If you want to get into photography, most people know that you will need a few pieces of equipment. A camera, obviously, a few lenses, maybe a tripod, a bag, some editing software for your computer. That's pretty much all you need, right? That is if, like me, your main thing is outdoor activities like landscape or street photography (I'm not talking about studio photographers who should be prepared to sell their first-born to get the money needed for the proper lights, screens, and whatnot).

Wrong. As any photographer who has spent more than 10 minutes on Facebook knows, you are far from done. At least according to the hundreds of companies and individuals who make a living off photographers and who must spend millions targeting their ads at gullible people like me.

I'm not ashamed to admit that over the years I have spent a good deal of money on things that I later regretted, and that a lot of it was due to my inexperience and naivity, not to mention my general tendency to not do proper research when I buy stuff. So don't misunderstand. I blame no one but myself. I'm sure the makers of the products below had nothing but good intentions to help out their fellow photographers.

So here goes: my top 5 money wasting photography purchases...

Lens Belt

At one point I fell in love with the idea of carrying my lenses in a belt around my waist like some camera gun slinger, so I ordered a belt along with a selection of lens cases that could be strapped to the belt. After several weeks the items arrived from who knows where, but most likely China. Judging from the belt, it was certainly from a place where a typical male waistline is about two thirds of what can be found on your average middle-aged Western European amateur photographer. Only by sucking my gut in to near implosion was I able to latch it. Needless to say, the subsequent photo excursion to the local forest was an unpleasant experience. Afterwards the belt was never used again, and I decided getting camera lenses out of a regular camera bag isn't such a hassle after all.

Lenses for cell phone

I should have known better. You can't attach a $10 lens to a cell phone camera and expect anything resembling a useful image. I bought a whole kit of various lenses. A fish-eye lens, a zoom-lens, and an even longer zoom-lens. The quality of the images they produced was in all three cases abysmal. I never put them on again after that first attempt. Now, if you read the description of these types of lenses on places like Amazon, they all but promise you that your cell phone will now be all the camera you'll need, and they show sample images that I guarantee were not taken with those lenses. Now, I can't rule out that if you pay a little more for cell phone attacheable lenses, and if your expectations aren't too high, you might get a decent result. But it will still be so far from what you can do with even the cheapest kit lens to a real camera, it's not even funny.

Lightroom Presets

Over time I have learned that Lightroom presets are a big industry, and for a while I was an easy target. After all, presets were part of what opened my eyes to the power of RAW files and Lightroom. So this is not a knock at presets per se, but it seems to be a way to make an easy income for many photography gurus out there. And that would be okay if presets were really a miracle cure to turn your average images into masterpieces that they are made out to be, but they are not. Notice that every time you see advertising for Lightroom presets, the example images they use are absolutely stunning landscape photos with perfect light and composition. Unless you are a world class photographer who go to the most spectacular locations on Earth, that is not how your pictures will look by applying a preset. And if you are, you probably don't need presets to make your pictures look good. And don't fall for their trick when they will sell you 2,000 presets at a 95% discount. No one needs 2,000 presets. No one can even keep track of 2,000 presets. And I guarantee that whatever the price was supposed to be without the 95% discount, it was never listed at that price, let alone worth it.

Monument

This was some sort of Kickstarter project that I supported. It was a storage device that - through AI image recognition - could automatically tag your images as they were uploaded. That sounded like sweet music to me. A device that would make the tedious task of image tagging your images a thing of the past. Boy, was I disappointed. It turned out the only way you could add images to Monument was through a cell phone app, which in reality meant that it only worked with pictures you had taken with your cell phone. Since 90% of the pictures I keep are taken with my real camera, this made it pretty useless from the get go. On top of that, it turned out the "tagging" was extremely superficial... and most of the time downright incorrect. A few weeks after setting it up, my phone app stopped uploading to it for inexcplicaple reasons. I half-heartedly tried to fix it, to no avail. Then I took it down and put it in my box of unused electronics never to be looked at again.

Picfair

Over the years I have subscribed to a number of online photo services that promised exposure, sales, not to mention fame and fortune if you would just upgrade to their paid version. Picfair is one such online service, but they are merely an example. I could have mentioned others. But unlike many other more versatile services, the whole idea with Picfair is to be a sales platform for photographers. Now, you'll probably say that my pictures just aren't good enough for anyone to buy them, and that's not an unreasonable claim. They may not be. But when, despite using pictures that according to Picfair's guidelines are in demand, and tagging them using my librarian expertise and their own tagging guidelines, they still get zero views over the course of several months, something isn't adding up. I do realize that just putting them on a photo service like Picfair isn't enough. You have to do your own leg work, too. But again... zero views. Not zero sales (well, that too). Zero views.

Conclusion

These examples of my bad investments in photography products and services should not necessarily be seen as a warning against those particular products. I'm just one person. Others may have had their life revolutionzed by the Monument storing system, or if you are not overweight like me, maybe a lens case belt has been the exact right thing for you. But it never hurts to be aware of the tactics used in marketing, and to be a little better at doing your research before you submit your credit card information.

Oh, and if you are interested in any of the above-mentioned products, let me know. I'll give you a 95% discount.

 

Here on the 56th latitude, the forests are on the verge of exploding into green and - I'm guessing - making the Garden of Eden look like your average city park. Spring is my favorite time of year, not just for photography but for being alive.

So let's talk about something completely different: winter! The season that has just ended. And let's start with this image...

That's what winter in a Danish forest normally looks like. Gray, bleak, and dull. And that's how this past winter started. Not that that is necessarily a problem. My philosophy is that you work with what you've got, so if gray, bleak, and dull is what you've got, you somehow make it work, which I think I did with this image.

But then something happened.

At first it was just a slight sprinkle of white, but that was enough to get me excited. To which you may say, "But isn't Denmark, like, almost at the North Pole? Don't you have snow most of the year?" And no, we don't. First of all, we are  nowhere near the North Pole. When you see pictures or film from Scandinavia with snow-covered landscapes, reindeer, and log cabins, those are from way up in Sweden, Finland or Norway. Denmark is much further south in the temperate zone, plus we are a very flat land with very little elevation and therefore relatively warm.

Still, even considering our placement on the map, the snow drought we've experienced in the last 10 years is new and is probably somehow connected to climate change. When I was a child (he said with a squeeky old man's voice), snow was much more common, and even in my adulthood, there have been years when my snow shovel has been on heavy active duty. Not so anymore so even a tiny bit of snow was a welcome change from the grayness.

Fast forward 1½ months where the above snow cover, which lasted less than a day, seemed to be all we would get. It looked like it would be another typical snowless winter. Until...

That day marked the beginning of a long stretch of snow and cold that would last a month or more. Mind you, it's not like we had several feet of snow. What you see in the image is about as deep as it would get, but it was enough to turn the world white, much to my photographer self's delight (my car driver self hates snow and ice).

The image shows one of my favorite trees (you can also see a couple of pictures of it here), old and steady as life and seasons come and go around it. It was actually snowing as I was taking the picture, but for some reason I couldn't for the life of me get the snow flakes to show, no matter what shutter speed I chose.

Winter culminated a few days later after another snowfall that made it possible to capture the below pictures on a magical afternoon in my local forest. Due to not having had the opportunity to do any real snow photography the whole time that photography has been my passion, I  quickly had to learn the basics about it. The number one rule is to shoot while the snow is still covering the tree branches. It makes a world of difference, but also limits your window by a lot. Another rule is, of course, to not over-expose the snow, which can be difficult to avoid, but I think I managed. Last but not least, capture the snow while it's falling. I failed that one for sure.

Winter photography doesn't just equal snow. By the middle of February most of the snow had melted, but the cold returned for another round. At first it didn't result in new snow, but instead we got a period of pretty harsh frost that turned lakes and even coastal waters to ice. I missed most of that, but did catch this interesting jigsaw puzzle of ice breaking up.

At the time of the above shot, I thought for sure that would be the last we would see of winter, but - true story - two days later, my local forest looked like this...

That picture was taken around dusk, and no, it's not black and white. This is what it looked like, revealing yet another one of winter's many faces.

However, I have saved the best for last. The below image was shot during a photo outing in the woods that, despite a bit of snow on the ground, was terribly uninspiring and - until I stumbled on the below scene - hardly yielded anything worth keeping. Then, accompanied by heavenly trumpets, this sight appeared before me and instantly made me drop to my knees... That is, in order to capture the scene from the low angle that would perfect the "door to spring", as I call it.

At the time "Door to Spring" was shot, spring was actually still 2½ months away, so the door closed again pretty quickly. Now, 2½ months later, I look back on a winter season that, I feel, for the first time since I got into photography, offered plenty of opportunities for real winter landscape photography. And real winter landscape photography, as we all know, contains plenty of that white stuff. Next winter I will most likely be back to shooting gray, dreary, snowless woodland and telling you how awesome it is, when you think of it, but you'll know that when I put my head on the pillow in the evening, I will be dreaming of snowclad trees, icy lakes, and snowflakes gently falling from the sky.

On the next episode.... Green, green leaves!

But first, a few more winter favorites:

Iceland, Faroe Islands, Vancouver Island, Bornholm... Wait a second... What did I say? Bornholm? Did I really just name Bornholm in the same sentence as those other world famous photography havens? It appears that I did, and it may be completely ridiculous, but hear me out. When I went to the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea in October, for the first time in my life, I, at times, felt close to what I felt during my short visit to Iceland and what I imagine others might feel when they visit the rugged coast of Vancouver Island and the vertical rock walls of Faroe Islands.

Bornholm is a 588 square kilometer island about 150 kilometers from the rest of Denmark. It is in many ways a concentrated platter of most of what landscape photography has to offer and presents a great variety in a within a very small area. You can drive from one end of the island to the other in less than an hour and on the way see rocky coastline, majestic forest, sweeping open land, sandy beaches, idyllic fishing villages, valley gorges, and of course the cream of crop, the great castle ruin of Hammershus.

Hammershus

It turned out we were practically next-door neighbors to the last-mentioned attraction, so that made it a natural starting point for us. Hammershus Castle Ruin is an ominous fortress complex sitting on top of a hill overlooking the Baltic Sea. It's the largest and most well-preserved ruin in Denmark and is a very impressive sight. It has lots of interesting little details, but it begs for a widescreen treatment, which is what I provided in this stitched panorama. For having been taken in relatively bland middle-of-the-day light, I couldn't be happier with the result. The clouds help, too.

However, I knew as soon as I saw it that the perfect image of Hammershus would be taken during a sunset with dramatic colors and clouds in the background. To my joy, when, after spending the afternoon in a nearby town, we returned to our vacation house around sunset, the conditions were ideal. I dropped off my wife at the house and sped back to the ruin, where - having the whole castle ground to myself - I captured the below image, which is very close to what I'd envisioned earlier in the day.

Gudhjem

In many ways, the big, gloomy looking ruin is very uncharateristic of Bornholm. The human effect on Bornholm in general bears a lot more resemblance to the Hobbit village in Lord of the Rings than it does to Mordor. Along the coastline you will find one beautiful, idyllic town after another. One of the most acclaimed examples is the town of Gudhjem (God Home) that we visited on our second day. The light was less than ideal (if light can be gray then gray it was), which meant the town didn't show itself from its best side. (The island of Bornholm is actually nicknamed "The Sunshine Island" because it has the highest number of sunshine hours on average over the course of a year in all of Denmark.) Still, it got better while we were there and I managed to secure a nice panorama as the cloud layer was opening:

It appears as if all I did on Bornholm was shoot panoramas. That's not quite the case, but I do need to show you one more, which was taken from a location very close to the one above. I feel it's one of my best multi-image, stitched panoramas ever. Not just because of how the pieces fit together and constitute a killer composition, but because of the technical challenges it offered, including the strong backlight and the fact that I was positioned close to a 5 meter edge, falling off which would have seen me land in the backyard of the yellow house in the foreground. It was so difficult that, after shooting it during our visit to Gudhjem, I actually had to go back the next day to reshoot it, because I didn't get it right the first time. I call the image "Sun Over Gudhjem", and as any Dane can tell you, that is also the name of a culinary Bornholm specialty: an open sandwich consisting of smoked herring on rye bread topped with a raw egg yolk. I personally I like my version better.

Allinge-Sandvig

As you drive down along the coastline between idyllic towns, you often have a good view of the rugged rock formations that make up the edge of the island in a lot of places. In a Danish context, this is pretty unique. No wonder I was extremely excited to get a close look at these mysterious shapes. I even climbed out among them  and made good use of my trusty wideangle 16-35 mm lens, trying to imitate rugged rock images from more famous places like Bryce Canyon or the Oregon Coast.

The Opal Lake

The third day of our Bornholm vacation proved to be the most satisfying so far when it came to photography and adventure. The day started with us taking the short drive to an old abandoned quarry that has turned into a lake and nature area: the Opal Lake. We walked on a path that took us higher and higher above the lake. With every step that we took, the view got more beautiful, culminating near the top with this breathtaking spot that surpassed all my expectations of what Bornholm would have to offer. It looked like one of those iconic places where landscape photographers from all over the world stand in line waiting their turn to get the shot, except there was no one there but me and my wife. Note, by the way, that you can see the Hammershus Castle Ruin in the background behind the tree.

Døn Valley

After circling the Opal Lake we drove to no less than the tallest waterfall in Denmark. And here I must admit that the comparison of Bornholm to other more famous landscape photography locations becomes a bit of a stretch. Because when it comes to shooting waterfalls, Denmark is probably the last place you want to visit. So when I say "the tallest waterfall in Denmark" we're talking a 10 meter tall trickle that no doubt leaves many visitors wondering if their leg is being pulled. Still, that doesn't mean you can't shoot good photos of it, which I think I did. And to be fair, my guidebook said it's a lot more impressive in the spring than in the fall. I guess I will have to return at a more favorable time.

Dueodde

Our last stop of the day was the Dueodde Beach, which is famous for its incredible fine, white sand that would rival that of much warmer beaches in the Caribbean. And while the sand was indeed fine and white, that's not what attracted me the most about the place once we arrived.  The tall lighthouse towering over the beach constituted a much better focal point, and this combined with the waning golden hour light made for a perfect end of the day.

The Lion Head

As our Bornholm visit was coming to an end, I knew there was still one place I needed to go. Near our vacation house, just below the Hammershus Castle, is an iconic rock called "The Camel Head". Again, the photography gods were with me. A colorful sunset at the exact right spot and powerful winds helped turn the drama knob to 10 on this image.

The next day I packed my camera away, and we left the island after an exciting few days. The above images are of course just a fraction of what I took. You will find a few more in the selection below. It's possible Bornholm is not about to be the new Isle of Skye on the landscape photography map, but no landscape photographer could go to Bornholm and not find it worth their time. Of that I'm certain. For my own part, I can say for sure that it won't be another 50 years before I go back to Bornholm. If I returned in 2021 it wouldn't be a moment too soon.

A week ago the forest was still an explosion of colors. Today... gone. This year's fall color season is officially over and the next five months will be a return to naked branches, gray skies, and muddy trails. A few trees were making a last stand, and I tried to capture their lonesome struggle to the best of my ability on an afternoon that offered no proper light or other redeeming factors.

I'm losing track of how many times I have been out in nature taking pictures when passers-by have stopped, looked in the direction that my camera was pointing, and asked, "What are you looking at?" In most cases, it turns out that what they are actually asking is, "What rare bird have you spotted?"

To most people, a middle-aged man carrying a "real" camera (as in, not a cell phone) in nature means that he is a bird photographer. The concept of just taking a picture of the landscape, or a tree, or a creek is apparently very foreign to the average person. At least, they seem quite surprised when I explain it to them, and they quickly move on. Not interested.

And it's not that I don't see the point of bird photography. I would love to be a great bird photographer, but 1) I can't tell a seagull from an eagle, 2) I don't have the patience required, and 3) I can't afford the lenses bird photography calls for. The last point should be a dead giveaway to those who think I'm a bird photographer. How could I possibly be a bird photographer when the lens attached to my camera is a 300 mm at best? Don't people know that you need at least a 400 mm lens for that?

Now, all this doesn't mean that I haven't been known to push the release button if a bird happens to enter my focus area and that I haven't taken some fairly awesome photos featuring birds. I believe I have. And there is one bird that is an exception to everything I have just said about me and bird photography: swans. While you cannot call me a bird photographer, I would definitely categorize myself as a swan photographer. I love swans. They are some of the most beautiful and most photogenic animals on the planet. Especially the kind that you find in my neck of the woods: the mute swan. It also happens to be the national bird of Denmark, and I for one am thrilled about that.

To an actual bird photographer, swans are probably what a Toyota Corolla is to a car enthusiast. Plain, common, and boring. Not to me. They may be common, but they are anything but plain and boring. In fact, they are majestic and inspiring. The challenge in swan photography lies in catching them in the right surroundings and having them pose, or interact with each other, in an interesting way. That requires a certain amount of patience and time spent observing them.

My interest in swans, I think, comes from my wife, the American, who wasn't used to the kind of swans we have in Denmark and made me open my eyes to their beauty. I mean, I grew up here and was used to swans and, like with so many other things before photography changed how I look at just about everything, I never really gave them much thought.

Another boost to my swan fascination came with the image below. It was taken not too long after I got my first "real" camera (my Sony A33) and is probably still among the three best photos I have ever taken (which, in a way, is a little sad considering all the practice I have gotten since). Look at that composition! How the swan on the left provides perfect balance to the castle on the right, and how the swan in the center of the image looks straight into the camera. Sure, I have enhanced it and turned the "magical fairy tale" knob to 10, but I like it. And it really made me consciously seek out swans to include in my images ever since.

The next image is also several years old and is my first picture of a swan with its wings spread out. It looks like an angel. Now, if you live next to swans and see swans every day, seeing them with their wings spread out like that may not be such a rare occurrence. But while I see swans quite often - probably once or twice a week - the times I have seen them in the last five years, with their wings spread out like that, can be counted on one hand. And catching them like that from the right angle and distance is even rarer. So it's something I'm always hoping will happen when I head to a place with swans, and it almost never does.

One of the things that make swans so special is their monogamy. They stick to the same partner for life and raise a new brood of cygnets every year. On a few occasions, my wife and I have followed a swan couple through a season and seen how they have built their nest, laid on their eggs, and taken their tiny new cygnets for a swim. And we have seen the cygnets grow and finally replace their gray ugly duckling plumage with beautiful white feathers. This can also be a heartbreaking experience as sometimes the swan couple will start out with six cygnets and then lose them one by one to predatory fish or birds until only a couple remain. In the below picture, a family of swans (and a friendly duck) is chilling in a local creek under the moonlight. All right, I admit, the full moon has been added, but the moon really was out that night, although not quite in such a favorable position.

Swans do other things than just be beautiful and majestic. They can be some nasty birds and apparently very territorial. One afternoon I was walking along a lake when the below scene played out. One particularly angry swan was busy keeping his part of the lake free from other swans. It's extremely dramatic when big birds like that get in each other's throats, and you really don't want to make a swan cross. This was shot with a cell phone and turned out very well for me, but at the expense of the poor couple that had ventured into the angry swan's territory. Or maybe they were the bad guys who had ventured into the angry swan's territory and got what they deserved. Who knows?

The next image is from the same lake and may even be one of the same swans, but a more common situation. There is nothing as serene and beautiful as a swan quietly drifting in and out between tufts of grass and waterweed during a sunset. They are like strange extra-terrestrial beings gracing our world with their other-worldly presence.

Standing close to a swan, you wouldn't think that their size would allow them to be particularly good flyers. But as the perfect beings that they are, flying is of course not a problem. In fact, standing underneath a flock of swans as they pass over you is a magnificent experience. You hear them before you see them. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The sound of their big wings is just one of their many majestic characteristics that leave you in awe and make you look up. If you are really lucky, as I was while taking the below picture, you are carrying your camera, the camera has a suitable lens mounted, and the shutter is set to a sufficiently fast speed. That rarely happens to me since my camera is usually in landscape photography mode, but in this case, everything aligned and I got one of my few sharp pictures of flying swans.

Last but not least: the swan heart image. I had been chasing this photo for almost as long as I have been chasing swans. Inspired by the town arms of the city that I work in, I wanted so badly to photograph two swans forming a heart with their long, beautiful necks. I had been close many times where I would see a swan couple drifting toward each other, only to break off at the last second or stick their necks into the water for food just at the crucial moment (I can't count how many pictures I have of swans with their heads in the water).

And then, finally this year, on Valentine's Day no less, this happened. It was a magical moment. The swan on the left had just landed on the water after having been out flying for a while. My prejudice about gender roles tells me that it was the male. The other swan - the female - saw him land, and they immediately headed towards each other and met in this, not quite perfect, heart shape in the middle of the lake. They spent the next few seconds almost wrapping their necks around each other in a loving embrace. I was absolutely thrilled.

I have tons more swan pictures in my collection, but these are some of the highlights. Swans are a subject I never get tired of, and I find it almost impossible to walk past a swan without taking its picture. Other birds may be rarer or more interesting in many ways, but none are as beautiful and photogenic in all their various poses and moods.

A patch of forest not far from my house where I had only been once before. Back then I wasn't all that excited about what I saw, but I thought I'd give it another shot. I did not regret it. Despite dull, gray light there was no shortage of compositions. One young tree in particular caught my attention. The tree had just come into leaf and was surrounded by older trees that were still bare. I was spellbound by the green whirl that seemed to float in free air around the tree.

The forest is located next to a riding center, so you constantly run into horseback riders and horses grazing along the paths, which of course, I took full advantage of.

An evening walk in the forest that started out with the most amazing light, but it fizzled out and for once, I didn't come home with 100+ images on my card.

What a difference a different time of day means. Until now most of my spring photography has taken place in broad daylight in sunny and harsh light conditions. Today I went out as the sun was lowering in the sky and captured the spring leafs in magnificent ways. I love this time of year, when the bright green leafs are are coming out in little, apparently free-floating, bursts here and there and before they take over the forest completely. The scene today was my local forest where I have been a million times before, but I keep capturing new aspects of it. Spots that one day are hardly worth a glance turn into explosions of light and patterns and beauty, just because the season, the time of day, and the weather conditions are different.

April has been extremely bright and sunny and with hardly any rain. Today was no exception, and again it put a damper on my ability to create great photos. But as is almost always the case, I gradually got carried away and enjoyed myself tremendously. My first stop was Ulvedalen (Wolf Valley) in the middle of the forest, a location I have talked about before. The free-roaming horses were still there, but that wasn't the only thing that caught my attention. Looking through my long zoom lens, a surreal sight caught my eye: a man was sitting on a far hilltop, lotus position, hands spread out in meditation. Apparently he thought he was all alone. As I was watching him, the horses started to approach him. Soon they were so close to him, he could no longer focus. He got up and rode away on his bicycle.

The rest of my day went with standard forest photography, and a picture of the train that criss-cross the forest.

I'm going for a lot of walks these days due to the corona lock-down, where I'm otherwise stuck behind my desk working from home and hardly moving all day. Today the walk took me to Frederiksborg Castle Park, which is always worth visiting. The light on the castle was worth capturing, and so was the spring leafs on my way home through the local forest.

Bright sunshine, a clear blue sky... in other words, awful conditions. But, although most of my images from this day were garbage, I was happy with how I ended up documenting the emerging spring leafs. And there is that very Danish farmhouse again, and it even had the Danish flag flying.

A bike ride without my real camera and with no intentions of taking pictures turned into a cell phone photography extravaganza when the forest I visited turned out to be quite photogenic. Especially when the sun started to set and the shadows grew long.

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