring hike because nothing much happened but I guess I’ll rather have one these than do something stupid… even if it’s the stupid things I’ll remember best afterwards!

In the evening when I was processing the pictures, I saw a strange light in the window. It had been raining all evening but it turned out that there was a gap in the clouds where the sun was setting, so I had a huge rainbow in one direction and bright orange clouds in the other. The problem is that I’m not familiar enough with my surroundings to know which way to find the best foreground and I was out a little bit too late anyway, the sun was dipping below the horizon and the rainbow disappeared with it. The glow in the clouds stuck around a bit longer but even so I missed the best of it, because I ran in the wrong direction at first and wasted precious time. When I found a better spot (not perfect, but better), it was too late already and all I had was the last rays. Last night it was the kind of sunset where you wanted to keep the light at your back and shoot the scenery lit by the sun. Tonight it was the kind of sunset where you wanted to shoot right into the light!

* * *

I think I’ll spend Saturday on my new couch and maybe watch some of the Frasier episodes I brought on DVD. I’ve only had time to watch one episode so far… I sure don’t need a TV here! The days have been filled with hiking and photography and I’ve barely had time to go through my pictures and write the blog posts. On the other hand, I’ve also been lucky with the weather. It has been a few rainy days, but only one day when it has rained from morning to evening. I’ve also had a few days with warm sunshine to get that summer feeling, but otherwise it’s been perfect for hiking. Perhaps a little less ideal for photography but those few moments when the light worked to my advantage far outweigh the times when it didn’t. There’s only one day when I didn’t get any pictures and that’s the day I drove to Östersund for shopping. Maybe some days I didn’t get any nice keepers, but I also have a “documentation mode” – just grab some shots of the places I’ve been to so I can remind myself of them later on. And this is what I’ve been doing with the blog as well, write the stories and use the pictures as illustration. I know the stories have been a bit on the long side, but thank you anyone who has taken the time to read through!

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…

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.!

Today we were a group of four photographers, my old photographer buddy and fellow botanist Mr S. had come over for the weekend and my regular photo companions from Ljusdal had driven up for the day. I had tried to plan a day that would provide the best chances with little effort, but that would require the weather to co-operate. The forecast said it would be sunny, but that doesn’t always mean that it’s really sunny in the mountains because the highest mountains tend to maintain their own climate. We started from Torkilstöten which is my favourite flower mountain and the view from top towards Helags is great as it’s so close. As just as I was afraid of, Helags persisted with its own cloud cover so it was shaded and the view was effectively ruined.

A funny thing though – as I was walking across the top plateau, I kept an eye out for the alpine chamorchis. I didn’t see it, but I figured that I was on the wrong side of the trail anyway (I had gone left from the trail, while the alpine chamorchis I found last year were to the right from the trail). I had to wait for the company to catch up, so I sat on a rock to rest my feet. I looked around to kill some time and what would catch my eye… if not this littlest of orchids! A closer look revealed six individuals in this small patch. And that’s all the alpine chamorchis I found on this trip.

When the sun just wouldn’t properly come out, we gave up on Torkilstöten and I thought we should try with a waterfall instead. Silverfallet is the obvious choice once we were on this side of Flatruet anyway, but there’s just one little problem with it – it’s very wet to get there. Previous experience had taught me to wear wellingtons but the others only had hiking boots, and for those to keep your feet dry you need a very good waterproofing. And as if the risk of getting wet feet wasn’t bad enough, there was also the millions of mosquitoes to deal with. With my wellingtons and mosquito repellant I was actually quite comfortable, but I think I was alone with that… I hope they found the waterfall worth the effort though. Personally, I struggled with the light because by now of course the sun was properly out, when I really didn’t need it. I still have trouble working with waterfalls in sunlight and Silverfallet was side-lit, so there was a lot of contrast to deal with.

I guess mountains are a little like a box of chocolates. You never know what you get…