Friday Photo #310 – Polar Night

Photo: December’s afternoon twilight during the polar night – Mørketid over Vestvågøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. December 11, 2018. 12:54

The sun has finally set on Lofoten for the year. A though it remains below the southern horizon at noon, on clear days – kinda rare this year – we still have some magical light before the darkness returns by early afternoon. At time it can feel as if the whole world is glowing in a pastel twilight. While other days the clouds and rain only bring deep shades of dark blue and grey, they sky mirroring the sea, and only allowing us a short glimpse of the word beyond the streetlights.

November is already a dark and often stormy month here in the north. So the beginning of the Mørketid isn’t sudden. It is just a slow fading of the light until one day you look at the calendar and realize you’re not going to see the sun again for a while. And so it is, the Mørketid – the dark time here in the arctic.

But Lofoten really only experiences a light version of the Polar night, nothing like the 2 months of darkness the people up in Finnmark experience. It is strange to think – as far north as Lofoten is, there is a whole lot further north to go in Norway!

Nothing technical about this image. I was passing the beach on my way home from Norwegian class – luckily we got out a bit early this day – and saw the world was glowing. So I quickly went home to grab my camera and then headed back. There had been some glow on the distant Himmeltind when I initially passed, but I unfortunately missed that.

I knew I wanted to capture a little water blur so I put the ISO down to 31 on my D850 – one of the best thing about the recent Nikon’s – super low ISO. While the race these days is high ISO performance, I almost want the opposite. I want ISO 10, or 5! Other than northern lights, I don’t often need high ISO. I’m much more likely to shoot longer exposures, and so it’s nice not always having to pull out filters. Perhaps I’m just lazy…

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 31
f 13
1.6 seconds
WB Daylight
2 images – top, bottom