On thin ice

This young hooded seagull have found some thin ice to stand on. It seems to be contemplating taking a dive in the could water of the lake in Frederiksberg Garden.

Defrosting Santa

I'm still playing around with my new Nikon D800 camera and I'm still struck by awe. One of the new features in it is the time-lapse function and a few days ago I just had to try it out on something. Into the freezer Santa went and out again the next day, now embedded in a block of ice. The camera went on a tripod with the macro lens, a black background went up and a spotlight was used for the main lighting. But as I didn't want to stand around for hours, waiting for the ice to melt, a hair dryer was very handy. Setting the time-lapse function was easy enough; a photo each 2 seconds and 30 minutes of shooting and off I, or rather the camera went. 30 minutes later the the ice had melted and the video was in the box. A few things I needed to improve the next time; manual focus on Santas face, a wider depth of field and a more solid platform for the tripod (or is it the hair dryer moving Santa a bit?). Not too bad for a first try I think, though.

The second attempt was much better. This time I skipped the hair dryer and went for a natural melting. A photo every 20 seconds for 5 hours and manual focus with an f=12 and the shooting could begin. Well home after work (the shooting started at 6am) I discovered that the battery had run out at some point so that the video was 25 seconds long instead of the planned 30 seconds, but I still got the whole melting. And I like the result! I've got a few more ideas to try out so this is not the last time lapse I'm doing.

Hatching an Egg of Ice

In Tivoli a Chinese couple makes sculptures of ice every day until Christmas, while the guests can watch the progress. With temperatures below freezing in Copenhagen, this is the ideal climate for this sort of art.

Crystals

With the outside temperatures well below the deep-freezer there's no reason to venture outside. The ice crystals on the windows are perfect motives anyway, back-lit as they are by the sunset.