How nice it is to be able to reach the winter within an hour drive – yesterday, the Bavarian alps were still experiencing remnants of that winter storm Andrea that hit Germany on Thursday. A lot of fresh snow, allowing this intimate photo of a mountain hut near Unterammergau.

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Lightning photography seems either extremely easy, or extremely hard: When the thunder god is willing to show his best side, all you need is a camera and a tripod and some patience. If not, it seems impossible to get a single image with a lightning visible in any corner of the frame.

Until last month I was strictly subscribed to the latter – I had tried but never made any lightning photo the subject was clearly visible in. This changed when Thor (or pick your favorite one from the Wikipedia List Of Thundergods) showed his muscles as I hadn’t seen before…

The theory to take an image like above is rather easy:

1. Put the camera on a steady tripod.
2. Put it into Manual exposure mode (that’s the M, you heard correctly )!
3. Decide on an exposure time that will be long enough to get some lightning in there – you will press the shutter *before* you see a lightning… I chose 10 seconds here. 30 might do as well, depending on the amount of ambient light. You want your photo to be all black when taken without lightnings’ light.
4. Lightning is very very bright, but it will vary greatly depending on rain and distance. Ideally, you have none or at least not heavy rain. In addition,  you can decide to get only the brightest lightnings correctly exposed, and have the weak ones underexposed. I started with setting the ISO to 100 (or “low” on a Nikon), and closed the aperture down to 8, and later adjusted it to 11 when I saw I was still getting some overexposed images.
5. Take a test image to check the exposure without lightning.
6. Make sure the focus is on the foreground you framed. Focus manually and turn off autofocus. It won’t work in the pitch black night anyway, and slow down every shutter release.
7. And now comes the hard part – if you are lucky, your camera supports an automatic interval timer like my D300 does. Else, you will need a cable release with that feature, or do manual clicks all night long.  Use the interval timer to repeat taking exposures until your flash card is full or the thunder is gone.
   I set my Nikon to do 500 images with a gap of 1 second (the smallest possible). Thus, I would expose 10 seconds, then the camera would wait for a second, and then shoot the next 10 second image. So I could make sure I would have 91% of all lightning on my sensor within the framed part of the sky.
8. For this image, I did not take a wide angle but rather a mild telelens (100 mm on a 1.5x crop camera here). I chose a pleasing (well, you might recognize the building from my earlier teleconverter tests) foreground and framed a part of the night sky where I hoped the lightning would occur, and waited…

The fun part is harvesting the results after the thunderstorm. This one lasted a full three hours, and I kept adjusting the part of the sky I was photographing to the slowly moving “hot spot” of lightning as the clouds were moving as well. The exposure time of 10 seconds allowed to aggregate multiple smaller lightnings into one frame like in the image above.

“Depending on the storm, lightning flashes can last for several hundred milliseconds and contain dozens of strokes each occurring approximately 40 milliseconds apart.” (lightningtrigger.com)

Statistics? Well, I took 303 images, of which 247 showed no sign of lightning at all. 23 were lit by lightning not in the frame or just barely being visible (for those tiny lightnings, the aperture was closed too much). Another 18 showed more promising lightning strikes which were either under- or overexposed, or were just at the border of the frame. This left me with 15 rather decent lightning images.

Of those, I really liked the spectactular above and this one:

So the next time you meet the Thunder God, enjoy the digital age, make sure to have a tripod with you and just shoot away! But stay safe and out of the danger area – read through the safety tips by the NWS before you decide to give it a try! I made these photos through a window from the safety from my home!

If you wonder how our grandfathers did this without the blessing of digital images, have a look at this great page at weatherscapes, with more info on the different type of thunderstorms and more. And if you are looking into daytime lightning photography, you will have to invest in more gear (oh joy!) and have a look at a lightning trigger (more great information about lightning photography there as well!).

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1. How to: Create a sun star in your landscape photo

When coming back from last weekend’s landscape tour, I knew I had a keeper with me: The brilliant yellow field of rapeseed with a dark blue sky of a passing thunderstorm makes for a simple, but really effective landscape image. Rule simplify for better photos applied at its best. Nothing special, but I certainly like looking at it again.

And suddenly, I saw it: A hot pixel. Hot pixels (or stuck pixels) can occur on any image sensor, and usually get mapped out in the camera – after the mapping, the pixel or subpixel will no longer contribute to the final image, and the value for it will be interpolated from its neighbouring pixels. So what really is a hardware defect, even if its a small one as there are 11,999,999 other pixels left, gets corrected in software. It is not very dramatic as well, but once you see it you see it in every picture – and reviewing older photos it got stuck already a month ago, and therefore is on all photos I took since then with the Pen.

Here is a 100% crop of the image above with the hot pixel in all it’s beauty:

Panic! I will need the camera for my vacation in 4 weeks! If I send it in, how long will Olympus need for the repair?

I wrote an email to the Olympus support (it’s di.support@olympus-europa.com in Europe, in case you need it) asking where to send it to. I confess, I have underestimated the Olympus engineers. Won’t do it again, promised. It is Nikon who asks to send the body in for such a fix.

Olympus support replied within 90 minutes of opening their hotline on Monday morning, and politely hinted I should try the “pixel mapping” function. Blush. Ok, RTFM – the camera already has the self-healing function built it. I triggered it using the procedure as described in the camera’s manual on page 129 – menu button, “gears” menu, sub-item I, function Pixel Mapping. Some seconds wait, problem gone!

Kudos, Olympus!

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On a rather cold day some weeks ago in the Chiemgau mountain range, I was backcountry skiing, the weather being rather boring with high fogs hiding the sun from view throughout the day, providing a very flat light (which is, with snow, normally not a good thing photographically speaking).

On my way home I was still looking for a chance to get some nice sunset light, but the light was very dispersed and I had nearly given up and moved into a valley running from north to south, knowing I would not get any direct view of the sun should it decide to show itself before sundown.

So I was not in a position to get the sun itself into the picture when it send its rays toward me – but the high fog of the day provided a very nice medium for the sun rays. I like especially the peaks’ shadows in the foggy air. The image above was taken with my little Olympus Pen E-P1, cropped to a Panorama. Colors and contrast have been enhanced in post production. I hope you like it anyway

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I was hiking in the Chiemgau mountain range, and came across this old tree wanting to be a nice foreground. I found that at that time of day the sun was making its way into the picture, and as always if it’s that close to the border of the frame – I chose to include it.

Did so, and snapped a picture to see whether this motif would work (ok, not that great, but good enough to show the effect).

I thought it came out ok – but – who was talking about ugly white blotches in the sky where the sun was supposed to be? So, in order to create a nice sun star, do:

1. Close your aperture. This is important. I usually choose f/16 or f/22.
2. Clean your front lens. If it has any dirt speckles, the image will be useless.
3. Hope that your sensor is clean – that much stopped down, it will show. Better sort that out before going into the field.
4. Remove any filter from your lens, as in all these backlighting situations image quality can suffer because of light trapped between filter and front lens, reducing overall contrast.
5. Choose the right lens. This is something that seems to be amiss in most tutorials I found (nice ones here and here), but in my experience the lens really makes the difference!

My standard lens I also used for the picture above is the rather old kit lens AF-S 18-70 mm DX, which is really nice, but it does perform miserably in terms of sun stars. My Tokina 12-24 mm wide angle, which I mostly use for landscape situations like this, luckily performs much better – I just love its 18 ray sun stars! Quick switch of lens, retake photo utilizing also the larger view angle possible – quite a difference, eh?

By the way, the shape of the sun star depends on the number of blades the physical aperture in the lens has: An even number will create one ray per blade, an odd number of blades will create a sunstar with twice as many rays as blades. I also read that curved blades used for making the nicest Bokeh are rather bad for sunstars, which come out better with straight blades. Seems the Tokina got 9 straight ones!

And here is the image from two winters ago, which shows that the Tokina can produce sunstars also with the full sun in the image, not just when it’s partially obscured by trunks or trees. And it shows how I learned I should rather clean the front lens

Hope that was useful to you! But tell us about your experience – do you have lenses that excel (or perform badly) when doing sunstars?

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1. Travel planning – which countries to visit as a landscape photographer?
2. How to: photograph lightning (at night)

So let me try to answer the questions from Olaf from my experience. Green color where I am in sync with Olaf :

Best pictures so far: Norway

Most disappointing landscape: Sicily (Italy)

Most variety in landscape: La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain)

Best Food: Sicily (Italy)

Worst Food: Norway

Easiest way to get access to beaches and special landscapes: Norway

Hardest way to get access to beaches and special landscapes: La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain)

Coldest Country: Norway

Most rain: Norway

Most underestimated country/landscape: Germany

Highest “Must Come Back” Potential: Norway

And adding two new questions:

Countries I really need to revisit: USA (Hawaii, Florida, California), Seychelles, Finland in winter

Countries I long to travel to: Iceland, Scotland, Chile, Ecuador, Patagonia (Argentina), Svalbard (Norway), Extramadura (Spain), Hungary, Siberia and Kamtchatka (Russia), Japan, Bretagne (France), New England (USA), Southwest USA, Northwest USA, Westcoast Canada, Alaska… Sigh.

Given this year’s travel budget, Scotland or Southern Spain rank high in likeliness

What can you tell us about your experiences? Post a blog article and link it here or leave a comment!

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1. How to: Create a sun star in your landscape photo

The online gallery with the winners and the winning images of the 2010 award has just been published, make sure to surf by and have a look, it always is worth a visit:

But don’t get depressed thinking you will never make it – It is easy to think that if you would only live in South Africa you certainly would win that award more easily than, let’s say, living in The Netherlands. Is this really true? Let’s have a quick look at a) where the winning photographers actually come frome, and b) where the winning images were taken.

If we have a quick count of the home countries of the winning photographers, and summarize to, well, continents or areas, you get this result (pardon me for counting photographers multiple times in case they won more than one award, my spreadsheet currently doesn’t allow more detail). A certainly strong European flavor in this competition:

But where the photographers are from is not as relevant for our discussion as where the images were actually made. So, drilling down on the area the winning photos were made in, no surprise Africa comes up first. But right then, European wildlife and landscapes make it on the ranks of the award.

Antarctica? For sure. One winning image.  Underwater, at a southern sea coral reef? Certainly. One winning image. Canary Islands? Yikes, three winning images!

Conclusion: You do not necessarily need to book a transcontinental flight to stand a chance in this competition. Look closer to your home, and for you Europeans out there: Embrace the European Wonders of Nature!

Of course, alternatively, if you don’t think you will make it at home you could travel as far as the Australian Kent Miklenda who shot this awarded image on the Lofot islands, northern Norway:

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1. Wildlife photography workshop cancelled – where are you guys?
2. Travel planning – which countries to visit as a landscape photographer?
3. Exhibition tip: WPOY exhibition in Nymphenburg, Munich

Guess what happened? Arriving on Sunday afternoon in the best of all possible sun flooded winter snows, we hit the track and had a great time. Next morning, things were even getting better – after one of the coldest nights of the year with temperatures way below -20° C (that’s -5° F), the sun came out and everything – and I mean really everything – was covered by the thickest hoar frost I have ever seen. And since last year I’m in love with hoar frost, remember?

We did a great tour of about 18 km through this wonderful landscape, and I’d love to show you photos – but I can’t, because while I had packed the huge Lowepro backpack with D300 and everything, I just forgot the tiny little Canon ixus 40 on my desk. Was too small. Just overlooked it in the huge pile of equipment I packed. I briefly considered taking the D300, but the >1 kg monster including lens was not suited for cross-contry, neither was the Computrekker Plus backpack. That is certainly not suited for any kind of sports, as it’s just barely ok for airplane travel.

Quickly decided to rathermore enjoy the scenery without taking pictures – only thing I can share of this perfect afternoon is our track. For more interest on geo-tagging and GPS data workflows, you’re invited to revisit my previous posts on this topic.

Wow, I just found a new feature in Google Earth 5.1 I had not noticed in it’s significance: It has a button for “Show sunlight across the landscape”. You can select date and time of day, and it will render the light. This could come in handy to predict cool photo spots in a mountainous landscape. Below the simulated phase of the Haldensee lake we touched on our ski tour at the time of day the sun dips below the first mountain range. This is certainly something I have to try in the future.

Next day, of course, no hoar frost anymore and the sun showed itself a little less generous. Did ski, but the photos we took later that afternoon are really everything but impressive in terms of light. Look how flat the light is with snow and high fog… This is the (frozen) Haldensee lake, looking back from the position indicated on the track map towards the “camera” of the Google Earth picture shown above. The track across the lake was closed, for the ice obviously not being trusted after the prior weekend’s foehn.

Lesson learned: Sometimes, less is more. And don’t be so stupid to leave the small camera at home.

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Now, after lunch, which at least for my part meant a delicious Kaiserschmarrn, a sweet pancake-based dish famous in Austria and Bavaria, the real challenge began: To climb up from the hut to the summit of the Herzogstand, to the full 1731 meters height. To my dismay, it was still foggy out there and nobody was really looking forward to the steep climb through fog and snow up onto the summit – without any vista value, it would have been a photo-less exercise only (with a 10 kg backpack, of course).

We started out and began the switchback trail, and I am sure in summer this would have been an easy walk, but with the snow the trail had become quite narrow, and walking right next to the steep slopes through snow and ice was a new thing for me and required quite some focus and attention.

About 100 meters below the summit, suddenly the sky turned from white to blueish white, and a quick glance at the horizon (stopping first – mind your step) confirmed: We were climbing out of the fog! The first mountain peaks were visible at a distance, with some separation from the background. Now this could turn out to be a photographer’s dream…

With renewed vigor, we made the final two switchbacks and found that we had climbed “just” above the fog ceiling – an incredible view! I was basically too stunned by what I saw to be able to think about “framing it”, and as Bruno, our guide, assured us at the evening’s image critique, this was an “unphotographable moment”.

After having recovered from the first joyful shock, I tried anyway.

You have to imagine being up there, over the clouds, with an incredible peaceful silence (and actually no wind at all). The snow and mountains showered by sun light, and the clouds (I prefer clouds over fog here…) constantly changing shape and sometimes flowing over the top of the mountain including the summit cross and a group of photogs

The challenge that the motif presented – it was concretely the huge Karwendel mountain range in Austria as well as the Wetterstein mountains on the German side of the border – was the sheer impossible aspect ratio. The mountains spanned a large section of the horizon, but of course being quite distant – I measured 18 km using Google Earth – came out much smaller in the image than the eye made me believe. Three solutions came into my mind:

1. Just grab a nice looking section from the mountain range and try to have a nice left and right edge composition anyway. With a zoom, you have a large freedom to choose. This was pretty hard, and I am not really satisfied with this image (which was taken using my Sigma 100-300 f/4 at 125 mm).
   
   
2. Look for a mountain that is not connected to the main range. I found one right behind me – the Benediktenwand, which made quite a sight being an island in the sea of clouds. Now, the wikipedia article (sorry, German and French only for now) states that the Benediktenwand was one of the mountains in the last ice age which was high enough to have it’s peak rise about 600 meters out over the glaciers surrounding it. Wonder how this would have looked like!
   
3. Ha! Make a panorama image! This leaves the aspect ratio problem to the viewer, not the photographer. Worked out only so so, as I needed 11 (!) images at 100 mm focal length to cover the Karwendel only, leaving out the Wetterstein part. Now, if we assume a panorama can nicely be viewed when it has a 1:3 to maximum 1:4 aspect ratio, this is a failure Here is a quick and dirty preview of the image material – I used Autostitch for this one, when I would go full quality I’d use Photoshop CS3 nowadays.

4. Introduce some foreground trying to convey the scale of the experience – this is the approach that worked best for me, even if the mountains themselves loose their dominance in the resulting images.

[svgallery name="wintermagic2"]

We were discussing with our guide Bruno whether everybody felt comfortable staying up there to watch and photograph the sun coming down, and walk back down in darkness (and fog) – I had packed my flash lights including my new head mounted flash light, and was ready to stay up there to not miss the surely spectacular colors of a sunset. But luck had already shown it’s nicer face to us, and started looking away – the fog rose about another 100 meters, leaving us without any sunlight or motif. So at 4:30pm we decided to give up (the sun was to set at 5:11pm according to my GPS unit) and have the easier walk in remaining day light. It was the right decision, as even those who were willing to wait another 45 minutes and walk in the dark came down without any view of a sunset.

Having missed the opportunity for nice sunset pictures, our hope for a nice sunrise at 7:44am the next day was stifled by our hosts, who with their experience predicted that we would be having fog as well the next morning, and we could “stay in bed until breakfast”.

Well, I didn’t, and got up at 7am to take my gear outside and try my luck

More to come…

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1. Workshop report: Winter Magic (part I)
2. Wildlife photography workshop cancelled – where are you guys?

Now, the plan was to take the gondola lift up to the Herzogstand close to the beautiful Walchensee lake, and do some serious landscape photography up there, at an altitude of about 1600 meters. The best news, as usual in the Alps, is that there is a cozy mountain-hut-like hotel where we were to stay overnight. The possibility to sleep up there meant that we would get a chance for a sunset and a sunrise on top of the mountain. Wow!

So much for the plan, which was to be executed last weekend, January 31. When I arrived at the parking lot of the gondola lift Saturday morning, 8:30 am (yikes, again got up before 7 am. Maybe I’ll turn into a real nature photographer someday), I was still positively looking forward to go up as the lake itself (and basically the entire way from Munich) was in fog. Not the really thick can’t see where I’m driving kind, but good enough to dim the lights and kill all shadows. Now, I still hoped for sunshine up there, as I had seen in the news the day before that the sun was shining brightly for the skiing competition in near Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

My hope was shattered when the joyful gondola operator ensured me that there was “only clouds” up there and that this wouldn’t change for the day or the next day. He seemed to enjoy imagining this bunch of photographers sitting on top of his mountain with nothing else to photograph than white snow in white fog.

How wrong I was. And surprised. Surprised by the fact that our workshop leader, Bruno, was getting all fidgety about the possibility to have frost up there, and he insisted that the group moved quickly, and brought the equipment into the gondola to go up and not “miss it”! Miss fog? Sorry? It was already all dull and dark down here, how can that be better? It will only be colder, I thought.

[svgallery name="wintermagic1"]

So I learned about the beauty of hoar frost, and the unlikeliness to encounter it when you try to plan it. We were really lucky to get a full morning of frost photography, see for yourself if that is boring!? But it came even better, stay tuned…

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1. Wildlife photography workshop cancelled – where are you guys?