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Posts Tagged ‘nordkapp’

So this is my first post of 2010! Here I go…

My problem with going someplace worth photographing is coming back with 40-50GB of photos to sift through and edit. I usually just don’t have the time to go through the sheer number of images after a trip and tend to leave it for later, months later and in some cases years later. Let’s face it, post processing takes time and inspiration neither of which can be conjured up at will.  When I come back from a trip I typically go through my images, delete the ones I don’t need and roughly mark the ones I’d like to edit at some point. Months later I’ll go back and edit these images turning them into what I originally envisioned. Most of the 4-5 star images tend to go through several re-edits until I’m completely satisfied with the result. Talk about a time consuming workflow…

I recently had a little time to sit down and stitch a few panoramas taken in summer ’09 on my trip though Nordland and Finnmark in Norway.

Honningsvåg, Finnmark

HonningsvÃ¥g, the northermost city in Norway. Well it’s more like the northermost large fishing village with a city status but it sure is picturesque, especially when you see a full grown white reindeer grazing in the local school’s yard. It’s also the starting point for most tourist excursions in the area.

A beach at Bleik, Andöy, across the road from the camping grounds where we stayed for a night to catch up on sleep and free wifi. Nothing but fine white silky smooth sand dotted with patches of vegetation as far as the eye could see.

The North Cape, often referred to as Europe’s northernmost point. However, the neighbouring point Knivskjellodden is actually 1,457 metres further north. Here the sun never sets in summer, well from the 14th of May to the 31st of July.  This shot and was taken just before midnight. Being woken up by reindeer herds wondering through the parking lot is an awesome experience. This image has been in the header for some time now. I was going for an almost artificially created simplicity…

Midnight sun at the North Cape

Another shot of the North Cape. The shots for this pano were actually taken between 11 and 12pm. This sight never ceases to take my breath away. Going along with the North Cape theme this is one of the images in the running got blog header for at lest the first half of 2010.

Wiew of a sunset in the Norwegian sea off the Hurtigrutten boat we took from Tromsö to Hammerfest. Shooting panoramas off boats is tricky, especially in low light conditions and in spite of the sea looking rather calm i was having trouble hand-holding a 70-200mm lens due to the gusts of wind blowing over the deck. However, I found comfort in the fact that even out in the middle of the Norwegian sea, I had almost full cell phone reception, something my phone company can’t provide in central Stockholm.

Narvik was a strategically important port during WWII and still today is the closest port to the iron ore mine in Kiruna that does not freeze in winter. Also it is one totally awesome great place to ski. The city also has its “own” whale which will periodically wonder deep into the fjord. I’ve been here twice and so far had no luck when it comes to spotting this whale.

I know I should have posted this before my trip but I simply did not have time. The truth is I was too busy trying to find a way to pack my photo bag and deciding what to take. My starting point was simple, one bag for all the camera gear, that I could carry as cabin luggage on the flight back. I had to have a laptop with me and I had to have 2 copies of all my raw files I downloaded to it. I didn’t care too much about having a backup of my Lightroom library since I wasn’t planning to do editing on the road. I had to be able to charge everything from a wall socket as well as a 12V cigarette lighter socket in a car since most of the trip was to be spent driving and I had to be able to use AA batteries in at least one of my camera bodies.

Simple huh? Well, no. Packing a photo bag is actually hard work, you have to know where every little thing is and have it easily accessible. If you’re driving your bag is gonna spend most of its time in the back seat of a car while you’re in the front so it needs to be packed so that you can one-handedly pick things out of it.

The general idea when you pack photo gear is to take as much as you can with you. Have two sets of bags, one to get the gear to wherever you are (say your hotel room) and the other to lug just the gear you need for a particular shoot. I couldn’t afford this luxury since the one bag I had, had to fit into the overhead compartment of the plane I was flying back on.

If you watch the video you’ll see that I stress the point of having as many lens cloths as you could possibly carry. This is good practice in any case but is especially important when shooting close to salty water or in areas where the prevailing winds blow in from the sea. Salt water tends to leave a sticky oily film on lenses which is really hard to get rid off. I tend to carry sensor cleaning equipment with me. It’s useful in case a major dust spot arises, but I don’t rely on it to thoroughly clean my sensor when away from home unless i’m certain that I have a nice dust-free environment I can work with.

Another point is to have a way to keep track of memory cards which have been filled up. I tend to put them back into the card compartments in my bag facing label down if the card  is full. Taking backups is a must here…i’ve never had a CF card die on me but i’m convinced it’ll happen one day. Even if I didn’t fill up my memory cards one particular day I tried to dump them onto my laptop once a day, since there I was creating two copies of everything  on separate hard-drives. This meant that I grabbed every possible chance I could to charge  whatever gadgets I had with me.

So that’s been my gear strategy, feel free to share yours…

Here’s the video: