Friday Photo #436 – Spring Thaw

Photo: Small waterfall flowing from melting spring snow below the mountains of Flakstad, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 12, 2021. 21:46

It was a strange and mostly snow-less winter in west Lofoten and so much of the lower elevations have been snow free since the beginning of April (minus a quick snow shower or two) but it finally seems the spring thaw is underway in the higher elevations and the small mountain rivers are flowing. The first flowers are in the fields and the lower elevation trees have their first leaves. Higher up though, the landscape is just beginning to grow, otherwise remaining mostly winter-like in appearance.

I always find this a strange time of year for photography. The days are now endless and there has been some interesting light over the last weeks. But I don’t like the brown, winter landscape so much. It just feels a bit dull and boring – especially since I know that the lush greens and meadows full of wildflowers are only a few weeks away. So May always feels like a month of waiting for me: The summer light has arrived, now the landscape needs to catch up. But day by day it does and the fields outside my house look slightly greener each morning and a little more snow has disappeared from the mountains. And with the sun shining bright, it might actually be t-shirt weather this weekend and it looks like the weather will cooperate for a nice 17th of May barbecue on Monday.

This photo is actually 3 vertically shifted image from at 24mm tilt-shift lens. The original cropping is 4:5, but this here is 2:3 – which I normally don’t like in vertical format. However, in the 4:5 crop, the rock on the lower right side of the image felt too large and overpowering. I tried cropping in tighter overall, but then I needed to compromise with getting too tight on the mountains, or loosing too much flow in the water. So out of all the options I had, 2:3 crop seemed the least offensive one to me.

Head over to my Instagram account for (almost) daily postings of the local conditions here on Lofoten: @distant.north

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 31
f 13
0.4 second
WB Daylight
3 image vertical pano