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Lofoten Burning Sky



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Lofoten are such magical island, especially in winter. Sometimes they provide it all: Hours of magic light in the constant sunrise-sunset, dramatic clouds in th...
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Lofoten are such magical island, especially in winter. Sometimes they provide it all: Hours of magic light in the constant sunrise-sunset, dramatic clouds in the sky, water just at the brink of freezing over but still liquid enough to reflect the amazing mountains, and ... in this case even a petrified footprint of big foot as foreground.
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Awards

Contest Finalist in 5000 Dramatic Landscapes Photo Contest
Peer Award
Absolute Masterpiece
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Superb Composition
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Top Choice
paultomlins Jphoto garfieldmilne_5814 ivanfurman joestanley alarsen Onthewildsidephotography +15
Outstanding Creativity
JamesHLewis Ladyarcher FlyingOceans matthewarmsby Kenkidner johngregory SunkissedCrow +9
Magnificent Capture
cclaude mvilaret Hellrach paulfaria Beegirl daliaa Jan_Zajc +7
All Star
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Superior Skill
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Genius
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Virtuoso
PhilipGHale

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5 Comments | Report
nina050
 
nina050 June 15, 2016
Stunning!!
nina050
 
nina050 June 15, 2016
Is this Iceland?
nina050
 
nina050 June 15, 2016
Never mind....I see that it's Norway!
Beegirl
 
Beegirl September 07, 2016
Very Nice capture
EdithNero
 
EdithNero April 16, 2017
Stunning capture ????????????
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Behind The Lens

Location

This image was taken in a frozen fjord in the middle of winter on Lofoten islands, Norway. However, the Fjord was not completely frozen but had a layer of water on top of the ice - providing the mirror for a nice reflection.

Time

This was shot in late afternoon with the sun behind the clouds and soon setting behind the mountains.

Lighting

This was the best possible light for the kind of image I envisioned- with the clouds much better than without them. And: Only available light, of course! I didn't travel all the way in winter to Lofoten islands for that absolutely magic arctic light to spoil it all with a flash!

Equipment

I am a wide angle junkie! The wider, the better. This was done using the 12 mm wide-angle Voigtlander Leica-M-mount lens mounted onto my Sony A72 with an adapter. On a tripod. And, as always: no flash!

Inspiration

Lofoten are such magical islands, especially in winter. Sometimes they provide it all: Hours of magic light in the constant sunrise/sunset, dramatic clouds in the sky, water just at the brink of freezing over but still liquid enough to reflect the amazing mountains, and ... in this case even a petrified footprint of big foot as foreground.

Editing

My post-processing workflow is quite involved and all about quality. Starting out with the best possible raw file I used DxO to convert the file into another raw format (.dng) using DxO's very good and gentle noise reduction, sharpening and my own custom made lense profile for the Voigtländer 12mm on the Sony A7II. Then I open the .dng in Lightroom and do 90% of the post-processing there, completely nondestructive, everything still in raw. At the latest possible point I finally open the file in Photoshop as a 16 bit .tif for some final touches (like a slight Orton effect, some filters from Nik and Topaz, etc.). Then I save this 16 bit .tif and add it to my Lightroom library. Never, ever do I convert to jpg. A jpg file has only 8 bit of information-depth as compared to the 14 bit I started out with in raw. That is only a tiny fraction, namely 1/64th (or 1.56%) of the information I gathered with the camera (64 is 2 to the power of 6, and 6=14-8 is the difference in bit-depth between raw and jpg). Therefore I do not consider jpg as a decent photo format worth having in my library. The only time I touch jpg is when I export something to upload to the web.

In my camera bag

For over 30 years I always used Nikon equipment, in the last 5 years the mighty D800 and later a D810, the classic Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens and the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens, a Nikon D750 and the Nikon 70-200 f/4. But now I have sold all this and changed to Sony. I now have a Sony A7RII and a Sony A7II as cameras, the Sony 16-35 f/4 and the Sony 70-200 f/4 FE-lenses, also the Sony-Zeiss 55 f/1.8 lens and a Voigtlaender 12mm f/5.6 VM lens with a Leica-to-Sony adapter. But lo and behold! Voigtlaender is now making NATIVE lenses for the Sony FE mount and there is an even wider lens available - a 10 mm rectangular full-frame wide-angle lens! So, recently I sold my 12 mm with the Leica mount and now have the new Voigtlaender 10 mm which natively connects to my Sony cameras.

Feedback

One advice for the shoot: Ultra-wide photography is not at all about 'getting it all into the frame'. It is about getting close... very close. And 12 mm is REALLY wide. So you gotta get REALLY close. And therefore, you absolutely MUST have a good foreground in such wide-angle shots. A simple rule: no foreground, no wide-angle (but... sometimes... there are exceptions ... as with any rule). One advice for post: Be careful to never convert to jpg in any step of your workflow. If you do, you throw away over 98% of the information in your raw file and from that moment onward you work with less than 1.6% of your data! And for those jpg-shooters out there: You have done that already in the first step of your workflow, i.e. when you shot the picture. Congratulations! ;-)

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