Where the ice giants dragged their feet...

This past week I've been on holiday with my family, on a P&O cruise ship called the Ventura, sailing across the North Sea and up and down the great Fjords of Norway.

We visited Stavanger, Skjolden, Geiranger and Bergen, due to the toddler amongst us we weren't able to do any particularly adventurous treks into the mountains or Norwegian wilds however we did see some extraordinary views as we sailed right up the middle of some of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

This also gave me a brilliant excuse to put the Tokina 11-16mm lens I bought recently to a proper test and try my hand at some landscape photography. Having such a wide angle is something that takes some getting used to. A lot of things can sneak into frame that you wouldn't necessarily expect and often the details within the shot are too seemingly 'distant' or small to comprehend when reviewing them through or on the camera. In some cases it wasn't until I got the image home and post-processed it that I realised what I had.
Hopefully with sufficient practice I'll become more accustomed.

The following three shots were the first few shots I took on the top deck of the cruise ship in Stavanger. To amuse my self-sense of irony I decided to use the wide angle lens to see if I could make a panoramic 'photo-stitch' image of an even wider angle.

I didn't take many photographs in Stavanger itself, most of what I did were very touristy, more so than the above three (The third isn't very obviously stitched anyway).

The following shots are from the departure of Stavanger and the sunset that punctuated it.

Some random shots from Skjolden

... and then Geiranger...

The views from our rear facing balcony on the journey out of Geiranger.

To put things into a bit of perspective I snapped this one of the back of the ship.

This was the very last shot I took on the trip. I just held the camera against the window in and took a photo on almost full auto settings(I think it was aperture priority)I after the shutter stayed open for longer than I expected I assumed it'd be a waste of time so never thought to review the image before putting it away. I never expected that taking a long exposure on a moving object(The ship) could work as well as it did. If i'd realised this sooner I would've played with the technique much more.

So there we have it. My trip to Norway. :)

Scribble of the week #12

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(well, bi-monthly at best at the moment) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

This chap is called Wolfgard, an unimaginatively named character who is a werewolf. He is the chief of a clan of werewolves. He's meant to be a fairly stereo-typical Scandinavian Viking type who's taken it upon himself to lead and build a refuge for others of his kind. The woman is Wielew, his wife, who i'll likely draw later. Werewolves in my mythology, such as that is, are a complicated breed to which they can control their affliction and live their lives as morally as the rest of humanity wherever possible. Sometimes though the affliction can cause madness when mixed with other diseases such as rabies or more simply pre-existing psychological maladies, this causes a werewolf to be referred to as a lycanthrope. Traditionally the name used for the psychiatric condition of "thinking" you're a werewolf. Lycanthropes differ from werewolves in that they are not organised, they don't try to cling to humanity and will not bind themselves to human morality. Typically this causes them to live wild in forests and country, hunting whatever sates their hunger, man or beast. Wolfgard and his clan take it as their responsibility to "handle" the lycanthrope problem and where possible re-abilitate.

Sunset at Mupe Bay

Last night I decided to do the opposite of what I've been doing previously and instead of going to a location before dawn I would go after sunset.
The weather reports looked like clear skies, albeit with a bit of cloud.
This time I decided to revisit Mupe Bay as the firing ranges would be open and I decided it'd likely be sufficiently shrouded from local light pollution.

In preparation for the trip I did buy some hand-warmers and a torch and found I only needed the torch really, you work up quite a heat whilst hiking over those cliffs when approaching Mupe Bay and I left before the temperature really dropped for the night. The only downside to the evening was it was quite a bit cloudier than I would've hoped.

I got some nice shots early on but eventually left, not due to cold or wind as I thought would be the cause, but simply because the stars ended up covered by cloud. That said I now know what's involved in the trip and am much more confident for planning many more trips in the weeks to come. (firing range open times permitting of course)

That's not a sunset sadly, that's light pollution from Swanage which is about 12 miles away

I caught this by accident, I didn't notice it until I reviewed the photo that initially caught it, then I quickly adjusted my settings so I could grab it's full trajectory until it went out of sight.
It is not a shooting star, though i would love it to be, I'm also certain it's not a plane as I'm sure it wiggled from side to side a bit when observing it by eye. My best guess is that it was one of those floating lanterns you can buy.

For this one I just wanted to get a shot with many stars in to make sure I was understanding the rule of 600 better.
Previously I was calculating based on the focal range of the lens rather than the effective focal range that the cameras sensor gives you.(D90's aren't full frame cameras after all)

I also had my first experiment in time-lapsing some photographs together.

It's only a few frames and just over a second but I think I can see enough to know I've got the hang of it. When on location it's hard to commit to a timelapse because it takes sooooo much time that you're eagerly wanting to spend photographing other things.

Photograph of the week #057

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."

I took the new wide angle lens out round Holes Bay to play a bit.

Photograph of the week #056

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."


After my dawn run to Kimmeridge I managed to get some shots from the local area in frosty conditions. Driving through the Lulworth firing ranges I noticed some ruined tanks on the range and grabbed a shot from the road side.

Dawn at Kimmeridge 02

Another Dawn trip down to the Bay. This time with my new wide angle lens.

Things did not go quite to plan however. According to the met office this morning would be the last day of decentish weather for the next week and the firing ranges were opened for the Easter holidays which should've given me the opportunity to explore a litte further along the coast to get some slightly different shots. However I failed to check the tide times so halfway through the morning it became clear (on reviewing the photos i'd taken so far) that  the rockpools I was intending to shoot were fairly quickly disapearing and, if i wanted any guarantee of making it back to my car without getting my feet wet before I go to work, i'd best leave immediately.

For my first test run with a new lens I'm quite happy. I got a suprising amount of stars and am hoping to do the same again soon. It's slightly disapointing that my exposures were just a little too long to avoid minor star-trailing but I've done my research now and should be able to avoid it in future.
There's also a disapointingly large volume of noise in the images which i'm currently researching how to compensate for.

I haven't yet worked out what colour temperature to apply to the images so you'll likely notice some slightly different colour tints.
All of these photos are taken at night, nothing but the full moon for illumination.

The next few photos were taken whilst I explored the purbecks after leaving the bay

Dawn at Kimmeridge

For the past couple of weeks the weather in the UK has been particularly good. I couldn't help but take advantage of this and after doing a test run one weekend I worked out I could get to some pretty good photographic locations at dawn, set up, take some shots, pack up again and still make it on time for work.

This has meant I've ended up spending most mornings over the past few days sat on a rock at Kimmeridge Bay, watching the sunrise behind Clavell Tower in the Isle of Purbecks and... once every few minutes, adjusting my camera settings.

It's been great to see this part of the country at this time fo the day. I'm not really even sure what inspired me to start making the trips but i'm very glad for doing it and, weather permitting and whether the MOD allow acces to the firing ranges I will continue to do so.