Uploads from ystenes, tagged captainblueice

Most beautiful place in the world?

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:18:03 -0700

ystenes posted a photo:

Jökulsarlon, Iceland, the most wonderful place in the world. At least for making photos.

This is a new version of my by far biggest success on Flickr, "Captain Blue Ice". (See comment below.) The new version is from a marginally different angle, I have not cropped to concentrate on the "captain", and I have gained some experience in using Picnik.

Don't publish this photo anywhere without the consent of the Copyright holder.

Captain Blue Sky

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Fri, 03 May 2013 03:08:23 -0700

ystenes posted a photo:

Waiting for the ferry in Molde, we saw this peculiar cloud. "He looks like Captain Blue Ice", my youngest son suddenly said, and I was astonished. He was even slightly blue...

See below for "Captain Blue Ice" and make up your own mind...

Captain Blue Ice

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 02:10:03 -0700

ystenes posted a photo:

Blue ice with a spectacular shape. He looks like a captain ready to follow his sinking ship into their common watery grave. The ice on this lake, Jökulsarlon, comes from an arm of Iceland's largest glacier, Vatnajökul. The black color is caused by volcanic ashes from eruptions of one of the many volcanos under the ice; probably Gjalp or Grimsvötn, which both erupted around the turn of the century.

I was quite disappointed when I first time saw the photo on the computer, it was very different from how I remembered him. See the unedited original here. www.flickr.com/photos/ystenes/4174859678/ I was so disappointed that I did not include the photo when presenting photos of the trips to those who had joined me, and it took at least one month from uploading before I posted it.

That changed when I started to edit my photos. This edited version is much closer to what I saw, and was an immediate success on Flickr. Nevertheless, I consider redoing the editing now with more experience.

In Mars or April 2009 I discovered that this photo was on the top of the list of the most "interesting" photos made with the Nikon Coolpix 995 camera: www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/coolpix_995/. The photo stayed on the top until November.
Then another one of my photos took over the top position:
www.flickr.com/photos/ystenes/3149242346/
I like this list (15th nov)
www.flickr.com/search/?q=coolpix_995&ss=1&s=int

Captain Blue Ice revisited

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:12:36 -0800

ystenes posted a photo:

Blue ice with a spectacular shape. He looks like a captain ready to follow his sinking ship into their common watery grave. The ice on this lake, Jökulsarlon, comes from an arm of Iceland's largest glacier, Vatnajökul. The black color is caused by volcanic ashes from eruptions of one of the many volcanos under the ice; probably Gjalp or Grimsvötn, which both erupted around the turn of the century.

I was quite disappointed when I first time saw the photo on the computer, it was very different from how I remembered him. I just had to admit that my camera was not good enough any more, stray light and worn out lens coating seemed gave poor contrast and the blue color that l saw so clearly up there was hardly visible. See the unedited original below. I was so disappointed that I did not include the photo when presenting photos of the trips to those who had joined me, and it took at least a month from uploading before I posted any photo of the captain.

Everything changed when I started to edit my photos. The edited version (See second photo below) was much closer to what I saw, and the first attempt was an immediate success on Flickr. "Captain Blue Ice" is by far my most viewed, commented and faved photo.

However, I was never fully satisfied with the version, in particular I disliked the whiteout on parts of the photo. What I did like was the color balance. Other versions I made were more correct of the blue color of the captain, but the the rest of the photo was too blue. The greyish background on "Captain blue ice" seemed to emphasis the blue color.

Here is the reedited version. I had to reduce the contrast and make the photo slightly darker to avoid too much whiteout. Therefore I had to increase the color intensity, but also them warmer, hence the ice is slightly greenish and the surrounding slightly brownish. I like this much more, but may try to improve it even further later.

2nd take of "Captain blue ice"

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:14:00 -0800

ystenes posted a photo:

"Captain blue ice", is by far my most successful photo on flickr. This photo was taken with a slightly different angle, and has also been edited differently.

I will here tell the story of these two photos, illustrated with the photos below.

When I first discovered this blue ice sculpture at a few hundred meters distance (first photo), I knew immediately I had found something exeptional. What surprises me is that I have never seen any other photo showing the same sculpture, and I have seen very many photos from Jökulsarlon. neither have any ever told me they have seen something similar.

My first reaction when i saw the photo on my PC was utter disappontment (photo no 2). The shortcomings of my camera were all to visible: The contrast was too weak which also almost made the color disappear, and there is also some whiteout.

That changed a few weeks later, when i tried the "auto correct" in Windows office picture manager. At first I hesitated, because i felt it was a fake, but on the other hand the new corrected photo looked like I remember having seen it in the real life. So I uploaded the corrected photo, cropped and adjusted a bit more in Picnik. "Captian blue ice" was born (photo 3), and he was an immediate success. He had success in every group I posted him, he had views far above everything I had seen before, and in a few days he was my most viewed photo.

Then I decided to make another version (photo 4). By that time my photos from Jökulsarlon really dominated my staistics, Jökulsarlon was by far the best place I had been to take photos. So I called the photo "The most beautiful place in the wortld", which turned out to be extremely lucky. Several comments to the photo had mispelled "beautiful" in different way, and several that looked for "beautiful" on Google images mispelled it too. The result: If you searched for "The most beautiful place in the world" and mispelled, you got my photo as one of the five first, for some misspells the photo was on the top. So many of those evidently clicked on my photo, so my photo eventually climbed to the top of the list even without any mispells. I still get lots of views that way!

A frustation came when I reallized that I could not sell the photo, because the cropped photo has only 1,6 megapixels, whereas Gettyimages require 3.0. The camera gave me 3.23, but i had already cropped the original a bit so i have no version of my first "Captain blue ice" that exceeds this limit. However, the second take just exceeds it. So I decideed to rework it, keep it at 3.0 mpix, and adjusting the colors to be as correct as possible, as clear as possible, and at the same time avoid any whiteout. The last was the most tricky, so I had to go for a compromize. The last photo is the result.

Captain Blue Ice - original

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:28:06 -0700

ystenes posted a photo:

No editing at all.

I was not satisfied at all with my old coolpix camera this day, I was utterly disappointed when I got to see the photo on my PC screen. The contrasts were far too soft, and the blue color of the ice that was so clear to see in real life was hardly seen on the photo.

That changed when I learned to edit the photo, and adjusted color and contrast to fit what I remembered I saw there. The response on the edited version was immediate and strong.

The edited version, "Captain Blue Ice", is shown below. (From a slightly different shot.)

But I still feel there is a definite charm in this unedited version.

Jökulsarlon, Iceland

Captain Blue Ice - new version B

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:11:00 -0800

ystenes posted a photo:

Re-edited from raw.

First glimpse of the "captain"

nobody@flickr.com (ystenes) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:08:04 -0800

ystenes posted a photo:

My first view of "Captain blue ice". Do you understand why I was so excited?

I just had to get closer! Note the little headland to the left, but the distance from the shore turned out to be larger that it looks on this photo. And how to avoid disturbing elements near by and a quiet background?

Surprisingly, no one else seem to have walked this far. Hundreds of tourists visited this wonderful lake every day, possibly more than one thousand that day, but I must have been the only one with a camera walking the few hundred meters needed discover him. I have seen hundreds of beautiful photos from this lake, there must be thousands on Flickr. Approx. 15.000 (Dec. 2009) have seen this photo. But I have never seen anything like "him", and no one have mentioned to me that they have seen him on other photos.

Possibly I have been the only one to see him "alive", except for my youngest son that came running after me and caught a hasty glimpse. But he also noted that "he" was something spectacular.

Note the black ice behind him, also a nice subject.