Info

Landscape and Nature Photography from the North of Europe

Posts from the Articles Category

Choose another category?

It surely took a while, but after four months of waiting my Lee Big Stopper finally arrived at my front door! Since it took so long it was way too late to use it during my trips to Norway and it’s coast (admittedly the conditions didn’t allow me then to actually reach there but that’s a totally different story) but there are enough places around here to make use of it.

Even though I had only little chance to make actually use of it so far, I found doing the math and/or looking at the accompanied table to figure out the correct exposure time, not difficult, but maybe a bit cumbersome. In short: I was looking for a handy solution.

Spending some time during a four-minute exposure and taking pictures of, well, the camera taking pictures.

Previously I checked the exposure, looked up the exposure time one the table (or worse: tried to calculate) and then started the stopwatch on my phone. Not too difficult but I was looking for something even easier, and naturally there’s an app for that!

Screenshot of NDTimer

I found a simple little app in the app-store called NDTimer which does all I was looking for: calculating the exposure and includes a timer. The procedure is simple, after composing the image I take a meter reading for the correct exposure without the filter attached and enter it into the app. I have already pre-selected of the many options, the 10 Stops for the Big Stopper and get immediately the correct exposure together with a timer. Next I only have to release the shutter (in bulp-mode) and the timer at the same time. The rest is just waiting. Couldn’t be any easier.

For the price of a fraction of the filter it is a no-brainer if you own an iPhone.

Note

The app calculates many different ND and pol filters as well. For a complete overview of it’s feature visit the app-store or the developer’s webpage

I don’t know about you, but I have always been fascinated by the beauty and timelessness of a good black and white photograph, but for some reason I often found it challenging to pre-visualize the final image. While I found that more often than not an image which works in B&W usually will also work in colour, but not necessarily the other way round. It is the shapes and tones which make or break a composition and seeing an image in colour ever so often distracts from the final result.

This raised the question on how one could learn to see images in Black & White.

Naturally, as will all things art there’s no real shortcut. It is learned by studying examples of good B&W photography and simply working on this. But there’s a way to make the process of visualization at least a bit easier and maybe speed up the process a bit.

Doing my last road-trip I remembered a technique which I believe to have heard of in one of the interviews by Brooks Jensen (I wish I could point you to the right one, as it was very interesting), that is, shooting in RAW (well, that’s a given) and simply setting the image-preview to monochrome.

It’s that easy!

This might not be possible on every camera but on the 5D MkII for example, it is just a matter of a menu setting.

An image from a recent project composed using B&W preview

As long as the image is taken in RAW the only thing that actually changes is the preview on the back of the camera. If composing in the Live-View mode of the camera it possible to get already a very good idea about the final image even before the shutter is pressed. I found that using this technique I tend to compose an image slightly different and I’m satisfied with the result almost every time.

And there’s nothing to worry, it is still possible to use the photograph in colour, everything is still there. Once the image is imported into Lightroom (or any other RAW editor) it will be shown as a colour image anyway, since only the embedded JPG preview in the RAW-file is a B&W version of the photograph.

This technique was and is a quite interesting learning experience for me and I will surely continue to work like this, should I be interested to create a black and white image.

Note:
I have tested this on the Canon 5D MkII and to avoid any unfortunate catastrophes please check you’re camera’s manual before using this technique in real live.

Since I have received my iPad, now almost a year ago, I have developed quite an e-book addiction. I simply enjoy the immediate availability of the books on the net (who else dislikes waiting for books to arrive?), the presentation (at least in most cases) and the mere fact, that I can easily carry around as many as I want and read when I have time. Try to do that with paper magazines.

Every now and then I will showcase a few selected e-books which I think are both nice and inspiring in terms of content and presentation. My personal favourites so to speak.

In this first post I would like to talk a bit about the LensWork publication.

If you have been visiting here more frequently you might remember that I have been mentioning the Lens Work podcast and Brooks Jensen’s folios (the editor of LensWork) earlier on the blog. I just think that he is doing some astonishingly good and inspiring work.

I only knew that the Lens Work Publication is printed magazine, and so far have shied away from purchasing a copy for myself. This changed once I learned that the Lens Work magazine is available not only as a printed magazine, but also in an e-book format. Since I have developed a ebook-reading-habit I definitely needed to check it out. I can tell you that this was a lucky find!

The Editions

The e-book comes in two different flavours, the portable one and the extended version. The difference between the two is that the extended edition features larger and more portfolios aside from the full content of the portable edition. Additionally is for each magazine ( that is at least for the newer ones) a pack of interviews in MP-3 format as a separate download/purchase available. The magazine goes for 3,95$ the extended version for 4,95$ US Dollar and a set of interviews starting from 2,97$, which considered the quality of the work and the interviews is really a bargain. In this country you will have a hard time getting any drink for this price.

The Content

More important is of course the content of this magazine, which in my humble opinion, is outstanding. I can honestly say, that from what I have seen there so far, it is some of the finest and most inspiring work that I had the pleasure to see in any kind of magazine.

The magazine itself set itself apart from other ordinary publications since it is essentially a collection of folios by selected photographers. These folios are rounded-up by a short introductory text by the artists and some biographical information. The presentation is clear, simple and focused on each folio. On the accompanying and optional MP-3′s (which have to be purchased separately) you find interviews with the artists of each edition.

By the time of this writing I have had explored only a handful of these magazines and interviews but you can consider me sold on this magazine. Browsing through such beautiful folios as from artists like Michael Kenna or Josef Hoflehner paired with the accompanied interviews is really an experience (the interview with Michael Kenna is indeed as inspiring as his photography).

Besides the quality of the content I do enjoy the lack of sales-pitches in this magazine. It’s just about the art and not about cameras or yet another PS/Lightroom plugin. Just the way it should be in my opinion and I’m looking forward to explore the magazine even further in the future.

With now 93 editions available, there’s much to catch up. More info you can find over on LensWork of course.

Spring is slowly merging ito Summer and with Midsummer only a mere 21 ahead it’s not getting dark in the night anymore, which make this time of year definitely my most busiest time to photograph. As during the last years, I hope to be able to make the most out of this brief period and if all went well, I should just have been returned from my first trip this summer (I wrote this post ahead of time).

Which brings me to a totally different matter… this month’s wallpaper.

The wallpaper(s) for this month are of complete different nature than usual ones, where I tended to use slightly modified versions of some of my images. Recently I gave my blog a little facelift (if you are reading this in your feed reader feel free head over to my site and have a look) and since I am very happy with this new look, I thought the background will also make a great background for the iPad.

Here on this blog and over on my galleries I have used the same background to give both sites a uniform look, even though both sites are of completely different design of course. On the blog you actually will have different backgrounds, depending on post-type and page-type (well this is still a bit under construction).

The Wallpaper

I used the same pattern as here on the blog (which is inspired by this tutorial), but I added a few gradients to the top and the bottom to add a bit more interest. I know I say this with every wallpaper that I post here, but I actually like them very much and use them myself.

To have a few more choices I have three more colour options.


Installing the Wallpaper

Unfortunately I had to realize that it is not entirely easy to actually get images in the correct resolution onto the iPad. iTunes is at times living in the belief that it has to re-size images during the import, which in this case, led to rather unfortunate results. But naturally there’s a work-a-round by installing/saving the image right through Safari. This should be the same for other images and wallpapers as well.

Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Select the image that you like and open it in Safari
  2. Press and hold on the on the image and save it to the photo-app
  3. In photo-app assign as wallpaper.

And that’s about it. If one knows about an easier way to get images on the device without re-sizing you are most welcome to share in the comments.

But I hope you like the wallpaper, at least I do.

Just the other day iA Writer for the Mac got released and since I’m already a huge fan of the iPad version of the app I naturally went for it immediately. I have tried, used and own many of the “distraction-free” writing solutions so far, but I always went back to iA Writer for iPad once I started to use it. Finally I got my hands on the OS X version, and so far it looks, with it’s clean design, typography and functionality, like a winner for me.

Since I have been using more and more simple text editors I increasingly started to use Gruber’s Markdown syntax to generate the HTML code for my blog posts. Luckily iA Writer is using this format as well, which is fantastic for my purposes (it is not converting links though as it is focused on creating text and HTML of course).

The thing missing from iA Writer though is the possibility to actually export the formatted text into for example HTML, which would be very handy for exporting the text to the blog. As it is not available in the app itself I used NValt first to convert the text to HTML, but I was looking for a simpler solution and quickly found a services tutorial which I adjusted slightly to suit my needs.

What I want to do is, to simply select the text and then copy the generated HTML to the clipboard and paste into WordPress’ text editor.

(more…)

It’s almost exactly a year ago that I posted a blog about video’s specifically focused on Landscape Photography and  it’s definitely about time for a follow-up post. Some new DVD’s have been (or are about to be) released, but it’s not at all on the same level as for example on lighting and what not (actually I think this a good thing) but the situation is improving.

Here are a few good and new resources:

DVD

  • David Noton: Photography in the RAW

    This DVD came out in the meanwhile and if you are familiar with David’s work you might guess what to expect. Beautiful photography from beautiful locations and valuable information, presented in his own light and entertaining way.

  • Joe Cornish: With Landscape In Mind

    I posted a link to the trailer to this already but the DVD should be available by now. Ordered already, and now waiting for the mail to arrive.

  • Charlie Waite: Seeing Scotland

    For some reason I didn’t mention this DVD in my earlier post, but this is a nice video following Charlie through the landscapes of Scotland.

(more…)

Every now and then I surprise myself with discovering something so useful in an area where I expect it the least. This time it is the absolute usefulness of the live-view feature of my DSLR in landscape photography.

I guess that like many of you, I have been happily composing through looking the viewfinder and rarely relied on the auto focus of the camera and rather focussed myself. So far this technique hasn’t failed on me and I tend to get the result that I was aiming at. It happened a few months ago, that I to started the try out the live view feature of my camera when composing my landscapes. First only out of interest, it stuck and interestingly I haven’t looked back since. The advantages are huge in every level.
(more…)

Spring is slowly (too slow in my opinion) taking over and the launch of my photographic season is getting closer. Since the next vacation and the possibility for visiting locations further away is still way ahead I will use the time to re-visit some of favourite locations close by.

This reminded me of a talk that I have been holding during a presentation of my work at the end of the last year and I would like write a bit about one of the topics that I have talked about: the importance of having a local, favorite place.

Why do I think this is important?

I guess only a few of us have the pleasure, or privilege, to live right in the middle of a wonderful location, say the Lofoten Islands, Scotland, Iceland… you name it, therefore finding inspiration in the surroundings is crucial. Of course, it is exciting and inspiring to do trips to remote locations and photograph the scenery there, but for me it is as important to have to have the chance to go out and photograph the landscapes in my close neighborhood once the conditions are right.

Not only it is important for my own mental health but also to learn about a certain location, to learn about how the light develops, to learn about how a location not only changes in certain conditions but also during the course of the year. Or simply to learn about composition in general and challenging oneself finding a different view or a different approach to a yet familiar place.

Re-visiting a certain location and really trying to understand what to expect there under certain conditions is crucial, and it naturally is beneficial for all other locations that one might want to visit. I have a few places here close-by which I visit frequently once the conditions are right and I also have time to take benefit of these.

To make my point I will feature a new series here on the blog in which I will write a little about these locations, my preferences and post images from these locations which I took over the time. I hope you will enjoy these kinds of posts.

The first post in this series will be published in the next week.