Weird thing in a night photo

The other week I was testing what it would look like if I took a night photo towards North and had a tree or two that's lit up in the foreground. This 30 second exposure didn't turn out too bad (besides the fact that I missed North and Polaris isn't in the shot), but what's that up in the sky?

Here's a 100% crop of it. Part of it looks like clouds, but the pink/purple/yellow part does not. I took more than one shot that night and this photo is the only one that has this anomaly in it.

If anyone knows what caused it (I'm sure it's some kind of optical phenomenon), let me know.

What to do when internet is slow

Yesterday we had some internet problems which made everything very slow. I couldn't play online games and just loading Youtube videos took forever. So what did I do? This:

Learner's permit... possibly

This is an update to something I wrote about last week. I know I said in this post that I would not get a driver's license, but as I wrote last week I don't seem to be able to get a job without one...
Anyhow, I have finally been able to apply for a learner's permit. It appears that I was not in the database that everyone in Sweden should be put into automatically when we are old enough to get a learner's permit. Stupid government.

On a happier note, my weight loss is really turning out well. Today I was under 80 kg (176.4 lbs) for the first time. The scale showed 79,8 kg (175.9 lbs) this morning.

Catch 22

This isn't about the book by Joseph Heller, but if you get the chance you should read it. It's really good.
Anyhow, I have a bit of a catch 22 situation going on. I'm unemployed and I don't have a driver's license. For some reason companies nowadays wants you to have a driver's license even if the job in question is "sitting at a desk moving numbers from one excel spreadsheet to another" or even just working as a cashier. I don't know if they think you need to drive from one side of the store to the other.
However, since I don't have a driver's license I can't seem to get a job and without a job I can't afford getting a driver's license. It currently costs between 15000 and 20000 SEK (that's around 2225 to 2970 US Dollar, or 1680 to 2240 Euro, or 1400 to 1870 Pound sterling) to get a driver's license here in Sweden. So it's not exactly cheap.
Yesterday I thought I could at least start taking some driving lessons with the help of the money I have saved. So I went on the web to apply for a learner's permit. It turns out that I can't get one and I have no idea why. The customer service was not open in the evening, and I don't like calling unknown people anyways, so I sent them an e-mail to see if they could look at it. Still no reply. So I can't get a job and I can't get a driver's license apparently.

Irrational fears

As most people I have some irrational fears (also knowns as phobias or anxiety disorders). Two of them come to mind when I think about it. Aquaphobia and anxiety about talking on the phone.

Aquaphobia is a fear of water. The reason why it's not called hydrophobia (which would be the correct way to say it since most fears are named in Greek) is that the last stage of rabies is already called that and to avoid confusion it's better to called it aquaphobia. In me it's not a fear of all kinds of water. It's more specifically large bodies of water, such as rivers, swimming pools, lakes, oceans and so on. I can walk up to and even out into an ocean but when the water is starting to get high enough so that my head could, but not necessarily would, get under water if I sat down I start getting anxious. I have learned to swim, about 30 years ago, but my head was so far up that I think my neck would be completely dry afterwards. If someone would joke about pushing me into a pool I would get a panic attack and possibly end up hurting that person. When I say "joke about pushing me into a pool" I mean that I would walk near a pool and someone would pretend that they were about to push me but really not.

Onto the telephones. I can talk on the phone in a few different situations.
1. If I'm at home alone when the phone rings.
2. If I'm at home and I know the person calling.
3. If I'm at home (preferably alone) and I call someone I know well.
What gives me anxiety attacks is when someone else is around and I have to answer the phone. It gets even worse if there are people I don't know around. Also, whenever I have to call someone I don't know or not know well. The absolute worst thing is calling someone I don't know and have never talked to. I can walk around the apartment for up to an hour before I even pick up the phone to dial the number. To be honest I'm starting to get a bit anxious now just thinking about it. And yes I do often ask others if they could call for me, or ask the person I need to contact if I can e-mail or send text messages instead of calling.

Hot Pixels

I've noticed more and more that I have some so called hot pixels on my camera's sensor. I decided to test it out a bit so I took a series of photos (1 second, 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds exposures) in complete darkness with the lens cap on. Then I looked at the photos in 100% on my computer and in the 1 second exposure I couldn't find a single pixel that wasn't black. That's good. In the 2 seconds exposure I was able to find one dark gray pixel. That exact pixel just got brighter and brighter the longer the exposure got. It even got some friends to join in around it.

Here's that pixel in 400% zoom in the different exposures.
From left to right it's 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds.

Then I decided to check for all the hot pixels I could see in 100% zoom of the 45 seconds exposure. I've resized them (400% zoom), cut them out and pasted them in the area they appear in the photos. So they aren't that big in reality, it was more to show where they are and what they look like.

The last photo is to show how well they show up in real photos and not just complete darkness ones. This is the top left hot pixels and the lower right ones in 100% zoom from a not so good 60 seconds exposure of stars. An attempt at making a star trail photo around Polaris.

I'm not sure if it's possible to fix the hot pixel problem, but as long as I don't get longer exposures than 1 second I will be fine. Too bad half my photos are made at night.

Ölmevallasjön (it's the name of a lake close to where I live)

Looked through old photos again and found two that were taken at the same location a few years ago. They are both taken with the same camera. A Canon PowerShot A70.
The first one was taken on October 12 2003 and the second on July 29 2004. I think both photos are nice in their own way. The first one because you can see the sand at the bottom of the lake and the second because the water is so calm that it perfectly reflects the trees and sky.

October 12 2003

July 29 2004

Insomnia

Ok it's not really insomnia. I just didn't sleep last night. For a few reasons I decide not to reveal here.
While I don't really have a blog post for today, because I'm too tired to think, I did daydream away to years that were and thought how amazing it would've been to get back to Brazil again.
Here's a photo of the Iguassu Falls that I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70 when I was there in 2006.

Devil's Throat/Garganta do Diabo/Garganta del Diablo

Jupiter and Venus

Last night Jupiter and Venus were pretty close together. I had originally planned to go out and take a photo when they were closer to the horizon, but since the thick dark clouds came in fast I had to put on my 14mm Samyang lens and take a quick photo before they disappeared completely.

Edit: Today we had a clear sky so I went out and got this photo using my 30mm Sigma lens.

Weight loss - before and after photo

The before photo was taken on September 14. On that day I weighed 109 kg (240.3 lbs).
The after photo was taken on March 8. On that day I weighed 81,6 kg (179.9 lbs).
So the difference is almost 6 months and 27,4 kg (60.4 lbs). My face looks much more chubby in the before photo. Sure the photos are taken with different lighting and at different distances, but you can still see the difference.

Before

After

Bird photography at Lake Hornborga

This morning I went on a trip to Lake Hornborga (Hornborgasjön) to see if I could take some photos of the birds that stay there every spring. Unfortunately I didn't see any cranes. They started to arrive a few days ago, but they were probably in a different part of the lake when I was there. If I had gone there in two weeks or so there would've been thousands of them there. I did see lots of Canada geese and Greylag geese and a few Whooper swans though. So how did my photos turn out? Well, to be honest I think my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM lens was way too short and the Canon EOS 550D's autofocus wasn't fast enough for the flying birds.
Below are the best photos of the day. Some are not that good I know, but I wanted to show what I managed to produce the first time I tried bird photography.

Information center Naturum Hornborgasjön

Sign that welcomes you to the "Crane dance"

Geese and Swans out on the field

Canada geese (branta canadensis)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Canada geese (branta canadensis)

Greylag geese (anser anser)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Whooper swan (cygnus cygnus)

Greylag geese (anser anser)

Short poem

 I wrote this poem about 10 years ago about a girl that I fancied. She never read it or heard it or even if she did she wouldn't know it was about her.

All I see around me is darkness.
Not the least bit of light anywhere.
It's like walking around in the middle of the night during a blackout.
Until suddenly, I see you smile.

Canon 5D Mark III

Today Canon presented their new fullframe digital SLR: Canon 5D Mark III. Not that I will ever get one, I'm happy with my crop sensor EOS 550D (Rebel T2i), but everything I've read about this new camera on forums is scary. Even before anyone has gotten a chance to test it or even seen sample photos taken with it they jump on the bandwagon and cry about it being "worse than Nikon D800 because the way I read the specs tells me the D800 has more megapixels and that's all that matters".
Some people have even said "that's it, now I'm going to sell all my Canon equipment and buy the D800 instead". Why would someone do that? Because the D800 has 14 megapixels more? That's ridiculous. Who, besides the professional "billboard photographers", has the need for 36 megapixels? And who needs it so badly that they are willing to sell all their old equipment just to buy a camera that has instead of buying a very good camera that has 22 megapixels? Morons, that's who. Or more likely forum trolls that will never get rid of their equipment. They just want to complain because it wasn't the best camera in the world ever for an extremely cheap price... Preferably less than the cheapest compact cameras.
My advice to anyone out there interested in the Canon 5D Mark III: Wait until you've had a chance to read reviews and been able to go to a store to look at it and feel what it's like to have it in your hands. Then make up your mind. If it's not right for you, then have a look at another camera. If you already have Canon equipment, maybe you have a camera that's still good and wait for the next release.