Some Photographs and Notes from Denmark

I have returned home from my short stay in this wonderful county. I did manage take a fair number of photos, probably around a 1,000 in total. About 300 were centered on the wedding event. Another 200 were focused on people images that I could use as reference material for my oil painting studies. The remaining 500, which is not a lot in digital standards, were around town and in the country side. Looking at them now, many just seem ordinary.

One part of me says every image should be great but is that really practicable when you are walking and shooting without giving much though to composition? Especially when you are just grabbing what’s interesting and trying your best to make it reasonable in the viewfinder.

When it comes to landscapes I find perform best when I have a tripod. This forces me to spend more time to pre-think the setup and final composition. This process of examining and feeling really helps me to identify those elements that can excite and stir some passions. I didn’t use a tripod on the trip but instead relied on my trusty 18-200mm Nikon VR lens. This sure is a great tourist lens and coupled with a high ISO capability there is almost no scene you can’t capture.

My brother’s wedding went well and it was great to celebrate this event with him and his new wife and then to connect with some family members that I had not met before. We were lucky that we were granted permission to take images inside the Queen’s church and a few of these I will show on a later date.




While visiting another brother out in the country I came across many fields ablaze in vibrant yellows, which are from the oilseed rape plant blossoms. These fields are quite common in many farming areas and the plant is nicknamed the "sunshine crop”

The above image I find very interesting because there are 2 sets of complimentary colours. The Blue which I enhanced to better match the glow of the Yellow. The other set is the Reddish -Green pair. I muted (de-saturated) the foreground green to better compliment the more muted orange tones. The overall harmony is maintained because there are also greens in the yellows and orange is speckled in the lower greens where there is bare ground.




In Copenhagen I was walking around the historic area of Dragor which was an old mariner’s port and now is a very expensive community. Out in the channel I saw this freighter passing in front of the channel markers leading out of the harbour. I decided to crop the image to pair up the 3 buoys with the 3 white structures on the ship.

The green is as captured and the red and blue only have a slight increase in saturation.

The telephoto lens (200mm) really compresses the scene almost making the buoys seem near the ship when in fact it’s probably 2km away.

In the central part of Copenhagen there are many parks with small lakes that provide a surreal tranquility when you know that just on the edge of the park is the hustle and bustle of a busy city.

There are many people who like to just sit and relax in the afternoons and enjoy a bit of paradise.

I enjoy travelling to new places and exploring the local sites and customs but I never travel well. It’s the getting there part. First since I don’t fly business class and I find the economy seats very cramped (6’3”) and when the time change is more that a few hours sift, it takes me a long to time to adjust.

Denmark has a great train system more like our subways with short stops and frequent schedules (many leave every 20 mins) that traveling around the country is a pure pleasure.

Why does North America have to be so dependant of cars that public transportation is almost an after thought unless you are in large downtown metro areas?

In one of the old king’s parks Frederiksberg Have (garden) there is this tree with thousands of soothers hanging from it.

De-saturated the green and yellow in tree leaves

When your child has out grown the soothers, parents hang these from the tree and a few even add wish notes which I guess is common throughout Europe.


Niels Henriksen