Above the clouds

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...

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.

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.

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...

Risposte e commenti