Took my Helm out to experience Finnish winter

Prelude

With the time of the year, the temperatures have been relatively cool and there has been plenty of snow. Yesterday was a beautiful -9°C day with sunshine, so I wanted to take some pictures of my Helm in the snow.

By the time that I would have been able to do so, it was too late and sunlight was no longer usable. Thus these pictures never came to pass.

Today, the temperature has managed to climb up closer to -6, but it is of course cloudy and it will remain so for at least another week according to the forecast that I use.

All hope seemed lost, but when life gives you lemons, you just need to make things work anyway.

Chapter 1: Journey

With that in mind, I set out with an idea to experiment with. Could a flashlight provide sufficient lighting?

Turns out that my flashlight does not work in the cold.

But no need to worry! My camera (Sony DSC-RX100M3) still has a built-in flash, so I still had something to try.

Eventually I reached an open field-type area in a nice forest park. Fortunately, there was some uninterrupted snow in the corner, so I went over, set my watch on the snow and it sank right in. Turns out a heavy dive watch is not well supported by soft snow. What a surprise!

So I tried it again, and again - and finally the watch decided to stay near the surface.

Chapter 2: Photography

I took out my camera, adjusted the settings and started taking some pictures with the flash on. Turns out that my camera's flash leaves a shadow at the bottom due to the lens being there.

But no worries! I can avoid it somehow, right?

Indeed, I just had to shoot from further away and zoom in so that the shadow is not within the image.

This worked and I managed to take a bunch of pictures. As they are all fairly similar, I opted to pick one out and process the RAW file in Darktable.

Chapter 3: Return

My outing was not yet over, for I still had to find my way back home. As I rather like winter, I decided to take a detour and go through the park.

It's a small park in the city center with a bunch of stone sculptures across its paths - an outdoor art exhibition of sorts.

I decided to stop in front of one such sculpture and take a wrist shot there. I took a few photographs and ended up with one that I consider good enough.

Besides my thick coat taking up a lot of space, this picture brings out another interesting characteristic of my camera's flash: the foreground of the image appears far brighter than the background. In cloudy daylight conditions, the flash only provides additional light and colour within a short range, so we end up with an image that separates foreground and background noticeably more than is usual.

After this, I continued on my journey and eventually reached the place known as my home. The watch was fine (no surprises there) and I managed to get the pictures out from my camera. Now that I have taken the time to process my pictures and write this post, I possess great hunger and require nourishment asap, so it is time for my lunch!