Golden Eagle Adventures...

Even though I already had 2400 pictures of golden eagles which I was really happy with, when I got the opportunity to join Felix Heintzenberg on a 3 day trip to Norway to photograph more golden eagles, I just couldn't resist. So after landing in Oslo at 9:30 we picked up our 4wd rental car at 10.00 and started driving to Dalen in Telemark, a place so remote that my GPS said there are no streets there. Thanks to back up guidance from Felix we managed to find our guide's home at 3.00am. Jostein had said to give him a call when we got there, and a bit hesistantly we called and got... voicemail. Grrrrr. Now what? Sleep in the car for an hour and a half before getting up to head to the hide? We knocked on the door; carefully at first and then a little more insistenly. Still no answer. I checked the door, it was unlocked. "I'm going inside and sleeping on the couch". Felix followed me in and we were met by two extremely well behaved retrievers who refused to bark or leave there beds, but their tails were wagging so hard it was hard to ignore while trying to fall asleep. Jostein finally heard all our noise and came and greeted us. His phone had run out of juice without him noticing he explained sheepishly.
We tried to sleep a few more minutes, and at 4:30 we finally got up and had some breakfast before packing our gear and loading it on to Jostesin snowmobile and sled. Felix volunteered to ride on the sled with the gear as we started the 15 minute ride to the top of the mountain to the eagle hide. I kept looking back to make sure Felix was still there. Near the top of a very steep hill the snowmobile just started spinning its track, so we both had to jump off and walk the last 15 meters up the hill. The brisk wind and a lot of snow down the back of my neck woke had me fully awake and the all night drive seemed almost forgotten. We finally reached the hide, loaded in our gear and hurried to get everything set up while it was still pitch black to avoid scaring off any eagles or ravens that might be able to see us. We had two cameras and lenses each, and once they were in place, pointing out of the hide, they could not be removed until it was dark to avoid scaring the eagles.

At 8:30 there was finally enough light to being to photograph, but so far only the ravens were to be seen, and care must be taken not to scare them. They are a sign to the eagles that everything is safe. Finally at 9:00 the first eagle made a cautious approach and sat on a tree top at a safe distance, but they were cautious and only stayed a few seconds at a time. As the day wore on and it became afternoon the eagles came and left several times and extended their stays, Felix and I took turns napping between eagles visits.

Most of the eagles fed individually and if a second eagle landed it usually meant there was going to be a fight. But there was one pair of eagles that was obviously a couple since they ate and flew together. In little more than a month the female would be sitting on their nest incubating two eggs that will hatch around the beginning of May.

The weather changed from snow to clear to fog to more snow and finally the light disappeared again at 5:00pm while a final eagle took a few last scraps of meat to tide him over until morning. The days result was 360 images, a few of which made the long day in the hide worthwhile. We packed up our gear and waited for Jostein and his snowmobile to take us back down the mountain.
By the time we got off the mountain, ate dinner and had a quick review of our pictures we were ready to pass out from lack of sleep. We made an early evening of ate and before we knew it the alarm was ringing to tell us it was 4:30am and time to get up.

Our second and final day in the hide was much slower, fewer visits and poor light, but  nature is fickle and golden eagles show up on their own terms. Nonetheless I took 260 images and filmed the eagles as they ate 25 yards from us. We loaded our car with our gear and prepared for the the five hour drive back to Oslo. On the way we passed a wooden church and thanks to the full moon the sky still had a blue tint despite the fact that it was 11:00pm. We finally reached Oslo at 1:30 where we grabbed a few hours of sleep before catching a 7:00AM flight back to Copenhagen.

Two days in isolation with these majestic birds and a fantastic view; it can hardly be called a vacation, but it was definitely worth the time and effort! Nonetheless I was glad to get back to work and be able to sleep normal hours...

Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Spot

Domkyrkan, the cathedral in Lund is a great photo subject during the Christmas and New Year's holidays. The towers are illuminated and the windows glow from the lights inside. The only challenge is getting far enough back in order to be able to capture the entire facade. The front of Lund's Domkyrka is about 35 meters from the buildings and shops across the street and through the years I have seen thousands of tourists pressed up against the shops across the street trying in vain to get as much as possible into the shot.
For most p&s cameras it's impossible, they just can't go wide enough. When I first came to Lund in 1987 I had an analog camera, an Olympus OM2n and a 24mm Zuiko lens which allowed me to capture the front but not much else. The situation deteriorated when I went digital with the Canon 300D + 18-55mm lens, which was the full frame equivalent of 29mm

Lunds Cathedral at 18mm (29mm fullframe equivalent)

As you see the shot is nothing to excited about, it might work as a reminder of what I have seen, but it doesn't put the cathedral into any kind of context.

I've never been very interested in wide-angle lenses but every time you travel to a big city like Stockholm, New York or Lund, you realize they have a place in your lens collection. With a full-frame camera like the 5DII the Canon 24-105mm lens became my "walk-around" lens. It's much better than 29mm but still not quite at home in close quarters. Here is where the 17-40mm lens shines, allowing you to put things into a context:

Lunds Cathedral at 17mm

As you see in this shot the cars spoil the shot, and setting up for New Years eve fireworks I knew that this was going to be a problem when the fireworks went off behind the cathedral. It would be better to be on the same side of the street, but then the 17-40 isn't wide enough. So I decided to chance it and as you see from the result below the composition is pretty good, but the cars were indeed a problem; of the 15 shots I took, there were cars in most of them.

New Years Fireworks at 17mm

Still even 17mm doesn't tell the whole story, and while my favorite lens the Samyang 14mm is better, I wanted even more.

Lunds Cathedral with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8

So during the last days of my Christmas holidays I experimented with stitched panoramas of the cathedral, using the 14mm Samyang and taking 15 shots in portrait orientation to create a 360 degree view.

360 degree view of Lunds Cathedral

Of course now the distortion is a bit distracting, but it captures the big picture.
The nice thing about stitching images is that you can use almost any lens, a tripod makes it easier to line up the images properly and shoot in M mode to ensure that the exposure is identical in all images. I could have created the same result using a 50mm lens, but it would have taken 240 images instead of 15.
So next time you can't get far enough from your subject, try capturing the shot using multiple images, remember to use portrait orientation, otherwise your image will only be wider, not higher. Photoshop's "Photomerge function will put the pieces together for you automagically, blending the image perfectly.

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!

Reflections on the Water...

I spent a blustery fall day in the Skäralid National Park in southern Sweden in the beginning of November. My self-appointed theme for the day was reflections, and as I took pictures a song from my childhood played in head.

Season Suite: Fall

Reflections on the water like shadows in my mind
Speak to me of passing days and nights and passing time
The falling leaves are whispering winter's on its way
I close my eyes remembering the warmth of yesterday

It seems a shame to see September swallowed by the wind
And more than that it's oh so sad to see the summer end
And though the changing colors are a lovely thing to see
If it were mine to make the change I think I'd let it be...

But I don't remember hearing anybody asking me...

John Denver (1972)

You can hear it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q5197B_7iI starting at 2:54.

And as certain as winter is coming, there will be a spring; and in the meantime there are always a few die hard optimists who refuse to let a little wind and rain put a damper on life...

All images taken with Canon 6D and 24-105/4L iso50. A neutral density filter allowed exposures up to 30 seconds.

Time to Head South...

I have mixed feelings about fall; I love the changing colors of the foliage...

Once again the trees are filled with unusual small birds looking for spiders and tasty bugs. The photo-opps are as close as the back yard; just hang a camouflage net in the back door, lie down on the living room floor and wait for the visiting common redstart to patrol the lawn.

Or head to the southwest tip of Sweden together with hundreds of amateur ornithologists and watch the fall migration from Kolabacken at the Falsterbo Golf Club. As countless thousands of songbirds head south, thousands of birds of prey like peregrine falcons, hobbies, and sparrow hawks follow their food supply on a perilous journey over southern European. A greater risk than the peregrine falcon are the hunting grounds where millions of songbirds will end their lives in glues traps before being sold to restaurants and served as tapas. And next spring the number of birds returning will once again drop...

In a few more weeks the trees will be bare and most of the birds will have disappeared, and in 70-some-odd days the day in southern Sweden will be only 7 hours long.But the sunrise and sunset can last an hour...

In the meantime the bull red elk tries to gather a harem and mate with as many females as possible.

Some people complain about this dark time of year, but it's a good time for reviewing and editing the year's photographs and of course spending time with family and friends. I even know a rather clever photographer, Felix Heintzenberg who just published a book all about nature photography in the dark: Nordiska Nätter - Djurliv mellan skymning och gryning (Nordic Nights - Animal Life Between Dusk and Dawn). That bit of imagination and some great photography got him the WWF Panda Book award for 2014. Congratulations Felix!

Reflections of Dublin

Due to a last minute invitation to an 4 day training session at IBM in Dublin I had the unexpected pleasure of finding myself in the middle of Dublin when the weather and temperature was perfect. Most of my fellow IBM'ers followed the advice to use the hotel near the office to keep costs down, but after a little research I found a hotel in town and public transportation that would keep me in budget and give me a chance for some evening photography in Dublin. We stayed near the Samuel Beckett Bridge which was a 20 minute walk from town along the quay and provided many photo-opps.

To simplify my travel I only had a carry-on bag on the flight, but fortunately I have a Gitzo tripod that will fit inside the bag if I remove the head and center column. My camera bag with five lenses qualifies as my "personal item". So after catching the bus into town from the airport I dropped my bags at the hotel and armed with tripod and camera I explored the nearby bridges and buildings along the quay.

The Beckett Bridge is a marvel of engineering, looking somewhat like a giant harp. But the style is so modern that it doesn't exactly blend in historical Dublin. Fortunately it is far enough from town in an area being built up with new buildings and offices, so it fits just fine in that neighborhood.

This shot was taken with the Canon 5DmkII + 24-105L at 24mm f/10 30secs at iso200.

Closer to town is the Lifey Bridge or the Ha'penny Bridge as it is popularly called. It got its name from the half-penny charge to cross it. No charge these days and at last count in 2001 it was crossed by about 27,000 people per day. This shot was also taken with the 24-105 f/8 4 secs at iso400

A bit further west along the Liffey river is the Four Courts dome behind the Ross Road Bridge. Again taken with the 24-105L at 35mm f/8 6 secs at iso400

A shot straight over the Liffey at the houses and buildings, using the 24-105L, 24mm f/8 8secs, iso400

and a similar shot giving a bit more overview of the Quay. Also with the 24-105L at 24mm, f/8 6secs iso400.

One block off the Quay right at the Ha'Penny Bridge you'll find the Temple Bar and dozens of other small pubs and restaurants. A bit pricey, but the atmosphere, music and energy is worth a visit and a few photographs.

And finally Friday afternoon after 4 days of intensive education at IBM in Damastown I get a parting shot as my flight heads for Copenhagen...

Sunrise in the Desert

San Diego is fantastic destination for a summer vacation with the family, especially if grandma and grandpa live there. But for the a nature photographer summer is actually the slow time of the year in San Diego. You see San Diego is the winter home to millions of birds that spend their summers in the Arctic, birds like waders and terns, but they are joined (well maybe pursued is more correct) by thousands of birds of prey like eagles, falcons, hawks etc.

So for our second summer in San Diego we were fast running out of unusual subjects for our photography. So Johan and I got up at 4:00AM, loaded the VW camper with all our camera gear and headed for the desert in hopes of finding some burrowing owl families. It was actually late in the season for this, so the odds were against us, but what the heck; we're on vacation. We drove towards El Centro and went looking along the irrigation canals in the area and sure enough we found a few owls and even one small family...

Two juvenile (C & R) and one adult (L) burrowing owls

As we drove slowly along the deserted roads we were surprised to find a rather noisy wader; a black-necked stilt. Normally these birds can be found in shallow waters along the coast, but there must also be a population living at the Salton Sea which is not so far away. Still I had a hard time figuring out what this individual was doing here, there can't be that much food in the irrigation canals. The continued warning cries made it pretty clear that there must be a chick nearby and sure enough looking down into the canal the stilt was standing on we caught a glimpse of a tiny stilt chick running for cover. We decided to leave mom and her chick in peace and continue on our search for owls...

Black-Necked Stilt

As luck would have it we did find a few more; even as the temperatures approached 90 degrees (32 degrees). Unfortunately by 9:00AM the heat distortion made it useless to photograph the owls from as close as ten meters and instead we went looking for a cool place to enjoy our breakfast before heading back to San Diego. 

One of the last individuals we ran into was quite bold and scolded us continuously, more or less telling us to get lost,  I couldn't resist filming him/her. Slowly opening the side door to the VW camper, I was able to lie on the floor and film from about 15 meters.