Out and About December

There is (or probably more accurately, was) a trope in exploration films of the last century that the natives would refuse to let themselves be photographed for fear of losing their essence, that the camera would magically capture their soul or 'essence' and leave them somehow diminished. As enlightened people we pooh-pooh such superstitious nonsense, especially the more scientifically minded of us (I have a PhD in biochemistry). But more recently I've come back to this question, from a slightly different perspective. Not that I'm advocating that capturing light reflected from a subject on a sensor in any way takes something away from the scene, but the idea of capturing the essence of something.

At The Castle Gate I || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250 

It all boils down to the age-old question; what makes a good photo? Obviously there are n+1 answers to that question, where n = the number of photographers asked, and a lot will depend on the genre of photography in question. What makes a good portrait photo isn't the same as what makes a good product, macro, wildlife, abstract, street, sport or landscape photo. I'm not even sure that there's a single over-arching principle that captures what constitutes a good photo for a single one of these genres, but I think that the concept of capturing the essence of the subject comes close. 

The Setting Sun: Composite || Olympus 100 mm f/5.6, 1/320 s, ISO 200

The shot above is a three-shot composite. I hesitate to use the term HDR as it was more a case of exposure blending - manually combining the correct levels of exposure from the three otherwise identical photos instead of a computer (or camera) -generated HDR. Hand-held. The essence of the scene is the setting sun in the context of the ice-covered branches and wintery sky.

A portrait that tells you something about the subject's passions by capturing the person in their environment, a sports photo that conveys the tension of the game, a landscape photo that transports the viewer to the environment and scene in question will always be more compelling than a plain documentary shot. But how do you get such an image?

A Man and His Dog; Rule of Thirds || Olympus 100 mm f/7.1, 1/30 s, ISO 1600

This is where the standard rules of photography composition play a supporting role, but no more - which is all they should ever do (IMHO). The rule of thirds (above, horizontally and vertically), the use of leading lines to direct the viewer's gaze, focus point and depth of field, centred reflections are only ever aids to arriving at decent photos and never a guarantee. It's easy to take a photo that obeys all the rules, but taking a photo that captures the essence of the scene requires something more than following a list of step by step instructions. This is what separates the good from the great.

The Village Oak Tree || Olympus 31 mm f/5.6, 1/60 s, ISO 250

A great question that can help really capture a photo that tells a story is to ask yourself which aspect of the scene really caught your attention. Once that question has been answered, the next one is more technical; how can I take a photo of the scene that accentuates that aspect. Which focal length do I need to use to emphasise the aspect in question? What light do I need to light the scene? Exposure? Depth of field? Sometimes the response to all of these questions is instinctive and you just know as soon as you look at the scene what you need to do, but this instinct requires training. 

The American photographer Joshua Cripps sums up this process with the following analogy: "a good landscape photograph is like a caricature: it simplifies and exaggerates". I think that's a great concept to hold in mind as we as ourselves these questions. In the photo above I've done this partly in post-processing, emphasising the brightness of the snow on the branches. Trees with a low amount of snow on them like this are infinitely more interesting than without, or even with tons of snow on them. What would otherwise have essentially been a high contrast image without the snow - more or less black and light blue, gains an extra dimension.

Winter Evening Personified || Olympus 41 mm f/7.1, 1/80 s, ISO 1250

When looking through my photos from December so far, this was an concept that I had in mind. Which of these photos capture the essence of early winter, that transport the viewer to the scene at the time? Which of them leave the viewer feeling the cold on the end of their nose and tips of the ears? Or hearing the crunch of snow under their feet as they walk the local fields?

At The Castle Gate II || Olympus 23 mm f/7.1, 1/50 s, ISO 1600

My daughter gave me the idea for the shot above as she crouched close to the ground to catch the reflection of the gate in the frozen water. Never be too proud to steal a good idea, or to get your trousers grubby/wet for the cause!

Winter's Morning || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

Equally, it's always good to be able to go at the drop of the hat. This wintery sunrise shot was shot pretty much from the front doorstep

Landsberg Christmas Tree || Olympus 11 mm f/3.5, 1/13 s, ISO 250

I love shooting in the blue hour - the hour or so after (or before) the sun goes down. Whether in towns such as our local Landsberg (above) or out in nature catching the first stars whilst there's still enough light to illuminate the mountains. Any earlier for this scene and the Christmas lights would have been overwhelmed by the daylight, much later and there wouldn't have been enough light to see the buildings properly.

Between the Villages || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

Another venerable tree, a solitary beech in the fields between us and the next village. Again, the snow on the branches make an otherwise relatively dull subject a lot more interesting. The ploughed field and resulting lines help to add interest and geometry to the shot. In retrospect I should have got a little closer to the tree to get more separation from the tree behind it, but it's not disastrous.

Across the Fields || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

I really like winter skies, especially towards the ends of the day. There's often a lot of pink in the clouds even when sunset isn't imminent. This photo was taken just an hour after midday looking south.

A Glimpse of Sun || Olympus 31 mm f/20, 1/15 s, ISO 200

This is a good example of a caricature image. The things that caught my eye were the sunlight twinkling through the tree tops and the snow lying on the downward sloping branches. I deliberately stopped the aperture down to f/20 to achieve the little sunbursts. Combining low aperture with fragments of sun - whether it's just breaking over the horizon, peaking from behind a mountain or behind trees like here lets you get these classical star shapes. Some lenses will give more, others, such as the Olympus Zuiko 12-100 mm here, less, but they still give that classic sunburst. This is another manual exposure blend, one for the sky and one for the forest. The pile of dead wood in the foreground emphasises the snowy branches by repeating the pattern of lines.

Into the Woods || Olympus 18 mm f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 800

Classic leading lines here heading into some local woodland. Exposure bracketed / HDR in order not to overwhelm the shadows and highlights in the final image. The curve of the track really strengthens the image, as do the snowy branches left and right and the upright trunks of the firs at the back. The fact that there's some light at the centre illuminating the trees also helps; the eyes are always naturally attracted to the light. 

Unearthly Glow HDR || Olympus 15 mm f/8, 1/10 s, ISO 320

I really like this last shot. Walking back towards the house through my favourite local woods the low afternoon sun and slight mist caught my eye through the trees. Taking care to hide the direct sun behind a tree I shot an exposure bracket (again, +/- 2 EV), combined as an HDR image in ON1 Photo Raw. The snow on the ground and the high branches (you had to look back didn't you?) really set it off.

So, that's my December photography so far. How's yours going? What weather have you got? Are you able to get out still?

Ten Below Zero

At about the same time as we came to Bavaria, two of our friends moved to southern Norway. Over the years we've kept in touch and every few years visited each other. With the children out of the nest, we decided to use the opportunity to head north this winter for a week's cross country skiing with them up at their cabin in the hills above Lillehammer. The temperature maximum for the whole week was - 9°C, a fleeting moment on Tuesday lunchtime if memory serves, and with a perceived wind chill of a further -10°C, so it didn't really count anyway. 

The Hills at Fagerhoy || F8, 1/640 s, ISO 200

Shooting in snow and in minus temperatures is challenging. Because of the inherent brightness of the conditions we need to shoot even further to the right than normal to avoid muddying things and without losing any details to the highlights. Unless I'm deliberately shooting high key, where it doesn't matter if parts of the photo are washed out, I like to be able to see at least a breath of detail in even the brightest parts of a photo, otherwise it disturbs me as much as a wonky horizon. So, shoot as far to the right as possible. 

The next problem is the cold, whether out during the day or during the two astro sessions at night. Either the battery didn't like it or the lens frosted over. When I'm hiking or cross country skiing I like to have the camera attached to my rucksack strap with a Peak Design capture plate; I'm more a runner and gunner rather than a tripod shooter. At -15°C the battery only lasts so long strapped to the shoulder and the padded holster tends to interfere either with the arms if attached to the hip or certain parts of the male anatomy if it's further round to the front. On the coldest days there was no other option if I wanted to take photos though. 

Blue Shining Through || F7.1, 1/320 s, ISO 200

The challenge the first few days was more a question of abundance of light and lack of familiarity with the landscape. Bright blue skies on snow make very high contrast images, turning almost everything else in the frame black, whether trees or people. And although we'd been to this location once before, it had been at the end of summer rather than the middle of winter. There was no reverting to my standard approach of focusing on the foreground or foliage - there simply wasn't any, and the landscape is significantly different to my normal alpine stamping grounds, the skies are much more wide open than I'm used to. 

Intimate details

Whilst trying to get the lie of the land, my eye was caught by some easier intimate shots, my safety fallback. I know some photographers struggle to see these mini landscapes, but my eye seems to be tuned to these more compact pictures somehow. In the snowy landscape it was the folds in the hills where streams run in summer, the collections of bushes on a hillside or an isolated farmstead, abandoned for the winter. The subtle shots. 

The Folds || F6.3, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Sometimes you don't have to look for the compositions, they veritably jump out at you such as here with the frost covered birch trees. There are essentially two types of trees on the hillsides around Skeikampen, either the dark firs or the stunted coppery birch, both of which simply appear to be black against the blinding white snow. The last two nights in the cabin there was enough mist at night that it formed hoarfrost on the wind-stunted birch, adding a third shade to the otherwise stark black/white contrast. This alone was enough to grab all of our interests, the grey tones adding a significant point of interest to the scene. 

The Folds || F6.3, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Fjell Farmsted || F8, 1/400 s, ISO 200

Norwegian hyttekultur 

The Norwegians love their mountain cabins, their home from homes in the wilds (and less than wilds). In fact it's not unknown for them to invest more in their weekend houses than their town dwellings; a small flat in Oslo and a comfortable cabin in the hills. My research tells me that in 2008, every second Norwegian had access to a second home of some kind. The hills around Skeikampen are littered with these cabins in a range of sizes and styles, anything from the simple wooden structures to low-lying dwellings made from the local stone, sometimes with grass roofs. In fact some of them blend in so well that you don't appreciate how many there are dotted around the countryside until dusk, when they all light up. 

The Folds || F4, 1/3 s, ISO 1600

Layers

Morning mist on the last morning gave us the double bonus of a touch of hoar frost together with some sweet layers. The time windows were quite narrow though, even with temperatures below - 10°C, as soon as the mist lifted the late February sun warmed the branches of the trees and the frost quickly disappeared. The transformation from magical to mundane was very stark. 

Layers in the Forest || F8, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

Frosty Forest || F8, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Astro 

There were two new bits of gear that I took with me that I was itching to try out; my Benro Geared Head and a new Haida Clear Night astro filter. Added to that I had some ideas about how to shoot some star trails using the Olympus Live Composite mode; essentially this in-camera setting allows you to take a single starting exposure and then press the shutter a second time and the camera starts a series of shots that only record additional light - it's useful for lightning storms for example, allowing you essentially to take a long exposure without danger of overexposing the base image. Other cameras require you to take a series of images and then stack them additively in post. Live Comp allows you to do it in a single image. The disadvantage is that a single complication can ruin the whole 30 min shot (a car driving past, for example, or somebody knocking the tripod by accident), the advantage that you can do the whole thing in one take without stacking. 

After a couple of test images taking multiple 30" exposures over about 5 min I tried a first 30 min image on the first night out. A couple of nights later I'd scouted out a much better location pointing north towards the pole star overlooking the local village. I deliberately placed the pole star* off centre as I felt that having it dead centre would have been boring. The final shot is a composite of three images; one for the sky, one for the brightly lit village and one for the snowy forest. Assembling and masking the layers in ON1 was tricky, particularly the border between the night sky and the fir trees, but I'm quite happy with the end result. 

Pole Star over Skeikampen || F2.8, 40 min, ISO 1600, 30 s ISO 200 and 30 s ISO 6400

*The pole (north) star can be found by drawing an imaginary line connecting the two stars at the back of The Plough (Big Dipper, The Wagon or Ursa Major) and following it about 5 repeats upwards until you get to the next bright star.

One thing that I was quite eager to see while we were so far north (for us at least) was the northern lights and I loaded the Aurora app on my phone before we left. I rather naively thought that we'd be seeing them every other night and so was quite disappointed when the KP forecast was only 2/8, rising to a maximum of 4/8 in the middle of the week. Imagine my surprise (and excitement) then when looking at my first test shot looking north to see a green fringe on the horizon! There was absolutely nothing visible to the naked eye, but a 25" exposure revealed a clear trace of the northern lights. 

The winter Milky Way isn't all that much to look at, but here's my final take on Cygnus and the Northern Lights. Single shot edited in ON1 Photo RAW 2020.

Northern Lights at Skeikampen || F2.8, 60 s, ISO ISO 6400

Regarding the new gear, the Benro certainly makes precise alignments a whole lot easier, making focusing much simpler too, using the camera focus zoom to centre in on a bright star. Whether or not the star filter brings a lot to the table remains to be seen. There isn't a whole lot of light pollution in central Norway and I didn't have the presence of mind to do any with/without comparisons, so they're all 'with'. 

One error that I'm consistently making with my astro shots is foreground exposure. Because it's dark, the images on the back screen of the camera appear comparatively bright, but take the image indoors and it's a very different picture. 

Panoramas

I have a love-hate relationship with panoramas. It's something that I'd love to be able to do well, but feel that it's a discipline that I haven't yet mastered. I'm comfortable with the 16:9 format, but anything longer than that is challenging. I don't know whether it's simply a question of size - that I can't envisage how the picture would look printed big, or whether it's something more fundamental. Whatever it is, it's going to require significant work to consistently arrive at images I'm happy with (with the exception of this one). Be sure to let me know if you have a suggestion concerning how to improve my panoramic game. 

Over the Fjells || F8, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

So, those are my 10 'below zero' shots. What adventures have you got coming up, and what preparations are you making for the photography?