a photographer's view to the world – a traveler's blog
Today, I have a more abstract image for you. Before reading any further, guess what you see in the image.
It’s a little dune of snow created by the wind. This was one of the pro sides of the regular strong snow storms we were suffering in Norway. The structure is approximately 20 cm long and 7-8 cm high. The low-standing afternoon sun trow that long shadow. It was located right next to the path we were walking from a panoramic viewpoint back to the parking ground.
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As usual on weekends, I’m participating in the Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge. It’s hosted by Sohpia this week. She challenges us this week with “spring”. It seems to be a perfect fit for me because next week we have the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.
First of all, I think of lambs when thinking of spring. Second, the awakening of nature and popping up of spring flowers. Some of the spring flowers, like i.e. bluebells and wood anemones, have to hurry to complete their full circle of fertilization before the surrounding trees close the roof with their leaves.
As usual, click on the images to enlarge them.
Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Sophia’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.
Take care!
More of my images can be seen on my own blog.
behind the curtain !
I still have a couple of folders with undeveloped images in my backlog. I finished this folder from April 2011 recently. Enjoy!
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Weather can change quite fast in Scotland. Fortunately, that’s also true for the change in the other direction.
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recently, I stumbled upon an image of this tree online. My own images of this tree are all in color. But, that fellow photographer developed and showed a monochrome image of that tree. Seeing his image, I copied mine and played a little bit around. This is a second, more traditional, version of the image.
Do you like it? Or do you like the inverted version from last week more?
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Ok, guys. It’s Saturday and so my contribution to LAPC is due. This week, John is our host. He asks for “the road most often taken”. But, instead of following the idea literally, he explains, he understands it more metaphorically and projects it to photography. So, he wants us to show images, more or less typical for us.
There are so many kinds of photography like landscape, architecture, people, street, fashion, macro, or food, to name only a few of them. Since I started photography back in the early 1980s, my focus is primarily on nature and monochrome. Thus you can find me more likely in rural environments than in urban ones. I love observing natural landscapes and wild animals (wildlife), especially birds.
In my early years, I took over photography jobs for an advertising agency on a regular basis and photographed the given subjects with monochrome films which were developed and printed in my own lab. I still have my love for monochrome images, as you can easily see when browsing my blog.
Thus, I decided to pick a few examples for today, where nature and monochrome are combined. All of the images are taken during my latest trip to Norway, from which I returned on Wednesday night.
As usual, click on the images to enlarge them.
Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to John’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.
Take care!
More of my images can be seen on my own blog.
pouring down!
… from northern Norway again. During the last 12 days we tried to meet the Green Lady again, but the overall outcome is quite disappointing considering the current peak of solar activity which is the cause of the Aurora.
At first, we had 2 days in and around Tromsø with snowy and rainy weather, but no Aurora. Next 4 days on Senja: snowstorms, thick clouds, and partly rain 😲 to melt the snow, and such even prevented nice winter images.
Thus, after checking the weather forecast for the greater region, we left 1 day early, canceled the next location, and postponed another one. Instead, we escaped to Sweden, which was proposing the best conditions for the next few days.
It was a horrible 320km drive to Sweden crossing a mountain pass: towards darkness during a snowstorm on such a steep and small road is quite a challenge, even with spikes. At first, we lost an hour because the pass was closed for rescuing a truck stuck in the snow. Snow chains were an absolute necessity for trucks. The bad sight demanded further delays because of the quite slow speed for driving. Driving convoy was also necessary to make sure to not lose sight of the car in front of us.
After dinner on the arriving day, we noticed a greenish glow above the town. So, two of us (me included 😁 of course) decided to give it a try. Despite being quite late (in comparison to their usual schedule), she popped out and danced for us. We were back at the hotel at about 2 a.m., tired, but with happy smiles on our faces. My companion even wanted to stay way longer. The first meeting with the Aurora for this trip. The others were too tired from the drive.
Unfortunately, the next two days she was shy again and didn’t show us more than a weak glow between the clouds, that already arrived there, too, although the weather forecast said differently.
After 3 nights in Sweden, we headed back to Norway for the remaining 3 nights.
When we arrived at our last location, we struggled again with bad weather. One day and night got lost to another snowstorm, but we also got two crisp clear nights, but she didn’t pop up. While we got at least a short and weak Aurora in one of these two nights, the other one was completely Aurora-free. At least we got some wonderful sunny winter days.
Overall, this year’s trip for seeing the Aurora was quite disappointing although the conditions are extremely good this year. Solar activity is at or near its maximum. Surprisingly, a green Aurora was visible even in the middle of Germany but not in northern Norway. I guess, because of the high level of solar activity, the center moved south so that we couldn’t see Auroras north of the polar circle in Norway as expected.
The green lights are at about 40km high, while the reds are up to 100km high. Thus, middle Europe usually sees the red lights of an aurora, when a strong Aurora happens. But green lights are extremely rare at these latitudes.
On the other hand, this was again a nice winter trip with nice company and quite well-prepared (although it seemed a bit chaotic sometimes).
Surprisingly, I have more the half of my images already developed and even started creating an ebook with some of my monochrome images taken during this trip. So, even the days with bad weather delivered. During the last third of the trip, I definitely had the best weather. So, be prepared to see some of the images in the future.
For today I have one Aurora image for you (how could it be otherwise). You might have already seen it on Instagram.
Second, an image taken while coping with the bad conditions on the pass. Coincidentally at that time, the shuffle function of my audio collection decided to play „May it be“ by Enya from the first Lord of the Rings movie where it is underscoring how the fellows hiked upwards the Caradhras pass.
The third image is one of the last images, taken near sunset on our last day.
One of the other highlights of the trip was our visit to the Ice Hotel in Kiruna. You can rent a room for a night made of ice. Sleep in a sleeping bag on a bed made of ice covered with reindeer furs set up in a room made completely of ice. They offer three different kinds of such rooms. First, they have the standard rooms, where you feel like standing in a room of the gigantic crystalline fortress made by the green crystal thrown by Clark Kent (the later Men of Steel) in the Canadian Arctic. Other rooms were more individually decorated, like the one in the image below. All of these are supposed to melt as soon as spring starts and return their water to the lake beside the hotel. In a separate huge hall, there are individually designed rooms by some ice artists. I suppose those rooms are not for rent. According to the website, “the room holds a temperature of -5 to -8 degrees Celsius. The bed is covered with reindeer hides and you sleep in a thermal sleeping bag. Instead of doors, the hotel rooms have curtains that you draw to give you and your company privacy.“ So, I wish you a good night and sleep well 😁
The entrance fee for seeing these rooms is quite high but definitely worth the money. While I was expecting only a bar made of ice set up in a room made of ice and equipped with chairs and tables made of ice, I was visiting an art gallery where not only the rooms were made of ice, but also the pieces of art itself. Btw. they also have the bar 😁.
The final image for today is one of the monochrome images taken at a beach in the greater Tromsø area.
Here, the different layers work best in monochrome. The foreground is made of gray rocks, the middle ground is made of dark rocks and the background is formed by the mountains. All of them are well parted by the moving water of the fjord and the white splashes stand out well from the dark rocks while the shoreline leads the eye from the lower left right to the splashes and thus makes them the main subject. The color version is on Instagram for comparison.
So, my advice for photographing on a trip. Don’t stick to the ideas you have on your bucket list. Instead, try always to get the best from the situation you’re in. There is always something for you to take. Use your time well and the location will pay back. When sticking to the ideas from your bucket list, remember that you will never be in the same situation, in the same conditions, and probably in the same place as the photographer whose picture you saw. But, it will limit your ability to see the scene with your own eyes and capture the beauty laying in front of you. Be a creator and not a copycat.
Take care!
Take care!
Take care!
recently, I stumbled upon an image of this tree online. My own images of this tree are all in color. But, that fellow photographer developed and showed a monochrome image of that tree. Seeing his image, I copied mine and played a little bit around. In the end, I got this: monochrome and inverted.
Do you like it?
Take care!
More of my images can be seen on my own blog.
through the curtain!
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Take care!
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mirror on the wall to my feet, who is the fairest of them all
Take care!
More of my images can be seen on my own blog.
bathing hippo!
Today 5 years ago, I created my account at Vero. At that time, a quite new social network. You either had to be invited or you had to pre-register and wait until you got a free slot to join. For me, the latter was true.
Although the idea is very similar to Instagram, it’s different. Besides images, you can also post other kinds of media like i.e. links to music, games, video, or places.
After, I guess, a year or so, I deleted all posted content. I can’t remember why. But, 1,5 years ago, I reactivated the account. Instagram becomes more and more annoying in my opinion.
First, I hate all the movies, reels, and other uninteresting stuff. I joined Instagram for the stills. When looking at images, I want to look at them carefully. When they are moving, I can’t recognize and enjoy the lighting, composition, and message. Because of all the annoying and distracting sounds, I always switch off the speakers. When I want to see moving images, I head to YouTube.
Second, I see so much uninteresting stuff instead of content posted by one of the guys I’m following. And it seems to me, on a certain day 1,5 years ago, they changed their algorisms which is the origin of this. Because I noticed a severe decrease in likes from one to another.
Third, I’m getting tons of comments where (apparently) bots trying to persuade me to pay them for promoting my images. I check the commenter’s profiles as well as the profiles to which I should send my images, and none of them has even the slightest relation to my images. Well, you know images I’m posting here on my blog. The images I’m posting on Instagram are similar. So, I don’t see a reason, why I should pay a half-naked girl to post my images between her selfies. And, as soon as I delete one of those comments, I don’t get any more likes.
At least during the last 1,5 years, Vero performed much better. Give it a try and join me!
This blog post is no advertisement and I don’t get any money for referring Vero.
For Instagram, my advice is, to concentrate on your strengths and on what you can do very well. If you really want to do something else (like i.e. copycatting TikTok), create a separate app for that stuff to serve those users the best you can instead of squeezing it into a container or format, that does not fit. Or, at least, give us the opportunity to not see that annoying stuff. Otherwise, we’re voting with our feed and heading away (like many people already do, and Meta knows it). In the past, they already converted Facebook from a place for adolescents into an elderly pension home, while the youth moves further.
Dear Meta, guess why there are soo many abandoned accounts on Instagram!
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Take care!
Today we have a conceptual topic for LAPC. Usually, you want to have crisp clear, and sharp images. But, sometimes softness better supports the message you want to transfer.
You can try to reach this by decreasing the contrast or the clarity (if your raw development software supports offers such a feature), but in general, it’s much better to take care of this right when taking the images.
Especially in people photography, this softness is used to transport intimacy i.e. when taking images of brides. In the old days, photographers used either soft lenses (I have such a lens, but use it only very rarely), vaseline (never tried, because I’m afraid of ruining my front lens as they are coated nowadays), or nylon stockings (used every now and then).
As I never publish images of customers, I can’t show you any images of people. But, I also have a few images of flowers to demonstrate the effect.
Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Bren’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.
For the next at least two weeks I’m pausing with LAPC, because I’m on a trip. As usual when on a trip, there won’t be much time to blog. Days start early and last long, when on a trip. My usual posts are scheduled as I always do. So, there won’t be a pause at all.
Take care!
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