Ranten Peak (1419m./4655ft.) illuminated by
the very last light accompanied by strong wind. Norway, March 2012.
Copyright © Seung Kye Lee and may not be used in any way without specific permission.

Winter of 2011 has not been successful for me, as a photographer. It has been mild, the weather mostly grey and most of the times when I have arrived at a planned destination; no light, foggy, stormy and so on and so forth. To photograph winter mountains successfully, light is important to reveal textures, forms and depth in an otherwise featureless, white and snowy landscape.
Last week, I went on two ski trips to this mountain area, hoping that there would be some light so that I could photograph not only the grand landscape, but also sastrugi and other abstracts. When the week was over, I had been lucky to have two afternoons with marvellous light and acceptable wind. In fact, soon after I had photographed Revelation, the wind chased me down from the mountain and made me fall over three times before I had ascended below the tree line. I look back with excitement, though it wasn`t nearly as dramatic as I remembered it to be. This photograph is the one that expresses my experience the best and therefore decided to share it with you. With time, I have become better at leaving my work alone for a while before I start editing, and when I do start editing, I give each photograph time to grow in my mind. I often find that the most obvious winners, suddenly become second best after my impression from a trip looses its grip on me. I often find that there is something beyond composition, light or subject that eventually awakens me from inside and helps me find the true winners. Time is essential when we try to figure out what we are looking for.

Technical notes: Canon 5D Mark II, with my new Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L II tilt-shift lens, 3 exposures by using shift; up 10mm (upper third part of photograph), no shift (center part) and down 10mm (lower part), processed equally in the raw-converter, converted to 16-bit tiff-files and stitched together to create this 4x5 format with (relatively) very high resolution. Now, after a month of getting used to the tilt-shift lens, I can safely say that I am more than satisfied with its performance and I also feel right at home with the 24mm focal length as I have tended to use my old 17-40mm f/4 L USM in the 20-24mm focal range for a time now.
In a landscape composition like this, getting the right focus takes more time than with a standard lens, but when focus plane is adjusted to match the subject, I have everything from near to far in perfect, sharp focus. You must see it with your own eyes to really appreciate it and maybe I will post some sample images of this later on. I have also discovered a side effect of using some tilt-shift lenses, especially this particular (version II) lens that can shift to 12mm instead of just 8mm (version I), on a DSLR which I will write more about, together with how to avoid it, in an upcoming blog post. See you soon!

UPDATE:
I have now (20th of March) published the post about the dark edge issues: Tilt-shift Dark Edge Issue? Read On...

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Best Wishes
Seung Kye

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