Erlaufsee by Night. Night Photos Cont'd

Erlaufsee, 20mm, 36 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400

Being in the mood to shoot at night and having good weather support I had to go somewhere last night as well. Somewhere further away from Vienna city lights. I thought Erlaufsee by Mariazell would be good choice. Small lake surrounded by hills and relatively far from larger city. I have been there some time ago remembered calm crystal clear waters of the lake. 130 km drive is nothing special so let's do it.

Having had short nap in the afternoon (got up at 6 p.m.) I headed south west towards Erlaufsee (lake). Border between Lower Austria and  Steiremark (Styria) roughly divides the lake into two halves. I have problems with captioning the pictures. Physically I was on Steirmark soil but overlooking Lower Austria (Niederösterreich) at the same time. How to classify such photos...

Anyway, got to the place after 9 p.m., and my hopes to be in really dark surrounding died instantly out of natural causes. Drove for an hour or so via serpentine deep dark forest surrounded roads just to see nice and calm place with small piers, as it used to be, now covered with restaurant tables and restaurant lights all over. What else could go wrong?!

Besides building's strong yellow lights there was number of strong lanterns placed along lake's beach so to speak. Light was all over me while I was looking for complete darkness!

Steamed up lens effect.

I kept walking around trying to find some at least acceptable spot where I could shoot stars and their water reflections. No way. I was only hoping that sooner or later owners will go to sleep and will shut down that poxy light including lanterns. Other alternative was to drive back home.

For the time being I decided to play with the light... Instead of painting with light, let's use ambient light. Kept walking by water's edge and tried to get some well illuminated trees and structures which could add interest to sky photo. Persistence paid off. There was this old (looks quite old) boats shed with trees around giving great reflections and dark sky above Restaurant lights are behind me. I only had to make sure to position myself not to cast a shadow of myself. In reality it all looked deep dark, but cameras see way more that we do in such conditions, opposite to high contrast situations(!) It took me few frames shooting at highest ISO (see post from yesterday) to set final composition and wow! I love this shot. (Top photograph of the post). Great colours at night and beautiful reflections and starred sky!

Milky Way by Erlafsee
16mm, 36 sec, f/2.8. ISO 6400

With temperature dropping down moisture started to build up rapidly. I tried to shoot star trails and all of sudden realized my lens was completely steamed up! Tripod and camera were almost wet. It took me few moments to realize what was going on. Kept wiping out the lens but steam kept coming back. I took few shots with the steam on and must say I even like the effect....

So wiping did not work too well, I decided to use air blower used to clean dust from lenses. Like in the car when you blow warm air to prevent it from steaming. This worked the charm. The only problem was, I had to keep blowing after every shot! So doing 60+ one after another images as planned was out of the question. I have taken few other compositions and started to pack, actually I was already by the car and loading stuff when ... "expected" miracle happened. It was around midnight when ALL LIGHTS simply shut down. They must have had some timer built in. Finally I was surrounded by darkness with fantastic sky above me! For anyone going to Erlaufsee for night shooting, be there after midnight.

Stars and milky was I was after finally popped-up! I have spent another 2 hours shooting sky. Darkness and silence around me. Silence most of the time excluding sounds of distant barns and cattle's howlings. Fantastic silent moments when you feel melted and welded with surrounding and time does not count at all. Event 1 hour exposure and de-noising would seem as one passing minute.

I shot few panorama shots as well...

5 pictures stitched panorama of Erlausee

Finally around 2 in the morning decided to head home.. might have stayed till morning chasing morning fog but... next time. Had things to do today. Walking back to the car, met nice little fox, who completely ignored me. Obviously must have been used to humans. First I saw eyes' reflections from a distance and initially thought it was a cat, but no... it was a fox who completely did not care about who I was and what I was doing.

Cheers

Jerzy