winter

All posts tagged winter

Some more snow…

Posted by Arno on February 16, 2013
Posted in: color, lightroom, nature, object, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

… 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, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/500 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

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

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

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

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/5.6, Nikkor 14-24mm

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

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

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

 

 

 

The sound of silence …

Posted by Arno on January 29, 2013
Posted in: color, lightroom, nature, photography, Photoshop, travel, wildlife. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 4 comments

I tend to think I’m a social (sociable) guy. But I know I also love solitude. I love to go out by myself, to places where I know I’m alone, where no one can hear me, where I can hear no one.
When I was in the Rocky Mountains with my Buddy Wayne we had an absolute great time, spent together of course, mostly. But there was one moment when we were supposed to shoot the sunrise over Grand Lake, but replanned because there was too thick a fog. We went out on a hike instead and at some point I ventured one way and he the other. I veered off the path and walked about half a mile or so into the bushes, until just at the edge of the forest line.

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

See, not very good for sunrise, or what? 😀

Got some surprising company in the end:

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm, Nikkor TC2 III

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm, Nikkor TC2 III

D800, ISO800, 1/1000 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm, Nikkor TC2 III

 

It was awesome. Yeah, it could’ve been a black bear, I realize. In which case it would’ve still been awesome, but things may not have ended in the same way as they did 😀
It’s a completely different feeling than when you pull up behind the other 10 cars with people (and their pockets / cellphones with flash).

Grand Lake – Rocky Mountains, landscapes

Posted by Arno on November 20, 2012
Posted in: black and white, color, long exposure, nature, photography, Photoshop, travel. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I can write loooong pieces of text about the landscapes.
They’re gorgeous. And they’re many. And they look different every day, especially when you have a sunny day one day and snow the next, and sun again the day after that.
Have a look:

Valley with a river running in between two mountain ranges

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm

Yellow line dividing the road running off into the distance

D800, ISO400, 1/250 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm, Nikkor TC2

Boulders on top of a mountain in Rocky Mountain national park

D800, ISO100, 1/30 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 14-24mm

Logs in the partly frozen water of a lake

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

Dirt road leading into the fog and into the Rocky Mountains

D800, ISO100, 1/30 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

Waterfall in a small stream covered with fallen trees

D800, ISO400, 1/4 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

Water fall in a small canyon in Grand Lake in the Rocky Mountains

D800, ISO100, 8 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm, Singh-Ray VariND

Sunset over Grand Lake

D800, ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 50mm

So then… the Rockies…

Posted by Arno on November 9, 2012
Posted in: black and white, color, nature, photography. Tagged: , , , , . 1 comment

After all the fuss with the cards and then the image theft, I finally got around to do something with my images.
I’ll spread it out over a few posts, so I don’t have to write everything in one go, and you get to take your time looking at the scenery 😉

The initial idea was that we were going to photograph the fall colors. But my Buddy had already warned me to take warm clothes, because the weather was turning around rapidly.
And so it did. I flew in to Denver late one night. We slept a night, and went for a ride in Rocky Mountain National Park, slept for another night and went back along the same route.
These were two completely different days. Two completely different worlds. It was both amazing and stunning. But I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Colorado River (as a baby)

D800, ISO400, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 14-24mm

And 24 hours later:

Colorado River (as a baby)

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 14-24mm

Traffic sign without snow

D800, ISO200, 1/125 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 50mm

And 24 hours later:

Traffic sign after a night of snow

D800, ISO200, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 50mm

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)

 

Once you get the hang of it…

Posted by Arno on February 9, 2012
Posted in: color, long exposure, nature, photography, Photoshop, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

… you gladly return to freeze your ass off. Seriously!
The forecast was bad. The forecast was full cloudy, with chances of snow. But I had to get up early to bring the Better Half to the airport, so I figured I could take the camera anyway. To drive down there, have a looksie, and if it wouldn’t look good, go home and back to bed.
It didn’t look good. You know… for once… the forecast had a point. It was cloudy. Very much so. But owwell… I was awake and cold (the temperature was only -4°C, but that wind… that wind was MEAN, I tell you!), so it would be stupid to go back home and to be now, right?

Right! Good things will come to those who wait. Patience is a virtue. And so on and so on.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 10 sec @ f/6.7, Nikkor 50mm

I was out there well before the sunrise started. It was still full dark. But when the light hit through, it started out like this. The sky opened up slightly for a moment, which was when I shot a few pictures like the one above. Then it got totally cloudy again. But then, when the actual sunrise started, it opened up again slightly.

Lauttasaari sunrise

D700, ISO200, 1/10 sec @ f/11, Nikkor 70-200mm

Lauttasaari sunrise

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

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

Staying in black and white

Posted by Arno on February 2, 2012
Posted in: black and white, color, copyright infringement, object, photography, Photoshop, portrait, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I wrote about hi-contrast black and white late last year, when I shot a picture from the window of my apartment.

I shot a bunch of images from this window (all posted here on the blog), which I figured I could turn into a series I named “Between the corner of the street and the sixth floor” (or in Finnish “Kadun kulman ja kuudennen kerroksen välissä”). Don’t ask… 😉
Anyway… I was missing one image still, and I had some idea about it. And I thought I could implement one of the most cliché things in photography. It was kind of inspired by that court case about copyright infringement which has just been in the news in the UK about the black and white image with the red British bus and the Big Ben in the background (totally stupid, something so moron-ish I thought it could only happen in the US with their farce of a justice system, and all of us photographers could just as well pack up our photography bags and hang them in the trees with an outcome like that, but let’s not get me going, that’ll just ruin my day).

I was looking for people crossing that same pedestrian’s crossing, but in winter, with snow, and dressed (partly) in red.
It’s surprising how many of those are walking around here, I must say. It wasn’t at all hard to get. Hence I ended up with a good number of pictures in just like half an hour or so. Now I’m considering making this a whole new series in itself 😀

Crossing

D700, ISO200, 1/60 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

Crossing

D700, ISO200, 1/125 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

Crossing

D700, ISO200, 1/125 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

Crossing

D700, ISO800, 1/180 sec @ f/8, Nikkor 70-200mm

Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope I won’t be hauled to a UK prison and be dragged into court for copyright infringement. Because that church in the background (which is just outside the visible area) does look a lot like Big Ben. And I gotta say that some of the people in these pictures really do look like a British bus…
But owwell… Let’s see.

Oh, and if you happen to recognize yourself in the picture do drop me a line and I’ll send you a print for free. I didn’t think it was a good idea to yell six floors down and ask if it was ok to take the picture while you were standing in the middle of the road… 😉

And sometimes you have to look up to get something in the eye

Posted by Arno on January 25, 2012
Posted in: color, nature, photography, seasons, weather. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

😀

It’s been snowing here pretty much non-stop for the past week.
I got a parking ticket for parking with a permit in an area where my permit is valid, because the parking smurf was too lazy to clean the snow off my window to see the permit (or then I don’t understand what’s written on the sign, but we’ll see about that when I object to the fine).
Anyway… In all desperate frustration, you throw your arms up to the sky, look up and quietly say some really foul words and then fall silent for the beauty that meets your eye up there.
Not all beauty is on eye-height, or at your feet for that matter.

It's snowing!

D700, ISO200, 1/125 sec @ f/2.4, Nikkor 50mm