This is the place to find the updates on our travels: where we've been and (in due course) a little bit about the places.
Photography on the move - from a train, car, coach or even a plane - Sommarøy example
I'm still processing my images from my visit to Norway but one example gives me an opportunity to talk about a slightly different subject.
Whilst the best approach to travel photography by far is to research the location and spend some time getting to know the place and the culture by just walking around and talking to the locals, sometimes the opportunities for photography are more fleeting. You may be in a car (with a local driver) with limited opportunity to stop or on a coach trip where part of the purpose is the scenic views. Do you try and get a grab shot through the window or not bother at all on the grounds that the quality is going to be poor?
Whether smartphone or conventional camera, I hope that you at least try but there are a few techniques which can improve the chances of success. For a start, grabbing a window seat is fairly obvious but research in advance which side has the better views. These days, some coach companies apply their logos to the windows as well: a ridiculous idea for a tour bus but if you have one of those, take note before you get on board. Good car and coach drivers will ensure that their vehicles are clean, including the windows. Plane windows are usually acceptable but on trains, you may be less lucky and it's worth seeing if the windows will open sufficiently or whether there is a carriage which is open at the ends. It's also worthwhile carrying some wetwipes in case you can get access to the outside glass, but if all else fails, searching for a spot that is cleaner than the rest can work. Raindrops on the glass unfortunately are a show-stopper.
Assuming that you are blessed with some usable glass, I recommend buying a rubber hood which you can press against the glass to reduce reflections. These are available for both smartphones and conventional lenses. You won't always be shooting at 90 degrees to the glass, but they are reasonably effective at 10-20 degrees either side of the perpendicular too. A lot of vehicle windows are tinted and the steeper the angle of the camera to the perpendicular, the more the glass will act as a graduated filter. To some extent, this can be corrected in post processing but far better to avoid it in the first place.
Now, settings. To avoid motion blur, you need a fast shutter speed and I suggest 1/500s or faster. Smartphone users cannot rely on their camera to do this: you may have to switch to Pro mode (Android) or use a 3rd party app (iPhone). Keep a reasonably wide angle lens (35mm equivalent is a good choice. You can always crop later and that rubber hood may get in the way.) I generally choose an aperture around f6.3-f8. With larger apertures, you'll lose depth of field and with smaller apertures you sacrifice shutter speed. Then set the ISO to achieve these values. On dull days this may mean ISO values of 1600 or above. This is not ideal but good noise reduction later will help.
Lastly, if you do end up with some window reflections, there are now reflection removal tools in Adobe Lightroom which are excellent when they work or object removal can be successful too.
So, how good is it overall? I was able to take a coach trip to Sommarøy (Summer Island), 1.25 hrs from Tromsø in northern Norway, with the trip famed for its scenic views of the countryside. The images can be seen here. All but 3 images (those from the Arctic Hotel and the Ersfjord viewpoint) were taken through the coach window. One last suggestion: keep an eye on what is coming up ahead so that you are ready for when you reach it.
In Search of the Northern Lights - Found them!
The prime aim of my most recent trips(s) to Norway was to find the Northern Lights and very elusive they are too. Whilst we are still near the peak of the 11 year geomagnetic activity cycle (which affects the frequency and intensity of aurora sightings), if the sky is cloudy, you won't see anything and up north, especially in the winter, there's a lot of cloud. I've heard stories of cruise ship passengers taking 5 sailings with no sightings and my current captain claimed never to have witnessed them!
This time however, we struck lucky up in Alta in northern Norway. The forecast wasn't looking promising but as sometimes happens the sky unexpectedly cleared and remained clear for much of the night. My target shot was a picture of the Northern Lights Cathedral in central Alta, but the ship was delayed arriving and by the time I got to the Cathedral it was 20:05 (sunset was about 18:00), well at the end of the blue hour and an almost completely overcast sky which looked black even to the camera.
The area around the Cathedral was covered in snow and the building was very brightly lit with searing spotlights reflecting off the metallic cladding but I took some shots anyway. I wandered around for a while looking for the best angle when just before 21:00, a few of the other guests in the area claimed excitedly that they had captured aurora on their smartphones. Sure enough, there seemed to be a very faint green glow in the distance. I attempted to capture this with my camera but as time progressed, the lights became stronger and moved over the Cathedral and the clouds started to clear. This was the dream shot materialising.
Planting my tripod in the snow on the unobstructed side of the Cathedral, the next problem became apparent. The Cathedral was so brightly lit that it was impossible to expose correctly for both the aurora and the building in the same frame: there were 5 stops of difference! Plus the aurorae were moving quite quickly and more than a few seconds of exposure would result in blur. One has to think quickly in these circumstances so I chose a high ISO to give shutter speeds of 1-4s for the sky and, trying not to move the tripod in the (melting) snow despite cold fingers, took a series of much shorter bracketed exposures of the Cathedral in the hope of combining them later.
After about half an hour, the aurorae seemed to die down so I returned to the ship - 20 minutes away by shuttle. Considering the evening to be reasonably successful, I returned to my cabin to review the results but at about 22:30 got a call from one of the astronomy team that the lights were again visible. Looking for an aurora shot over an attractive seascape, I went up on deck where the lights had been dimmed to facilitate stargazing and aurora watching and set up my larger tripod in the hope that the ship would remain stable enough for reasonable exposures. From about 22:45, the aurorae came out in force and the views out to starboard and from the stern were both dramatic - if not a little dark.
By about midnight, I felt that I'd captured enough, though the aurorae reportedly continued until about 2am. Asking a local in Alta the next day about how typical this sighting had been he said that it was common enough up there and the aurorae brightness was medium with a thin veil of cloud preventing sight of fine structural details but that the duration of the 'show' was really quite long compared with usual.
Some of the results can be seen here
In the not too distant future, I plan to create a downloadable guide to aurora shooting which gives much more of the technical detail, how to overcome challenges like combining bright artificial lights with faint aurorae, guidance on processing techniques and use of smartphones. If you have not yet registered to receive these blogs and notifications directly to your e-mail address, you can do so via this link
Northern Norway
My current trip has taken me to Norway's northern cities of Tromsø and Narvik. Tromsø is the largest city in northern Norway and is known as the 'Gateway to the Arctic'. Its geography is dominated by the Storsteinen mountain which has a cable car from which dramatic views of the island of Tromsø
can be gained. I have visited Tromsø once before in the summer and was able to capture these views but this time the cable car was not working and in any case, the weather was much poorer (and still no Northern Lights!) Also dominating Tromsø's skyline is the Arctic Cathedral. Last time I tried to get a blue hour shot but we had to leave before sunset. This time however, timing was good and some very dramatic blue hour images were obtained. Incidentally, this far north, the blue hour lasts longer than nearer the equator: at this time of year, an hour and a half.
The Tromsø gallery can be seen here
Following Tromsø, we stopped at Narvik - a first visit for me. Narvik is a relatively new city which was founded in 1899, specifically to serve as an ice-free, year-round deep water port for exporting iron ore from the Swedish mines in Kiruna. A railway (the Ofoten Railway) was built from the Swedish border to the city for transporting the ore and due to its strategic importance, it was famously targeted during WWII. Today that railway has been re-purposed as a tourist attraction which some dramatic views over the mountain terrain. The city of Narvik itself is not particularly picturesque compared with say Ålesund
or Bergen. It does boast a cable car but as for Tromsø, it was also not working (and neither were the Northern Lights).
The Narvik gallery can be seen here
In search of the Northern Lights
I am now in Norway on a cruise searching for the Northern Lights. The route follows the Norwegian coast starting with Molde, sailing past the rock ‘Torghatten’ and the Seven Sisters mountain range then north to Tromsø, returing via Narvik and Ålesund. It’s early spring and the weather is still cold with snow on the ground in parts.
Molde is a picturesque town which is well known for its proximity to the Atlantic Road, an 8km stretch of coastal highway which links Molde to the town of Kristiansund via some incredibly engineered bridges and tunnels.
Some views of Molde, the Atlantic Road and vistas along the route can be seen here
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 8: Flinders to Melbourne
Our last leg of the trip still had a distance of some 130km to travel but first our friends in Flinders took us on some coastal walks around their neighbourhood. The weather unfortunately wasn't great but this is the thing with travel photography: you have to make the best of what you are given. After the coastal walks, we paid a brief visit to a winery as there are a surprisingly large number of vineyards in this area, so capturing these was part of the culture.
Lastly, before joining the M11/M1 motorway to Melbourne, we passed by Arthurs Seat: a high viewpoint with a good view of the coastline in this part of Australia - at least it would have been with good weather.
The route into Melbourne flowed pretty freely and then there was the detailed navigation into central Melbourne. There are multiple and complex street signs along this route including a number of seep and traffic light cameras and specific rules about driving on the same road as trams. Google Maps was the saviour and we arrived with high stress but without incident.
Images of the area around Flinders can be seen here.