Commuter Photography; Making the Most of Short Nordic Winter Days...

I am fortunate to work in the beautiful Swedish city of Malmö, Sweden and to avoid the morning rush hour I generally try to get to the office by 7:15. During the fall and winter this means it's still dark, but this has the advantage of letting me do night time, blue hour and sunrise photography. And afternoons are quite similar, just 400 meters from the office we have the boardwalk and a fabulous view of the Öresund Bridge which makes a great subject in the setting sun.
I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of the cold and dark winters in Sweden, but this year they became a lot more enjoyable by taking advantage of the many photo-opps.

 The morning commute, the Malmö Harbor Lighthouse at sunrise

 A 400 meter dash from the office to the boardwalk to catch the setting sun on a windy winter's day...

 An unusually calm morning made for a nice blue hour shot of the old ship-building harbor.

 A small detour on another calm morning to catch the reflection of Malmöhus castle in its moat.

 The evening commute, the full moon rising behind Turning Torso, a stone's throw from where I work.

 Early morning blue hour photography of one of Malmö's most visited buildings "Turning Torso"

Morning commute street art, for much of December a miniature restaurant and accessories brought smiles to children and parents alike on their way to daycare, school or work.

Sunset on the boardwalk in Malmö's Västra Hamnen.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Every so often Lena gets tired of spending Christmas in Southern Californa and insists that we spend Christmas in Sweden and enjoy a traditional Christmas in Sweden. Unfortunately the weather in southern Sweden has a somewhat different interpretation of traditional Christmas, and what we generally get is rain, wind and clouds.

As luck would have it we did get some snow a couple of weeks before Christmas and Lena and I took the opportunity to pay another visit to Skäralid National Park. It made for a fantastic winter setting but it only lasted one day before the rains came and washed it all away.

This image was taken with the Canon 6D and my "walk-around lens" the 24-105L, post-processing done in PS Lightroom, with some extra saturation to bring out the red in the buildings.

This image is taken with one of my absolute favorite lenses, the Samyang 14mm f/2.8. Although this is a completely manual lens, you shouldn't be intimidated by the lack of autofocus. Even at f2.8 the depth of field will extend from 2m to infinity, so focussing is rarely a problem. This lens costs a fraction of what Canon's 14mm lens costs, and easily matches the Canon in most aspects, and surpasses the Canon for astro-photography where the Canon has a tendency to make stars look like commas.

And here is the Christmas weather we were dreaming about:

But I had to dig into the archives from 2005 and the Ice Hotel in Northern Sweden for this one.

Best wishes for a happy new year!

Waiting for the Spring Thaw

Update March 23
Apparently spring has gone missing. Despite global warming, el niño and the spring equinox winter is not going out without a fight; at least it can look good in pictures...

In Southern Sweden the days are already 5 hrs and 30 mins longer than they were at the winter solstice. From 7:00 on Dec 21 we are now at 12:30. So things are quickly moving in the right direction. But since we did not visit Southern California for Christmas, I have to admit I am getting a bit tired of the cold and dark and the lack of interesting material to photograph. So as we wait for the spring thaw I took a few minutes at a nearby feeding station:

The Ghost of Christmas Past

To celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary (New Years eve 2009) our family spent a week in Gambia Dec 24-31. It's not your typical charter destination, but it has a lot to offer for the entire family. We managed to find a reasonably priced hotel directly on Sunset Beach outside of Serekunda and alternated between family outings to local markets and points of interest, sunset walks on the beach, and photography outings with the local birding guides. Some of the best bird photography was on the grounds of the Senegambia Hotel where the birds where almost tame. Photography is best during the morning and evening. Between 11AM and 3PM the harsh light and the heat can be too much. But even midday will work for the birds on the hotel grounds since the birds can also be found relaxing in the shade. So while Lena and Kristina lay by the pool and worked on their tans, Johan and I crawled on our bellies across the hotel lawns armed with our 500mm and 300mm lenses...

The beach behind our hotel

Apparently white-crowned robin chats have young to feed in December...

Village weavers beating the midday heat...

Our local bird guide did a great job! His contact info is on my Pbase page

More images from Gambia can be seen at:
http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/birds_of_gambia

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

"Deadliest Catch" Eagle Photography...

My son Johan(15) and I were looking for some winter photo action. Most of the birds in Sweden have headed South and by now are somewhere in Spain or Africa. Not being so keen on the heat we had another alternative that we had been thinking about for a while - Alaska! (I think we've been watching too much "Deadliest Catch")

Winter flights to Anchorage were pretty reasonable; it was obviously not the tourist season, or maybe it was the connections. We flew with KLM Copenhagen - Amsterdam - Minneapolis/St.Paul - Anchorage. Even the lodging on the Homer Spit Road (where all the action is) was reasonably priced; so we booked five days in a one bedroom flat where we could do our own cooking, with a door directly onto the beach.

We picked up our rental car at the Anchorage airport, and then headed to our hotel room, exhausted after our 21 hours of travel we were asleep by 9:00PM. Our body clocks completely out of sync we woke up at 3AM and were ready to go. So we packed our gear into the car and headed to Denny's for a steak and egg breakfast. We sat next to three Alaska police who were probably wondering what kind of cruel trick I was playing on my son by getting him up at this hour. By 4:30AM we were on our way and as we left the lights of Anchorage behind us we drove off into the winter night; a black road, but the snowy mountains lighting up the sides of the road. The sun comes up at 8:45 in the middle of February but there is a long beautiful twilight which we thoroughly enjoyed. We made a few stops after the sun came up looking for other birds and animals, but there was not much to be seen until we ran into a bald eagle eating a dog that had been hit by a car. Not the glorious first encounter we were hoping for.

A few hours of traffic free driving on clear highways and we were in Homer exploring the town. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco, and we discovered that there were quite a few migrants from the Bay Area. There were eagles all along the Spit sitting on rocks, tree stumps, boats and buildings. My pulse was rising, and we took a few photos and then checked into the hotel. We did some shopping for dinner and breakfast groceries and made it another early night.

The next morning we headed out before sunrise to park next to Jean Keene's trailer where the eagles were being given a hand out of frozen herring.

Sitting in the back of our SUV with the back door up we had the perfect view of the incoming eagles.

While it's not the most natural environment for eagles, it's not much different from the bird feeders we have in our backyard at home, although we use sunflower seed, and not herring.

To get some pictures in different environments we took a couple of day trips with Mako Haggerty who runs Mako's Water Taxi who took us to some coves and inlets on the Kachemak Bay to feed and photograph the eagles and look for other wildlife.

So we had actually succeeded! We were on a crabbing boat (I think Mako had a couple of crabbing pots) in Homer, Alaska in the middle of February. Thankfully the seas were calm and the weather was beautiful.

On the water  we saw some of the other local wildlife like these seals,

And a mother sea-otter with her pup.

Our five days in Homer passed quickly. We had several thousand images each, and agreed that this was more fun than our winter photo trips to Norway where we sat in a freezing hide not being able to move or leave the hide during daylight hours.

We headed back to Anchorage for our final night and prepared for the 21 hour trip back to Sweden. As luck would have it we had a two hour layover in Seattle which gave us just enough time to have lunch at the airport with an old family friend, Marion Friederich. For our next trip we want to visit Alaska in the summer.

The equipment we used was the Canon 1DmkIII, 5DmkII, 300/2.8IS, 500/4IS and 100-400. 

For a few more images from our trip see 
http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/bald_eagles

The Grand Canyon in Winter

Since we live in Southern Sweden where the winters are dark, cold and wet, we often spend Christmas with my parents in San Diego, California, where the winters are about the same as a Swedish summer. But after 20 years of traveling to sunshine and beaches we were running out of things to see and do in the Southern California. So with a little arm-twisting and the promise of a good time in Las Vegas I managed to get the family to agree to a week long excursion including a trip to the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and Monument National Park.

Las Vegas always lives up to expectations with the neon lights, comfortable hotel rooms, big-screen tv's, and plenty of good food. Johan and Kristina wanted to try their luck on the slots but thankfully the law said otherwise. So after a good nights sleep at the Luxor Hotel, we headed East to the Grand Canyon National Park where we had booked rooms at the Maswik Lodge.

A couple of good things about a winter visit to the Grand Canyon is that there are no crowds, and you are able to drive your car all along the canyon rim on roads reserved for buses during the summer season. For sunrise and sunset photography this saves you a few precious minutes and may you allow to visit and photograph several places when the light is at its best.

After checking in at the hotel we started with sunset at Hopi Point with several vantage points.

And then made some evening and night shots on the way back to the village.

Later when I got back to the hotel I discovered I my Blackberry was missing. So in the pitch black of the desert night I retraced my steps back to my where I had been photographing, and thankfully the little green LED of my Blackberry made it easy to find in the snow. Whew!

The next morning I was back before sunrise in -20F, while the rest of the family was snoozing away under their comforters.

 After a great breakfast we began our sightseeing trip east along the canyon rim before exiting the park and heading towards Page, Arizona to photograph Horseshoe Bend.

We arrived in Page in time to catch the sunset at Horseshoe Bend, but the light and clouds were not great, so I headed back the next morning to catch the sunrise instead. It's hard to see, but I am standing about one foot away from a 1000 foot sheer cliff. About the same as the two other photographers in the image below.

We would have liked to visit the Wave, but there were no spots available, so we will save that for another trip. Instead we also visited Lower Antelope Canyon before heading on to Monument National Park where we spent the night in the newly opened hotel at the visitors center.

Although we had planned on spending the entire next day at Monument Valley, a storm alert with threats of road closures and getting stuck chased us out as soon as we finished our breakfast. But I think the family was just as happy to be back in the sunshine of San Diego after a week of sub-zero in the high desert.
The images in this series are taken with the Canon 5DII and the 24-105L and 17-40L.In many cases I have taken multiple images and exposures to achieve HDR panormas. In the case of Horsebend the image is 9 images wide (portrait orientation) x 3 exposures of each image for a total of 27 images. Each set of three processed as HDR and then the finished HDR images stitched together in Photoshop.

A few more images from our trips in the Southwest can be seen at:
http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/southwest 

As the Sun Sinks Slowly into the West

While photographing owls, a gyr falcon and other birds of prey along the South coast of Sweden we ended the day watching a beautiful sunset. Armed with my 500mm lens +1.4extender for a focal length of 700mm, I noticed a couple walking along a shore several kilometers away as the sun set behind them. Just enough clouds to prevent the sun from overexposing the shot, yet not too much to hide the sun and the sunset colors.

 Some times you just get lucky...




Michael Gehrisch