spitzbergen

Heavenly arctic rays

god-rays-1.jpg

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic It was a grey day up in the norwegian arctic as we tromped around the snow and rocks in search of arctic enlightenment. It was nice to stretch my legs and explore the contemplative landscape of the north, but I still felt like I was holding my breath, like I was waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what I was expecting but I was going to be ready for it.

As our group walked between a valley towards an old hut the view of the mountains in the distance greeted us. This is when the sky opened up to reveal these beautiful rays of light pouring out of the grey clouds. Everyone just stopped to look in.

This is where I was glad to have other people in this photograph. The woman in purple on the right is also taking a picture, further expressing this is a scene worth photographing as her shadow is cast behind her like a spectator of a nuclear explosion.

Photographic details: Shot in raw I was able to get all the details I wanted in this scene with one exposure. I had to darken down the brighter portions of the image, and brighten up others to get the photograph to look much more like how I saw it. The magic with shooting and processing in raw with lightroom is that I can correct the mistakes that my camera makes. It’s nowhere near as intelligent and advanced as the human brain and eye; a photograph needs human direction to be a human photograph. Sure it’s nice when a photo comes out looking perfect without a bit of processing, but most of the time an untouched photograph is something that is just done by a robot. I am not a robot.

I shot this at f16 to make sure everything is as sharp as can be for this landscape photo.

Canon 5D Mark II 1/80s f/16.0 ISO100 16mm

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