Pages

Sunday, September 7, 2008

My Stay in Denmark, Norway and Trip Through Sweden

I have been back almost a week now and I am now finally adjusting to being back home. The hectic pace of being on the go for the month of August creates a vacuum in activity levels when you get home that make you wonder what to do next. Then at the same time there is the tendency to overdo the do nothing feeling and just relax.

The vacation to Denmark, Norway and Sweden was a family holiday, in fact a chance to see new family members who until a few years ago did not even know I exited. It was really great and special to meet all the gang and they treated my wife and I like visiting royalty. Every breakfast, lunch and dinner was a feast of great local delicacies that filled the entire table. There was extra weight brought back and not just in the suitcases.

For not being a photography holiday, I did take a fair bit of camera gear with me. See previous article for a list of items. If you need something, it is too far away to get it to you.

There was a last minute change in that I did take my tripod and I was glad I did and I left the gorilla pod flexible tripod behind. When I decided to test the gorilla pad on table for steadiness, it wasn’t that great for long zooms. I could have used the camera with the mirror up but this seemed too much work in trying to steady it. In all the years I have owned it I have not used it for one real photograph. I find with the new vibration reduction or image stabilization lens and the good high iso on the d300, I don’t need the tripod as much for low light settings.

Except for the few flower macro shots (Tamron 90mm di) I used the Nikon 18-200 f3.5 vr exclusively. This allowed me to carry with me at all times a camera in a small bag.

The images that I am showing in this article will each be, on its own, a photographic scenic essay.


Nikon 18-200mm vr @62mm (93=35mm), f11.0, 1/500s, iso 200
The white chalk cliffs on the south eastern part of Sjealland at Mons Klint, Denmark



After a review of the images (a rating system I use) I have 1001 images that are 2 or higher and 99 that are 3 or higher with a total of 1638 images and a storage capacity of 32GB.



Nikon 18-200mm vr @ 157mm, f5.5, 1/1160s, iso 400

Copenhagen is a city that is fully adapted to the bicyclist. Notice the separate roadway that has a curb departing the road. These end just before each intersection, but bikers have first green signal before cars can go. Also, no turning on a red light.


The old flashtrax 40GB storage device worked flawlessly in backing up all my CF cards. I highly recommend that, when on a maybe once in a lifetime adventure, there is some method to backup your images, in case something happens to the original storage device.



Nikon 18-200mm vr @27mm, f6.3, i1/1000s, iso 200

Old historic train yard and ferries from World War II.

Norway has a very special beautiful charm with its high rising treed cliff sides to tall snow capped mountains.



Nikon 18-200mm vr @200mm, f11.0, 1/500s, iso 200



I did manage one afternoon to get out by myself and explore the local shoreline in the small town of Nykobing Mors, Denmark.


Nikon 18-200mm vr @93mm, f10.0, 1/250, iso 200

This was my 8Gig afternoon were I decided I would fill up the card at about 18mb an image. This was easy to accomplish while shooting panos of the other coastline. It will be interesting to see how these will turn out. My nephew was hoping to get a B&W for his living room wall and I think that there is one that might work.

Nikon 18-200mm vr @50mm, f9.0, 1/800s/iso 200

Sometimes there are just interesting discoveries as you trek about. If you look closely, you will see a surfer on a kite sail. There were some good shots of them playing around on the surf.


Being near the northern oceans you can’t help but notice the intensity and strangeness that the sky and clouds can take on.




There were many good opportunities to capture a few images as we traveled around. There is this one spot near Rjukan, Norway were I kept the kind car driver on short notice as I would cry out “stop the car I just have to get this picture”. This was repeated almost every 10 feet it seems, as we traveled up and over the 5,600ft mountain ridge. This is where I may have gotten the one image that you think might have it all as I looked back at the rain entering one end of the valley town and the sun was shining through all this fine mist. You’ll have to wait for a future article to see this spectacular photo.



Niels Henriksen

2 comments:

Anita Jesse said...

What a beautiful series. Thank you for sharing those scenes and welcome back.

Unknown said...

Thanks Jesse:

I am hoping that I will have enough good material to produce several series form this trip.

Some articles will by its very nature provide better photographic images and will lend to better story telling. I hope you enjoy them all.


Niels

Like

Related Posts with Thumbnails