Tuesday, May 17, 2011

My Blue Stockholm

I am spoiled by living  45 minutes away from Copenhagen. Travel to Stockholm is a pain. The reasonably priced flights are before 7AM or after 6PM. And since most of my visits to Stockholm have been business trips over the day, I have had very little opportunity to do any serious photography in the Swedish capitol. But an extended project has put me in Stockholm for several days, and the long Swedish days and the long twilight in the late spring provide fantastic light even at 8PM. An evening walk through "Gamla Stan" (Old Town) provides endless photo opportunities...

 9PM from the Katarinahissen
10:15PM at Stortorget (The Main Square)
11:15PM at the Royal Palace
11:30PM the City Hall
Midnight at the harbor 


Shooting this late you will need a tripod, since the typical exposure times are between 5-30 seconds. But it's worth the effort, a stable, travelers carbon-fibre tripod only weighs a couple of pounds and only takes a few seconds extra to set up. Using a tripod will also allow you to stitch together multiple images. The image of the Royal Palace actually consists of 10 images taken in portait format with about 30% overlap and then stitched in Photoshop.

Other images of Sweden can be seen at
http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/sweden