Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Wet autumn days and nights


Steps, originally uploaded by jiihaa.


Walking blur, originally uploaded by jiihaa.


Forest edge, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Yesterday the board of Ursa Astronomical Association visited the observatory at Artjärvi. It was an interesting trip, although we couldn't try to make any observations. It was raining, there was thick fog, and the sky was heavily clouded. And as the observatory is situated in a place where there are few lights anywhere, it was really dark.

In addition to one photograph taken yesterday at Artjärvi, here are two photographs from today. It was still clouded, foggy and raining, but at least I was able to go out before sunset.

One of the two photographs was taken with a long exposure while walking, and interesting way of taking photographs, although not many images succeed.

6 comments:

Steve Skinner said...

The image titled Walking Blur is outstanding!

Juha Haataja said...

There are positive surprises every so often with this technique, you can get interesting painterly effects. But most such images are failures, you need to make a lot of experiments.

Sven W said...

The image 'Steps' is very dramatic. Did you create the lighting or did the 'stars align'? It's a striking image!

For many good examples of square format images, check out "The Landscapist" (Mark Hobson).

Juha Haataja said...

@Sven W: As I mentioned, it was very dark, so I had to use ISO 400, f/2.0 and 8 second exposure here.

There was a sort of pedestal for putting your own telescope for viewing, and I put my LX3 there and took a couple long exposures.

The other Ursa board members had flashlights and cameras, and someone happened to take a photo using a flash while I was taking this exposure. So, it was all random and accidental. And did I mention that it was also raining?

In exposures like this the limits of compact cameras such as the LX3 come visible. I didn't try to remove any of the noise and left it visible, thinking that perhaps it adds to the atmosphere.

I have been following Mark Hobson since summer 2008, he is really impressive. (Although I don't agree with some of his views...)

Markus said...

Juha, that #1 is great (and interesting to read that you got it by chance) but also that mixed light situation in #3 I like very much. With this kind of lighting I am often reminded of Hopper paintings.

Juha Haataja said...

@Markus: Of course, I was sort of expecting something to happen when people were climbing the stairs with their flashlights and cameras, when I was making some 8 second exposures. A lucky short nevertheless.

Hopper - indeed!