This has immediately become a legendary day in my photography career. Sporting my brand new 70-300 mm lens, I managed to take one amazing picture after another of the very approachable wildlife roaming among the beginning fall colors. I have written about this place before, and it remains a magical nature spot surrounded by Copenhagen suburbs, a fact that you don't notice at all. To me it's not a goal in itself to get as close to the animals as possible. The goal is to show the animals in their natural surroundings and interacting with each other.

Just another walk in the woods that produced some nice forest images featuring eye-catching orange ferns.

One of my very rare sunrise outings. It did not disappoint. A beautiful morning fog shrouded the area. Still, finding compositions in this beautiful spot proved harder than expected. One of the problems was that the growth along the lake was so tall, you couldn't see the lake.

A beautiful evening at a beautiful spot, with cows, resulted in some so-so pictures. I enjoyed it more than I enjoy what it produced, although the one with the flock of birds flying over the old farm house is a favorite.

I have never had much luck with the conditions in Oslo for photography. This year was no exception. A thick layer of clouds, and even a bout of rain, made this day a doubtful affair photography-wise. But I was actually pretty happy with how I fared in the face of these less than optimal conditions.

Approaching Oslo through the Oslo Fiord, one of the first images of the day was the below very classic and simple composition. The light was still reasonable, and focus on the lonely sailboat was nailed.

Downtown Oslo on a busy morning.

Reflections in downtown Oslo.

Although we've been to Oslo several times, we'd never taken a close look the famous opera house,  opera not being one of our favorite pastimes. I guess we didn't realize that you could actually walk on top of it and enjoy the magnificent architecture from up close. Well, you can and we did, resulting in my favorite image of the day of these three women taking a break outside the big glass structure. Amazingly, no other people got in the way (except maybe I removed one or two in Photoshop).

The last image was taken from the ferry. I just like this overview of Oslo and the aerial perspective in the hills in the background.

A few days after returning from our Jutland road trip, we set our for a new adventure: another trip to Oslo on the big Oslo ferry. Now, it was only a little over a year since we had last been in Oslo, which I wrote about here. Still, we always have a nice time away from the grind, and it always presents another photo opportunity to me.

Like last time, my photography started as we were departing from Copenhagen. Last time I complained about my lack of a proper zoom lens. 100 mm was my longest option. This time I went equipped with my 70-300 mm zoom lens that I purchased since our last trip. It made a big difference, including with the bottom two images of this batch, which were all taken at a focal length longer than 100 mm, the bottom one making use of my entire 300 mm range.

I take the below picture every time we go on the Oslo ferry. It's just such an obvious leading line. I like this year's version well enough to include it here.

How rude of this cargo ship to block the view of Kronborg Castle just as we were sailing by! But I actually like this image quite a bit. It kind of symbolizes how the strait of Øresund was always an important trade route and how Kronborg Castle used to make sure no one went through without paying tax to the Danish king. It doesn't work quite like that anymore, but other things never change.

 

Our only full day away from home was spent cruising around Jutland, from the east to the west and back east. The first image is from Himmelbjerget (Sky Mountain), which is one of the highest points in Denmark. It's not really a mountain - we don't have mountains in Denmark - but a hill with a pretty amazing view. Unfortunately, light was rather dull so my pictures of the view were not as good as this picture of the tower that you find on top of the hill.

The light had returned a few hours later when we arrived on the west coast of Jutland and the Wadden Sea - an area where you can walk far off the shore during low tide. I didn't walk very far, but I shot the place to pieces with my camera. In the end, the images were not as good as I thought when I took them, but this one is not bad at all.

The next image was also taken in the Wadden Sea area. A classic minimalist composition of a sunlit field. The light was amazing. Shadows from fast moving clouds swept across the field resulting in a scene that was half sunlit, half covered in shade.

On our way back to the hotel in the evening we came across the most beautiful row of wind turbines. The golden hour light was absolutely exquisite, and I just had to turn the car around and go shoot this scene even though it was 8 o'clock in the evening and we hadn't had much food all day.

And that's how an amazing day of sightseeing and photography ended. I was happy with my images overall, but also felt that they could have been better if I had been more familiar with the areas that we visited. The importance of knowing a place can't be overstated, in my opinion.

Day 1 of our road trip vacation to Jutland. On the way over there, we stopped at a place called Camp Adventure, which recently got a new attraction: a 45 meter wooden tower that rises above the  treetops enabling you to see for miles and miles. But first we had walk through a little forest where other visitors were zip-lining above us. The leafs were green and lush, and the sun was shining, which was all good and well inside the forest, but which made my images taken of the view from the tower a bit too contrasty and harsh, so I haven't included any. I did include one of the tower, of course. That's just an epic subject with its spiral shape.

 

Now we're talking! A 30-minute drive to Tegner's Museum, which I also visited in the spring, paid off big time. Golden hour, dramatic clouds, and beautiful purple heather made this one of the best photo shoots of the year. I frantically ran around trying to capture as much as possible while the light still lasted. I was very happy with the result, which included the below self-portrait, and the second image where you can see my wife on her way back to the car. What you don't see in any of these images are the bronze sculptures that are randomly distributed in the area to great effect. I did take pictures of them, including some that I liked a lot, but while they work well when you walk around in the area, in my images I prefer the.unspoiled nature and have no need for man-made art to enhance it.

It seemed like an easy shoot. After all, the park around Frederiksborg Castle always has plenty to offer. But boy, did I struggle. The light was harsh and horrible. In the middle of August, late afternoon is still way too early to get good light. I took very few pictures and not a single one of the castle. These two were the only ones that were remotely interesting, and they could have been taken almost anywhere. They say nothing about the park.

Altogether, the first half of August has put me in a real photography impasse. Some of it is due to harsh summer light, and some of it is just me being a little bored with my usual locations that don't seem to offer anything interesting at the moment.

A new record for fewest images per kilometer covered. I must have walked 5-6 kilometers and took less than five pictures. There just wasn't anything interesting to shoot. However, when I came home and saw the first of these two images, I was actually quite happy with it. That composition has potential! The S-shaped road, the bridge across the creek, the rural atmosphere. I checked my sun position app and found out that the sun would set on that horizon in October and decided to return to the spot by then.

The second image of the day may only be included because I want to include at least two. It was a very beautiful forest path with the low sun creating beautiful light between the trees, but the fact is that I took the picture a few seconds too late and had to enhance it quite a bit to capture what I had just seen, resulting in a picture that's probably a little too enhanced.

My first outing in August resulted in a mostly rather unremarkable set of forest images. Let's just say, the forest was more impressive in real life than i was able to capture in these images. I did experiment with some focus stacking in the first image and higher f-values and a resulting blurry background in the second one, something that I have not been very succesful with in the past, but this time it turned out okay.