Author: John

Lost in Genoa

Posted on by John

Genoa has a lot of narrow streets and it is actually not that easy to find your way around. I don’t know if that is the case for the small family in this picture, but they do look a bit lost.

Talk to me Goose

Posted on by John

Greylag Geese (Anser anser) seems to be everywhere in Lille Vildmose, especially in the winter. They are fun birds, always making noise and watching out for predators, but they aren’t too shy. But, as soon as one of them panicks and takes off, the entire flock scrambles. Seeing several hundred geese scramble at once, straight over your head, because something on the opposite side startled them is quite a sight.

Blue Jellyfish

Posted on by John

From a fish tank in Nordsø Oceanariet in Hirtshals, Denmark.
it was a bit hard to get good focus, as they were in a round fish tank that you could walk around, so obviously the glass was curved and you had to get as straight an angle as possible through the glass.

Moose In The Rain

Posted on by John

Went out trying to get more familiar with my newly acquired RF 100-500L. This lens really blows me away! It is SO much sharper and much better at locking focus than my good old Tamron 150-600 G2.
Granted, I lose 100mm in reach, but when the image quality is this much better, I can live with that.
I went to Lille Vildmose, and found this Moose bull and a fellow bull minding their own business about 50 meter from the path I was following. Looks like a wet day to be a moose.

Visayan hornbill

Posted on by John

A scruffy looking male Visayan hornbill (Penelopides panini) I photographed when visiting BIOPARC Fuengirola in Spain.
I hadn’t packed a long lens for this trip, so I had to make due with the Canon 24-105mm f/4 L.
In general I would say the in most cases it was okay, but I would have liked having my Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 G2 with me, or my R7, to get a bit more reach.

Eurasian Tree Sparrow Part II

Posted on by John

I’ve been shooting with my R7 and the Tamron 150-600mm G2 for some years now, and even though I think I have gotten some decent shots with that combination, I have also found it to be really hard to get consistently sharp images with the Tamron, especially with a 1.4x extender attached. On my R6 using the extender would often be fine, but on the R7 I wasn’t impressed and ended up never using the extender. Still I didn’t get the image quality that I expected. So, I emptied the piggy bank and invested in the Canon RF 100-500mm L lens. Unfortunately it has been either dark, raining or snowing (or a combination of the above) more or less constantly since I bought it. But I did manage to take it out a couple of times and even though I still haven’t had decent light, I think this lens performs way better than the Tamron. Granted, it is more than twice as expensive, so better performance was to be expected but it still impressed me how much more sharpness I got.

Old school

Posted on by John

One of the many interesting old buildings in Aalborg, the old navigation school in Aalborg Vestby. For many years this building has been used by various political youth organizations.
Taken with the Lensbaby Edge 50

The Watcher and the Tower

Posted on by John

I’ll be the first to admit that a 50mm Lensbaby Edge 50 is not the optimal wildlife lens.. ..but you have to work with what you have at hand. I was actually out trying to do something else than wildlife photography, when I saw a Cormorant drying its wings in the winter sun, on one of the foundations of the old railroad bridge in Aalborg. I quickly ran up on the new(er) bridge next to it to get the buildings on the other side of Limfjorden as a background. I then twisted and turned the Edge 50 to get the line of focus just right.. and then the bird turned its head.. perfect timing.. I ended up with a picture I really like.

Waterfront in low sun

Posted on by John

It has been a while since I went for a walk with my Lensbaby Edge 50 by the waterfront in Aalborg. A bit sad actually, because I always seem to get home with something i like. This time it was these buildings on the other side of Limfjorden, being lighted by the afternoon sun, which is really low this time of the year. The light became even more dominant because heavy snow clouds were passing further North.
The Lensbaby Edge 50 has this ability to enhance this feeling of surrealism that I really like and even though it isn’t that dominant in this shot, I like the end result.

Twilight Moose

Posted on by John

Just as I had packed up my gear and was driving out of Lille Vildmose, I suddenly saw this great Moose bull. I quickly pulled over and had about five minutes alone with the big guy before other cars started pulling over and he decided to walk away.
I am actually quite amazed over this picture. It was twilight, I shot at 600mm with a shutter speed of just 1/80s at ISO 6400. Still, with help from Topaz Photo AI and the skills I have acquired in Lightroom over the years, I still ended up with an acceptable result. Even though the R7 is a crop sensor camera, it is still capable of delivering, even at high ISO.

Switching grooves

Posted on by John

When I started taking photography more serious, I mainly shot black and white photos. I loved a good black and white photo. To be fair, I still do.
And I also still love when I see a subject or scene that I know exactly how to capture in black and white.

But still I have noticed a change in the photos I post here on my site. A while back, the majority were black and white, now most of them are in color.

The reason for this is quite simple. I have switched groove. I am now primarily taking pictures of animals, either in the wild or on various zoos.
Animals usually have strong or distinctive colors, and while some animals photos can work in black and white, most of them deserve to be in color.

Switching grooves is not a bad thing. It is an evolution. The next step.
Instead of keeping in the same groove and starting to repeat yourself, or growing tired of what you do, you can try something else. It doesn’t mean that you can’t switch back to your old groove if you want to at some later point.
And if you switch back, maybe you will have learned something new, that takes your work to another level.

At the moment I still have a strong urge to photograph wildlife, but I can also feel a beginng yearning for the old days of picking up my camera, put on a 35mm lens or a Lensbaby, and go out exploring and capture new black and white sceneries.

Goodbye POTN

Posted on by John

When I first started getting serious with photography, I would have all kinds of issues that puzzled me, or that didn’t make sense to me. So, I did what I always do in such cases, I looked for like-minded online.

I quickly found photography-on-the.net (POTN). At that time a forum for Canon users. It was a forum populated by nice and helpful people, and it seemed to have answers for almost all my questions and funny interactions and comments as well.

later on POTN opened up for all kinds of cameras, and even then, no Brand-wars broke out.

Over the years I spent hours on that forum, slowly noticing that the interactions changed. Instead of a lot of post about people asking for help, it would be posts about specific cameras, lenses, bird photography etc.

I guess the people looking for answers were going elsewhere, or that all questions had already been answered.

Now Pekka, the guy who runs POTN has decided to shut the forum down, apparently around February 2024, to free up time for his other interests, and while I understand and respect his decision, I can’t help to feel a little sad, that a good forum with a lot of good users will now dissappear.

Goodbye POTN, you will be missed.

Inside the Lighthouse

Posted on by John

I went to see the lighthouse in Lyngvig this summer. There were so many stairs to the top, and what a view. When we came back down I looked up and even though there were a lot of people in the lighthouse that day, the stairway was empty.. and I managed to get this shot of the stairway spiraling to the top.