horison
Nov, 2020Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I live in the north western Norway - Ålesund, Møre og Romsdal county This is islands - lots of islands, fjords, mountains and islands. Pointing the camera towards the horison comes natural. This particular photo was shot at the island Vigra. I love this view, nothing out there until you hit Iceland, if you miss that it is Greenland next. All the rest is open wild sea.Time
It was a terribly rainy late October afternoon , full raingear - both me and camera. The evenings are getting dark quite early at this time, the dark clouds and the rain are stealing a lot of the daylight left. The shot was done around 1430 - 1500. I have been there many times before, lovely spot. When I find pieces of landscape that catch my interest I like to return several times, different time of the day, different weather, different light. After some visits you will know when to return to get what you want.Lighting
I have learned one thing about light; if you want to wait for the best light before you shoot you might not shoot much at all. Not around here at least. Rainy autumn days like this are all ways dark and grey, even if it is only October and the darkest winter months still to come. You have to be an optimist to enjoy life here; "it will change, it always changes", lies we tell ourselves before we rig ourselves up to stay more or less dry, at least the first hour or two ... It didn't change, the light, it stayed grey, dark, rainy and cold. My finger hurts, I forgot my gloves in the car, was to eager to get going.Equipment
At this time I shot a Sony A7II with a cheap and simple remote, the lens was the Zeiss Loxia 21mm, love this lens, small, sharp, contrasty, great colours. Brilliant, one of my favorites. I use a Manfrotto Tripod in aluminium, the head is the Manfrotto 405 geared head. Big and heavy, a bit slow to use, but precise, lovely to work with and most important; big nobs, this is important; I can use it even with my frozen fingers full of pain. Also great head for rigging up for a macro shoot. The legs are less brilliant but not bad. The lens was equipped with a ND filter, dark enough to get 30 sec at f6.3 and ISO 100. The image is built up from several 30 sec exposures, stacked in PS. When I shoot the exposure stacks I put my camera at manual and continuous shooting, lock the release button on the remote, and pour myself a cup of coffee while the camera shoot a series of exposures. I prefere to do it like this, gives me more control, less noise to handle, and I can control how long I want the finished exposure to be when I'm working at it in post by stacking more or less photos. I don't remember how long this ended up, more like 10 to 12 minutes in total.Inspiration
Our little society have for ages been based on what we could get out the sea. People have always been looking towards the horizon, some of them waiting for weather good enough to go out fishing, others; like wives, sons and daughters, staring at the horizon to se the men home. For the bravest the horizon have been a challenge, a challenge for adventure, to travel and see what is beyond. The sharp line that divides sea from sky bring hope, promises and fears, even dreams. Exploring the horizon with my camera comes as a natural consequence of our long history living with this magic line.Editing
All of my images gets some kind of treatment in post. The basic stuff of cause, like adjusting midtones, hightligts and darks, shapening, colours, cropping, spots and dust, stuff like that. This image is an exposure stack, this is done in PS, everything else in LR. In this image it is not much more than that. The grey and flat light made it difficult to make the image "pop", so in this kind of light I find it useful to increase the dynamics in the highlight by pulling down the highlights and pushing the whites up, lifted the greyes a bit to get the brightness back up without loosing the darks. That's about it.In my camera bag
My goto kit for landscape is a Sony A7r4, three Loxia lenses; 21mm, 35mm and 85mm, a Voigtländer 65mm f2, two spare batteries, some filters, extra memory cards. A lightweight tripod if I need one, and occasionally a lightweight panorama head that fits my hiking tripod, but when I want to do long exposures like this I always use my much heavier and sturdier Manfrotto tripod with the 405 head. For traveling I got two zoom lenses; Sony 24-105 and Tamron 70-180, and of cause the light travel tripod. The zooms are nice but not my most used lenses.Feedback
Not really much to say. Use your eyes more than your camera, look around you, move around, use time, think. I like my landscape photo slow, there is no reason to hurry. I want to take the time I need to "absorb" the scene; I shoot for pleasure ... I think the best advice I can give is spending time before you shoot, and when you shoot know your gear well enough so you don't have to spend time on buttons, knobs and menus, it breaks the magic, don't break the magic. Most important; get out there, and don't forget the coffee.
