Friday Photo #383 – Midnight Hjell

Photo: Midnight Hjell, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 8, 2020. 00:05

Winter on Lofoten. Well, no, this is mid May 2020. After several nice days of sunshine last weekend, the thermostat has dropped and snow showers have been falling across the Islands over the last days. And the long term forecast seems to show that we’ll have the same cold conditions for the next week or more. In the one year where’d I’d just want even 10˚ on a calm afternoon. Nope!

It is not that snow is unusual in May. It’s actually to be expected here in the north, which is why we can keep our winter tires on a little longer than the Oslo city people in the south – who have already been sitting in the sunshine for weeks. It just seems this year the weather has remained extra stormy, with few days of sunshine and even cooler temperatures overall. A day or two of snow is no problem in May when you have some sunny 10˚ degrees in between. But this year, the thermostat has been struggling even to reach 5˚ over the last month.

I could have pretended this was a winter photo. And by the look of it, I could have said it was taken any time between November and March and for most people it would seem out of place. But there are some clues which show it’s not a winter image. The first, and easiest to pick up is the time the photo was taken: 00:05, five minutes after midnight. Though the sky is mostly overcast, you can see the warm light glowing on the horizon. This would not happen in winter. The second clue, and really only for those who know the area, is that the glowing horizon is in the north. Definitely not something which happens in winter. In December, this image could have been taken facing south at noon for a similar result.

But I’m tired of snow. It’s been a long winter this year. Hopefully I can start posting some sunny images soon! I need to for myself…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 31
f 16
30 seconds
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #382 – Spring Twilight

Photo: Evening twilight glow over northern coast of Lofoten Islands from Flakstadøy. April 29, 2020. 22:32

For the first time in a month there was a cloudless sky over Lofoten on Wednesday. While there have been some moments of sun here and there at times, never in the whole of April have we had a clear and calm day. So I decided to head up to the mountains for sunset.

Normally I love this time of year, with the ever lightening horizons each night. But this year, the night sky has been almost entirely cloudy, especially lower on the horizon. So I haven’t really been able to observe the change, since it all looks the same when cloudy. So with a clear sky it felt like a jump in time, suddenly it was so light!

The snow was too icy – and I brought my light crampons – for the mountain I wanted to climb, so I headed over to a section of ridge overlooking the coast above Vikten. The clear sky didn’t provide the most dramatic sunset, but it was nice to just sit and watch the sun sink into the calm sea, even if it was a little on the cold side. Normally I would have had the setting sun visible from my house for about two weeks now, but last night from the mountain was the first time I saw it happen this year.

I headed down a little before 23:00, making my journey through a mostly snow filled valley until a short steep descent to the lake and the muddy trail home. I brought my headlamp, it it remained in my backpack, probably the last time I will carry it until late August. Only a few more weeks until the sun is here for the summer and the sleepless nights begin…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f/1.8
14mm
ISO 100
f 9
1/5 second
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #381 – Grey Spring

Photo: Grey skies over Myrlandsfjellet, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. April 23, 2020. 18:23

I saw an article yesterday on NRK that Bodø has had the cloudiest April since 1977. And it has been no different out here on Lofoten. In fact, it seems like it’s been continuously cloudy over Lofoten since last year. I can only remember a few clear days or nights – one reason it was also a difficult aurora season this year for my photo workshops – although every tour still managed at least one night of northern lights, it was hard work and quite a lot of stress for me this year.

While the winter winds seem to have calmed themselves a bit, the last week Lofoten has been covered in low, misty grey clouds and 4-6 degree temperatures. And there has been some amount of precipitation on 26 of the last 30 days. All while watching the stories about summer sun and temperatures down in Oslo and the southern coast. They are promising us several days of sunshine after the weekend, but I won’t believe it until I see it – as should always be the case with weather forecasting here.

Even with the uncooperative weather, the seasons still move forward. Sunset is now after 21:30 and sunrise earlier than I want to think about. The next time the sky is clear, the sun will have moved far enough north now that I’ll see it setting over the sea from my house, no longer blocked by the mountains to the west. And while a cold spell can return anytime, the spring thaw in well under way and the first signs of green are begging to appear. Whatever new snow which may fall now won’t last long on any sun exposed terrain.

Eventually summer will arrive…

Speaking of summer. I have made the decision to cancel all summer photo workshops. I also had several private tours for early June which I was holding out hope for, but it is not looking likely. Hopefully the autumn can continue as normal, but I am unsure on that as well. If the borders do open before then, then I will only take bookings for private tours during summer.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 100
f 11
1/30 second
WB Daylight


Friday Photo #380 – Spring Storms

Photo: Storm over coast of Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 8, 2020. 13:06

Last week during one of the big storms I waited for a pause in the rain before walking down to the coast to checkout some of the action. The wind was blowing strongly – and actually blew me over/made me slip in the mud on my way back home. Out at the coast all I could do was sit, as it wasn’t safe to stand – especially for my camera!

This past weekend another big storm arrived, though it was a north wind, blowing the waves onshore, so not really possible to photograph from my area. And even the last days, which now feel almost calm, the wind has been blowing at near gale force. The wind seems endless this year.

I always find it difficult to photograph a stormy sea. When the big wind gusts arrive, everything turns into chaos and any composition I thought I might have had either disappears or just doesn’t look nearly as dramatic as the moment was. Especially shooting from sea level into a mostly grey sky, the scene looses all the contrast of the sea spray blowing off the waves.

In this scene I tried to put the distant mountain (Veggen) into the background for a little contrast to the flat grey sky. But even then, it is mostly just waiting and hoping that the wind gust arrives at the right time with the wave in the right location, etc. Just luck mostly. But even then, it’s also hard to give a sense of scale to such a scene.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 70-200 f/4
78mm
ISO 250
f 5.6
1/1000 seconds
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #377 – Equinox Aurora

Photo: Equinox Aurora over Storsandnes beach, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 20, 2020. 21:35

Last friday was a stormy and windy day with passing snow showers and storm force wind gusts throughout the day. Sometime in the early evening I randomly looked out the window and saw a faint green band of aurora high in the sky. Hmm, wasn’t expecting that.

The next wave of clouds and wind and snow shook my house. But after I looked out again and the aurora was beginning to dance a little. Hmm, better get moving!

So I headed down the road to Storsandnes beach, arriving just as the sky began to explode in light. Somehow I knocked my camera out of focus after a couple shots – Which I didn’t catch for another minute, and had to run back up to the road to focus on the lights of a distant house.

I often sound like a broken record on photo workshops, reminding people to zoom in and check focus on images every few minutes, and it’s good I follow my own advice as well! It’s easy in the dark with gloves on to accidentally hit a button or the lens when recomposing or adjusting settings. I missed a first good display because of this, even though I was only out of focus for a minute before I caught it. But no worries, there was plenty more to come this night!

Without any moonlight, you can see the effect of the light pollution from Leknes and Gravdal on the clouds on the right side of the image. Usually with would disturb me, but on this image I kinda like it. It ads a bit of a surreal look to the image. Luckily I caught this light flash of pink as the aurora picked up in speed and danced across the sky. Even at a relatively fast shutter speed of 2 seconds for northern lights, you can see they are still quite blurry.

There was no high KP forecast and the weather was mostly terrible as well. This was just one of those nights where you just have to be here and maybe you get lucky.

This year as been a tough year for northern lights here on Lofoten. I was lucky that each of my 5 winter workshops I guided this season had at least one night of northern lights, but on a couple occasions it wasn’t until the final night of the trip – the 2nd time was due to the trip with my Swiss group being cut short due to the sudden quarantine regulations here in Norway due to covid-19 and having to get them on the soonest possible flight out of Tromsø and back home before everything shut down.

The main difficulty this year was the weathe. It’s been endlessly windy and cloudy this year. It wasn’t even until March that I had seen the sun on 10 separate occasions. I’d say this was my least productive aurora season since moving here in February 2016. There’s still a few weeks left, so who knows what might happen…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f/1.8
14mm
ISO 2500
f 1.8
2 seconds
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #376 – Storm

Photo: Hold fast, all storms pass. Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 20, 2020. 11:05

We bring in the spring equinox with the passing of another polar low pressure and gale force winds sweeping across Lofoten. But a bigger storm has already hit Norway and the rest of the world, something that will not pass so easily.

It was last Thursday evening that I walked into the restaurant in Hamn on Senja with my workshop group. The hotel manager immediately walked up to us and said we were all on quarantine (Well, I technically wasn’t since I haven’t been outside of Norway since last year), and the message was clear. The world had changed.

Information was difficult to find. Were they allowed to leave? Would they get fined for leaving? Did they have to sit for 14 days alone in their cabins? With every hour the situation changed. Soon Denmark closed its borders entirely, in which Norway soon followed, then the rest of Europe and the world.

With the workshop already ending on Sunday, the hotel situation in Tromsø was uncertain, we decided that they should rebook flights back to Switzerland for Saturday morning. And thus in the 5:00 morning darkness and blowing snow showers we began a silent journey towards the airport and everyone got on the flight out of Norway.

I had to remain in Tromsø another night. And after the initial panic of the first days, things seemed to have calmed a bit and other than Tromsø feeling like a ghost town and new regulations for entering stores and disinfecting hands, one might not have noticed that anything was happening.

But getting home was just one step of the journey. The real struggle will be surviving the next weeks and months. The travel industry has been completely decimated across Europe (and I’m sure the rest of the world). Within a week, Norway now has the highest unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the Kroner’s value has fallen off a cliff. What the future will be or how long this will last, no one can say.

Best of luck to everyone out there. Hold fast!

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24-70 f/2.8
24mm
ISO 100
f 10
1/60 second
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #375 – Stortind Waterfall

Photo: Mølnelva waterfall below Stortind, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 13, 2020. 15:24

It has been a strange winter photo season this year on Lofoten. The commonly popular places in former years – Uttakleiv, Haukland, Unstad, Reinehalsen overlook – seemed almost deserted at times, while more random and isolated places seem to have grown in popularity. Case in point, Mølnelva.

This small cascading river flowing across some slabby rocky just next to the E10 never seemed to popular in previous years. This year however, while I was out trying to take a couple last images for the update of Seasons on Lofoten: Winter ebook, it seemed to always have a crowd of photographers each time I drove by. It wasn’t until late on some stormy afternoon that I finally found the location deserted.

Perhaps it is a bit of confirmation bias – I was specifically looking at the river, so always noticed it was busy, while I’ve driven by it 1000’s of times before without paying much attention. But this wouldn’t be the only ‘lesser known’ location I’ve seen quite busy on Lofoten this winter photo season.

Maybe people are getting a little tired of the classic views and looking for something new. Maybe there’s some social media popularity about a certain location that I haven’t known about – though this mostly seems isolated to the Instagrammer drone flyers, who love to copy a shot once its been ‘found.’ As though it is some new discovery and hasn’t been there forever.

I don’t know…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 14-24 f/2.8
14mm
ISO 31
f 16
0.6 second
WB Daylight

Friday Photo #371 – Winter Grey

Photo: Rocks and ocean, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 13, 2020. 12:49

It has been a grey winter this year. So far, half way into February, I’ve seen the sun four times. Ikke bra! (as one would say in Norwegian). I’ve maybe missed it a couple other times as when not guiding I’m almost entirely stuck behind the computer trying to get the 4th edition of Seasons On Lofoten – Winter ebook finally published. But anything I missed would have only been short moments of light between the seemingly ever preset clouds of 2020.

This week will be a short post. All my brain power is on book editing and design. Frankly, I’m exhausted. What was just meant to be a small updated to some info turned into an additional 130+ pages and images for a new detailed destination guide section in what is basically an entirely new ebook. And, since I’m not the best businessperson in the world, all this work will be a free update for anyone who’s bought the previous editions, even going back to first edition for $5 in 2015 – The new version will be $18, just FYI. This project has been a burden on me since Christmas, so I’m looking for it to be finished soon! Hopefully by this weekend – something I’ve said since mid January…

And yet, as much as I want to be finished, I want it to be good. So even yesterday and today I’ve been out photographing a couple locations to be included in the destination guide, having had to wait for the right conditions – which this year means, ‘not rain.’

This image is one of the new photos from yesterday, taken on a quiet section of Flakstadøy. To find out more, you’ll have to get the 4th edition of the ebook. 🙂

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24-70 f/2.8
40mm
ISO 100
f 10
8 seconds
WB Daylight
6 Stop ND filter

Friday Photo #370 – January Grey

Photo: Heavy grey sky over Flakstadøy, Vareid, Lofoten Islands, Norway. January 24, 2020. 14:15

I only saw the sun twice in January this year – Once on Lofoten and once on Senja. The rest of the time the sky has mostly been filled with heavy clouds so far this year. Though last Friday there was a fantastic pink sunrise, I just couldn’t get anywhere before the light was gone. But overall, it has been a wet and grey start to the year – almost complete opposite to least year which had fantastic light much of the time.

A few days before this photo I was driving by and saw a photographer get completely soaked by a huge wave and the on shore north wind. I decided against stopping there with my group, as an ocean shower didn’t seem like the best welcome to Lofoten on their first day. But later in the week the weather calmed slightly and it was ok to shoot without killing cameras or getting washed to sea. The light was flat with heavy snow approaching in the distance – but at least it was snow! As the forecast had called for rain much of the week.

Initially I had been shooting a shorter exposure to capture the crashing waves. But as the sea was a bit too stormy, the image felt too busy to me – too much white of the water in the foreground, just chaos. So I stuck on a 6 stop ND filter and tried something longer. It lost the energy of the sea, but produced a slightly more abstract look to the foreground which seemed to work better with the flat grey light of the day.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24-70 f/2.8
24mm
ISO 64
f 11
30 seconds
WB Daylight
6 stop ND filter

Friday Photo #367 – Are You Visible?

Photo: Are you invisible or visible when standing on the roads? Lofoten Islands, Norway. January 15, 2020. 16:41

The weather continues to be mostly terrible here on Lofoten, but I’ve been out and about the last week attempting to shoot some missing images for the winter ebook update (coming by the end of the month hopefully!). I can already notice the roads getting a little busier with rental cars as and have bumped into a few tour groups as the first photographers of the winter season are beginning to arrive. And especially in this horrible weather and darkness, visibility is an issue!

Photographers like to dress in black. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s merely that the shops only carry winter gear in dark colors, or maybe some nationalities dress different than other. But there are a lot of photography Ninja’s standing on the roads of Lofoten during winter.

If you’ve ever been here, you’ll notice nearly all the locals utilise some variety of reflective clothing when out on their evening walks – and even during the day at this time of year where it’s still quite dark. And trust me, as someone who drives here year round, it really makes a difference! I’m glad I can see the people when they’re walking.

In the last years, some of the rental car companies and rorbuer have begun placing hi-vis vests in the cars and cabins. And hopefully the trend continues. And I’ll admit that I myself am not always so good at this either, especially during tour season when I spend a lot of time near the roads.

For the winter ebook update I’m starting to write a little more about safety, especially on the roads, as I witness a lot of dangerous behaviour during the winter season. One of the sections will be about this, visibility.

The other night during a pause in the rain I went down the road to try shoot a photo to illustrate the difference. I stood on the left dressed in all black and on the right I changed into brighter clothing and a hi-vis vest. The image is lit from my vans headlights. I merged the two photos together to illustrate the difference. And what a difference it is!

So now imagine someone is photographing the northern lights in the middle of the road – which happens a lot! There’s a car coming, the passenger is pointing at the sky and telling the driver to hurry up as the lights are amazing. The driver is looking at the gps trying to see how far away the beach is. The photographer is focused on the northern lights and doesn’t really notice the car coming. Which person is the driver hopefully going to see standing in the middle of the road?

Visibility is safety for everyone here in winter…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24-70 f/2.8
45mm
ISO 800
f 7.1
.4 second
WB Daylight