You know it will be a good week when it starts like this!

On my recent trip over to Copenhagen, I was a little concerned about the weather. It was going to be a bit cold, and there was a possibility of rain in the forecast too. And while I generally like it colder and cloudy, I would hate to fly thousands of miles to a foreign city, only to miss out on shooting due to rain. That would suck.

My initial plans had me passing through London Heathrow in about an hour and a half (a challenge even with everything going my way), and thus arriving into Copenhagen before lunchtime. That all sounded great to me, but it didn't happen. My arrival into London was delayed, causing me to miss the connection. I was rebooked onto the next flight and arrived mid-afternoon instead. That's all fine really - I've had much worse.

So I made my way to the hotel and got settled, and immediately met up with my friend Mark and headed out to shoot. No point wasting any time, right? Even without sleeping on the overnight flight (I just can't sleep on planes), my excitement levels are too high to even consider sitting down to rest. I always go out and shoot, then eat, then sleep (for 12 hours!). It works for me.

We immediately headed over to Nyhavn, Copenhagen's historic harborfront, which is both fantastically awesome and a short 2 minute stroll from the Phoenix Hotel (which is why I stay there when I go to Copenhagen). I always want to see and shoot Nyhavn first - it's just that special to me. I love the place. (And I have about a million pics of it which I will share here across a few different future blog posts).

One of the good things about shooting in the winter season (this was late March, still somewhat wintry-feeling in a place so far north) is that the sunset comes reasonably early. I actually like that, because I can go shoot sunset and blue hour, and then get dinner and call it a day. Works pretty well for me. The opposite is shooting sunset in London in the summer, which happens at like 9:30 pm or something crazy. Makes for a long day!

Anyways, it was obvious that the weather was going to hold off, and that we may actually get a decent sunset out of the deal. So after Nyhavn, we made the short walk over to Amalienborg Palace and spent the rest of the evening there, firing away happily. How can you not be happy when you get a beautiful sunset, in a beautiful foreign city, looking at a beautiful palace?

So we wandered and shot the area, ending up back at the river/harbor area that runs along the edge of the city and firing away at the massive tall ship you see in today's pics. Having been here to Copenhagen 3 times now (the first two with my old full frame Nikon and wide-angle lens), my intent was to shoot it entirely different than I would have done in the past. On the previous trips I was all wide-angle, all the time - so the shots are all pretty similar. I like them, but they are have a common thread, that is, they are all wide angle shots.

This time I was using my Olympus OMD EM-1 mirrorless camera and the 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro lens, which gave me an entirely different perspective on things. Although I shot plenty of stuff at 12mm, I tried to mix it up too and get different and original compositions of the scene, zooming in and out and just experimenting. I generally think I succeeded in that effort, and I was really thankful for the great light that evening too! You just can't complain when you get great light.

It's also great to be able to shoot a city that you have previously shot. In addition to picking up shots that you may have overlooked the first time, I also just love the feeling that I don't have to be in such a hurry to "get it all done". It's almost relaxing. While I have an addiction to "the new", I also like the feeling of familiarity a return visit brings. It actually causes me to try and get creative and to find new things to shoot, as well as to shoot old things in new ways. In other words, it causes me to spend time thinking about creativity, which is exactly what I need to be doing!

After all that photo'ing, we headed back, I had dinner and a beer, and slept like a hibernating bear. Felt great! Day one was a huge success, photographically speaking. And admittedly, the rest of the week was pretty awesome too. You'll have to come back soon to see more - I am frantically working through my 3200 photos from Copenhagen, which I highlighted in this recent post. So far it appears there were a lot of keepers from this trip!

Thanks for stopping by! More soon!