frozen

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Sometimes…..

Posted by Arno on February 12, 2013
Posted in: black and white, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , . 1 comment

….. when you expect one thing, you get something completely different.

That’s what happened when we went out for a sunrise shoot a week or so ago.
The weather was a bit… weird. I knew that if it would be completely overcast, the way it looked the day before, I wouldn’t go, because it wouldn’t be worth it, really. But the forecast said it would be partly overcast, which would be good. So we went out, and…
Yeah, it was completely overcast. I knew already then that what I’d be shooting would be monotone only. But it was good that we went, because even on totally overcast days you can find nice things to photograph.

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

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

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

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

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

D800, ISO100, 1/2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

(it’s funny how the color shifts when it’s rendered on the web. These images were all changed with the same setting in Lightroom, and look the same in full format. Here the hues are all over the map…)

Of course during the day the weather cleared up, and the clouds disappeared, bringing on yet another crisp and cold night.
I borrowed the Nikkor 300mm from a Buddy of mine (thanks Don!) and was presented with a good target in the early evening. Shot off the balcony of the apartment:

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 300mm + TC2 + TC1.4

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 300mm + TC2 + TC1.4

Tried to put 2 TC2s on top of each other, but that didn’t work. It’d require me to file off a piece of one of the TCs and that was a bit too much of the good 😀
I like the image as it is, though. It’s a lot crisper than previous moon pictures I once took with my old Sigma 170-500mm.

Just before it’s all ending…

Posted by Arno on March 13, 2012
Posted in: color, long exposure, nature, object, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

It’s almost a month ago since I stood on the sea taking pictures of the sunrise. Last week I was out there again. A whole different story now. And a lot earlier, too. Pff… And I almost missed it. Thought I’d be in time when I set the alarm on 5am, but boy, it was close. The civil twilight was already on its way out when I came to the spot.

The sea was starting to open up already again, even if it hasn’t been above zero very much, yet. The ice is still very thick in most places, but for the pictures that I shot I went right up to the water.
And when that boat passed, and everything started cracking and moaning around me, it did give me a slight tingle of discomfort. But owwell… There where I was standing the water can’t’ve been really deep 😉
Also… It’s rather worrying how the thick ice chunks appeal to you (or me in this case), they’re almost beckoning you to jump on them and see how far you can walk out on the sea…
But anyway… I could withstand the draw of the ice, but I did shoot some wonderful pictures of the sunrise.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/8 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm, and a second slightly shorter exposure, which I merged in Photoshop into the above HDR result.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 2 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm, and a second slightly shorter exposure, which I merged in Photoshop into the above HDR result.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 50mm

Time moves on, very fast

Posted by Arno on February 16, 2012
Posted in: color, long exposure, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

The sunrises in the posts before the previous one (the one with the ferries) were shot on Tuesday 7th of February. I was well in time, well before the Civil Twilight set in. I was on location at around 7:15 am and it was still dark. Then I planned to go shoot another sunrise with a friend of mine on Friday 10th (the pictures below are from that day). He asked me what time we should meet, and with the “7:15 still dark” in the back of my mind I told him between 7:00 and 7:15 would be just fine. But then Friday came and I was driving down to the location and Civil Twilight had already set in around 7:05. We missed the prettiest part, unfortunately 🙁
So within three days Civil Twilight had come about 20 minutes earlier…

Not all was lost, though, and even though the sunrise itself wasn’t as spectacular as the Tuesday before, the images still came out nice.
And there’s one of the moonset, too, which happened to be at the same time, in the same location, but then on the other side. I considered trying a 270° panorama, with both sunrise and moonset in one picture, but didn’t do it in the end. You’ll have to make do with separates.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/10 sec @ f/16, Nikkor 14-24mm

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 14-24mm

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 14-24mm

Lauttasaari moonset

D700, ISO200, 1 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm (two images merged in Photoshop)

 

And for a little added bonus…

Posted by Arno on February 13, 2012
Posted in: color, industry, long exposure, nature, object, photography, Photoshop, travel, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I didn’t realize when I was out there, that I was so close to the route of the cruise liners that go to Estonia and Sweden from Helsinki. So it was a nice surprise when they came by.

Cruise liner going to Sweden

D700, ISO200, 30 sec @ f/22, Nikkor 70-200mm

The next one was a bit more complicated. I had to run close to the water and set up 14 flashes which I could remotely trigger, so that the ship was lit up sufficiently. I nearly drowned in the process, but I survived.

Cruise liner going to Tallinn, Estonia

D700, ISO200, 1/60 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200mm

Okok… I lied… I didn’t use flashes, I did it in post-processing 😉

How to… a little tutorial on how I post-processed the sunrise

Posted by Arno on February 10, 2012
Posted in: color, long exposure, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I can just hear you think: “Pff… That guy is ranting all the time about how not to overdo it with the saturation sliders and all, and look at him, totally out of control there!”

But no. I wasn’t. What you see here, is pretty much what I saw out there. It was beautiful. It was breath-taking. It was like the sky was ignited. I took the last image from the previous blog post. Check it out from the screenshots below, and you’ll see that I didn’t touch the saturation sliders to saturate the colors. I even DEsaturated the blues slightly.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/20sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm.

What you see above here is the original. The untouched, unedited RAW file. I underexposed it on purpose, because I didn’t want to blow out the shades in and around the sun. Shooting in RAW will give you so much leverage that you can easily underexpose with a few stops without the risk of screwing up your image.

I imported the image in Lightroom, where I tweaked it slightly. The screenshot below shows I didn’t touch the saturation sliders. Just the lens correction, some fill light and some clarity, which made the image look like this:

Lauttasaari sunrise

The original image after some minor adjustments in Lightroom

After that I opened it up in Photoshop. The first thing I did was pull up a curves adjustment layer and gave it some more contrast:

Lauttasaari sunrise

A curves adjustment layer to give the image a bit more contrast for that little punch

See what that does to the color? This would almost go for a saturation increase, wouldn’t it? That’s what contrast typically does to a picture, it gives it that little extra punch that makes it from flat into… well… flamboyant 😀

The next thing I did, that’s a personal thing, I guess, is desaturate the snow at the bottom. Even if the dark clouds above reflected their deep blue hue in the snow, and it really looked blue, I don’t really fancy it. So I made that look a lot less blue (as I did in all the images from the previous blog post. I think in the first one it shows most clearly).

Lauttasaari sunrise

A hue/saturation adjustment layer including layer mask to desaturate the blue tone from the snow in the bottom part of the image.

And finally a levels adjustment layer, also for the snow at the bottom part, to lighten it up a bit so it didn’t look too grey. Be careful not to lighten it up too much, otherwise it’ll look unnatural with the rest of the image.

Lauttasaari sunrise

A levels adjustment layer to brighten up the snow a tad bit, so that it doesn't look grey after desaturating the blue.

So there you have it. The end result. No out of control saturation stuff. Just the way it was. And gorgeous it was! Worth withstanding the cold every second.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/20 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm

It may be hard in the beginning, but the reward…

Posted by Arno on February 5, 2012
Posted in: color, long exposure, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Winters here are harsh. We’re talking temperatures close to -30°C in southern Finland at the moment. And colder during the night. And even colder when you go more north. Last year I posted a few pictures of the Sininen Hetki, the “Blue Moment”, kind of like the Civil Twilight, but in terms of colors you only get it during very cold and clear nights. This deep, deep, almost tangible blue which is touched by the colors of the sun rising or setting. It’s magical.
I’ve been planning to go to this particular spot already for several years, but for some reason I never did. Last week I tried, but since it’s been snowing her pretty much non-stop for a week now, there wasn’t an opportunity to get this Blue Moment.
Today there was, though (on a Sunday, of all days… ;o) ). Dark moments here in Finland, short days, with not much light and not much sun. But the positive side to that is, that you don’t have to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning to shoot a sunrise. So I got up at 6:30, looked outside and saw that it was good. Looked on the thermometer and saw that it was not so good, but owwell… You can dress for cold weather and I’ve been out in colder than -24°C. Got dressed, packed up the gear (and put some batteries in my pants pocket, just in case) and left for the location I’ve been wanting to go to for such a long time.

Thermometer may have pointed at -24°C at the outside of the apartment, out of the wind in between apartment buildings, but I tell you, it was NASTY cold out on the sea (yes, on the sea. Here the temperatures drop to such foul levels that the sea freezes over).
But once you’re out there, out in the middle of nowhere… Where not only the colors are almost tangible, but also the silence… You could just lose yourself in the nothingness that surrounds you. Every now and again a bird chirps (probably also complaining about the weather) and the creaking of the branches of the trees back on the shore). Solitude is a warm blanket of peacefulness when taken in the right amounts and in the right locations.
That in itself is already a reward for withstanding the freezing temperatures and the tempting covers of a warm bed. But when you see the sun come up slowly and you see the colors change…

Sunrise over Lauttasaari

D700, ISO200, 3 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 14-24mm

Sunrise over Lauttasaari

D700, ISO200, 1/20 sec @ f/13, Nikkor 14-24mm

Sunrise over Lauttasaari

D700, ISO200, 1/3 sec @ f/13, Nikkor 14-24mm

A guy’s world of wonders, Day 162

Posted by Arno on February 26, 2011
Posted in: color, nature, photography, shapes. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 comment

It’s really quite easily explained, but it’s still a wonder how this happens.
Did I mention before to get in closer? And don’t be afraid to get down and dirty. Lying on your stomach gives a whole different perspective of the world. You should try it some time 😉

Icicles

D700, ISO200, 1/500 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

Icicles

D700, ISO200, 1/350 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

A guy’s world of wonders, Day 160

Posted by Arno on February 24, 2011
Posted in: color, nature, photography, shapes. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Well… what can I say…
Grrr… 😀

Icicles

D700, ISO200, 1/750 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

A guy’s world of oblivion, Day 50

Posted by Arno on November 6, 2010
Posted in: black and white, color, flower, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, studio. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

From my post about the last bit of fall there was a bit left…
I read an article in one of the photography magazines that I get and decided to try out one of the things they showed there. I’d saved one of the leaves and put it in a bowl of water in the freezer to let it freeze over. I forgot about the whole thing and it’s been sitting in the freezer all that time. But not anymore!
It’s really a fun experiment to try 🙂

Frozen leaf

D700, ISO200, 1/20 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro

Frozen leaf

D700, ISO200, 1/125 sec @ f/3.8, Tamron 90mm macro

It sneaks up on you

Posted by Arno on September 30, 2008
Posted in: photography, seasons. Tagged: , , , . 1 comment

And you don’t even notice!
I’ve been out pretty much every day, but not early in the morning in the past week and a half or so. During the day it was really pleasant weather. Sunshine (for a change!) and probably some 14 degrees Celcius.
This morning I had to get out early, because I had an appointment downtown. When I got to the car I was kind of surprised to see it all frozen up. And not just a bit, but a good layer of ice that I needed to scrape off.
That layer of ice meant it had been at least -3 to -5 degrees Celcius in the night.

Took me 10 minutes to get the car ice-free!

Took me 10 minutes to get the car ice-free!

Well, what can I say? ;)

Well, what can I say? 😉

So… Winter’s on the doorstep. And I’ve seen only a couple of weeks of fall. We’ll probably get a big pack of snow in a couple of weeks…