Earlier this month, I entered my first photos into a competition. The competition, Nordic Nature Photo Contest, is for nature photos taken in the Nordics. After thoroughly reviewing this years photos, I found that most of the photos I wanted to submit was from my trip to Flatanger earlier this year (Eagles, seagulls and seagulls)
The “main entry”, so to speak, is a series of photos of a white tail eagle that is on approach to pick up a fish in the water. At the last moment, a competitor comes in and snatches the fish right before his claws…
Competing for food
The nice thing about the series is that all the photos are pin sharp, so they can be used in multiple settings…
I also decided to enter other photos from the same trip:
ScoutingTime for coffee!!Reflections and bow wave 2Reflections
Last week was the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk and I participated at the walk in Trondheim. It was great fun, especially to meet up with other photographers. Even if we have a photo club at work, it is always nice to meet other local enthusiasts.
We walked from the city centre and out through an industrial harbour area before returning through Svartlamon (link is in Norwegian only). Svartlamon is an area for experimentation in different forms of societal organization.
Walking through the industrial area, there were a lot of motives. The challenge was how to avoid all the other photographers…
What’s happening here?
That made “landscape” photography difficult, even it there was a lot of motives. On the other hand, industrial areas also contain a lot of opportunities for details and such.
No Smoking!!The evil eye
And by careful timing, it was also possible to get some landscape shots…
Heavy lifting
Svartlamon, on our back, was a totally different experience. It was filled with street art and political statements. And sometimes it was difficult to see what was what…
Trash artTrash art detail – can you spot the little camera?Say no to the materialist patriarchy’s attempt to commercialize our childhood!!
All in all, it was great fun 🙂 I look forward to next year already! And great thanks to Trøndelag Fotoklubb for arranging the photo walk! More of the photos from the walk can be found on my Flickr page
We had a constant stream of seagulls following the boat. They served as an alert to the eagles that we were around and to us as alerts that the eagles were inbound (the change in behaviour was noticeable when the eagles were inbound).
The seagulls did not hesitate in grabbing whatever they wanted…
Thief!!!
Watching Ole Martin of Norway Nature with the seagulls was very entertaining. He knew exactly what to do to get great shots, and he posed willingly with the seagulls.
Time for coffee!!Stay away from my cup!!!Cannot be just coffee in this cup…Scouting
I didn’t know that seagulls could be such great photo opportunities… Check out the rest of the photos from Flatanger in my Flickr sets for eagles and seagulls
While out photographing white tail eagles last weekend together with my friend Jon, we had some time in between the eagles. Our guide, Ole-Martin from Norway Nature, is also an experienced photographer, and he suggested that we took some photos of seagulls on a black sea.
Reflections
I was curious to see how we could do this, as most of the photos I had taken so far did not get the black sea I was looking for.
However, Ole Martin knew the perfect spot and soon we had the seagulls taking off and landing near the boat, making it possible to get that velvet-like black feel and with great reflections.
Reflections and bow wave
Also, as they landed, the seagulls got great bow waves that caught the light and made them stand out.
Reflections and bow wave 2Reflections and bow wave 3
Last weekend, I got to photograph something other than horses. It was the third weekend in a row where I could really go out and enjoy my photo hobby 🙂 Together with my friend Jon Leirdal and some colleagues from work we travelled to Flatanger to spend the weekend photographing wildlife. We got to photograph a lot of different wild life and in this first blog post I will show some white tail eagles. I have photographed birds of prey earlier in a park, but it was something else to experience it in nature
We spent some hours in together with Ole Martin Dahle of Norway Nature where he took us around the habitats of the white tail eagle to see if we could catch them fishing. We got to see a lot of eagles, and they came quite close to the boat.
We would see the eagles soaring in the sky
Once in a while they would discover fish in the sea and dive in to retrieve it.
Discovering fish 1Discovering fish 2
There was a lot of fishing to be seen, so I got a lot of practice. It was a technically difficult shooting, since the boat was constantly moving in the water and the eagle was unpredictable in its behaviour. So I have some thousand out of focus shots as well 🙂 Also, check out my flickr page for more eagle shots
Catching fish 1Catching fish 2
For the technically minded people out there, these shots where taken with a Canon EOS 7D with a 70-200 lens, using mostly manuall settings (except focus).
Check back later for some photos of seagulls. Never thought they could be so photographically funny.
To all my English readers, my most sincere apologies. This post is for the local horse jumping competition scheduled for this weekend. A more thorough English post will follow.
Her ligger bildene fra Sommerspranget 2012 ved Reppe Ridesenter: Dag 1 og dag 2
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Min talentfulle medfotograf Sigrid Bergquist tok også bilder: Dag 1 og dag 2.
Her er bilder fra tidligere sprangstevner ved Reppe:
And of course with the right equipment at the right settings. And doing that takes an awful lot of training… Last night we had a workshop in the photo club where I work (Statoil Photo Club Middle Norway). The first part was a course in sports photography given by Richard Sagen, the award winning photographer in our local newspaper. He lectured on what to look for and how to work when photographing events such as a soccer game or ski race.
Afterwards we headed over to Lerkendal, the local soccer stadium where Rosenborg play their home games. The match was against Viking and is a much anticipated game during the season.
We were given a task to deliver afterwards:
Two action photos that shows the intensity of the game (duels, cut-downs and more)
One journalistic shot that has a context and can be used in a newspaper story
One experimental shot with more freedom…
Photographing the game was pretty intense (even if the game itself was boring). There was a lot of situations that could be crucial to the news story, so the finger was constantly on the shutter release button, and memory cards flew by (I shot approx 2100 photos during the game).
As my action contributions, I chose these two photos:
Speed…. I. Am. Speed….
The first photo is a general action photo, and photographically is one of the better shots. The background is fairly clean, it shows action and the composition is satisfactory.
Rough going
The second shot conveys the intensity of the game. You can clearly see the white player struggle with a bunch of blue ones.
Celebration and disappointment
The journalistic contribution is taken about 30 seconds before full-time. The home team was down 0-1, and suddenly managed to break through and score with just seconds of the game left. The home player (in white) is overjoyed, the visiting player is just pissed off and the goalie is still on his knees. You can also see the ball on the far left side, showing that this is in fact a goal, and a celebration. The journalistic impact of such as shot is great, as it supports the story with a photo taken just at the right moment.
And last but not least, the experimental one:
Emotions
With the rather restricted movements we were allowed, there wasn’t that many opportunities to be creative, especially since we had to pay attention to the game at all times. However, looking through the shots afterwards, I remembered the lady sitting just behind me and her wide range of facial emotions. Individually they aren’t that great, but combined into a triptych they convey the intensity of emotions often seen among sports fans.
All in all, it was a great event. I learned a lot from Richard, and the opportunity to practice afterwards was just fantastic.
On my trip to Washington last fall, I bought a 10-stop ND filter. I haven’t really had the time to play around with it much since the process of using it is so time-consuming.
However, yesterday and today I got the opportunity to spend some time in Drivdalen and at Kjøvangen taking photos with the filter.
The process of using such a filter is quite time-consuming. Since it takes away 99,9 percent of the light, it is impossible to use the viewfinder for composing. Thus, composition must be done either without the filter or by using high ISO snapshots.
The exposure easily runs into the hundreds of seconds, something that gives silky smooth water. This summer has been a wet summer in Norway, meaning lots of rain and lots of water in the rivers and waterfalls.
The dismal summer also means that the beaches are fairly empty (there is no such thing as bad weather, only different photo opportunities). Right next to our cabin there is a public beach with a nice quay. In the summer it has always been full of people, but today it was almost empty. Thus I found another opportunity to play around with the ND-filter.
In the last photo, some people arrived on the quay, but the since they didn’t manage to stay still for long periods of time, the effect was more like ghosts than real people…
This summer, I visited Orlando with my family. We visited Disney World, and I was fascinated by the attention to detail that all the theme parks have.
Detail from fountain
The little fountain above was just next to a cafeteria inside the park. Most people just sat there, and I would guess that most people just took it as part of the scenery without really reflecting over the details…
Asian temple
Also, the temple in the Asian part looked like it had been taken straight from the Asian jungle and dropped in place. Of course, it helps that the surrounding forest had a tropical feel (I think it would have looked strange in a Norwegian winter pine forest).
Tiger detail
At the tiger enclosure, the attention to detail was also clear as seen in this wall painting of a tiger…
Not only the buildings were “authentic looking”. Someone had also thought through the details on the costumes of artists performing, as seen in these two “African” drummers.
