The Quiet Picture

I talked about the Moose Lake hike a while back. Another favourite hike I have is north-west to the Kvarnsjön lake, then south to Ryggskog and home via Gäddtjärnen. I used to do it a lot when I was still skiing, but not so much now that I’m snowshoeing because it’s a tad long for that. But when you’re on foot, it’s possible to take the road from Ryggskog back to Loos so it was easy to make the decision today to do this hike.

Photographically this route is not quite as good as the Moose Lake, but yesterday I went to Älgsjön and had very little to show for it, so today all I wanted was to have a nice hike and maybe take a few snapshots along the way. And the hike certainly started well, I got a real kick out of the wide open spaces and the new snow. It was snowing and there was almost no contrast at all, so the trail is barely visible in the picture.

When I got to Kvarnsjön, I had a look at the Storryggsån brook that runs into the lake from the west. During milder winters this brook is almost always open, but now it’s been covered with ice since December. I found a great opportunity for a panorama though, and there aren’t a lot of places around Loos that would work as a panorama quite as well as this. It was still snowing but the sun was starting to come out, which provided an interesting light on the landscape. I found a few other opportunities as well, but they would have required digging my way through the deep snow. I had already done one 50m detour and my legs were screaming for oxygen afterwards, I’m really not cut out for hiking knee deep… but following my own tracks back was easy. I can see the benefit of snowshoeing in a group – people can take turns in doing to the hard work. Anyway, I missed those other opportunities I speculated about because my legs were still shaking from the first effort and I had to leave some energy for the hike to Ryggskog.

The trail from Kvarnsjön to Ryggskog is not used a lot. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen a snowmobile here, but they do drive the route occasionally because the tracks are there. Except now of course, nobody’s done the trail since the snowfall started this week, so I had to pulse through the new snow. It’s uphill almost all the way to Ryggskog, but I love the forest that this trail runs through. It’s a fairly dense forest, mostly pines but a good dose of spruces as well (which is the norm around here). Because of the closeness of the trees, you’ll often see snow here when it’s already fallen down from the trees everywhere else. I haven’t found a way to photograph it so I could do it justice, but as an experience to hike through this forest it’s just simply wonderful. For me it’s a mile of pure winter bliss! And today it felt like it was better than normal… I don’t know if I was stopping so frequently to catch my breath or to enjoy the sight and silence!

I had high hopes for great winter scenery, because it’s been snowing for a couple of days solid now. But alas, I had a really tough time finding subjects. A few twigs sticking out of the snow turned out to be the highlight of the day… Oh well, one more to add to my minimalistic snow abstract collection.

The snow cover is probably about one metre on the marshes. It’s all powder – there hasn’t been any thaw since December to create an icy layer, so it’s tough to walk in the snow even with snowshoes. I sank to my knees wearing the snowshoes, but I guess it’s better than sinking to my hips without the snowshoes. Knee deep, you can still move… hip deep, and you’re pretty much stuck! Despite the generous snow cover and recent cold weather, there’s always a small element of risk to sink in a water hole. This particular water hole here was easy to avoid, but some small holes are covered so you have to watch out for those depressions in the snow to avoid wet feet. So every time I ventured outside the trail, I was just a little bit nervous… I do not like wet feet in cold weather!

What a strange winter. I think we’ve had a solid two months of cold weather, not a single day with temperatures above freezing. And now it’s really cold again, it was borderline too cold for me to want to go out, but in the afternoon the temperature crept up to -18ºC and it felt quite alright, properly dressed as I was. And then I came out from the protection of the forest and the wind hit me right in the face, instantly freezing my cheekbones. I was glad I had been smart enough to wear a scarf so I could pull it over my face, it’s not often I cover my face because I don’t particularly enjoy breathing through a cloth but rather that than frostbites.

I’m talking more about the weather and less about photography because there’s not a lot to say about photography to be honest. The entire February has been a struggle, every picture feels very forced because the thought of letting an entire weekend pass by without taking any pictures seems like a waste so I’m just scraping the proverbial barrel in pure desperation. But when everything else fails, there’s always some barn door that I haven’t shot yet!

Instead of complaining how difficult it is to find any photo subjects, I’ll marvel at the sun instead. To be precise, how warm it is already. It was -5°C when I left for hike in the afternoon, and very soon I discovered that my gloves were too warm. So I took them off and hiked barehanded. Of course, when I stopped for those very few photo ops I had, the hands quickly cooled but the gloves came off as soon as I was moving again. Brilliant. For the first time since I moved to Sweden, I’m actually quite eager for the winter to end and the summer to begin. A promise of the cabin that is scheduled to be finished in early May, if the current schedule holds…

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?

It’s been a cold weekend and I skipped my planned excursion yesterday, so I was really hoping I could go out today. By noon the temperature was up to -18°C so I dressed warmly and set out. And it wasn’t actually as bad as I expected, breathing was my biggest concern and that was no problem at all and as long as you keep moving at a good pace, you generate enough body heat to keep the extremities warm as well. It’s only when you stop to take pictures that you can feel the heat dissipate quickly… just as well that I didn’t have many photo ops then. Only two in fact, one in the way out and another in the same place on the way home – the light had changed so it was worth shooting twice, LOL.

But yes, I was a little bit surprised that I didn’t have to use the camera more often than that. The sceneries are wonderful to look at, but it just doesn’t quite work in the viewfinder. A little bit too much wind in conjunction with the snowfall earlier in the week so it’s not all photogenic. But it was a nice hike in any case, I was positively surprised to see that the cold temperature wasn’t a problem so if we get another of these cold weekends, I shouldn’t allow myself to be stuck inside four walls.

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!

Keep It Simple, Stupid! The winter is full of opportunities to simplify your images. In a very basic form, all it takes is a few lines. Or a lot of lines, like the frozen web on the left. It wasn’t just frost, but proper ice crystals that made the threads look like a band of pearls.

The slight dusting of snow we got earlier in the week together with the frost provided me with some nice subjects and I could stop kicking myself about the missed opportunities yesterday. I even found something that was very much like the “Arches” picture that failed miserably as taken with the mobile phone. But already as I was taking pictures of this small bush (or a small birch), I realised that it will be very difficult to bring out the lines when there’s almost no natural contrast at all. So it took a surprising amount of effort to process a simple picture in Lightroom, the trick is to deliberately underexpose a little and then boost the contrast and curves and finally I even used the adjustment brush on the branches to lift them from the background and finished off with a vignette. And it still doesn’t work.

But then I found an easier way to photograph the same subject. The flipside. On the opposite side of the bush (yes, it’s the same bush), the branches were visible so the lines were clearly defined. Processing was easy – deliberate over-exposure for a high-keyish effect with a boost in blacks and clarity and then I just had to clone a small distraction in a corner. And add a slight vignette of course, I’ve taken the habit of routinely add vignettes to almost all my pictures.

Keep it simple. On a wonderful winter’s day as it was today, it was easy. In the immortal words of Frank Drebin in Naked Gun: I love it!

We’ve had a little bit of new snow, but it’s not really the big transformation I’m waiting for so I’m feeling unusually uninspired and left the camera at home today. Except, I’m not really ever totally camera-less – I keep the mobile phone with me and it has a camera. It’s one of those semi-smart phones and the camera is just one of the things it doesn’t do very well. But as they say, your best camera is the one you have with you, so instead of walking away while trying to kick myself for missing an opportunity, I decided to make the most of what I got.

I won’t even go into a discussion of comparing a phone camera to an SLR. Can they be compared at all, anyway? Apples and oranges… anyway, with all the shortcomings in mind, I reckon the results aren’t always terribly bad. Not terribly good either, granted, but for those occasions when you’re not carrying and SLR with you, then the phone camera is indeed the best camera you have with you. One thing that surprised me though is how it seems like it does a good job with some pictures while other ones fail. For example, I think the sharpness in the “Glove” and “Loos” pictures is quite acceptable. I was sure that the “Arches” picture below would be sharp as well, and part of it is, but then part of it is somehow muddy. Not out of focus, just… not sharp. Kinda like part of the picture is compressed harder than the rest of it.

I was also surprised about white balance. It actually does a good job at auto WB! But it doesn’t help much when there’s so much noise. The noise is very obvious in the first picture – even if you can’t see the grain in this small version, you can see the colour distortions. Just like the sharpness in “Arches”, the colour noise varies in strength across the picture. Seems to be worse on the right side. In order to get over this handicap, I tried a black&white conversion. The “Loos” picture worked pretty well as colour, but the b&w treatment suits it better. “Arches” look awful with the colour noise, so the b&w conversion definitely rescued it. Except for the problem with the sharpness, obviously.

I’ve had the mobile phone for … two years now? And this is the first time I’ve seriously tried to take any pictures with it. With these results, I think I will stick to my SLR though (surprise!). I just have to get more disciplined about carrying it with me even when I’m not feeling inspired, because you never know what you find. For example those snow arches, I am kicking myself for a missed opportunity. The camera I had with me was not the best one…

Last spring I was asked if I could take some pictures for a local book project. I was a bit hesitant because the motif wasn’t my normal stuff and experience has taught me that I don’t do well “on commission” – I’m only at ease when my inspiration to photograph comes from inside me. But, I’m also not very good at saying no so there I was at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård, shooting interiors and trying not to break any of the fragile old handicraft pieces from the 19th century while setting them up for close-ups.

The book is based on the diary entries of a local farmer. He lived on the estate that is now the Fågelsjö Gammelgård old farm museum, so his life is preserved not only in the words he wrote but also in the buildings, interior decorations and assorted household items. He was a skilful craftsman and it’s fascinating to see all the things he had manufactured himself, it seems like he was even a bit of an inventor because some of the artefacts were very creative.

The book was supposed to come out already last summer, I was asked well ahead in time but then the time ran out and suddenly they were in a hurry and I had to jump in with a short notice. And then as it happens so often, life intervened and the project got delayed anyway, but now the book is finally out and it looks great! Much better than I expected, and I mean the book as a whole. But the strange thing is… all of my pictures in the book look better than I expected as well. I’ve often heard photographers say that pictures look better in print than on screen, and I think that this book proves it. For all the hesitation at first, I’m really happy I did the job because now I have my work published in a book I can be proud of!

The book is called Min hand är icke begåfvad att föra en skikliger penna – Fågelsjöbonden Jonas Olssons dagbok 1851-1892 and it’s edited by Eva Heggestad (ISBN 978-91-633-6003-9, published by Fågelsjö Hembygdsförening). It will be available in the Ljusdal bookstore and I’m sure that it will be prominently displayed at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård museum in the summer.