I miss the sun. I miss the tropical heat. I miss light. Any light that isn’t gray will do. I wasn’t build for the cold dark Northern Winter (did I mention I also hate snow?) so this is clearly not my best time of the year! The reward for getting through these Winter days up here in Scandinavia is the long lovely Summer days. They do seem awfully far away at the moment and a Qantas flight down under seems an awfully attractive response to Winter. Either that or hibernation until Spring dominates our weather.
As a landscape and cityscape shooter I study the weather and especially the clouds constantly. I look for extraordinary light and sky when I shoot my landscapes and cityscapes. First thing I do when I travel to a new place is note the time and the place where the sun rises and sets. You can’t predict extraordinary light but you can certainly improve your changes of catching it if it happens!
Extraordinary light doesn’t mean it cannot be very cloudy and the sun doesn’t even have to be out. The sky and the light just have to have some drama! 100% sunny summer days with no clouds are lovely – but not good for my photography either. I need dramatic light! The worst days though are the totally overcast totally gray days which we unfortunately get a lot of in the Danish Winter. The light and sky in these days are so dull, boring and depressing it’s like all the colours and light in the world was stolen by a black hole in the ‘Verse. Days like that my camera does not get a work-out. I need my extraordinary light fix and will chase it forever!
Here are some examples of my never ending quest for extraordinary light and as you can see cloudy days work fine as long as they’re dramatic!
(as always, click to see large size on my website)
Storm approaching Brisbane. Some very dramatic clouds passing us quickly.
Winter Sunset in Copenhagen. Just after sunset and the few sunny days here in Winter can provide some nice colours
Just a perfect clear warm sunny day on Fraser Island – but with nice fluffy clouds
Hail storm in Copenhagen. A unique shot on a unique day, I have yet to see this sort of storm in Copenhagen again. Half the sky was pitch black, the other half was clear and allowed the setting sun (behind me) to light up the buildings.
Well – I’m off to look at either Qantas flights or hibernation possibilities!
3 Comments on “Photographer, sunlover, stormchaser, weatherman”
Hello! Flemming-san For a while we could not meet at dPrevies forum but I am happy I could enjoy your excellent works at your WWW site and blog.
I welcome you and all visitors for this blog to my blog at http://railroadjapan.way-nifty.com/railroadjapan/
(^_^)/~ Thank you
HAMADA from KUMAMOTO Japan
I found your blog via Google blog search while searching for winter photography and your post regarding “Photographer, sunlover, stormchaser, weatherman” looks very interesting to me. I have a few Photography websites of my own and I must say that your blog is really good. Keep up the great work on a really high class resource.
I Love winter photography and for most of us, even the thought of capturing on camera, a great shot of an idyllic winter scene is heartwarming and at the same time mind-numbingly depressing. We all know through bitter experience that a winter photography shot we thought of as perfect, might as well in fact be tossed in the garbage can. One really helpful trick that I learned for winter photography is to meter for something other than the snow. Think of all the photo opportunities we’re missing just by being unable to come to grips with proper exposure.
Hi and thanks for your comments, I'm pleased you like my blog!
I almost always meter for the sky and the use my experience to know if I need to over- or underexpose the scene a bit, so whether it's water, sand, rocks or snow makes little difference to me when metering…it's not the tricky metering situation that depresses me in snow, it's the snow itself and the fact that it's cold and winter!