One of the best things about North Europe (and, I would imagine, northern America or Asia) is the bright nights during summer. Close to the summer solstice, the sun goes down around 11-ish and already returns at ca. 4 am. As much as I enjoy the night, I really can’t function properly if I have to get out of bed before sunrise, but at this time of year I often find myself going to bed after the sun is up. Case in point: this entire weekend.

Unfortunately I only gave myself half an hour for my nocturnal expedition, because I didn’t want to go to bed later than 4 am, so I didn’t manage to find a really perfect place to photograph. The best I could do was an artificial hill in one of the parks near my house, and of course the view towards the east was mostly obscured by trees. I did manage to get a few good shots though, and these are them:

[View with PicLens]

Well… civilization in the broadest sense. Mostly an old worn-down harbour area and small industry and warehouses. Between the fog, the frost, the low vegetation, the old industrial buildings, and the occasional pile of rubble or trash, I experienced a strong sense of Gamer Deja Vu. So I took a lot of pictures. Allow me to walk you through how Amager looks 200 years after the bombs fell.

	Here is a remnant of civilization that made it through mankind’s downfall relatively unscathed. Let’s jump the fence and see what lies in the cordoned-off wasteland beyond.
On the peninsula across the water, it looks like some wastelanders have erected a makeshift ladder, perhaps allowing them to more easily return to their hideout after a day of foraging and hunting the mutated wildlife. With sharpened sticks.
	Here is a view down the coast into a small bay. The rotting remains of a trailer lies in the water on a bed of bricks from a ruined house. Further into the bay, several sunken boats are barely visible.
Here, it is clear that the coastline is in fact made out of rubble from old concrete and brick structures, doubtlessly torn apart in the nuclear holocaust two hundred years ago. Perhaps this was the site of a small settlement, or perhaps the debris was simply flung here by the blasts and allowed to remain, as nobody was left to clean up afterwards.
	This photo illustrates the state of the water: Instead of rocks or sand, the bottom of the bay is made out of mainly bricks. In the foreground lies a sizeable chunk of house, slowly being reclaimed by the post-nuclear vegetation (which may look ordinary, but it glows at night).
This looks like a small, currently dried out brook. Except the sides and the bottom are lined with old bricks and pieces of concrete.
	This pond may look idyllic, but note that it consists of strongly radioactive sewage water, carried here from the highly irradiated ruins of the old industry around ground-zero in Copenhagen inner city. In this pond doubtlessly lurks some Lovecraftian mutated monster.
Behold the source of the radioactive waste that feeds this lake of horrors. The unnatural shrieks of wretched atomic vermin emanates from its black depths. Sometimes. Probably.
	Here is an ancient metal container, painted with tribal motifs before the great war, but now being reclaimed by nature as is the way of all things. Behind it, also being devoured by some manner of sentient plant masquerading as ivy, you can see an abandoned plastic shelter used in the early attempts to evacuate the population.
It’s impossible to tell if this expressionistic portrayal of a forbidding city, its buildings painted as nuclear silhouettes on its own walls, was created after the bombs were dropped, or whether it’s some sort of grim foreshadowing of the events that would soon transpire. Either way it’s pretty awesome.
	Though this car has seen better days, I think we can all agree that it got through the nuclear apocalypse pretty alright all things considered, and that it’s still in remarkably good condition for having presumably been sitting here for over 200 years.
A patch of ice, shattered. Nuclear ice, maybe? It looks pretty neat anyway.
	Here is the wreckage of a small boat at the far end of the bay visible in earlier photos. Somebody (probably filthy wastelanders) have attempted to moor it to a tree branch by crudely fastening it with duct tape.
Heading back through the Valby park, I spotted these signs of foresting and was quite captivated by the contrast between the dark green foliage and the bright orange sawdust. I do admit that this photo is not as post-apocalyptic as it could have been, but at least the fog is still visible between the trees.

That concludes this tour of our bleak post-apocalyptic future. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and that you’ll survive when China finally nukes us all. Note that none of these pictures have been modified in Photoshop – improving their contrast or tampering with their colours would just ruin the brilliantly oppressive authenticity of it all.

I did come away from there with some significantly less bleak photos, but you probably wouldn’t be interested in them. They’re mostly either extreme close-ups of frost-covered red berries or landscape shots of glistening ice-covered islands vanishing into the fog. I put a nice moody drawing I found at DeviantArt on top of one of them and am now using it as my wallpaper.

Fog is awesome.

Since I bought my D50, I’ve been enjoying photography more than ever – since it’s digital, I can take 10 pictures of the same motif and select the best one when I get home without eating through a roll of film like a box of chocolates, and the D50 takes at least as good pictures as my old F50 – I can pretty much leave it on one of the automatic settings and the camera will do most of the work for me.

The difference between a hobbyist like me and a real professional photographer is that it sometimes seems like a pro can get a great shot out of the most uninteresting of motifs in the blandest lighting. Wanna-bes like myself are forced to rely on external factors such as actually having something interesting and well lit to photograph. That, and generous post-processing.

My usual strategy is to increase the contrast significantly and desaturate the colours a bit. When I want to emphasize a certain colour, I mess around with Photoshop’s Selective Colour tool for a few minutes until I give up and just superimpose a colourized copy of the picture on top of it with about 20-30% transparency. If I want to get really cheap, I’ll apply a Diffuse Glow filter for a bit of that extra fake advertising shine.

The photos in this post were taken in Vestre Kirkegård (Western Cemetery) last Sunday. The light fluctuated between mediocre and bland, but the late summer / early autumn colours of the vegetation were on my side, and cemetary photos will almost always turn out well simply by virtue of the connotations of the place itself and the stories whispered by every grave and every statue.

So instead, you’re going to get a random picture dump of photos I’ve taken over the last 2-3 weeks, because I love taking pictures and I love showing them off almost as much. First up is a batch of photos I took because the motifs remind me of various games – I’m really geeky that way. Then you’re getting a couple of random pictures too, because I’m a very self-indulgent person.

Half-Life 2, Water Hazard	Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast
Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas	Myst
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare	I’m going to put this in a game some day, mark my words!
Clearly they’re developing a lethal zombie virus in here. Or they’re controlling the national surveillance grid. Watching us all.	No game, really, the lighting was just hella good for photography that day.
The inevitable cat photo!	‘Tis I!

Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Malmö to attend the Nordic Game 2008 convention. Expect plenty more photos and a rundown of speaks I’ve attended when I return, Friday.