Last night there was a thunder storm.
It wasn’t really a storm, at least not near to where I live. There was no rain, just some wind and only occasionally did I hear some rumbling in the sky.
But I had a great view over the bay where the lightning came down every so often.

D800, ISO100, 30 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm
Three images put together in Photoshop (CS6, and no, I have no intention on going Cloud).

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…

… 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

… before we go to the nice and warm Philippines…

I’ll make this an exposure 101. If you’re a pro-photographer you already know this (or at least, you should! ), but I’ve been asked about this a couple of times and I decided to do a simple, little write up about it, without getting into too technical language.

Why is it important to take (manual) control of your camera?
A lot of people, especially those who have just bought a camera or have just gotten into photography, use the automatic settings in the camera. In most of the average cases that would be just fine, but since a camera is just a thing, with no obvious intelligence, when things get out of average, the picture goes south as well.

My camera is set (in 95% of the cases) to full manual with spot metering. I prefer spot metering above all other settings, because I get to pinpoint a location in my frame for which I decide what exposure is the best one, based on the initial suggestion of the light meter in the camera.
The other metering methods are also working fine, but don’t just blindly trust the values the light meter in your camera shows you.
What you need to know about the camera’s light meter, is that it’s “calibrated” to assume that everything in your frame has an average hue. The light meter doesn’t see or read colors, it just sees light or dark. 18% grey may sound familiar to some of you, maybe not to others. But 18% grey is what the light meter thinks the average hue in your image is (or rather, should become). Green grass, for example, is about 18% grey, on a normal sunny day. So if you were to take an image of a sports field with mostly grass and you’d have your camera do everything automatically, you’d have a great picture with a perfect exposure. Of course there are plenty of other things that are -about- 18% grey. But what if you’re shooting somewhere where everything, or the bigger part of your frame, is NOT 18% grey?
If that were the case, and you have your camera set to automatic (or to manual, and you’d dial the exposure, ISO and/or aperture so that the bar sits nicely on the 0 in the middle), your camera will make everything 18% grey.

The perfect examples are in the two extreme ends of the light spectrum.
Imagine a winter landscape, with mainly… yep: snow. Snow is one of the purest, whitest substances on this planet (provided it’s not territorially marked by some inhabitant of this planet ).
So what would happen in the camera when I’d point it at my winter landscape? The meter sees the landscape and ‘thinks’: “Wow! That’s easy! A big frame full of 18% grey.” And so, thinking the purest white snow is 18% grey, the camera underexposes your image with about 2 stops.

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/60 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/500 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 50mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 50mm

In order to correct this, and to get the right exposure for the snow, you’d have to manually adjust the exposure time either by dialing up it with up to two stops, or use the exposure compensation.

The same thing goes for the other extreme of the scale. When what you see in your viewfinder (or your Liveview screen) is primarily black/dark, the light meter will assume that this is 18% grey and will adjust -overexpose in this case- the exposure to make the blacks look like 18% grey. You will have to underexpose the image to correct for the camera’s false assumptions.

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 14-24mm

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

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/4, Nikkor 50mm

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

A snow storm always makes for nice pictures. Especially when you get to take the images from the relatively safe environment of your balcony and you get to see people struggling to get by from a distance…

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm