Story to the picture

Story to the picture

Reine at blue hour

I have the impression that some people think that many outstanding landscapes and nature photos are created just by the way. They don't know what effort and what planning is behind most very good photos.

Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, we have access to billions of photos worldwide. At any time, and at any place. And millions more are added every day.
A real flood of pictures overwhelms us every day. But not even 1% of these photos are worth to be shown at all and much, much less of them are really outstanding photos.

The famous photographer Ansel Adams once said: "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop."

And even if we assume such a high level of quality, there are millions of extremely good photos to watch on various websites.
This makes people lose a sense of the effort you have to put into taking such photos.

In this series I want to give you an impression of how my photos are made.

I will always look for a certain picture and write about how it was taken.

The beginning should be a picture which I already took in 2015 with my old Nikon D7000. This shows that it doesn't matter with which camera a photo is taken. What matters is a good image composition and the right lighting atmosphere on site.

It's about the photo 'Reine at blue hour'.

In the meantime, many people are probably familiar with this motif. It has been photographed hundreds, if not thousands of times.

The picture was taken on Lofoten, in northern Norway, in February. On the southern Lofoten there is the village Reine.
From Svolvær it takes about four hours by car to get there.

This perspective was photographed from a bridge.

If you just drive there without planning, the result will probably not meet your expectations. Some planning is necessary.

Several conditions had to be met for the photo to succeed in this way.

1. First of all, it must have snowed fresh, if possible, or there must be a lot of snow.
2. There must be a high tide. One should plan the day of the visit so that the tides are favorable. At low tide, there are many dark stones on the shore, in the foreground, which do not look good in the photo.
3. Then, of course, the weather has to fit so that there is a clear view of the mountains. It is necessary to plan according to the weather and to be flexible. In addition, the weather can change very quickly, especially in Lofoten.
4. And then of course it is important to be there at the right time. The golden and blue hour can be predicted exactly, thanks to certain apps.

The photo was taken in the evening, at the beginning of the blue hour. I took a long exposure to show the moving clouds. But exactly because of this long exposure another difficulty was to get the picture blur-free.
Next to the road there is a wooden bridge for the pedestrians. On it stood my tripod. If someone has crossed the bridge now, the wooden floor has wiggled slightly. Thus the tripod wobbled of course and the photo became blurred. So I had to wait for an absolutely calm moment in which no vibrations were felt on the floor. With an exposure time of one minute or more, it's not that easy.

All in all I spent about three hours there on the bridge in the freezing cold. Some nice photos were taken, of which I naturally chose the best.

The photo harmonizes, in my opinion, especially because of the three different colors. The white of the snow, the blue of the water, the red of the houses.