Sunset

Quick trip to Kökar

Around where I live, in the Turku region, there aren't really any grandiose landscapes. In fact, they are so boring (to me at least) that I decided to go to Norway a few years ago, and start this blog :) So, coming back from Iceland I had a tough few weeks; I wanted to take awesome pictures, but I had basically no money and not a lot of energy for travelling. But I remembered something I had though about a few years earlier; camping out in the archipelago and trying to get images out there.

MY dads cabin, as nice at it is, isn't out in what I call the 'real' archipelago. Yes, it's by the sea, on an island, but there is no place where you could see nothing but sea; it's simply not far enough from the coast. Luckily, Finland has very good public transportation, that also covers the major islands of the archipelago.

The island of Kökar is one of the biggest islands in the Turku / Åland archipelago, and it is also the most isolated big island of them all. All it took was a weather report promising proper thunderstorms for a weekend, and my mind was set. I packed the car with my gear and my tent, and headed to Korpo, from where I took the ferry to Kökar.

The plan was to spend two nights at a camping ground on the northwestern end of the island. That would give me good access to the coastline, giving me locations for sunrise, sunset, and possible storms. The reason I was interested in the storms is that they can produce some of the most dramatic skies you've ever seen; having a storm-front roll in over the archipelago, or having a storm clear way for the sun is a sight to behold. That was what I wanted to capture.

The first of two evenings, there wasn't a cloud in sight, but I went out to the coastline with my gear to do some location scouting. There are a few hiking trails in that part of the island that I quickly found, and I made my way through the trees towards the coast. After scaring a small family of deer, I got to the beach and started looking around. It was a great location, unfortunately the blue sky made it almost useless to photograph. Still, I looked around, and took some snapshots of possible locations for later.

One thing that I did decide to take a photo of that evening was the church. There is a small village church and graveyard on a small hill by the northern side of the island. It wasn't far away, so I walked there along the coast. I quickly found that if I wanted the church visible, there was only one direction I could take the photo from; luckily, the sun was setting in the same direction.

Not my best,  but it's not too shabby.

While taking the picture above I noticed something; I had left my jacket in the car,  and it was getting a bit chilly. So chilly, in fact, that in my hurry to get back to my jacket, I missed focus on a panorama I took from the same location. I took all 35 exposures for the HDR panorama, and I realized they were blurry only the next day. In my defense, I was cold and hungry.

Back at the tent, I first put on some proper clothing, and then cooked some dinner. The storm was supposed to hit the next day, and there was supposed to be partial cloud cover during sunrise. One of the ideas I had for the trip was to take a sunrise pic of the camping ground harbor, so I set my watch for 4:30 and went to bed.

There were dozens of these snails around my tent immediately after the sun went down.

The next morning, I looked out of my tent and decided begrudgingly that the weather forecast was right and that there might be a nice sunrise. I'm not a morning person, at all, but the things I do for photos... After about ten or fifteen minutes of walking through the thick bush I got to a rock overlooking the harbor and the sunrise, and set up my tripod. I still don't really know what I did wrong, but Lightroom and photoshop simply refuse to stitch the photos I took that morning into a nice straight panoramic. I've spent hours on straightening it, and luckily I've gotten it into something that almost resembles reality:

The morning was amazing, though. I sat on a rock by my camera, looking at the clouds rolling in from the right and the sun rising from the left. I have a lot of raw photos from that morning, my hope is that some day I'll bother to process all of them and see if some might be better than the one above. For now, I can't be bothered.

The storm came later that day. It was the biggest storm of the summer, actually. Or so the news said. It missed Kökar completely. We only got some rain with uniform grey skies. Best laid plans, and all that... I spent the day mostly doing nothing, sitting and watching the sea. A few hours later the showers of rain cleared out, so I took the chance and walked out to the beach again. 

Chillin'. If you look closely, you can see a seal's head above my shoe, some way out to sea.

There is something calming about the sea. I could spend hours just sitting and watching it. Well, I did. And I have before. Some time before sunset, I started to look for sunset compositions. I had already photographed the church, so I wasn't that interested in it. Besides, I didn't want anything man-made in my shot. This was going to be a picture of the wast calmness of the outer archipelago at sunset.

Gaps had started to appear in the clouds too, so I had a chance for a great sunset. After changing my composition three times, I set my tripod down, made my camera ready, and waited. The clouds were thickest at the horizon, but there was a small gap just above it. Maybe, with luck, the sun would get through there.

All in all, a nice evening. Even though I didn't get the storm clouds, I was happy I got something. Also, sitting at the beach all day was quite relaxing.

The next morning, it rained. Also, I discovered my tent isn't rainproof anymore. No wonder, it's probably 15 years old at this point. Still, not a happy morning for me. Good thing I had my car with me, it was easy to dump everything in it and pack up the tent. The rain continued for most of the day, but I did manage to take this:

Another rain cloud rolling in.

I was going to go to the beach, but it was raining and I was lazy. The cloud above might have looked great at the correct location... Anyway, that was it for this short trip. The rains continued for the whole trip back, even though they were quite sporadic. On the ferry back to Korpo I took the final image of the trip:

Not quite what I wanted, but it'll do.

All in all a good trip; I didn't get the photo I was planning to, but I did have a few relaxing day out by the sea. And in my book, that's a win.

Using HDR in Lightroom to increase Dynamic Range of your camera

Before we get started, just a few words about High Dynamic Range (HDR) editing. There are a lot of different ways to apply HDR processing to an image. All of them have their pros and cons. The way I use HDR in this post is the most basic use, and I'm sure that the more advanced of you think it isn't the right way to do it. But for you who don't know what HDR is, and why it's useful, I hope you'll find the following a useful stepping stone into expanding your toolbox. You can use this technique with any camera (even the one in your phone!), and it is especially useful on older and/or smaller cameras that don't have a very good Dynamic Range to begin with.

So, what is HDR and why should you care? Simply put, your camera is not as good as your eye at recording big ranges of light versus dark. If you stand in your back yard in the summer, you will note that your eye can see the blue in the sky, as well as the dark under the trees. Similarly, during e.g. sunset, your eyes and brain have no difficulty in seeing the last rays of the sun in the sky, as well as the dark ground in front of you.

For the camera, this poses a problem. Even though camera sensors have come a long way in recent years, they still can't compete with your own eyes when it comes to dynamic range (the range of brightness from black to white). Modern cameras can detect up to 15 stops of dynamic range at most, while your eyes are in the range of 20 or so (combined with your brain that range increases by a significant amount). If you are not familiar with the term 'stop', you might want to google that first, as it is a very fundamental measurement in how cameras tell you how bright something is. For now, I'll just tell you that each stop is a doubling of the amount of light. So, increasing the stop by one doubles the brightness, increasing it with two doubles the brightness twice, etc. A difference of 10 stops is actually a brightness difference 1024 times to the original. 

So, cameras can capture highlights that are around 4-8000 times brighter than the shadows, in theory at least. In practice, this range is smaller; the shadow range of that number comes with a lot of visible noise that you typically wouldn't want in your image. Of course, it doesn't matter what the numbers actually are, we are interested in the result. So, let's take a look.

The image above is a scene from the Finnish archipelago, during a nice sunset. It is processed to convey the feeling of serenity; but it is also processed to maximize dynamic range. When I took the image, I realized that the dynamic range of my camera wasn't going to cut it. The sky was much too bright, and the ground was much too dark in comparison. It's not what my eyes saw, but unfortunately my eyes don't take the picture. Here is the raw output of my camera with no processing:

The camera chose to expose more of the ground in this particular instance. As you can see, the ground is visible but still dark, and the sky is almost white. There is another problem as well; the sky doesn't only look white, it is white. Going to the 'Develop' Module in Lightroom and clicking on the highlight warning triangle in the histogram confirms this:

The area marked with red is pure white; that are was simply too bright for the camera to capture. The data in that area is gone; no colors, no contrast, no anything; it is just white. Because of this, reducing the whites or highlights doesn't work. The area isn't white anymore, but is still just a blob of the same color.

That does not look right. The sun and clouds around it are a solid block of color, no detail what so ever.

Typically, you can fix this by deliberately under-exposing your image by a stop or two. You can do this either in Manual mode or with Exposure Compensation, it doesn't matter; the point is you tell the camera to make the image darker on purpose, so that the camera has a chance to capture more of the highlights. So, let's try that:

Raw image, under-exposed by 1 stop (half as bright as the original). The sun is still over-exposed, but it is a lot better. The ground, though..

Now we have another issue; the ground is way too dark. Depending on your camera, it might not be a problem. Many modern cameras (Nikons especially) have amazing shadow recovery that let you get the detail back when processing a RAW file. But many cameras don't, and in this image, my trusty Nikon doesn't fare too well either. Let's try increasing the shadows and taking a detailed look at what it does.

Shadows at +100, nothing else. Too good to be true?

3:1 magnification of a shadow area. See all the noise? That pixelated mess is very typical when you raise deep shadows on most cameras.

So, we got the detail back, at least when looking at the image from a distance. But we paid heavily. When we increase the shadows, we are asking Lightroom to amplify the brightness in an area where our camera was struggling to get enough light. As a result, we see very clear noise in our image. Not good if we wan't to publish a high-resolution image online, or hang a print on our wall.

So, finally we arrive at what HDR actually is. To fix the problems we are having, we need more dynamic range. We need more information in the highlights and the shadows. Using HDR, we accomplish this by taking multiple images and combining them to a single, data-packed image. We take images that are darker so that we get a nice sky with all the detail preserved, and we take images that are too bright, to get more data for the shadows, reducing noise in those areas. Then we feed all of them into the Lightroom HDR tool and let it combine them. 

You can take as many photos as you like, but typically you would use 3 or 5 shots. The middle one is 'correctly' exposed, or at least what your camera thinks is correct. This will be your average. The other ones are spaced out both ways, with a difference of for example 1 stop. So with three images would have values of -1, 0 and +1 stop, and five would have -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. I took three with a difference of 2 stops (-2, 0, +2) because of the big range I was dealing with; the more images you take the better the end result will be, but the longer it takes to process. It helps to use a tripod when taking the images, but it isn't strictly necessary. Just remember that your bright shots might be 2 stops over-exposed, lowering your shutter speed by a factor of 4. In the series below the bright shot is at 1/6th of a second, making it tricky to hand-hold. I just used a tripod so that I din't need to worry about it. I'm lazy that way ;)

-2 stops, 'correct', +2 stops. The left one has a nice sky, the right one has no noise in the shadows, and the middle one is a good average.

Select the three images in Lightroom (e.g. using the ctrl key), right click, and choose 'Photo Merge' > 'HDR'. Lightroom will build a preview and show you some options.

Let's go through the options real quick.

  • Auto align: Always tick this, even when using a tripod. It makes sure the images are aligned, pixel-by-pixel.
  • Auto Tone: Leave this off, we want to process our image ourselves. Leaving it on is OK though, as you can reset those changes later if you don't like them.
  • Deghost amount: If your image contains moving subjects (people, vehicles, moving branches, etc.), chances are that those objects have moved between shots. This setting lets Lightroom detect that movement, and remove it. I typically use 'Low' or 'Medium', but with this particular image Lightroom was misbehaving and only let me choose 'None'. 

When ready, select 'Merge'. Lightroom will start the merging process. Note that the original images will not be touched; instead, a new file will be created. Lightroom can even merge RAW files, that external applications typically can't, and produces a HDR RAW file which is very convenient. Here is the new file, opened in the Develop module:

Doesn't look like much, does it? There are changes, if you look closely; the sky is a little bit darker, and the ground is a little bit lighter. The beauty, though, is in the data. Even though Lightroom doesn't tell you, it has a lot more range to play with now. Let's start opening up the shadows and checking the noise:

The noise is completely gone. Good riddance.

You'll see the same effect when processing the highlights; the detail is now back. From this point, you can edit the image as normal. I dropped the total exposure, added contrast, clarity and vibrance, and cropped some of the top and bottom (they weren't that interesting, and now the image is 16:9, fitting nicely into e.g. a Full HD screen).

Note how I cropped the leaves in the corner; you don't want distractions in the corners. The horizon is also close to a 3rd-line.

The I added some more vibrance to the overall image (from 15 to 30), and created a graduated filter to darken the sky a tiny bit, also adding a hint of saturation. The last thing was removing all the dust spots I had on my sensor/lens; go to 'Spot Removal' and turn on 'Visualize spots' and play with the slider until you clearly see the spots. Then just click each of them.

3 spots down, one to go (top right of the image).

And there you have it. I hope this tutorial helps you when you stumble on a great scene, but your camera doesn't want to play. Using the HDR function in Lightroom is really easy, as long as you remember to take the additional pictures. With it, you don't need the latest and greatest camera to produce amazing, high-range photos.

Next up, creating Panoramas in Lightroom, see you then :)

Day 3.5: why I do what I do

Fannaråken has the highest hostel in Europe. At 2068 meters over sea level, you can get a warm bed, a hot meal, and shelter from the elements. You can also enjoy the views, or even partake in the yearly 'run up Fannaråken'-challenge. I did none of that. Having spent the most exhausting 4.5 hours of my life getting to the very top, I could barely get to the cabin. After climbing in the door, I collapsed on a sofa and didn't move for a good while. The two guys taking care of the place just smiled at me; 'we heard there was someone on their way'. Other than that, they let me catch my breath in peace.

After 15 minutes, I stood up, got some coffee, and sat down again. I started looking around. Fannaråkhytte is divided into a few houses; the main house has a dining/rec area, kitchen and staff accommodations, while another cabin houses guest quarters. Bathrooms and tools sheds are separate as well. I read some info plaques about the place. The first building on Fannaråken was a year-round weather station (did I mention the Norwegians are crazy?) built in the 1930s. There was no road up the mountain, so they had to build it. Horses couldn't get up the steep hill, so they were left behind. Even the mules gave up 600 meters down from the top. What did the Norwegian Real Men do? They carried the building materials up. By hand. And built the damn cabin. 

I looked outside, thinking about the massive effort, but saw nothing but blinding fog. I left my camera in my bag and concentrated on the hot coffee. The combination of rest and caffeine was starting to have an effect, and soon enough I had enough strength to move myself to the guest house.

Fannaråkhytte, not in black and white.

Beware the snow. That is a 300 meter straight drop.

There is something down there.. One of the caretakers looking down from the highest point, just beside the guest cottage.

On the way I tried to look at the scenery, but the scenery wasn't playing along. The clouds still held their grip of the small mountaintop, and i could only get glimpses of other mountains or the valleys surrounding the peak. It was still early afternoon, so I knew I had plenty of time to look at the sights (or waiting for it to clear, at least). So I changed clothes and took a short nap in my bunk. 

#15, that's me!

I woke an hour later, looked outside, and my jaw just dropped. 

What a difference some clouds make.

The clouds hadn't cleared fully yet, and periodically they covered the mountain again. But gradually the clouds disappeared, leaving me to do my thing.

Down the valley. We're way above the glacier now.

Some ice desperately clinging to existence in the sun. The temperature was less than 5 degrees over zero.

View due East.

Best view from a toilet ever?

I spent the whole evening taking photos. I was so blown away, I didn't even really think of what I took images of; looking at them, I realize I missed some. There are a couple of vantage points I don't have any images from. Well, only gives me reason to go back :)

After taking photos for a couple of hours straight, I was invited for some dinner. It was almost all canned food, but I was starving, so it was predictably delicious. Hats off to the guys manning the hostel; not everyone likes being on a mountaintop for 5 weeks straight, making 3-course dinners and breakfast for tourists every day. After the dinner I talked briefly to one of the guys (I can't remember his name, I'm so sorry :( ). I mentioned that the biggest reason I came to Norway was to get a picture from the top of Fannaråken at either sunset or sunrise. Because of the weather, I was optimistic, but the guy said that he hadn't seen a sunset for 3 weeks. The weather had turned bad each evening. I got nervous; I already had great pics, but not THE pic. Would I get it?

After the talk I had about an hour before sunset was supposed to happen, so I had plenty of time to get a few golden hour shots out of the way:

It doesn't get any better than this. Or does it?

Same view, with 100% less fat Finnish man.

I waited 15 minutes for the sun to hit the glacier, but the hill in the middle covered it really effectively. Stupid mountains, getting in the way!

The sun was getting really low now, and the clouds in the horizon had basically disappeared. I wasn't going to get a shot in that direction. However, the most beautiful thing in a sunset isn't always the sun.. I did a quick re-plan, got my tripod out, ready to rock and roll. But first..

Can you really blame me?

The plan was simple; get a shot with golden light on the mountaintops and the buildings. Then wait for a few minutes until the sky gets some color, and take that shot. Using a tripod, both are perfectly aligned. With a sprinkle of Photoshop, you'd get a pretty nice shot. In theory.

I set up my tripod, realized it was wrong, moved it, moved it again, and then settled down to wait. The golden light was absolutely amazing. The caretakers got out their own cameras too, saying it was a very long time since it was this nice. The sun slowly went over the horizon, I kept shooting. Brackets of 5, full resolution RAW, mirror up, cable release. Checking each exposure. There was not a chance in hell I'd mess this up technically. 

Most of you know what I talk about when I say that the sunset can paint the sky red. The thing is, it doesn't happen during summer. In fact, I had been at my dads cottage a week earlier, and got almost no red at all. It has something do to with the quicker sunset in autumn along with colder air that creates the magic. I had hoped for a good image. Frankly, any color with some clouds would have made me happy. But this was something else. I still can't understand my luck; out of all of the days I could have chosen, I chose the only evening in weeks that had a proper sunset. And it was spectacular.