The Quiet Picture

Now this is what I call a Christmas present – new car! It’s a Nissan Qashqai 1.6 diesel, and I hope it will be everything the little Yaris wasn’t. My patience with the Yaris ran out last summer when it became painfully obviously how hopelessly inadequate it is on the mountain roads I was driving. And then of course I’ve always had a problem with the ground clearance, it’s just not enough for the forest roads around here. And the small engine with semi-automatic gearbox… I promise you I was starting to tear out hairs in frustration when I had to literally floor the gas pedal to get any decent acceleration out of it. And then you were suddenly doing 60 kph on second gear… I’m no race driver and the Yaris is not a racing car for sure.

The Qashqai fixes all these issues I’ve had. High ground clearance, bigger and more powerful engine, manual gearbox… and then it has a bigger trunk, more space inside (so it’s just simply bigger in every way and this time bigger is better), it’s actually more quiet to drive with an efficient sound proofing and you almost never hear the typical diesel engine noise, and the interior is less plasticky which means less rattling noise when driving on rough roads. And it’s smoother over bumps, all these little things which make the driving experience fun and not frustration.

There were some things about the car that made me so happy I was grinning for ear to ear… like for example, the car actually accelerates as soon as you push down the gas pedal, instead of waiting for a couple of seconds and then shifting down to a lower gear and then slowly going faster. And even when driving at 95 kph, the Qashqai is not even doing 2000 RPM. Do you know what the Yaris does at under 2K revs? Nothing!

Of course, when I got the Yaris I was initially very happy with it, I mean you’re always happy with a new car, right? But when the novelty wears off, the little nags start to surface. But considering that the Qashqai fixes all those nags I had with the Yaris, I have high hopes that I will stay happy with the “KasKas” (you need to be a Finn to appreciate that nickname…) for many many years to come!

Awesome! It’s snowing, so the snow cover will be pretty again.

I wanted do a long hike that would take me to some areas where snowshoes are required, while about half of the hike would be on a road where snowshoes would be more of a hinder. I’ve never liked carrying the snowshoes in hand for any longer stretches, so I decided to do something about it now. I rummaged through my sparepart drawer and found a shoulder strap which was just perfect for the snowshoe bag. As long as I’m hiking lightly (small backpack with only the camera, no tripod), it’s possible to sling the snowshoes at the back so they’re not hindering hand movement while walking. Problem solved.

Part of the trail goes under the power lines. They were making their buzzing bad-weather sound and it was a bit creepy to walk under them, with this constant reminder of the high voltage just above my head. For a moment I imagined that the power line was affecting my heart rate, but of course it was all that heavy walking through the snow with snowshoes on my feet that got my heart racing… a good workout for sure!

In the past few weeks I’ve been thinking that maybe I don’t like winter as much as I used to. Or rather, I still like winter, but I also really really want it to be summer so I could go hiking, I have all these big plans already.

But then it started snowing. A lot. And I can’t even think about summer any more, I was just so happy to be walking around in this winter wonderland and marvel at the snow covered landscape! So that’s the problem I’ve had in the past few weeks, it’s not the longing for the summer but it’s the longing for the snow.

It would’ve been a total lunar eclipse today and I was ready to jump in the car and drive to my designated spot at the first sight of a crack in the clouds. But it only started snowing again so it was pointless to drive out, not that I’m terribly disappointed anyway – I’m too happy about the snow to care about missed opportunities!

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!

So it’s finally here, the snow. Looks like it’s only temporary though, so I made sure to enjoy it today. When the snowflakes were falling big as mittens, I was all smiles. Then it started raining instead, and I was slightly less happy and desperate to get some pictures before it all would be gone already. But then it started snowing again and… oh well. I came back home and realised it was colder up here than down where I was, so there’s more snow on the ground. So much for my plan to find new scenery for my “first snow” pictures, instead of walking the same old routes in the village that I’ve done in previous years.

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As mentioned yesterday, I did a hike up the Svartån creek. I took the new trail for the expanded national park, something I’ve been meaning to do all year but never got around to. Glad I did it now, because I was pleasantly surprised. Svartån close to Voxnan is hard to photograph because there’s a lot of vegetation at the water’s edge, but I found out that it gets better upstream. Basically, once you reach the bridge, the landscape around the creek starts look like my favourite spot further upstream, meaning that it’s a lot of cliffs and rocks and pine forest. I found a whole bunch of photo opportunities that will require better conditions and a bigger lens; I had the Canon 24-105mm in the bag but considering the season, it wasn’t worth switching lenses. I must come back here in the summer and/or autumn, it was good enough to endure the mosquitoes!

I’ve noticed that lately (=past few months) I’ve been doing a lot of  (=a few more than usual) black and white pictures. It has gotten me wondering if something has changed with me, because I’ve never really had any appreciation for b&w pictures. Which is kind of strange actually, because if my goal is to simplify my pictures, then wouldn’t it be logical that I would also eliminate the colour from them? But the answer to that is that I’m a nature photographer. Most of photography (if you don’t like the generalisation, then read it as “most of my photography”) is actually documentary; what sets photographers apart from each other is how we document it. For me, colour is an essential part of nature. I don’t think I’ve ever even considered converting any of my flower pictures to b&w, because what is a flower without its colour? The botanist in me wants to portray the flower, the only tricks I will use are a careful selection of background and foreground, DOF and composition. That’s flower photography 101.

So back to this b&w issue then. Since colour is so important to me, the only times when I’ve converted a picture to b&w, it has happened out of necessity, not out of inspiration. In other words, I’ve had a picture I’ve otherwise liked but where I just can’t make the colours work. Use greyscale, problem solved. So why are so many of my recent favourite pictures b&w? Just a coincidence of having a lot of colour issues recently, or a shift in my thinking?

I decided to put this to a test. I couldn’t have picked a better day for it for sure, a typical November’s day with sleet, rain, drizzle, fog, low clouds, icy lakes and creeks and low light. I drove to one of my favourite places, the Svartån creek with old pine forest, rocks, cliffs and all kinds of mosses and lichens. Normally I visit this place to shoot the waterfalls, but this time I was set on exploring the forest instead. A good choice, because I found that the cliffs around the creek were covered with wet ice; it would’ve been stupid dangerous to venture on them when they were so slippery that you couldn’t even stand still on the cliffs without your feet starting to glide. So there I was in the forest, with a goal to find b&w pictures – not something that I will convert to greyscale as an afterthought, but something that I know even beforehand that I want in b&w. It was a good exercise and I spent a lot of time exploring the place, which gave me a great opportunity to reflect on this b&w issue. I came to the conclusion that my photographic preferences haven’t really shifted. I think what has happened is that I have learned to accept b&w as a creative option, so it has become a tool in my photographic toolbox just like DOF or background control or the shutter speed. But one thing hasn’t changed – I still don’t think that b&w is a “one size fits all” option. The best way (only way?) to use it is when it brings out something in the picture that colour can hide. But let’s face it, how often does that happen in documentary style nature photography?

Since there isn’t any snow yet, I haven’t given up on the ice patterns. I drove to a small lake that I’ve visited a few times before but never photographed, maybe it doesn’t make much difference with the ice but I also wanted to check out the forest around it. It hasn’t been very cold since yesterday so the frost was gone in most places but the most shaded ones, which of course meant that the ice was nice and clear with a sheet of water on it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was, when I saw that the ice was at least 5cm thick. For new ice, it means that it would’ve carried me if I just dared to walk on it, but I’m the kind of person who’s nervous about crossing lakes in January! The weird part of the ice is the sounds it makes. In the dead of the winter you can hear the ice crack, but right now it sounds completely different. A bit like playing a saw, except deeper and muted. Many times when I stepped on the frozen moss on the shore, the vibrations planted into the ice, making it sing. In my ears, it was saying “stay out of here”…

The weather forecast said it would be -4°C degrees in the morning. Bah. It was -8 when I got up, and -5 when I left. Not that I’m complaining, because it meant that there was frost everywhere. In some places the frost was so thick it looked like snow.

I had a plan, at first check out Svartåmyran because it was open enough for the sun to reach it in the morning, and it was a sunny day – no a cloud in sight. It didn’t quite work out though, I took quite a few pictures but in the end I deleted almost all of them. All hope was not lost though, the second part of my excursion was my old favourite, Svansjöbäcken. I haven’t been there all year but I was really hoping to find an icy lining to the water… but it turned out that there was quite a lot more ice than that. It wasn’t just a lining, it was a full ice cover everywhere but in the waterfalls.

So you’d think that I was disappointed, but no such worries. What makes this place so great is that there’s more to it than just the water, so I turned my eyes towards the forest instead. There’s a lot of old fallen pines around and now that they had a frost all over them, it wasn’t hard to find something interesting to shoot.

But all that standing around in the frozen moss, my toes were freezing. Seriously. The kind of thing that hurts when the circulation comes back. Note to self: the hiking boots are not rated for four seasons!

We are now in the time between where autumn comes to end and the waiting for the snow begins. The nights are cold and the weather forecast said that it would be a sunny weekend, so I was really looking forward to a morning shoot at my favourite tarn of the year (it keeps changing, because the tarns are so small that the photo ops are soon exhausted). When I got to the place, I sure wasn’t disappointed. There wasn’t as much ice on the water as I thought there would be but as long as it was calm, the open water worked just fine. The moss was almost frozen and half the time it carried me without breaking, giving me this surreal feeling of walking on water and then on the next step an actual feeling of walking in water when the crust broke…

As the sun climbed higher on the sky, it started melting the frost and the magic. It was surprisingly warm, actually, but I knew that I had already taken my keepers so my heart wasn’t in it any more and I left. But I will tell you one thing… my disappointment at missing most of the autumn colours is gone. I couldn’t possibly have any regrets after a morning like this!

A little bit crazy. It’s October and it’s so warm that I was walking around wearing a t-shirt. The jacket was just too much! This must be a first, I sure can’t remember an October when it’s been this warm. So it was nice to walk around in search of autumn colours, and it should’ve been easy because we actually have them (unlike the mountains). I tried it in the morning, and then spent most of the afternoon on it, and got nothing! It was getting so ridiculous in the end that I could just laugh at it. I visited a lot of spots that have been productive in the past, only to discover that pine and spruce are the dominant trees everywhere, and in those places with some birches the leaves had already dropped. So I was driving… and driving… on roads that are lined up with birches in beautiful yellow colours, and didn’t take a single picture of them. Because I didn’t want to shoot a birch by the road, I had higher ambitions than that. And got nothing.

Note to self: Find birch locations next summer.