The Quiet Picture

If I felt that 2009 ended with a photographic low note, then 2010 started with a high note. No genuine high key (even if I tried), but I found a lot of other things that I didn’t expect at all. When I left in the morning, my only target was an old and broken tractor down at the mill. I hoped that it would be covered in frost so I could get high key pictures of broken tractor detail… well, turns out that there was no frost. Zero. So much for that plan. But these broken windows on the other hand, they were interesting. For the colourful picture, I kind of over-processed it in LR and found that I liked the result, so the picture was worth keeping just for the colour.

It kept snowing all the time and I felt like doing a long walk, so I took a de-tour and snapped a few frames I hoped would work as high key. They didn’t, but failing is also learning so at least I’m learning what doesn’t work.

And then to my great surprise, the sun (almost) came out. It didn’t paint the landscape in golden light, but there was no mistaking the orange orb in the sky. So I made another extension to my walk, in case the light would improve… well it didn’t, but I was incredibly happy with the day anyway. Wonderful weather, I had a lot of photo ops and my legs weren’t dead tired despite the long walk. I guess it helps when you’re not treading through deep snow though…

There’s this one old birch that’s become something of an un-realised obsession for me. Obsession, because I think about photographing it almost every day – the birch is visible from the road so I see it on my way to work, and I see it on my way back home. And un-realised, because I’ve only over tried to shoot it once, many years ago.

So why I am not trying again, and again? Because I can’t decide what to do with it. Do I need sunlight or overcast weather? Sunrise or sunset? Noon? Summer with green leaves, or autumn with yellow leaves, or no leaves at all?

I was going to go somewhere else today, but things happened and I thought I might as well drive there and take a closer look at the tree to scout for the best angle. It’s not easy, because this is young pine forest and although the birch does stand out well from the distance, it’s really hard to find an unobstructed angle somewhere closer. There are some big rocks in the area and climbing on top of them solves part of the problem, but you’ll always have some pines sticking in the frame.

But there’s more to this place than the one birch. All the mosses, lichens, rocks, fallen and burned trees… I don’t know why I don’t visit the place more often. I guess I’m bothered by El tenedor del diablo.

El tenedor del diablo, The Devil’s Fork, is from the film Romancing the Stone. It’s one of my favourite films and although there’s nothing fork-like about this birch, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the tree and the name stuck. A devilish subject, for sure – and maybe that’s the clue to how I should shoot it: dark ominous clouds, no leaves. I think I have a November date with the Devil’s Fork.

All the excitement about the mandarin ducks yesterday almost made me forget that I had a productive trip to the Hamra National Park as well. Hamra National Park is currently the smallest national park in Sweden, but it will multiply in size next year when the Svartåmyran bog and the Svartån creek valley will be added to the park. 2009 is also a special year for the park, as it is 100 years now when the park was introduced as one of the first national parks in Sweden. The celebrations will take place on the 24th of May, I’m actually half considering of joining in even if I normally want to avoid the crowds. I just want to take an opportunity to walk around the park with a guide, because one thing that is currently woefully inadequate in the park is information – not a single information board anywhere along the trail to explain anything that makes the park so special.

But you don’t need to know anything about the park to enjoy it. I love old growth forests, it’s just nature being left on its own and it’s absolutely fascinating to see the circle of life, from rotten old tree trunks to fresh new sprouts. Photographically however, old growth forests are a nightmare for me. Too much information! I just can’t control all the detail to make any sensible pictures out of the forest, so this time I didn’t even bring a wideangle with me. I figured I could use the macro to isolate detail from the forest, and it turned out to be the right choice of equipment because this trip was more productive than all the previous visits put together. Having said that, it was still a very frustrating experience. I was looking around, absolutely convinced that there are countless pictures here but they just weren’t coming to me. I wish I could one day go to a chaotic forest with a skilled wideangle photographer and look through their viewfinder. Or maybe I need to go there with the fish-eye and film camera, maybe the extreme angle will jolt my vision!

It’s still early in the season so the park wasn’t at its best yet. I think I spotted a few ops for a normal wide-angle as well, so a new visit will be in order in the summer. The Hamra National Park is not there for great landscapes or exciting animal life, but that shouldn’t discourage anyone from visiting – you can’t find many of these untamed forests anymore so I’m happy to have one just around the corner!

Can’t complain about the weather, it’s certainly looking like winter now. I only wish it would be like this all winter through…

Since none of the trails are open yet, I decided to take the car and search for photo ops. I soon came across a flock of black grouse that didn’t take flight when I drove by, they normally do but now they endured me even when I reversed my car and opened the window to take some pictures. After a few frames they finally took off, but I did get my first black grouse pictures, even if it was with a landscape lens.

It was a very dark day, I had the camera on ISO 400 and I struggled to get shutter speeds fast enough to freeze the falling snowflakes. The days are also very short now, so I did some evening photography to make the most of the wonderful conditions. Unfortunately about half of the streetlights in Loos are orange so the snow takes on a funky colour, I can’t decide if I like it or not. The dark blue background is courtesy of the last remaining “daylight”.

We might be getting a little bit of sunshine tomorrow, that is also something to look forward to!

This day was even worse than yesterday – just as foggy, but now we got rain as well. Lovely. So it was another long walk with the G10 and this time I experimented with the ISO values. And again I agree with what everyone says, the IQ is usable up to ISO 200 and anything above that should only be used in desperation. This image is taken with ISO 200, it was originally full colour but trust me, the difference to this b&w version was minimal; the days don’t get much more gray than today. So although I’m not a fan of b&w, I’m kinda happy with this one (and it will work better when I can properly process the RAW in LR… please Adobe, please!). Just had to crop all around to tighten up the composition and then to 2:3 dimensions. It may seem that I’m really attached to the 2:3 format but the thing is that my brain is so programmed for it that I have trouble seeing my compositions in 4:5. It will be useful to learn it though, just in case I ever want to move up to medium format!

Oh wasn’t I excited about this weekend, I had two new toys to play with and head full of ideas. Some of the ideas were not even related to the new toys, so I started off on Saturday morning by setting up my squirrel feeder and squirrel-proof bird feeder. I hope that the squirrels will like their new setup and I also hope that they can’t figure out how to get to the bird food. I don’t have high hopes though, I’m sure they’ll turn up on the bird feeder sooner or later no matter what I come up with.

So that’s how I spent the beautiful and sunny Saturday morning. In the afternoon I was ready to play with the levelling base and 6-stop ND filter, so I drove to a new place which looked promising on the map. Sure enough, it looked like a great location. Except, what happened to the light? After idly waiting around for the sunset to happen, I gave up and drove to another place to see what my options were. As if by magic, the sun appeared and I got glorious evening light. Except, the this place wasn’t half as nice as the earlier one. Nevermind, I figured that the new place will look good in the morning light as well so I set my alarm clock to wake me up.

I arrived to this new location just after 8am, I knew that the first light wouldn’t get there because there was a hill shading it, but I hadn’t counted on the scarce pine forest to be all that shady so I still didn’t have light on the tiny lake by 9am and I decided to call it quits.

The forecast said that it would be windy in the afternoon, so I would have an opportunity to try the new ND filter. I drove to my favourite place, only to find it almost flooded (at least I had had the foresight of wearing wellingtons) and just to add insult to injury, even the wind was not happening. I took a 20 sec exposure and could still see the reflections on the water – it was almost calm! At this point I was ready to write off the whole weekend but decided at the last minute to check out the creek that runs out from the lake. When I saw this fallen tree, I just knew that I had to create something out of it, how chaotic it may be. It sums up my weekend, anyway.

I had found out that we have a rare primrose growing around here, bird’s-eye primrose (Primula farinosa). In fact, this is the only known place where it grows in the Hälsingland province and the flower is on the decline elsewhere in Sweden as well. We weren’t sure if it would already be blooming, but it’s better to be early than late so we checked out the place. We were happy to find buds, but then when we were already on our way back, we found some that were already in bloom. Oh joy! I just had to take a picture, ugly background or not… I will be back next weekend to photograph them better, most of them should be open by then.

With nothing better to do after lunch, I just settled down in my hammock to enjoy the warm day and started to read a book. Then I happened to glance at the neighbour’s garage and noticed that the ostrich fern behind it are beginning to unfurl. No time like present, I grabbed the camera to look at them through the macro lens. I was distracted by a caterpillar hanging from a bird cherry branch next to me, the wind was tossing it around and it landed on this leaf and looked luminous in the backlight. With a lot of patience and quick reflexes I was able to squeeze in a few shots, some of which were actually in focus – the wind was really not making things easy. And while I was up photographing the caterpillar, I noticed that the bird cherry blooms looked just perfect.

In the evening I took the Tricker for a spin. I had to cut it short because it was just simply too hot for the motorbike clothes. Warm days are not made for biking.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t raining this morning. I didn’t care, I just simply wasn’t inspired to photograph anything or look for flowers, just wanted to go home. As usual when I make a hasty exit from Funäsdalen, I took the scenic route via Sörvattnet and Lofsdalen. I have been eyeing the old pine roots on one stretch of the road for a long time and shook myself out of the slump to finally photograph them. Even as I was walking around and framing the roots in different compositions, I was thinking about using the Orton technique on the images and even – gulp – converting them to B&W since the subject itself is very greyscale. I don’t think it’s all bad, but I can’t decide whether I prefer it to the colour version or not. I am so rooted in colour photography…

The law of diminishing returns… my holiday is drawing to an end, but the rainy days and photographic slump are not. We drove to Mittåkläppen with high hopes to hike up the mountain in search of exciting flowers. We had barely reached the tree line when it started raining, and then it started pouring, so we fell back on Plan B and went to Djupdalsvallen to eat waffles. The weather didn’t really improve, so I ate another waffle. And since the weather was unsteady even after that, we called it a day.In the evening the weather improved marginally, so much so that there was half a chance of sunlight and I knew exactly where I wanted to capture it. I managed to get a few shots, then the clouds moved in again. I waited patiently until I got some more sunlight, which lasted all of… well, a minute anyway. Then a big cloud shaded the sun and I got tired of the waiting game and headed back. I reckon the short walk helped me work out half of a waffle. Or maybe a quarter. I think I had too many waffles today…

Tomorrow is set out to be a rainy end to my rather rainy holiday. Somehow I’m not too bummed out about it though – at least I haven’t had to sit in the office, or even think about work. That’s always something!

Yes I know there’s convergence with the tree and background forest. By the time I found an angle without overlapping them, the sun was already gone.