Photography Tips And Tricks – Page 3

Weather Lookout Points: Solitüde, Flensburg Fjord

Between Germany and Denmark is the Flensburg Fjord (Flensburger Förde). This is a long stretched and curved bay similar to a Scandinavian fjord. It belongs to the Baltic Sea. The Fjord ends in the famous town of Flensburg, which was sometimes a Danish and sometimes a German town. There are also famous tourist spots there as Glücksburg, a small city, and Holnis, a peninsula.

The area is frequented by tourists and sailors a lot and is also a favorite place for painters. A lot of people come from Berlin in the summer. On the other side, in Denmark, there are three little islands, “The Ochseninseln”. Unlike the flat “Nordfriesland” on the west side, the surroundings of the Fjord make a more England-like landscape with its green hills and many woods.

The Fjord is also a great place for weather-watching and photography. There are many viewpoints in Flensburg, on the Danish Coastline or at the top end of the Holnis Peninsula where there is a steep bank (visitors be careful!). It’s also a great place for watching birds or sunsets.

The destinations on the German side along the Flensburg-Fjord are connected by a highway, the “Nordstraße”. There are more fantastic lookout points in Langballig and Habernis.

However it isn’t necessary to do a long car ride, there are also great places within the city-limits of Flensburg: One example is the “Solitüde”, a beach and a quarter of Mürwik on the north-east side of Flensburg. It’s very popular among the inhabitants of Flensburg. Since a long time, there is also a restaurant and a small shipping pear. It’s great for swimming as long as are not so many jellyfish around.

But even more, it’s a great place for photography. It’s worth to visit the place all time of the year. Particularly, if the tourists are gone there is a unique atmosphere.

The shore consists of a beach and some meadows. Since I can remember there is a group of trees standing there. They never grew very big. They remind me always of a certain Tarkovsky-Film.

The place is an example of something which had been mentioned before: If you do weather-photography or video it’s always good to have good lookout points in mind, perhaps do an inventory of interesting places in a notebook, with their specific conditions. The Solitüde-Beach in Flensburg is a good example. It is quickly accessible and its a great backdrop. When I was there I always had been watching “great dramas” in the sky. Mostly if the wind is coming in from the North-West, it can be an interesting place.

There is wind most of the time. Weather is often changing quickly here and you have often completely different conditions within a few hours. However, it’s less extreme as on the west side of Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein with the Northern-Sea.

Contrast and color are also different most of the time as on the west-coast but there are many variations in atmospheres. The color of the Fjord’s water also changes all the time.

Even there is no tide on the Baltic-Seaside, water levels are changing too since if there is the wind coming in from the east-side it presses the water into the Fjord. Sometimes there is even flooding in the harbor of Flensburg.

If you do weather-pictures, it is useful to keep a list of landmarks and significant objects like these trees. It adds to the pictures if it’s not only clouds and some meadow and you could do a series over the years. The images with the trees below are an example.

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December 30, 2017April 26, 2018 by Waldmeister Categories: Photography Tips And Tricks, Stormchasing, Travel Tip, Uncategorized, Weather lookout point, WindTags: Fjord, Flensburg, Förde, Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, Solitüde, viewpoint, Weather lookout point

PURPLE LIGHT

Approximately 15 minutes after sunset there is sometimes a phenomenon called “Purpur Licht” in German (Purple Light). This is not the same as the “afterglow” where clouds are illuminated by the sun in a red light. Purple light is a physical phenomenon and created by dust particles high up in the atmosphere, for example, Sahara dust.

It needs two different kinds of reflections in the atmosphere to let us see the purple light. The observer sees a red light and a blue light. These two sources are getting mixed by our eyes and in our brain and we see a purple light.

October-November evenings are often a good time for purple light when the sky is clear. There are various conditions responsible for purple light. For example, pressure, wind, or what kind of dust particles are in the air are factors.

Sometimes it’s not exactly clear what the reason for this phenomenon is when the purple light is very intense but the eruption of a volcano or a bushfire could increase the number of particles in the atmosphere. The legendary paintings of romantic painter W. Turner with the memorable red sky are perhaps influenced by real intense purple light and afterglow due to volcanic activity.

Photography of purple light is easy. Mostly you need a place where you have no obstacle like high buildings or trees in the west. Always good to have the camera on a tripod since the eye is a bit tricked: the sky looks brighter as it is. I was going for a jog when I saw too late that this could be a very interesting sunset, thus my equipment wasn’t appropriate for the situation. Sometimes you could rest your camera on a stone or on the edge of a wall but here I was in the middle of some fields. I didn’t want to have a high ISO thus the result has its limits but demonstrates what purple light is. If you use photoshop or another post-pro software careful use of saturation could underline the purple light effect.

For a better effect, it is also worth to check an astronomical calendar and look out for an evening with a clear sky when Venus or Jupiter is visible in the west or even better a planet and the crescent moon having a rendezvous in the sky.

Sometimes also clouds in the stratosphere could create an intense “red sky phenomenon”. This time however it wasn’t stratospheric clouds or volcanic ash it was simply a few warm days with a clear sky during the Indian summer in October.

November 28, 2017April 26, 2018 by Waldmeister Categories: Photography Tips And Tricks, Uncategorized

April 28, 2017 – Snowfall

End of April: It is shortly before “Beltane” – the day where the summer is introduced – but in Southern Germany it looks like Middle of January. Even the days are already long, there is a grey twilight all the day. Its snowing and raining for days, temperature always close to zero. In the Black Forest the mass of snow became already a problem since this snow is very wet and heavy. Branches of trees were falling down. And in the Allgau (Bavaria) there are 30 centimetres of snow in some places. East-Switzerland experiences a mass of snow. The weather conditions are a big problem for traffic. A lot of accidents happened. Some drivers didn’t expect these kind of conditions late April. It is the first time that there is a closed sheet of snow in Bavaria since April 1989. This weather pattern, however, is not an anomly. Even this is not so typical winter can often last til May in Europe. In the mountains there is still snow most of the years. What’s getting amazing and perhaps a new trend due to climate change is the strong contrast between high and cold temperatures in a short time span. The current situation causes the biggest problem for the farmers. The late frost created huge damage in the orchards. Fruit trees are in full blossom because of the sunshine and warm temperatures in the first week of April and couldn’t stand the cold temperatures later. Its nearly impossible to protect orchard trees, particularly huge fields of fruit trees. There is also a problem for vineyards and gardens now. April is always a big risk for agriculture because it is unpredictable. Anything is possible. There had already been years with heat, drought and winter days like this year. What is really remarkable is the amount of rain and snow which is coming down now for days. It looks like the low-pressure system isn’t moving. However it is not a dangerous situation like the so-called 5B-pattern in Middle Europe when humid air from the Mediterranian is pressing against the North and leaving devastation floods. In April there are normally often showers of sleet, which is the so-called “April Weather”. Often then there is a quick change between sunshine and rain. For photographers April is usually a good time to take pictures of rainbows. This year, these days with its grey skies don’t look like something which is worth to take some pictures. However even such a late winter day can create a special mood. The pictures were taken at lake Ammersee, Upper Bavaria.

April is always a month of extremes in temperatures from very cold days til hot days. The record is a day with over 30C in Brandenburg, Germany. It’s normal that the weather is not stable. The meteorological explanation is that is is already very warm in Southern-Europe and Northern Africa and on the other side the sun is lower in the North; the sea is still very cold. Therefore there is a struggle between cold air and warm air. The good news is that summer wins the battle – for some months.

April 28, 2017April 26, 2018 by Waldmeister Categories: Photography Tips And Tricks

Winter Twilight Photography

At the end of the year 2013 it was most of the time cloudy or it was raining in the Berlin area, but in-between there were impressing sunsets when the sky cleared up for some hours. Cold days and a clear sky in winter offer interesting possibilities for photography, mostly because the air is very dry then and the horizon appears very clear without dust. Shortly after sunset, which was at 4.00pm on Dec.30, the first stars were to be seen. In the southwest there was still a rest of daylight but most of the sky was already very dark. This might be not a spectacular weather situation but I found it a good opportunity to do some long exposure photography. Some pictures of the series below where taken with 10 seconds time of exposure. Of course, the stars don’t appear as dots but as small streaks then and airplanes leave a big streak but with a wide angle the effects seemed tolerable. To me it’s a better option rather than to use ISO’s over 800 since even with a good DSLR noise becomes a problem. Minimum light also suggests normally an open visor but my experience is to try F16 or even F22 is interesting for desired effects and for more detail. It’s worth to do some experiments.
The only must is a tripod and preferable a remote release. If temperatures drop below zero you must both think about the equipment and of course the photographer. Battery power gets reduced as we know from car batteries (the best idea would be to have a spare battery and keep it warm inside your jacket) and if a camera is brought from a warm environment into the cold check first if there is fog on the lens. If it gets really cold it’s important to keep your hands and body warm. It’s worth to wait how the light situation changes and what opportunities come up, but standing around for an hour or much longer when the temperature drops below zero is not fun. I use for example a North Face jacket which served me well for some years, since it kept me always warm and is very light and thin at the same time. It’s also important that the jacket doesn’t make movements difficult and has some bigger pockets. Finally a flashlight is very important since it’s getting dark very fast in the winter.

This is not a guideline but mostly a collection of experience when I repeatedly did pictures after sunset in different situations in winter. The majority of the pictures were taken at lake Wannsee in Berlin. During the summer ships pick up tourists in this harbour for sightseeing tours on the several lakes around Berlin. The bridge is the famous “Glienicker Brücke” between Potsdam and Berlin where KGB and CIA exchanged captured agents during the Cold War.

The pics in Berlin where taken in a moonless night on December 30, 2013. At 5.00 pm there were still the summer star-signs as Lyra visible in the west. The following days proved that clear days are still rare in this winter. A series of depressions coming from the west and which created a lot of storm damage in England and Western Europe led to cloudy skies most of the time in North-East Germany.