Photo: Studalselva flowing through early autumn landscape below Tindstind, Sørvågen, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. September 12, 2021. 16:25

I woke up Monday morning to the first dusting of autumn snow across the higher peaks of Lofoten; A sure sign that we are now well into autumn. The snow seems early this year, which reinforced my observations that autumn itself seems to be a few weeks earlier than normal. Though this could also be a bit biased, as autumn was late to arrive last year. Either way, I think the wet summer, followed by an early cold spell, will hopefully lead to a colourful autumn this year on Lofoten. Just hope the storms stay away long enough!

With consistent rain through most of last week, on Sunday I headed west to Sørvågen to checkout the waterfalls and rivers of Studalselva which flow from Stuvdalsvatn. The autumn color was already quite mixed, with some trees already fully yellow/orange, while others have yet to turn at all. But I think the autumn color peak will be in late September this year – assuming weather conditions remain consistent – and not early October like most years.

The waterfalls were flowing nicely, but I ended up in the flatter part of the river first, with Tindstinden rising in the background. Even with my Wellies on and walking out into the river, I found it difficult to get a balance composition between the mountains in the background and the flowing river in the foreground. I just couldn’t (without wet feet) get to the right part of the river to balance out the scene properly. Especially because the mountain ridge to the right of Tindstind would become too strong and dominant if I showed to much of it.

Here are two versions of the scene in landscape and portrait format. I think the portrait format of this image works better in this case, as it avoids all the empty space of the upper left sky in the landscape image. I think I can spend a little more time working out the composition, but on this particular day, I was racing against the incoming rain, which eventually arrived and sent me back to my van.

With two Lofoten autumn workshops coming up in early October, I think I’ll have more time to spend in this location with the groups – just hoping the trees hold their color for another couple weeks!

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

Camera Info:
Nikon Z7 II
Nikon 14-30mm f/4
14mm
ISO 31
f 14
1.6 seconds
WB Daylight
3 stop ND filter

Photo: Autumn rain showers over Selfjorden, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. September 2, 2020

There generally always seems to be a north – south divide with the weather in Norway. When the media reports Norway is having a good summer, this can be translated to, ‘Oslo and the southern coast of Norway is having a good summer.’ This year the opposite weather effect seems to have been particularly strong, as Oslo has now having set a new record for the most summer days from June to August – 79 days over 20˚c this year. The previous record was from 2006 with 78 days.

Moving north to Lofoten. Leknes has had 11 days over 20˚c this summer, or what has been called summer. Now Lofoten is a long ways north, and obviously not a tropical destination. But the islands have had a particularly bad summer this year, to the point where even my old neighbours are commenting how grey and windy it has been. Basically the the entire coast of Norway north of Trondheim has been in an endless cycle of wind, rain, and clouds; with only a few redeeming days here or there.

And even as I write this, Nordland and Troms-Finnmark have already received the first snowfall (across the border in Sweden as well), while southern Norway is potentially setting more heat records.

There is never a particular day when one can say summer has ended up here in the north, but I think we’ve now made our way into autumn.

Beyond sitting at the beach, we are also now two weeks into the northern lights season, and I have yet to see them so far this season even as several large solar storms have already hit the earth (though they were seen in east Lofoten last week). Cloudy and windy days turn into cloudy and windy nights, which is not good for aurora photography, unfortunately. Last year was a wet and grey autumn, so I hope there is not a repeat of the same. Otherwise I will just sit around on rainy nights dreaming of Spanish sunshine…

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

Camera Info:
Nikon Z7 II
Nikon 24-200 f/4-6.3
62mm
ISO 100
f 9
1/800 second
WB Daylight

Photo: Frozen mountain pond, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. October 21, 2020. 17:16

The landscape has begun to settle into its winter freeze over the last week and many of the small mountain ponds are beginning to ice over. I went for a short hike on Wednesday up towards Solbjørnvatn, under the promise of a clear sky and good northern lights forecast – neither of which turned out to be true. Even the lower ground was mostly frozen and the hiking quite treacherous in places.

I had hiked higher into the mountains, where I was initially planning to wait for northern lights. But the route up over ice covered rock slabs required some tricky navigation, as I wasn’t entirely confident I could find my way down in the dark with the light of my headlamp, so I headed back to a lower spot just after sunset. By now the forecast showed a clear sky, while the scene before me was over ever thickening clouds in the fading light. My feet were wet from some of the bog which wasn’t yet frozen and a cold wind was blowing. It was barely 17:00.

So I took one last photo of this frozen pond, which I think ended up nicer than any of the sunset photos from earlier. I sat for a moment, glad to have my winter jacket on, as I took in the conditions. Should I stay and hope it clears? Or head down and try again another time. Had the evening been still, I probably would have cooked dinner and waited for a while. But as the conditions were, heading back to my van seemed like the better option. Which turned out to be the smarter choice in the end, as sky ended up fully cloudy and the aurora never arrived.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 100
f 9.5
1 second
WB Daylight
2 images – top, bottom