The Quiet Picture

I had very lofty ideas about skiing to Svartmorgraven today but I got seriously distracted on the way. I mentioned the reindeer yesterday and today I get coming across them at every turn. So I ended up zigzagging the tundra in search for the best angles to show the reindeer in this tough environment. Of course, as skittish as the reindeer are, there’s only so close you can get them. And there’s only so close you should get to them either, this is the season when the reindeer should be left well alone. There’s no hiding in the tundra so the animals saw me coming from a long way so at least I didn’t catch them by surprise at any point and after a while I drew the right conclusions and turned back home.

Coming down from the tundra is actually even more difficult than going up. Going up just requires some endurance, but the way down requires a high tolerance for pain. Either for the acid buildup in your muscles as you plough your skis to slow down the free fall, or the pain of colliding with a tree when the ploughing fails and your skis run out of control. Normally I take the skis and walk down, but this time when I saw that the snow cover in the forest was holding quite well, I zigzagged down and avoided all the pain. Better like that.

Yesterday I refilled the bird feeder I had set up in March. Back then, it took about two days before the birds found it, and it was just the same birds I had in Loos minus the crested tit. This time it took only about 15 minutes and I was thrilled to see bullfinch and common redpoll! For some reason I never got bullfinches in Loos, but heard other people had them. They’re very shy though, they fly away even when they see movement in the window so it’s difficult to get pictures and I only managed one distance shot. The redpolls were easier, but I didn’t have any particular setup so the background is not very well under control. Now that I know that I can get birds there even without setting up the feeder in the autumn, I’ll have a think about how to set up the whole thing next year.

In March, it seemed like spring is coming ahead of time. Things pretty much grinded to a halt in the past week with cold temperatures and even a little bit of new snow, which gave me hope that there would still be some skiing to be done in the mountains. I was going to go the cabin for Easter anyway, not sure what I would’ve done if skiing wasn’t possible but I don’t have to worry about that now.

The snowmelt is obviously well in progress and many of the skiing tracks are no longer prepared when the ground is bare. Or, like I discovered today, the trail disappears in an open creek. The snowmobile trails are still usable, despite the open spots where mud flies when the snowmobiles speed through. In one place the snowless patch was so big that it was pointless to try and go around it, so I just skiied over the turf instead. Was ok, but the glide wasn’t too good…

I visited my friendly neighbourhood ravine and found that a couple of guys had taken their snowmobiles inside Fiskhålsgraven. Thanks for ruining the snow for me.

I didn’t have any particular plan after that, so I just skiied aimlessly to the tundra and then found a small herd of reindeer on the plateau. I was a little bit surprised, I mean it’s not the first time I’ve seen reindeer on the mountain when there’s still snow on the ground, but it’s just that it’s so hard to believe that they can find anything to eat here. The only green things are the spruce and pine needles!

Another exciting thing about moving is that you have a whole new region to explore. I’m familiar with Föne only as far as driving through a few times but I’ve never stopped to take a closer look at anything.

The first thing I did was to study the map and I found an interesting looking area along the Ljusnan. Within a walking distance from home… So I got down there yesterday and today. It seems like no matter how you look at the maps and satellite pictures, you really have no idea what the place looks like until you’re actually there.

From the map I figured that Ljusnan must have flowed more easterly in the past, until it carved a new path in its present course. The area is lined with a steep embankment, but somehow you just don’t get an idea of exactly how steep until you’re standing on top of that embankment. It was so steep that I needed to take hold of tree trunks because I couldn’t get a good enough foothold to stop me from rolling down head first.

The map told me that there would be fields. I found the fields and I found a bird tower (or a moose hunting tower) in a corner, with a hole in the floor and a ladder positioned so awkwardly that I decided I wouldn’t climb in because I sure wouldn’t be able to get back down again.

I found a number of old barns, some of them half fallen already. I found old farming equipment left rusting in the fields and the forest, from a time so far ago that I don’t even have names for these things – in any language.

I found countless of old riverbeds that were flooded in the autumn, creating thick sheets of ice that were now resting on dry ground after the water receded during the winter.

I found birch forests and I found pine forests… slow flowing brooks… I found stone walls along the shores of Ljusnan.

I found so much photographic potential that I can hardly wait for the summer!

It seems like lately I’ve been in a lens frenzy. In the past, I’ve normally bought (changed) one lens per year on average. Last year I got two and now I have yet another new lens.

The thing is, since I got into wideangle photography, the Canon 24-105mm lens that’s been my normal walkaround lens is suddenly not very wide. 24mm is 38mm on an APS-C sensor, it was fine as long as I couldn’t make any sense of wideangles anyway. At the same time, a true walkaround lens needs some proper extension in the long end, so I couldn’t consider anything shorter than 100mm (in the far past, I had the Canon 17-85mm which I traded for the 24-105, because I couldn’t use the wide end and the long end was too short!). In addition, I have now decided that I will continue with the APS-C size sensor cameras (waiting for the follow-up to 7D).

Enter the Sigma 18-125mm f3.8-5.6 DC OS HSM. The Tamron 18-270mm superzoom was also an option and even though all the reviews pegged it about equal with the shorter Sigma, somehow I felt it was a safer bet to go for the shorter lens.

I can imagine you’re asking why I would trade a sharp Canon L lens for a cheap Sigma. Believe it or not, but I don’t think I’m losing so much here. Since I got the Tokina wideangle zoom(s), I noticed that my Canon zoom isn’t actually so super-sharp anyway, the Tokina(s) beat it. So I figured, the lens profile tools in Lightroom are really good and they can fix many of the shortcomings in the lenses. I’ve never even used the sharpening tools but I could start using them now if needed, unless my Sigma was a total lemon.

I got the lens on Friday, perfect timing. I’ve never been good at lens testing so I just took the pictures I would take anyway, plus just a few extra frames at fully open to see how it copes. And this is what I found:

• f8 and you’re there
• Fully open it’s soft as a baby’s butt. Horrible. But when did I ever use the Canon 24-105 fully open? Almost never.
• CA is epic. The wideangle Tokina lenses have a reputation for CA, but they’re just amateurs in comparison with the Sigma. A little bit of Lightroom magic though and the CA is gone, except in the most extreme cases (like tree branches against an overexposed sky). The Sigma is in good company in those situations though.
• The optical stabilisation is quiet and almost unnoticeable in the viewfinder. I’m used to the purring of the IS and the hopping in the viewfinder when using the Canon zoom but the Sigma is so quiet and solid in the viewfinder that at first I thought the OS was broken. It’s not.

In conclusion, I got exactly what I paid for and I got exactly what I expected. Obviously, one day and just a handful of pictures is not enough to be absolutely certain but my gut feeling is that the Sigma is good enough for my uses and the only thing where I have any significant loss of image quality is when shooting wide open. A quick look in LR tells me that I have 38 pictures shot at wide open with the Canon zoom in the 6 years I’ve had it. That’s 1 picture every other month on average, I can live with those odds!

I am happy with my decision to go with the Sigma and it will be my new walkaround lens. For the really “serious” pictures, I have the specialist lenses – Tokina 11-16mm for landscapes, Sigma 150mm for macro and Canon 300mm for animals. I hope that this kit will serve me for many years to come, because I can’t afford to keep buying lenses at the rate I’ve been doing in the past year!

I’m starting to get my new home in order, so I can think about other things. Like photography, of course!

Since spring has arrived early this year, we drove around a little bit to find some birds that you normally can find in the fields while they wait for their nesting grounds to melt. But maybe the spring has arrived earlier than the birds had counted on, so they haven’t made their way up here yet. Even the places which normally are very popular among the migrants were now just gaping empty and we found only one spot with any significant amount of life, and it was a little bit too far for my lens. I’ve kept the picture even though I had to crop it to the old D30 size, because I thought it was a bit funny… my first thought was that it was a Photoshop Disaster (straight out camera), but a closer look revealed that the leftmost swan has poked its beak through the wing of the swan in front. There was a chase going on and anything is possible in the heat of the action!

So I’m now officially a “fönebo” – spent my first night in my new home! I have a good feeling about this, somehow it feels like this new home is a little bit luxurious compared to the old one, even if some things here are clearly too old and in need of replacing or fixing. And the electricity bill will probably kill me because the heating elements are old and not programmable like in Loos, and this is a bigger house anyway. But the luxury is in the little things – like walking with bare feet and not freeze because the floor is actually not icy cold. Or standing in front of a window and not feel a draft. Or going to the toilet in the middle of the night and it’s warm – during the cold spells in the winter, it was only 13°C in the bathroom because there was no fixed element there that I could keep on at all times!

It felt like I had way too much stuff when I packed for the move. I was concerned that we would have to make two trips, but one of the guys who were helping me was a packing expert and we were able to fit everything in the trailer and got away with just one trip. This new place is bigger than the old one, but there’s no walk-in closet which means that I don’t have any place for those “out of sight, out of mind” things. Which I think is good for me, because now maybe I will start throwing or giving away things I don’t need, instead of just saving everything.

One of the best things about this new house is the view. During daylight, it’s nothing special – there’s some open fields and a hill with with a couple of ugly logged spots and a few houses at the foot of the hill. A good chance of seeing cranes when the snow melts, and I’ve already seen roe deer graze nearby. But at night… the kitchen window points to the north. When I turned off the lights last night, I looked out and saw the aurora. From my frekkin’ kitchen window! So I took my camera, set it up in the comfort indoors, and then went out to the porch and took some pictures. The foreground is probably not the best possible, but I’ll just say this again. I was shooting aurora from my frekkin’ porch!

Welcome to Föne.

I was supposed to stay in Messlingen until Sunday, but already on Friday I had a feeling that something wasn’t right. I went skiing but my heart really wasn’t in it and it felt like I was doing everything in slow motion. I was totally uninspired by everything and didn’t even bother to look for something to shoot. On Saturday morning I was even more lethargic and while I was lying down on the couch, trying to figure out what’s going on, I realised that I had pushed myself too hard all week. I’m not used to skiing 15-20 km every day and now I was physically all spent. And I think the wonderful night hike I did on Thursday was such a highlight that I knew that I couldn’t possibly do anything that would top it, so I wasn’t so keen on trying to find new photo opportunities either.

In 0ther words, if all I was going to do was to lie on the couch, then I might as well do it at home, so I got up and drove home. Maybe today I will find some energy and start packing. Gotta move next weekend!

Fox. Check.
Ravine. Check.
Full moon. Check.
Clear sky. Check.
Big Dipper. Check.
Aurora. Check.

For the longest time, I looked like it would be overcast today. But miracles do happen and the weather forecast indicated that it would be clear in the evening and sure enough, it was. The full moon was the reason I picked this week as my holiday but obviously, no amount of planning in the world can change the weather so I just had to hope for the best. And the best is what I got!

That escapade I had yesterday that lead me to Fiskhålsgraven turned out to be a blessing. The full moon will rise from the east, which means that standing on that west side of the ravine, I could have a view of the moonrise over the ravine. And secondly, I can also have a view to north over the big snow overhang I shot yesterday so I could shoot the aurora.

I set out well before sunset which would leave me a good margin to get to my spot. When I was getting close to the ravine, I saw something move ahead of me. The tail was unmistakable so I knew I was looking at a fox, but it took me a long time to believe it because it sure was a big fox. What amazed me even more than the size was that it was completely fearless. Instead of running away from me, it lay down on top of this hill! So I thought, let’s see if it’s still there when I take out the camera. It was. So let’s see if it’s still there if I get a few steps closer. It was. Hmm… so would it stay there if I climbed up that hill a little bit? Yes it was… Since it was over half an hour since sunset, there wasn’t a lot of light so I had to screw up the ISO well past my normal tolerance, but this situation was so unbelievable and new to me that I didn’t care how noisy the pictures would be. I think I was about 10 m from the fox when it reacted to the combination of me moving and the sound of snow mobiles in the background and finally got up and ran away. So I had this incredible experience and the evening hadn’t even begun yet!

I got to the same spot as yesterday and set up my gear. While waiting for the moon, I shot Mars above the ravine, because I really couldn’t think how I could ever find a better foreground for it. When the moon finally came up behind Ruändan, it was very difficult to shoot it. Since it was an hour since sunset, I needed a long exposure to get any definition in the foreground, while the moon was hopelessly overexposed. I tried bracketing but I knew that I didn’t have the skills to put together a natural looking HDR anyway, but how often do you get a chance to shoot the full moon rise like this? I had to try. In the end, I was right about the HDR, I couldn’t figure it out. So the picture is a single shot, with an overexposed moon.

As soon as the moon was fully above the horizon, it started spreading its light on the landscape. The first thing I noticed was how the big snow overhang in the ravine was lit. With the Big Dipper hanging above the ravine, all I needed now was the aurora… Aurora Alert kept beeping in my phone but unfortunately the increased geomagnetic activity didn’t translate in a good lightshow. The sensor caught a little big of the glow anyway.

I had been standing by the ravine for a long time now, and I was starting to seriously freeze. I knew that my spot was the best possible, but there’s always a point where your personal discomfort overcomes your patience so I packed up and started walking back to get some warmth back in my body. I had a view to the north on the way so in case the aurora would materialise, I would still be in a position to shoot it. But it never got better than the faint glow, and I could also see that the clear sky wasn’t so clear any more with some clouds starting to form, signalling the snowfall that would come later in the night.

I honestly can’t say I was disappointed about missing a good aurora when everything else about this evening was so perfect!

At school, we used to have a week’s holiday every winter. Translated from Finnish, a “skiing holiday”. I stopped using it for skiing somewhere around my teens, but now it was finally time to resurrect that noble tradition. So I have a week’s holiday and will spend it at the cabin and go skiing every day.

My first trip was to Andersborg in Tänndalen to sample their waffles. I’ve had better, but the skiing was awesome. Epic glide – front, back and sideways. The tracks were pretty much frozen. And I couldn’t have asked for better weather for sure, blue skies and white snow!

Having done those 15 km of skiing already, in the evening I set out on skis again to shoot the moonlit sky. But those small clouds that were so nice during the day, were a bit more problematic now. For example, Orion was half covered. But I had to try, because there’s a risk that this is the last clear night of the week. [2012-03-05]

* * *

I don’t know why, but even when I’m physically very tired, I sometimes have trouble sleeping. This was one of those nights, so I gave up even trying quite early in the morning and decided to upload yesterday’s pictures on the computer while waiting for sunrise. Slight problem though – I didn’t have a mini-USB cable! I thought I had taken a spare cable to the cabin last year, but it appears that I had also taken it back home which left me with no way of getting the pictures out of the camera. Oh well, the 4 GB memory card holds over 300 pictures and then I have a 1 GB card for emergencies. I’ll manage.

Later on I drove to Walles and picked up the snowmobile trail towards Ramundberget and then the Ösjöstugan waffle cabin. Very good waffles here, and this means that I’ve now eaten waffles at every waffle cabin in the region. Djupdalsvallen has the best ones, too bad they’re not open in the winter. On the other hand, most of the other ones are not open in the summer. Not even Ösjöstugan, which is a bit of a shame because it would be a nice hike from Walles along the Ösjöarna valley to the cabin. But if the colours are good this year then it’s worth doing regardless.

When I got back to Messlingen, I came across my neighbours. I took my chances and asked if they had a mini-USB cable they could borrow, and they did! Lovely. [2012-03-06]

* * *

For the rest of the week, I will explore the local trails in Messlingen. My first effort was the trail leading towards the Fiskhålsgraven which according to the winter trail map would be prepared. Well, it sure wasn’t. Just a couple of snow mobiles that went that way a good while ago so at least I got some hard tracks to follow. When it got really steep, I had to take off the skis and walk. I was wondering if it was smart to continue up, but then again I had faith that these tracks were leading to more tracks which eventually would take me to an actual trail. I was right – and the real bonus was that the “more tracks” took me right to the ravine! It was a bit risky though because now I was on the western side of the ravine which is lined with snow overhangs (I’m talking about a major snow pileup, it doesn’t melt away until well into summer). I made sure to stay on the right side of the birches that were growing on the edge, because I had a feeling that if I took just one step beyond them, I would be standing on empty. Just look at the top left quarter of the picture are you get what I mean by the overhang… [2012-03-07]

Lovely late winter’s day. I spent it all inside, going through my stuff to find out what I could throw away. I found that I had boxes and boxes and boxes of… boxes. Can’t believe how many empty cardboard boxes I’ve kept over the years! When I was done with my sorting, I had my car full of stuff going to either second hand or wasteland. Not to forget that I have a big car these days, so that’s a lot of stuff. The most depressing part is that my storage room doesn’t seem to have any more empty space than it did before. I guess I could throw away even more, but then I got to thinking that these things are still part of my life. I can’t erase my past just because I move from one place to another; I’m not sentimental but I’m still human.

When I was done with my to-do list for today, I started waiting for the sunset. I wanted to have another go at the crescent moon and I was somewhat concerned to see that there was a very thin veil of clouds in the sky, which would make it impossible to shoot the crescent (as yesterday’s experience taught me). But I had to try anyway, and I was happy to see that the veil almost disappeared after sunset. I finally got my crescent! Of course, shooting with a 11-16mm lens, it’s not a big crescent in the picture. But I don’t want to take a closeup of the moon either, because I want to give it a context. There was actually enough light today so I could’ve used the 24-105mm lens instead, but when it got darker and all the stars started showing, I was really happy I had 11mm on the camera. It took in my favourite part of the sky – Orion, Canis Major (Sirius) and Canis Minor (Procyon), Gemini; Capella and Aldebaran, the Pleiades… If these are the last pictures I take in Loos, it’s a good way to end an era.