Blue hour in the puddle

Blue hours on windless evenings calls for landscape photographers. Here is my latest encounter with the Danish winter in the blue hour (l’heure bleue).

I almost always bring my camera with me, when I’m out driving. Unfortunately, one evening driving a rental car in heavy fog, I didn’t. The scenario I drove past, was just perfect for a photo shoot. Lights, symmetry and calmness. If I had a cent for every picture I could have taken…

I was passing the same spot a week later. This time, the weather was different, but fortunately a light mist was in the air, and the blue hour was still there – and no wind. So I decided to park the car along the highway – and go for some pictures. Since I was driving a rental car again, I didn’t have my tripod with me. So I had to rely on high ISO and the appraised image stabilization (OIS) of my XF18-135mm-lens.

The place was a cargo terminal. A shipping company had a terminal next to the railway out of Fredericia. The company had build a stock and a neat and very long platform to unload the wagons. Newly build and apparently without fences. And for a good reason… Between me, on the road, and the cargo terminal, the marshland was very impassable and with an enormous puddle.

What really was of interest was the long and enlightened platform along the railway tracks. The lampposts were very high above the ground, and with a bit of luck, I should be able to catch their reflections in the puddle as well. First interesting spot was close to a (drowning?) tree. The branches of the tree were nicely reflected in the water, so I gave it a try on 18 mm. After a few test shots I found the right altitude for the shot, and switched to the 2 seconds timer. Trying to release the shutter on the X-T2 without the 2 seconds delay is (almost) impossible without destroying the image, since I was shooting at 1/6th of a second.

The reflections were nice. But the lampposts were a bit distorted due to the wide angle. I was not able to hold my camera on higher ground, and when I tried to zoom in, the tree was way too big in the image… So I had to ‘hit the road’ for a better view. The road was very narrow, so I had to go along the roadside. At several spots along the roadside, my shoes were almost drowning in the marsh. I had to take great care, not to stay at the same spot for more than a few seconds. Not optimal with shutter speeds close to half or a quarter of a second… After some scouting, I found a spot with enough water to create reflections, enough grass and rush in the water to create depth in image, and no trees or bushes to ruin the view from a 26mm perspective.

Hope you like the picture. The image noise is natural, due to the mist ;-)