This week the club welcomed back George Robertson to give us his 4th talk in almost as many years. George had already entertained us with three previous talks featuring stunning mountain photography, which you can read about here:
23 September 2021 (Into the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods)
22 September 2022 (George Robertson: The Snows of Kilimanjaro)
31 October 2024 (George Robertson: Exploring Kathmandu and the Khumbu Valley)
This time George described a trek he had made nearer to home, across the arctic wilderness of the Kungsleden, or King’s Trail in northern Sweden. George took minimal equipment and lots of spare batteries, as he did on his mountain treks, except this time he afforded himself the luxury of taking a tripod and a wide angle lens so he could capture photos of the aurora at night. His equipment consisted of:
- A Nikon Z7 II camera.
- A 24-120mm f4 lens.
- A 20mm f1.8 lens.
- A Gitzo carbon fibre tripod.
- 8 spare batteries.
The normal operating temperature of the camera was 0-40 C, but he was expecting temperatures on the trail in the range -5 to -25 C! He protected his kit with insulated bags and his own body heat.
The journey began in Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, and a road trip to Abisko, where George took a snowmobile trip (delayed 2 days by bad weather) through the Abisko National Park to a mountain cabin in Alesjaure, where the team stayed the night. The trek continued on foot the next day through frozen fields of snow up to 3 metres deep! Everyone wore high-tech, bright orange snow shows with spikes to give them traction on the snow. The supplies (and George’s tripod) were transported on a sled. The trek passed though the Tjäktjavagge valley to an overnight stop at Salka huts, then past the Rabot Glacier to another overnight stop at Singi, then another trek across wind blown snow to the final night in Kebnekaise lodge, close to Sweden’s highest mountain.
George enthralled us with his photos of the frozen landscape, with mountain huts half buried in wind-blown snow, set against the background of distant, snow-topped mountains. He also showed us shots of the accommodation and daily activities, such as chopping wood and carrying water from a well on a frozen lake. It was hard to get a scale on that vast snow-scape, until a pair of skiers with bright orange outfits joined the trek and became focal points in some of the scenes. George said that for snow scenes he makes use of the histogram on the back of his camera, making sure each shot peaks on the right hand side to give the snow a crisp, bright look. A typical shot would be made at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/200th second.
George also showed us some of the stunning aurora pictures he had taken at night. For aurora shots he used his 20mm lens at f/2 to f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 8-10 seconds. He fixed the aperture and shutter speed and used the ISO to control the exposure, most exposures needing around ISO 1600. He tried to keep the shutter speed short because the aurora is constantly changing, and long exposures will turn it into a green mush. You also need to keep the shutter speed below the level when stars start to trail. George uses the “NPF rule”, which works better for modern cameras than the old “500 rule”. George recommended the PhotoPills App, which can calculate the optimum shutter speed. It also has a lot of other useful facilities, such as a depth of field calculator.
George’s trek finished with a bus trip and a 12-hour stay in Stockholm, where he passed the time photographing the fantastic artwork integrated into the Stockholm subway network. This alone would have made a fascinating presentation. Thank you, George, for yet another mind boggling, inspirational talk. You can browse through some of George’s work on his web site:
- Next week we will take another look through the images submitted to the 15th October Digital Projected Images competition and review the judge’s comments. If the judge suggested making changes, please have a go at making the changes and bring along the results so we can see the difference. There were some images where the judge wondered why the background had been changed and suggested the original background might have been better. Please bring along the original images and we can discuss if the judge’s hunch was right or not. And there are some images where it would be fascinating just to find out how you did it, so please tell us the story. I look forward to it.
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