Come spring all the little bugs and critters come out again.
This year is no different.
Ants are a great example of with showing (over)active, ADHD-like behavior.
If it weren’t so uncomfortable, I would just sit down next to a hill and shoot pictures the whole day.

D800, ISO400, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO400, 1/500 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm, off-camera SB800

D800, ISO400, 1/500 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm, off-camera SB800

D800, ISO400, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm

And… call me masochist, but I find it extremely fascinating to watch a (red) ant trying to chew on my hand, especially while looking at it through a macro lens

D800, ISO400, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm

Happy Spring, everyone. It’s finally here!

… said he again in the evening.

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/4, Nikkor 50mm.
3 images stitched in Photoshop.

Let’s see how often I manage to get up early enough to capture this…

… said he in the evening…

I won’t say any more… Other than that in a few weeks from now I will be looking at this from the hammock on the balcony (if I wake up early enough, that is ).

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/2, Nikkor 50mm.
3 images stitched in Photoshop.

I have a godson. And he has a little brother.
I may have mentioned them before…

Due to mutually busy schedules we haven’t seen each other for quite some time, but today the whole family came over for a visit.
And lovely it was, as always. And yeah… Kids do grow fast. Crazy fast.

And my godson is still the cutest, with his baby brother putting up a stiff competition <3 

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/2, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/2, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/2, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/2, Nikkor 50mm

It’s a season everyone is looking forward to. Especially when you live in a country like Finland, where you’re digging your Life through 5-6 months of snow every year. And that’s Southern Finland (let’s not start about going up north).
And yeah… Finally, after many, many months it really does look like spring’s on its way (save for the snow that’s coming down as I write this).

Spring always comes with surprises. The worst part of the snow melting is all the dog poop that is surfacing and accompanying it the foul smell of it. I could go all into detail and describe to you the gooey… but no, I won’t.
A little colorful flower, which has had the power to withstand the weight of the snow that’s been piled up for way too long, and is now breaking the surface of the snow like the hand of a zombie trying to get out of the soil.
Cars that have disappeared under piles of snow with the winter ongoing, and the snow plows shoving all the snow off the street to the side.
And yeah… It can thus happen, that that big pile of snow looks exactly like… well… a big pile of snow. And a snow plow doesn’t really feel the difference when it piles up more snow, and maybe pushes it a bit further off the street and a bit further toward the pavement.

And yeah… If you happen to be the owner of such a car, and you don’t use your car during winter, then it could just happen that your car actually DOES disappear under said pile of snow.
And yeah… If the snow then melts, and your car happened to have been disguised as a pile of snow, you might just be in for a nasty surprise when the snow melts and your car peeks it’s battered head out of the snow…

Demolished mini van

Demolished mini van

… I of course got my portion of HDR and cross-processing. This really was an exceptional trip

D800, ISO400, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm. Cross-processed in Photoshop.

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 14-24mm

Combination of HDR and cross-processing in Photoshop.

Left: D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/11. Middle: D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/4. Nikkor 14-24mm.

Combination of HDR and cross-processing in Photoshop.

Last year we desperately wanted to see them. Maybe not as desperately as the Lights, but still… we didn’t see any: sea eagles. They are huge. And gracious.
This year we saw a good number of them, but always too far away to get a decent picture.
We got some, but they’re not spectacular. A bit closer than most of them we saw, but still pretty far away. Considering this was shot with a 300mm + TC2.
(in any case: this is a “wild” one. This is not one of those staged pictures where they put fish out and you just wait for it to come flying to you ).

D800, ISO400, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 300mm + TC2

D800, ISO400, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 300mm + TC2

There’s plenty of other wildlife. Small(er) birds, reindeer, of course. But I’ve got enough pictures of reindeer. We could’ve gone and set up camp somewhere in the middle of nowhere and hope to see an arctic fox or owl, or something like that… But … not this time

This was absolutely breath-taking. Even if it’s very simple to explain what you see, sometimes it’s hard to actually believe what you see.
And it’s remarkable how the weather influences your perception. We drove by this inlet several times and only once was it like this. When there was even the slightest breeze, and the water would start moving, the dream scenario disappeared instantly.

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm. 6 images stitched in Photoshop.

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm

Scouting, driving around the area, stopping the car, getting out of the car, getting into the car, driving, stopping the car, getting out of the car, getting into the car, driving… It’s the thing you typically do only with your fellow photographers. You do that with your spouse and inevitably you’ll get to see a lot of rolling eyes and the “*sighs* NOT AGAIN??”-looks
And even then there were beautiful scenes we missed, because of possible life-threatening situations we might’ve faced had we stopped (or leaned too far over the edge).

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/4, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 15 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm + Singh-Ray VariND

D800, ISO100, 1/500 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 14-24mm, 4 images stitched in Photoshop

D800, ISO100, 1/500 sec @ f/8, 8 images stitched in Photoshop

Seeing the Northern Lights isn’t a given. With the unpredictability of the weather up there there’s as much chance of seeing the Lights as there isn’t.
And considering the fact that the Lights are only visible in the evenings and/or at night, it leaves about 12 hours of daylight time to shoot other things. And besides being insanely expensive, Norway is also an insanely beautiful country. At least up in the north where we were.

Sunsets and sunrises, a part of every photographer’s portfolio wherever he/she goes (I’m privileged that I got to see the Lights in the first place, but it would be sooooo cool to catch the them at sunset…)

D800, ISO100, 1/30 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/22, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO800, 8 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 14-24mm