A Tale of Two Seasons

Prior to my February journey to Iceland I had visited the land of Fire & Ice during the Summer. The transformation of the landscape between Summer and Winter is truly breathtaking!

Here is an example of the Skogafoss waterfall, as I experienced it in August of 2022:

Skogafoss with Double Rainbow

The moss on the rocks is a warm green from being in an ideal growing environment combination of moisture and almost never-ending light. The waterfall is providing a great volume of water, as there is plenty of melt from Eyjafallajokull and Myrdalsjokull, the two glaciers that feed the Skoga river.

Winter’s metamorphosis of Skogafoss creates a completely difference sense of place and emotion:

Icy Skogafoss in February

Much of the waterfall’s volume is reduced, as the glaciers are stocking up on snow and ice to take on the return of warmer days; the ice formations are now an integral part of Skogafoss, having captured a goodly portion of the water as it tried to pass by. Nevertheless, Skogafoss’ tell-tale spray persists during this chilling days, although the Sun’s light does not impinge on it at an angle to produce a glorious rainbow.

Both times of year produce a spectacular landscape, each of which draw me in to come back more often and experience the breadth of Iceland’s offerings.

A Return to Iceland

First of all, greetings to everyone! It’s been too long since my last post for all the wrong reasons.

Great news is my recent return to Iceland for the third time. This was the first foray into the land of Fire and Ice during the Winter season, as I wanted to see even more of the Ice part of this beautiful country. During ten days in February, my traveling companion, George Fellner, and I spent some quality time photographing the amazing landscapes in their Winter glory.

Here’s my first item to share from this epic journey (it’s almost 4 minutes long, and I hope you enjoy all of it along with the soundtrack):

Aurora in Vik, Iceland

This was the first time in my life that I experienced the Aurora Borealis in person, and it was absolutely magical, breathtaking and astounding!

We had scoped out a location ahead of time, which would provide a bit of foreground in the form of the hills that you see in these images; the location is about 20 minutes from the town of Vik, and definitely not the most popular place, as we had it to ourselves. A number of other locations had large groups of people gathered, as we could even hear them in the quiet of the night.

After setting up around 9 pm, I spent some time ensuring that all the camera settings were within a range that would work, dialing in the exposure on my remote trigger. Just after 10 pm, the first glimpses of the aurora started showing in the sky, much to our excitement! For the next hour we were treated to this magnificent celestial display.

For the photography nerds, these images were capture on the Canon EOS R5 using the 15-35mm f2.8L RF lens. I kept my aperture wide open at f2.8 and set ISO to 800. During the shoot I made some adjustments to exposure lengths depending on strength of the aurora; exposure was typically around 20 seconds.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

iPhone Friday

Happy Friday to everyone! For this week’s installment, I opted for one of the images from my recent trip to Valley of Fire state park in Nevada…

Mosquito Arch

Even though I was predominantly shooting with my main camera on a tripod, I like using my iPhone to get a sense of the composition that I want, particularly to determine the height from which I want to capture the scene; it’s a lot easier to go low with your iPhone than adjust a tripod 5 times.

As the sun was getting very low behind us, the light became really saturated, so I actually reduced the overall saturation quite a bit in this shot.

Throwback Thursday

I have to admit that it’s fun to go back through some of my older images! It’s really cool to see how my ‘eye’ has evolved over the years, and also interesting to see some images that I still really like after many years.

This is one of those images…

Colors of the Wind

This image came about as I noticed the wind spinner that was sitting close to where I was photographing dog agility. It gave me the opportunity to play around a bit with exposure timing to get just the amount of blur that I was looking for.

Captured back in 2005 with a Canon EOS 1D MkII and an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens and 1.4x extender. Exposure time was 1/25s to get this effect.

Wonderful Wednesday

We made it to the middle of the week! In celebration, I thought it would be nice to have something wonderful to share…

The Wonderful Barn

This corkscrew-shaped building is commonly referred to as The Wonderful Barn and sits on the edge of the Castletown House Estate; the barn is in the town of Leixlip. The barn was built in 1743 and has a bit of mystery associated with it, as its purpose is in debate.

• One theory is that it was used as a dovecote where doves were kept, which were considered a delicacy during Georgian times.
• Another hints that the structure was used for sport shooting or as a gamekeepers tower
• A third theory states that this barn was used as a granary, which is supported by the fact that there is a hole in the center of each floor.

Of course, it could simply have been built as a folly, which was not unusual during those times.

What theory do you have for this interesting building?

Travel Tuesday – Ep. 8

I surmise that last week’s homage to a country on many of our minds in Travel Tuesday – Ep. 7 was rather challenging; this capture was from my trip to Ukraine in 2018 to the wonderful people and city of Kharkiv. The building is the Annunciation Cathedral (in Ukrainian:  Свято-Благовіщенський кафедральний собор), which I found to be a stunning edifice.

This week, we’re going back to 2015 and a location that might be easier for many of you to figure out…

Water Everywhere

One of my favorite locations and waterfalls, so I expect that some of you may know where this is…

Monochrome Monday

Part of my photographic explorations from the last year were in the area of Infrared photography. After some initial playing around, I bit the proverbial bullet and had my Canon EOS 5D MkII converted to filter at 590 nm (5900 Angstrom), which left me plenty of options on how I want to process the image.

Here’s one of the shots with this camera…

Red Brick Road

Seeing this beautiful red brick walkway in front of me, I couldn’t help but take this shot. As I know what the trees would do in IR, this lent itself for a B&W image that I still enjoy.

Developing an Image – part 2

Welcome to the 2nd installment and follow up to the Develop an Image – part-2 post from a couple of weeks ago. As a reminder, we were working on the intriguing image of rock formation in Gold Butte National Monument and had completed processing in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR):

ACR work is done

One quick note is that ACR can be invoked as a filter in Photoshop, which is an option that is fun to explore as there are some great presets in the Camera Raw Filter.

Next we take the 5 images and open them in Photoshop by clicking on the Open button. This opens the 5 files individually, so we’ll have to bring them into a single Photoshop file. I do this by going to using the first file that is open as the Background layer; then I go to the remaining files and select the image with a Command-A, copying it to the clipboard with a Command-C going to the background file tab and with a simple Command-V bringing the image in as a layer. That provides the following layers:

Focus Stack layers

Select all 5 layers and in Photoshop’s Edit menu select Auto-Align Layers… and use the Auto option; this ensures that any slight shifts between the shots are fully aligned. Then select Auto-Blend Layers… from the Edit menu, and the following dialog pops up:

Auto-Blend Layer options

The choice here is to Stack Images; I use the smarts of Photoshop to let it ensure that Tones and Colors are blended seamlessly and I trust its Content Aware Fill algorithms (they are good!). After some compute cycles, your layer panel will look as follows:

Auto-Blend Results

The magic is in the masks that Photoshop generates for each of the layers, as it uses the focal distance of each shot and selects that which is the most precise focus to composite the resultant focus-stacked layer.

At this point, all we have left to do is make the final adjustments, which I will cover in the next installment. In part 3, I’ll introduce you to some of the other tools in my Photoshop arsenal to help unleash some of its power without having to master all the complexities.

iPhone Friday

For this week, you get a shot taken yesterday…

ATAT in the Colosseum

Yes, that is an All-Terrain Armored Transport (ATAT) lumbering through the Colosseum! The gladiators of the Rebel Alliance have left their mark on this vehicle, but have not prevented it from taking center stage!

I enjoy collecting custom creations of this ilk, especially those from the fertile mind of Richard Page of umetoys. As I received this ATAT graffiti on Thursday, I immediately saw an opportunity to photograph it in my Lego Colosseum.

Do you have items that you collect and pose in unusual situations? It’s fun isn’t it? Have a great weekend!

Throwback Thursday

Sometimes miracles happen, such as Wednesday’s result of the French Cup match between Olympique de Marseille and FC Annecy; it was a dramatic result that went to a penalty shootout win for Annecy! This touched me as I visited Annecy many years ago, from which I have a slide that I had scanned a couple of years back…

Shopping in Annecy

My guess is that this image is from 1984 or 1985, when I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation and went on a business trip to visit our site in Annecy. It is a beautifully situated town in the Haute Savoie. When I saw the underdogs emerge victorious over mighty Olympique, I couldn’t help but think back to this visit!