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Above the clouds (January 18, 2006)
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| Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM, 1/100 f/22, iso 400, handheld. Aveto Valley, Italy. |
I had enviosioned this scene many
times, ever since I'd seen the movie "The Matrix
Revolutions"...honestly, it is not a great movie - but
there are some truly fascinating, dreamy scenes. Near the end, Neo
directs his spaceship towards the sky...he pass through the dark
clouds and, for few istants, he stays above and endless sea of
clouds, in the sunshine. This is a very symbolic scene - Neo lefts
behind the darkness, the war and the misery of its apocalyptic world
to reach another world made of dreams, peace and light.
In a unusually warm winter evenining, I
made a trip on the top of a mountain with some of my best friends.
We arrived on the top very late, but we were greeted by a fantastic
view...we were above the clouds! Not just few clouds...it was a sea
of clouds, with its flows, its currents, its waves...I could almost
imagine ghost vessels sailing on this heavenly sea, towards the
light...
I didn't have time even to mount
the tripod. The light was vanishing...I knew that it was
matter of minutes, then, the sun would have disappeared behind
the horizon. I quickly set the camera on ISO 400 and
f/22...there settings don't give the best image quality; ISO
400 results in strong noise, when you photograh very
contrasted scenes and you have the brighten up the shadows in
post processing, and f/22 reduces the fine detail due to the
diffraction but...who cares? Photography is not just about
image quality - photography is about emotions...I'd pick every
day a intense, fascintating photo with average image quality
over a sharp, perfecly exposed but lifeless photo. Of course,
if I've had time I'd have mounted the camera on my Gitzo
tripod, I'd have set the sentitivity on 100 and I'd have
photographed with remote release and self timer...but here the
only way to capture the scene was to shoot handheld, praying
that the third generation IS stopped the shake of my trembling
hands...
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| Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM, 1/1000 f/5, iso 200, handheld. Aveto Valley, Italy. |
Of course, I could have used a
wider aperture...at 24mm, even wide open the depth of field
would have been enough to get the entire scene in focus - but
the aperture f/22 was not for added depth of field, but for
flare and diffraction. When you include a bright light in the
photo, you get flare...and the sun is a very bright light!
Stopping down, you reduce the flare, but even at f/22 there
were still some small flare spot, that I cloned out. The
second reason to stop down to f/22 when you photograph the sun
is diffraction...the diffraction has many negative effects
(loss of sharpness, loss of contrast), but it has even a
positive effect: it tends to create
"sunbursts"...the rays of sun that you see in the
first photo are a result of diffraction, they wouldn't have been
visible if I'd used a wider aperture as f/4.
When I didn't frame the Sun, I
used a much wider aperture and I lowered the ISO. The heavenly
sea had two tones of color - pink and light blue - but here
and there, there were few small islands, ploughed by long
shadows. Sometimes the lowest peaks disappeared between the
clouds and re-apperared few minutes after.
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| Myself
admiring the sea of clouds... |
There was wind and the temperature was quickly
getting colder...my friends were quietly resting inside a small hut on the top
of the mountain, but I couldn't stop from moving around, trying to capture the
beauty and the emotion of the moment in few shots. For few seconds, a purple
light shined on the white sea...then, the Sun was gone. I toke a minute of rest,
and then I mounted the tripod and I swapped the 24-105 IS with the Sigma 12-24,
to take some wide angle views in the post-sunset light.
The sunset was hurry, strong winds, like a stormy
sea, while the late evening was quiet and peace. The sky toke a pink gradient
and the mountain were kissed by a soft, impalpable light. The clouds were no
longer pink and blue, they were a pearly sea.
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| Canon EOS 20D, Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM, 1" f/16, iso
100, tripod. Aveto Valley, Italy. |
Twenty minutes after sunset, we headed back to the
cars. There were nearly two hours of walk, and nobody had a torch...the descent
in the woods, without light and without the help of the Moon (hidden by the
clouds), was truly an adventure...but this is another story...
Do
you have comments or questions?
If you have comments or questions
about this article, feel free to ask in the Juza
Nature Photography Discussion Forum!
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