May Milkyway from Hundvag

The first place we headed out to after moving to Hundvag was Lundenesset, a small park with sheep pasture facing the fjords looking out towards Tau/Jorpeland to the East and Amoy to the North. Over several years while living in Hundvag this spot has been a favorite of mine for taking pictures of birds, seascapes and the nightsky. It's fairly quiet on most days except on sunny summer weekends. Flying drones here is also rather safe without having to contend with other people especially early Saturday or weekday mornings and before sunset.

I headed over to Lundenesset for some early morning Spring Milkyway on one clear sky night this week. Though now it is fairly well lit (jogging path all around) I didn't see anybody else except for your's truly. Perhaps the time being rather late and the wind rather crummy and cold explained the situation a little bit.

The night chosen wasn't exactly ideal other than the fact that it was a fairly clear sky night. The temperatures went to as low as 4 deg C and to make it worst the wind was practically howling the whole time I was there!

With difficulty I managed to shoot with the light duty Panasonic LX100 as well as the night time tool Sony A7S paired with a recently purchased (used) Voightlander 35/1,2 for a few shots. The 6xcarbon Gitzo truly couldn't manage to tame the winds, I had to press down the tripod legs with both hands to keep it steady for each shot. Even then only a few shots survived the shakes.

Some of these shots are shown here. 

Dalsnuten, Lost in the Fog

The intention was good. I left the house around 4am and reached the parking lot by 4.30am and I was only the second parked there. The other car must have belonged to the fellas taking up on of the cabins across the road. The intention today was to hiked in early and get a timelapse view over the city as the fog rises.

It's 4:45 am by the time I reached the foot of the trail, already I wasn't able to see 20 feet in front of me, not just because of the fog but also it's still dark, sunrise isn't happening for another 2hours. And I did not bring a torch. Making do with light from the handphone is snaked my way around what seemed to be a trail heading out to some silhouette of trees in the distance.

The trail lost an hour later I scrambled up the hill through some long grass and wet patches and soon rediscovered the main trail. By this time Dalsnuten is still nowhere to be seen. By 8am it's still surrounded by thick fog. The whole area was enveloped in gray mist. It's not dark, yet it's not yet light. It's a gray zone in the middle, it shifted with the breeze but never leaving the area. Trees and mounts of rock appears and disappears steeped in quietness. Occasionally the birds chirped.

By 11:00 am I started to hear voices of other hikers. There were still not visuals further than 50 feet. Then I saw a lone hiker on a trail below me, hunkered down briskly moving forward step after step intent on conquering the trail ahead.

By 12:00 Dalsnuten still hasn't come into view. Before more hikers started to appear I decided to leave the area. I descended Eiknuten following the main trail, still in the fog.

I wasn't sure what time the fog finally lifted, when I finally reached home, Dalsnuten was still in the thick embrace of the gray fog. It persisted throughout the entire day.