Photography
A couple of days prior to this shot, we had a light snowfall. The temperature was around -5˚C and the snow was light and almost like powder. Just after it stopped snowing the wind picked up and created these patterns. Note the blueish tone of the shadows lit by a clear blue sky, whereas the sunlit areas have a warmer tone due to the low angle of the sun.
White balance set to Daylight, shot 1 hour before sunset early February.
Here is another shot from the series of fog and snow shots I have been posting lately. The fog was lifting and there was a slight glow from the sunset over the tree line. I decided to keep the shot out of focus to preserve some of the mood from the shots earlier in the series; the in focus version failed to convey the mood of the scene the way I wanted.
We have had a spot of cold weather again with temperatures dropping to -16˚C (3˚F) during the night. One afternoon, as the sun was setting, some features started to appear which indicated that nacreous clouds could be present. Nacreous clouds, or "mother of pearl" clouds, are a type of clouds forming in the stratosphere at altitudes above 15000m, and just after sunset they reflect the sunlight and appear to be glowing as patches of mother of perl. I grabbed my camera and rushed of gambling on my hunch being correct. Perhaps not the most spectacular specimen, but at least I did not make the trip in vain. Hope you like it.
Nacreous clouds, or Polar Stratospheric Clouds.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”
Here is another shot from the Iceland PODAS. The glacier in the background is Eyjafjallajökull. I May 2010 flights all over Europe where grounded due to the ash-cloud spreading from the volcanic eruption here. The fields and the farm at the foot of the mountain was covered in a thick layer of volcanic ash. Two years later there are hardly any traces of the ash left.
M8 Summicron 35mm, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/750s - two shots stitched in PhotoShop
On the road with the PODAS outfit on our way to Vatnajökull, we drove across this desolate stretch of road crossing the Skeiđarársandur. A stark contrast from the grass covered slopes a few kilometers to the west and east of the sandur.
The Skeiđarársandur is a floodplain south of the Skeiđarárjökull, a branch of the Vantnajökull complex, and eruptions from the subglacial volcano Grimsvötn often causes a jökulhlaup, or a glacial flood. The lavaflow will melt the ice over and around the volcano, and at some point the water will force its way under the ice and gush out under the glacier front. Water and huge chunks of ice will sweep away anything in it way like for example bridges and power lines. There was an eruption at Grímsvötn in May 2010, preceded by a jökulhlaup in the autumn 2009 which took out a couple of bridges. The last big jökulhlaup happened in 1996.
M8, Summicron 35mm ASPH, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/1000s
M8, Summicron 35mm ASPH, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/500s
Like I said, there is just something about the clear ice, and as I mentioned in the Iceland PODAS article, we where treated to a zodiac ride in the Jökulsárlón and got to see the icebergs up close, at least the clear ones.
M8, Summicron 35mm ASPH, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/1500s
M8, Summicron 35mm ASPH, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/750s
M8, Summicron 35mm ASPH, ISO160 f/5.6 at 1/750s
The same scene as in the previous post, about the same time of year, and the same time of day. The snow is the same but the fog gives the scene a completely different character though.
This image is shot just after sunset a few days after winter solstice. In spite of the low quality JPEG and the limited gamut of the sRGB color space, which does not do this image justice, I hope you get an impression of the quality of the light at this time of year and time of day.
The week leading up to Christmas the weather has been quite cold, but temperatures rose and we have had a lot of snow. With the mild weather and the snow the fog rolled in and wrapped everything in a special kind of light where all distant objects and features blur into shadow like features. Like this tree line which is just a couple of hundred meters away.
We are approaching the winter solstice, and where I live the sun barely gets higher than seven degrees above the horizon this time of the year. To put this into perspective - if you extend your arm and close your fist, the height of your fist represents about ten degrees. The sun rises around nine in the morning, and sets at about three in the afternoon. The light in the hour before sunrise and after sunset can be quite special though.
Here is another example of basalt columns. This is from the Black Beach west of Vik. The sand consists of grains of black volcanic rock, and even faint sunlight will make the sand warm to the touch. (And for the fans of Bon Iver, if you have seen the "Holocene" video, these are the very columns the boy is climbing on towards the end of the video. You'll find the video on Vimeo.)
PhaseOne 645DF, IQ160, Schneider Kreuznach LS 80mm f/2.8 - ISO50 f/9 at 1/30s