Kannesteinen

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So apparently this rock is pretty famous and a favorite for photographers, however they neglected to mention that to get the cool cliche shot you really need to be there at sunrise to capture it with nice light, which in summer, is kinda not realistic with small children 🙂 However, what is amazing is the level of detail that cameras can bring out nowadays, you can pretty well underexpose the shot to capture all the bright bits then draw out the shadows, even in this scene, which is the worst for it, shooting right into the sun i was amazed that you can bring out so much detail and make it a bit edgey to boot 🙂

So here we have Chaos with her tourist pose on doing a great job of showing off the scale of this rock, which by the way is a lot smaller than it looks in pictures.

Apparently it has formed over thousands of years by loose rock washing up against it in the tides hence 'necking it'

Nordfjordeid

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Complex scene of lines, I spent a barrel load of time, moving alittle this way, alittle that way, up down, all to get the lines of the rocks, fallen trees and the waterflow to line up. Its a bit like natures jogsaw puzzle, however they do not always have a complete solution 🙂

Made from 8 images stitched into a panoramic view, view it large 🙂

Boats r us

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and why they are better than shopping trolleys

Where ever you drive in Norway there is always some form of water course and sure as another tunnel will come up in the drive there is always a boat moored in teh middle of nowhere. They seem to float about waiting for some to jump in and go somewhere, maybe here, across the fjord to the village…

So what does this have to do with trolleys? well these boats are everywhere, like trolleys at my local shopping centre – caution rant ahead – but unlike these nice little boats which seem to be moored anywhere, trolleys left anywhere (except in the designated trolley bay) at the shopping centre are a pita and those who can't be arsed pushing their trolley the 4 metres to the trolley bay deserved to have a thousand trolleys rain down in their front yard 🙂 I do my shopping late on a week night, best time ever, no crowds, no queues and always specials on perishables 🙂 the other night I noticed a couple push their trolley to their car, unload it, leave the trolley immediately behind the car and drive off – it was literally 5 metres to the trolley bay :-/ anyways, sure enough, 30 seconds after they drive off, it was like a magically trolley devil intervention, the trolley rolls back into the car on the other side of the carpark road :-/

So, if you go to a shopping centre, be sure to put your trolley in the bay and don't hesitate to put some other clowns incorrectly left trolley in the bay..even better take your kids for a spin in it on the way to the trolley bay (I can't confirm or deny doing circle work in a woolies trolley on the top level 😉 )

Rant finished – onto the image – heres a nice picture of a fjord with one of the many little boats waiting for someone to go an explore the snowcapped hills. 5 shot panorama.

Reality

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There has a been a whole bunch of discussion as of late regarding what is photography, specifically in regard to processing or photo manipulation – you just need to search AIPPA and the name of a famous australian landscape photographer to get the gist of whats going on.

Its been great to see these discussions and also get a insight into what people think, not to see what side people are on, if thats even possible since to have sides there must be a line, but more to understand what is the drive behind them when they generate images.

It has also been interesting from a introspective view trying to understand what I enjoy about photography and drives me to continue doing it, for me its the process of being out there and taking the image and also the interpretation of that image through the processing, from a long exposure, to panoramic to a… dare I say it.. tiny planet or whatever, whatever I can come up with 🙂 the final result, the finished image which gets dumped on social media, is but a mere 5% of the whole process and reason. That said its awesome for a having a timeline and collection of images since I could not organise or find any image on my hard drive beyond a few months 😉

so here we have a picture from Geiranger, Norway, its a wide angle panorama, using 4 frames to get the wide angle, each frame was bracketed to give 3 images, (one over exposed, one normally exposed and one under exposed) these were then automatically aligned and then manually blended (to preserve the bright areas and keep the dark areas) – is it reality? dunno, what if the mountains were tweaked to make them bigger ? everyone has a line when it comes to photography and art, simply because it might not be the same as your line does not make it right or wrong, just different – and just like opinions, this is just one 🙂

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8
Shutter Speed: 0.8s, 1/5s and 3s
ISO: 100

Sneaky little mountains

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There were a few mountains in Norway which did try and hide from us (prolly mostly me and my camera 😉 ) but in this case my rally driving skills in the Skodastation wagon managed to pull over at the right time to nail this one trying to escape without ending up in some dudes hay field 🙂

I dunno where this was or what mountain, they all seemed to blur together after awhile, but this was pretty typical of every road in Norway 🙂 Probably somewhere near Kristiansund…

6 shot panorama
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 38mm Aperture: f8 Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 200
Out front: just another little Norwegian Village

Aksla Viewpoint – Alesund

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Aksla Viewpoint - Ålesund - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Aksla Viewpoint – Ålesund – (c) Gerard Blacklock

ya gotta view this large and zoom in

The view from above the town of Alesund, a beautiful spot for sunset at 1030pm. I met a real nice young chap from Poland whilst up here, he was over for a few days on some cheap flights and apparently there is a direct flight from over there to Alesund. I reckon people who live in Europe do not realise how lucky they are being able to travel only a short distance to see such varied places, scenery and and also demographic. Try flying the 22 hours to Oz 😉

8 shot panorama image with each shot bracketed (0EV and -0.7EV)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 60mm Aperture: f16 Shutter Speed: 1/2.5 seconds Normal exp and 1/10s for the underexposed bracket
ISO: 200
Out front: Lee Graduated filter 0.9X

Alesund – At the midnight hour.

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Ålesund, Midnight Hour - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Ålesund, Midnight Hour – (c) Gerard Blacklock

At the midnight hour.

Alesund is a real pretty city perched out on one of the many little peninsulas on the west coast of Norway, some say its the most beautiful city in Norway, it certainly has some very cool old buildings in the main touristy area which is the older part of town.
We stayed in the Alesund Scandic Hotel just around the corner from this spot, it was one of the few hotels we stayed in whilst in Norway, although it was definitely dated, it did have a nice outlook and a pretty darn good breakfast 🙂

When you think or search for Alesund the most common image that comes up is the awesome scene which can be seen from the lookout that is situated above the town, its a bit of walk up alot of stairs, but worthwhile, the next image will be from that spot and you will be able to see just where this little vista is located with respect to the rest of the town 🙂

The best thing about shooting sunset.. or more correctly twilight here was that most people were in bed so whilst normally the stop is teeming with people I was able to enjoy some quiet time to get a few snaps, this one is a 12 shot panorama which each frame bracketed to get the highlights and shadows. No reflections artificially generated 🙂 it was glassy still.

Extreme Waterfalling

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at the extreme sports headquarters of Norway

The home to 'veko' (Ekstremsportveko – Extreme Sports Week), Voss, where crazy's get their craziness on and do crazy things like jumping off cliffs with dinky little parachutes and going over cliffs with water in little plastic buckets 😉

Not this little black duck tho, the most extreme thing I did whilst in Voss was stand on a slippery-ass rock and take a photo 😉

6 shot panorama just on dust with a nice glow in the sky.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 50mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO: 100
out front: Hoya Circular Polariser

Hjalma

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We must have past hundreds of these creeks and rivers flowing down off the snow covered mountains,each cutting a path through the rocks and forest. This one, Hjalma was a short walk from our airbnb farm house (thanks Trygve) so after the girls had gone to sleep and the petti-coat government was planning our trip to a 600 year old monastery i wandered down for a look. It had just stopped raining and it was getting pretty late, however as with summer in Norway the light lasts for ages (this was about 10pm), coming back to oz and having the sun go down at 5pm was a bit of a rude shock 🙂

Romsdalshornet

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So I send a message off to my good mate (well he is now 😉 ) Havard saying we are looking forward to staying in your airbnb (have you figured out that I am a fan of airbnb yet ? 😉 ) and seeing some more cool mountain views. Noting that we had never been to this area or seen any imagery of it.. so Havard messages me back and says, 'yeah we have some nice mountain views', excellent, that sounds promising I thought… well if they reckon this is nice I can only image what a Norwegian thinks awesome views are 🙂

I took a drive up the valley to a dead end where the was some cool looking blocked off tunnel that resembled something out of a James Bond movie, then hiked 3 hours in the driving wind and snow to get to this spot (.. well ok.. maybe it was not that long 😉 but it was cold and apparently its summer).

The peak here is Romsdalshornet and it stands about 1500 metres above SL, i passed a couple coming down from the rock face on the right who had ropes and stuff that looked like they were out for more than a late night stroll, note it was past 11pm at this stage 🙂 There was also a bunch of teenagers setting up a tent for the night (if you can call it that 😉 ) back a few hundred metres, awfully civilised too. The other cool thing, I had the whole place to myself 🙂

Veitastrond

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Norway, where the sunsets last for ever 🙂 I drove 10 kms between spots and the sunset colours where still going 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 2s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL, Lee graduated filter 0.6x

House by the Lake

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Holmane, Norway

After checking into one of our less than optimal accommodation choices (there was only two for the whole trip 🙂 so our strike rate was pretty good ). I had some time to check out google maps to see what was around, interestingly we had visited a few Glaciers on the way down to this point, all which come off the Jostedalsbreen National park area and I noticed a little back road up to a southern access point to this place, never seen any images of this place, but it was only 30 kms away so a little drive was in order.

Now, I really bang on about these Norwegians and their darn tunnels, well this little drive really galvanised it for me. This road up to Veitastrond, which is a village of less than a thousand people has 3 tunnels with a 4th being constructed, now these are not tunnels to punch thru mountains but simply to avoid having a bit of windy road on the lake 🙂 ie just cut thru the edge of the hill. We here in Oz struggle to get a freakin tunnel in our largest city to service…hundreds of thousands of people, yet here I was driving thru tunnels (each a few kms long), albeit single lane ones, to a village that has only a few hundred people… mind blowing. What was also really cool was that the tunnels had no lights and were full of fog.. very very cool 🙂

This was just one a few really nice houses sitting bit the edge of the Veitastrondavatnet .. yeah try and pronounce that 🙂

3 shot panorama, each shot in the landscape orientation
D750 coupled with Nikkor 70-200 mm f2.8 @ 82mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 5s
ISO: 100
out front: epic house location

Trollstigen

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So, the Norwegians love a good tunnel, but.. it appears from time to time they like a good windy road, maybe its the joy of watching people cycle up these or something to keep the motorcycle population happy, in anycase, this one (Trollstigen) is certainly a cracker, even in our little stationwagon punching on up this road it was pretty hair raising, especially when a bus came the other way!

The viewing platform up the top is neat, but I think I need a bigger camera, i could not fit all those norwegian hills in 😉 even at 16mm and 9 portrait frames stitched together I could not get all of the big waterfall in 🙂

The bottom of the where the windy bit starts is about 300m above SL, this spot here is 700m above SL, not a bad hill climb.

It would be awesome to do a night time shoot here and get the car trails in the frame, however for me with the sun not really setting until 12 midnight there was no hope, I'll let that go to the keeper for the next visit 😉

6 shot panorama, each shot in the portrait orientation
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/80s
ISO: 200
out front: just a few hills and a windy road with buses, summer skiers, mountain bike riders, campervans and motorbikes 😉

Nordfjord

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I think one of the best things about holidaying with ya family (other than all the quality time you get to spend with one another of course 🙂 ) and doing photography is that it forces you to be very opportunistic rather than being able to plan everything around a shoot, this was certainly one example.
Let me paint a scene for you here (forgive the pun 🙂 ) we decided to divert our route to check out one of, if not the oldest Monasteries in Norway at Maloy and consequently checked into one of our best airbnb in our Norway trip (thanks Trygve – even though i can still not pronounce your name, sorry mate). This airbnb was located 10 kms out of Nordfjordeid in a farming area and was an old, yet amazing farmhouse with, in my opinion, an amazing view, not one from a pre-canned location or lookout, but a true-blue style view that this little village of about 5 homes shared. The place even had one of those really cool old telephones, the ones with the windy handle!

I took this shot a few times over the two days whilst sitting at the window opposite a warm wood fire, this particular one was about 11pm-ish as the sun dissapeared from view – there was no hiking, no sitting in the cold, just chilling out with a cup of tea, my tripod and camera whilst the children slept 🙂

I'll be sure to post a few of the others from this spot, which have a very different feel, it was amazing how much the scene could change with fog and rain rolling in.

5 shot panorama, each shot in the landscape orientation
D750 coupled with Nikkor 70-200 mm f2.8 @ 155mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/800s
ISO: 250
out front: no filters, just another epic landscape.