My Latest Muse - It's Serious!

Hi folks, I know it's been a while - no posts for the whole of June 😲. I have been busy shooting, honest, but not much worth blogging about. Plenty of photos, but few words to go with them. I do have a new muse though. It's alright, Sharon knows about her. In fact she didn't even mind me creeping into bed at 2 am Saturday morning having spent the entire evening with her. It's a place, not a person and I've lived a 35 min drive away for the last 18 years and only just got round to visiting.

Science and Faith in Tension || Olympus 12 mm, f/9, 1/25 s, ISO 200, 14 shot pano 

The place in question is, unusually for me, a flat piece of ground, albeit within spitting distance of the mountains. What makes it special is the buildings - it's a satellite communication centre, an arable area spotted with massive 32 m diameter parabolic antennae. What makes this place special though is that it's also home to a beautiful little 600-year old Bavarian chapel; St. Johannes d. Täufer (St. John the Baptist). The whole site is so delightfully incongruous, firstly with the massive satellite dishes set in amongst the farm fields and then with the combination of the dishes and the ancient tiny church. Add a backdrop of the Alps - you're pretty much looking directly at the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain and I feel like the whole thing is a microcosm (or is that macrocosm) of my life - science, church, mountains.

Satellite Centre Raisting || Olympus 44 mm, f/8, 1/400 s, ISO 200 

Despite the 'incongruousnous' of the place, it works, there's tension between the elements, but there's also harmony. Visually, the tiny chapel easily holds its weight against the dozens of satellite dishes. This feels like my life to a certain extent, I live in multiple communities; my work community is very science laden with friends who are sceptical about people of faith, some parts of my faith community, my church, are wary about too much science, other communities I belong to are salt of the earth Bavarians where I live or people who share our love for the mountains. Here in Raisting it all comes together.

St. Johann d. Täufer, Raisting || Olympus 100 mm, f/8, 1/250 s, ISO 200

I've been down here three times in the meantime and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. The first time was to try an astro-shoot, the second after a massive rain storm came through and the third to try to catch the blue hour and some more astro shots. Given the right conditions, shooting the Milky Way here could be quite interesting. The trouble is, the dishes are quite well lit at night, obliterating any long exposures for the foreground. Add to that that both times I've been to shoot the stars there have been residual clouds reflecting light from the surrounding villages and you get a frustrating constellation (no pun intended, honest). The night sky is really dark and getting the best out of it requires long exposures to collect as much light as possible. If you've got wisps of cloud, even if they're not visible to the human eye, they catch the light being cast up from the villages below and as you'll see at the bottom of this post, it gives the night sky an ugly orange cast.

Stormclouds at Sunset || Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/25 s, ISO 200

I'm not going to show any photos from the first trip, they're just not worth it. I arrived late, set up where I thought there might be a nice view and shot into glaring spotlights all evening. The second time was quite special though. I went down with the whole family on the tail of a June thunderstorm. After eating at the delightfully Bavarian Gasthaus Drexl, we emerged to see the setting sun firing up the stormclouds that were slowly disappearing eastwards. What we hadn't expected were all the storks we saw. Sharon had glanced up as we left the Gasthaus and initially thought some silly bugger had posted a plastic bird on a scrappy nest atop their chimney, but then it moved and then we saw the chicks. Over the course of the evening we must have seen a dozen or so of the birds out in the fields, presumably looking for frogs and mice to bring back to their young.

Stork Parent || Olympus 100 mm, f/6.3, 1/800 s, ISO 200

The parabola dishes catch the evening light very satisfyingly, their structure catching the golden rays and reflecting them back. Some of the installations almost look like families with mum and dad towering over a clutch of infants.

Mum, Dad & The Kids || Olympus 29 mm, f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 200

The dishes are also thankful subjects for a monochrome treatment of the images. Here the combination of textures and tones screamed for a monochrome conversion. I pulled out the whites and blacks to make sure the image covered the whole gamut of black to white, added some dramatic contrast to the already moody clouds and sharpened the photo a little to arrive at this hangable composition.

Satellites and Storm || Olympus 13 mm, f/5.6, 1/80 s, ISO 200

My third trip was after a week of rainy storms had formed an impromptu lake in the middle of the fields allowing me to capture this reflection of the dishes dwarfed by an ancient oak tree. Getting low to the water let me catch some of the antennae with the mountains behind.

Satellite Reflections || Olympus 28 mm, f/6.3, 1/800 s, ISO 200

This time I was meeting up with a fellow photographer from Munich. Without him I would never have stepped behind the ancient chapel, but I'm so glad that I did just after the sun had set. Catching the colour of the last rays through the church windows together with the silhouette of the southwesternmost dish was a great start to the night.

Faith and Science at the Blue Hour || Olympus 8 mm, f/5.6, 1/5 s, ISO 200 

One of the nocturnal summer phenomena that I've only recently become aware of, thanks in part to Alyn Wallace's informative "What's in the Night Sky" YouTube series, is that of noctilucent clouds. They can be seen throughout the summer night, mostly to the north as these high altitude ice clouds catch the last of the sunlight. According to Wikipedia, these are normally only visible from about 50° latitude, meaning that they can be seen from the very northern tip of Bavaria. We seem to have had some luck in recent weeks and I've seen several photos of them in and around Munich and saw them myself when trying to catch the moon rising behind Andechs monastery a week previously. Being so far south I could only just see them dancing on the northern horizon, but they're definitely NLCs!

Noctilucent Clouds at Raisting|| Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 5 s, ISO 200

Having said that this next and last photo would never see the light of day, I am actually going to post it here. For one it highlights (sic) the problems of astrophotography in areas with urban light pollution, even when it's as sparsely populated as the area south of Dießen. Even the slightest amount of cloud catches the street lights and reflects their garing orange glow back to the camera as you can see here. But the reason I decided to share this image is the excitement that it gives me. This is a 3 min exposure at ISO 800 and not only can you see the beautiful textures of the galactic core, but also star colour is becoming visual. This is a quantum leap forward in my astrophotography, made possible by my Move Shoot Move star tracker, a device that sits between the tripod and camera and, when pointed at Polaris, rotates the camera at the same speed as the earth. Without it, my maximum exposure time is 25 s before the stars start to become streaks. With it I've been able to capture up to 8 min exposures with the stars remaining pin sharp. This allows me to lower the ISO and increase the colour information captured on the sensor. The downside is that, as you can see, with the camera moving even this slowly, any ground becomes blurred. Normally this would be overcome by taking a second similar exposure with the tracker turned off, but I had some technical issues with the untracked images and so this is about as good as it gets under the circumstances.

Milky Way Core || Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 3 min, ISO 800

This is definitely not the last you'll be seeing of the Erdfunkstelle Raisting from me; there's a lot more motherlode to be mined here. Watch this space!

Winter Sundowner at the Ammersee

I have the enormous privilege of living about a 10 min car ride from one of Bavaria's most picturesque lakes, the Ammersee. We've seen it in all conditions, from balmy sunny evenings, after torrential rain with mosquito plagues, autumn storms with huge waves and speeding kite surfers to completely frozen over in 2006. Working from home it's really easy to get there for a quick excursion. Although it's really chilly here at the moment - we're talking negative double digit Celsius - I was really surprised not to find more ice when I took off after work on Friday afternoon to check it out. Dawn that day had been really pretty and I had high hopes for the sunset despite the lack of significant cloud.

The Boathouse at Stegen I || Olympus 12 mm, f/4, 15 s, ISO 200 

Dressing up warm is critical in conditions like this. I knew I was going to be spending quite a while outside and so I put on downhill ski trousers over my jeans, heavy mountain boots with a second pair of socks, a windproof jacket, scarf, woolly hat and my latest acquisition, my Vallerret Markhof Pro 2.0 photography gloves. These are great thick gloves with foldable tips on the index fingers and thumbs allowing you to access all the necessary dials and buttons on the camera without exposing your whole hand. The finger tips fold back on strong magnets hidden unobtrusively within the fabric to keep out of the way.

I've included a screenshot of a Google map of Stegen (am Ammersee) detailing where each shot was taken in case you're interested. For more original ideas and inspiration regarding where to shoot at the Ammersee, Google images of the Ammersee or check out some of the local photo websites, such as Werner's Fototräume (also great for other photo spots in the vicinity).

Photo Locations from this Blog

The Solitary Boathouse at Stegen (1)

Arriving at the car park as most people were beginning to leave - not that the car park was very full anyway (had I mentioned how nippy it was?) - I was at first disappointed at the lack of ice, but I'd had the foresight to bring my neutral density filters and was confidant that I'd be able to get a few decent images out of the evening.

The Boathouse at Stegen II || Olympus 16 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 200

Once you get past the restaurants, the first landmark is the boathouse next to the beer garden. Always a thankful motive in the evening sun. The light was quite challenging so I slipped the Olympus into exposure bracketing mode and hand-took this image. It's not an HDR, but it is an exposure blend, with the sky, water and boathouse are all taken from separate images and assembled in ON1 Photo Raw - though any decent processing software will do the trick.

Boathouse Row at Stegen (2)

The second landmark is the row of boathouses with the Wasserwacht or lifeguard station. Again, sunset is always kind to these huts as you can see here. Whether or not you use the shoreline as a curved leading line is entirely up to you. On a clear day, the Alps form a pleasing backdrop to the right inviting you to taking a wider panorama. This time I had to be content with a pleasant orange glow on the horizon, which also works. The way the trees echo the line of the houses and the reflection all emphasise the structures in the scene.

Boathouse Row I || Olympus 23 mm, f/8, 1/125 s, ISO 200

The Jetty at Stegen (3)

The third stop and my actual destination was the background jetty in the photo here. The jetty leading from the beach huts doesn't work as there are no crosspieces down at the moment and looking along it you just get a wooden skeleton. I took my time setting up for this shot. At other times of the year you can line up the jetty pointing at the sun, but in February that's just not going to work. In order to bring a connection between the elements I elected for this 'compromise', placing the setting sun just over the end of the jetty. Tripod out, filters out. Assemble everything together, careful not to zoom out too far as my filters tend to vignette below about 14 mm. It was here that I noticed that the L-bracket had come loose. The clever people at Vallerret had anticipated this eventuality though. The back of each glove has a little pocket that you can stuff things like lens cloths in. The left pocket comes with a tripod key on a lengthy lanyard and so instead of having to fumble around in the fading light for the necessary tool, it was literally to hand.

You can see from the previous shot of the huts that the although the water near the shore was protected and relatively flat, further out the wind was ruffling the surface. In order to reduce the impact of the phenomenon it was time for the Big Stopper, an almost opaque piece of glass that goes in front of lens to reduce light, turning a 1/60 s exposure into a 20 s exposure, the minimum that was needed to iron out those waves. The almost direct sun was a bit of a problem so the next tool in the bag was the graduated filter. This is less dark than the Big Stopper but is gradated, one half being clear and the other darker for bringing down dark skies.

The Jetty I || Olympus 16 mm, f/5.6, 20 s, ISO 200

Processing-wise there wasn't a lot to do here. I've further darkened the sky and actually de-saturated it a bit to make the colours more pastel. I've done my usual trick of actually brightening the snow on the jetty to emphasise the line. As long as you don't blow the exposure, this is a really great technique to make an image stand out that I discovered when astro-shooting in the Alps in the early summer and revisited in my November edit of an image of the first snow of the season. They say that a good photo has rhythm - a difficult thing to define. One of the things I like about this photo is the repeating structures of the lines which are nicely parallel, from the jetty to the clouds and contrails (remember them?).

I shot quite a few of this scene as the sun sank below the horizon, but I think this one was the best of the set. There are always going to be shots that are blurred due to slight movements of the tripod, so shoot a few and sort out the best when you get back to the warm.

Back to Boathouse Row (2)

With the sun well and truly set it was time to start walking back to the car. A couple more 'togs were lingering around the boathouses and so I stopped to scout around to see what the fuss was about. I found this tiny inlet in the shore that caught my interest. Not a classical leading line, but it still takes the  viewer's eye in the right direction. I went as wide as I could, having put the Panasonic Leica 8-18 mm on the camera for this shot. The tripod was set low to the ground too.

Boathouse Row II || Olympus 8 mm, f/4.5, 5 s, ISO 64

Satisfied that I'd got the best out of the boathouses for the day I combed the beach back towards the restaurants. The sky still had a lot of interesting colour in it and it looked beautiful above the docked pleasure steamers at Stegen. Unfortunately, looking beautiful doesn't always translate to a great photo. I took a few, but none made the cut.

The Solitary Boathouse Revisited (1)

The last port of call was the original boathouse. By now, even though there was still a bit of colour in the sky, it was getting quite dark. But I'd come prepared with both my LumeCube panel and a head torch. The panel didn't like the cold very much. Even though I'd charged it completely before coming out it was only showing 30% power, plus it wasn't really cutting through the dark as I'd hoped. It wasn't the light source for the job. Fortunately the head torch was. My first image was from the east looking towards the sunset (first photo above). You can imagine from the photo why a little extra illumination was necessary. The light beam from the torch was quite narrow and so I waved my head back and forth over the wooden structure over the whole 15 s exposure. If you look carefully you can see the first stars beginning to appear in the sky. This for me is the magic window of light for photography - enough ambient light to be able to see features on the ground, the first stars visible and with a bit of colour in the sky from the setting sun. As you can imagine, it's a very narrow window, but if you get it right you can get some stunning images.

The Boathouse at Stegen III || Olympus 12 mm, f/4, 20 s, ISO 400

This last image is from the other side of the boathouse as the light was really fading. Again the boathouse was lit by my head torch. By playing around I found that if I illuminated for 10 s out of a 20 s exposure the light on the house was about right, though I did adjust it a bit in post - it's always difficult to accurately assess exposure in the dark as the camera screen always looks comparatively bright unless you dim it down. Keeping an eye on the histogram can certainly help, but here it was tricky to judge exactly how much light to add. I was certainly glad of the Vallerrets at this point. I really didn't want to have to be taking gloves on and off to fiddle with the settings in those temperatures.

I love how prominent Orion's Belt is in the winter sky here. Given the wide aperture I was surprised that the stars were as sharp as they have turned out here. That's micro four thirds cameras for you.

If you're local to us in Bavaria and are interested in a pair of Vallerret Markhofs, size L, drop me a line. They were just too small for me and I had to go XL. They're out of stock with Vallerret at the moment so if you want to do some winter photography this season I can warmly recommend them.

Afterword - If At First You Don't Succeed

A couple of the photography YouTube greats have recently released vlogs saying essentially the same thing. The one thing that will advance you as a photographer more than any other, the golden lesson of photography is... ...perseverance. I've had a couple of opportunities to practice this discipline over the last 12 months, whether the various attempts at astrophotography or trying again and again to get the right conditions on the covered bridge at Bad Hindelang, and every time it has paid off in spades. There were a couple of issues with the photos I took on Friday. I was especially unhappy with the photo of the jetty; the composition was off meaning that I had to heavily crop the image to get one that I was happy with and the aperture was so wide open that the depth of field was too narrow to catch the background ridge in focus (below). So tonight I returned, wife and girl-child in tow, to try and rectify my errors.

Reducing a picture to the essential elements

Valentine's Swans || Olympus 57 mm, f/8, 1/125 s, ISO 200

This time the view to the mountains was clear and there was some ice forming on the still water in front of the row of boathouses. On top of this, there were multiple pairs of swans on the water - how aposite for Valentine's day. I allowed myself to be distracted by both the birds and the boathouses before hurrying down to the jetty. I got a better crop, but the bitty ice detracts from the simplicity of the previous image and a lot of snow had gone from the jetty.

Boathouse Row III - HDR || Olympus 17 mm, f/8, 1/80 s, ISO 200 

This time I could get the composition and focus fixed on the jetty... ...but the ice is too gritty after kids were playing on it all day and the colours in the sky weren't quite as good. But hey, ho.

The Jetty II || Olympus 24 mm, f/8, 10 s, ISO 100

It's always a good idea to look around even when you've got a specific composition in mind. Ice had formed around the legs of the jetty and the water level had subsequently decreased, leaving these feet around the bottom. Against the light they formed an interesting sculpture.

Icy Foot || Olympus 86 mm, f/4, 50 s, ISO 100

And then the new moon revealed itself in the southwestern sky, giving me a chance to try another composition with the jetty including the mountains in the background...

The Jetty III  with New Moon and Swans || Olympus 14 mm, f/8, 1/10 s, ISO 100

The Jetty IV || Olympus 17 mm, f/8, 5 s, ISO 100

...and yet another with the boathouses before I was dragged back to the car by my half-frozen ladies. But I had promised them that we wouldn't stay too long and I was happy enough with the blue-hour photos from Friday. 

Boathouse Row IV || Olympus 8 mm, f/8, 5 s, ISO 100

Lessons Learned

Every time I go out I make mistakes. Every time I make mistakes I learn something. On Friday I learned about the best composition for the jetty. On Sunday I learned more about the Olympus high res mode and that patience is required when using it in conjunction with long exposures. A couple of times I thought it had crashed, when in fact it was just taking its time. Because I thought it had crashed I turned the camera off mid-processing, leading to me losing the first 2 or 3 high res shots. This mode is also too slow for lunar photography in combination with these long exposures - the moon simply moves too fast. Fewer mistakes to make next time.

Photography is like sailing or hiking. In fair weather it's easy. Mistakes are easily rectified, items are easy to find in rucksacks, etc. But the practice of doing those mundane things in straightforward conditions pays dividends when the going gets tough. When it's so cold that you can't think straight. When it's so dark that you can't remember where you put that filter. When the conditions are changing fast and you need to access a particular function on the camera, if you don't have the fair weather experience to fall back on, you'll just go home frustrated. If you want to be a good photographer, if you want to come home with the great photos taken in challenging conditions, practice all you can. You will be rewarded.