Photo: May sunset over summit of Volandstinden, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 16, 2020. 22:46
From mid May it is not long until the midnight sun arrives. Though as I often write, the light and temperature often do not match well at this time of year. Tomorrow the 17th of May is Norway’s constitution day – a day of parades and flags and bbq and more. And while down in Oslo it will be a sunny 20˚c, up here on Lofoten it will be a grey and maybe misty 6-7˚c – not exactly bbq weather!
Today’s photo is also from the 16 of May, but from several years ago. Lofoten had received a nice mid May snowfall, and so I headed up the mountains in the evening for a rare-ish combination of winter conditions and sun location. A couple days prior I had been on Ryten, for the evening sun to shine across the snowy bay (Friday Photo #384) , and it was a tough hike through the deep snow. On this day I took a little easier option of Volandstind, for a little rest of my sore legs.
I have already posted a different image from this evening (Friday Photo #595), showing more of the wintry landscape. This image is of the setting sun itself over the 2nd summit of Volandstind. Even at 22:46 at night, the sun still won’t set for another 45 minutes.
I was actually shooting a timelapse sequence as well. I actually shot a lot of timelapse sequences in May 2020 planning to put a short little video together, but 5 years later, I still haven’t found the time for that. Maybe one of these days, as there was some amazing light that year…
Camera Info: Nikon D850 Sigma 14mm f/1.8 14mm ISO 100 f11 1/30 Second WB Daylight
Photo: The first signs of spring as the fields begin to turn green in mid May, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 9, 2025. 14:27
While the landscape is still dominated by the brown dead grasses of winter, the fresh green growth is finally becoming more visible with each passing day. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but in only a couple more weeks, this field will be full of yellow wildflowers under the 24 hour daylight of the midnight sun.
Here you can see this same location in early June 10 years ago – Friday Photo #131. Quite a difference from today’s photo! And probably easy to see why this time of year I’m always sort of just waiting for summer to arrive…
Just a short post for today as I’m deep into a long overdue update for the Seasons on Lofoten – Summer ebook. A lot has changed in Lofoten since the last update and all the Covid related chaos. Hopefully I’ll have the update out by next week – at least the mostly gloomy weather makes it easy to spend all day on the computer…
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 85mm ISO 100 f7.1 1/320 Second WB Daylight
Photo: Willow Ptarmigan in flight over grassland, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 1, 2025. 15:30
April and May are always a strange time of year for me in the mix of summer daylight but winter-ish temperatures and landscape. I’ve already made a few trips down south this year and have seen green trees and meadows and fields of flowers and flying puffins. Yet returning north to Lofoten is like taking a time machine back to the brown cold of winter while the islands wait several more weeks to catch up to southern Norway.
I know it will be summer soon, so I find it difficult to photograph the drab, brown landscape which exists at the moment. Though the forecast for the weekend is calling for up to 20cm of snow in some places, so maybe a bit of white winter will make a short return; though soon to be melted away by the high May sun.
The local wildlife don’t really care about the looks of the landscape, but they too are under transformation from winter to summer. From late March and into early April a large majority of the migratory birds arrive and fight for nesting grounds and mates. The moorlands around my village have been a bustle of activity for weeks now.
The year round residents like the mountain hares and, in this photo, the willow ptarmigans are in various phases of change from winter white to summer brown. The remaining white hares looks like ghosts as they hop around the fields in the twilight nights – probably easy pickings for any eagles flying around.
But just a couple more weeks and all signs of winter will be gone. Hopefully we have a repeat of last years fantastic summer, but that is yet to be seen…
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 600mm ISO 280 f 6.3 1/2500 Second WB Daylight
Photo: Mountains of the ‘Lofoten Wall’ rise from the sea while traveling on the Bodø – Moskenes ferry, April 24, 2025. 19:52
20 hours after I should have originally been home from a short trip to Scotland, Lofoten’s mountain wall was finally growing larger as the ferry approached Moskenes harbor. The pervious day I had not planned to be on the ferry as I flew into Evenes airport where my van was parked. Unfortunately though, I large rockfall across the E10 just west of the intersection to Henningsvær meant I could not make the 4 hour drive from the airport and would instead need to make a long detour via Bodø.
I generally don’t like to fly from Evenes during winter and the weather is too unreliable and the driving conditions often difficult. Last year after dropping off clients I made it past a stuck semi-truck only minutes before what resulted in an 6 hour road closure in blizzard like conditions. Long winter journeys in northern Norway always bring a bit of uncertainty if they will go as planned. And this week, despite the weather almost being spring-like, things did not go to plan.
Rock slides of such, while rare, do happen every couple years here on Lofoten. As I was sitting in Oslo I still wasn’t sure what my plan would be. Normally I would have had some camping gear in my van and could just wait things out for a day or two by making a short road trip to Vesterålen or somewhere else. But unfortunately for me, I had been lazy after a long winter guiding season, and had not converted my van back to road-trip mode. Stupid mistake.
As they were uncertain with the actual opening dates for the road, but said it would likely be today at the earliest, I decided the best plan of action would be to stay at the airport hotel in Evenes and then make the 6 hour journey to Bodø in the morning. Snow showers were in the weather forecast, though the roads remained mostly snow free for the long and winding drive and so I made pretty good time to Bodø – with enough spare time for a quick stop at Bilthema. Once on the ferry I could tell I was not the only one making the long detour around the road closure – and the waiting line in Moskenes at arrival also looked overly full for a random day in late April.
Once on the ferry it was announced that the road would open at 21:30 that evening, so I could have driven back directly and just sat some hours in Svolvær had I know this. But I didn’t. And for people leaving Lofoten, there is only one ferry per day while on the winter schedule, so you had to commit to the ferry already before the info got out about the opening of the road.
And my 4 hour drive turned into a 21 hour detour through northern Nordland and a calm sailing across the Vestfjorden – which I seem to be doing a lot in recent years as I spend more time down along the Helgeland coast and Islands.
Snow showers were passing intermittently and I was hoping that the ferry’s arrival on Lofoten would be timed with some backlit snow from the evening sun. But the snow showers were too far to the east or had already passed before arrival, so I was presented with the south faces of the mountains in shadows and the sun shining from overhead. I should have switched to longer telephoto lens and focused in a bit more on the backlit blowing snow on the ridges. And even this image is somewhat cropped to remove the sun out of the top of the frame, but I still feel there is too much water in the foreground which doesn’t add much to the scene.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 120mm ISO 100 f 8 1/3200 Second WB Daylight
Photo: Bluehour reflection of Stornappstind with dusting of snow, Vestvågøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 28, 2025. 06:37
For many weeks this winter even just a dusting of snow mid-way down the mountains like this morning was a welcoming sight. The temperatures for the entire week prior to this morning had been averaging over 6˚C and this was the first time in 8 days to fall below 0˚C again.
It takes close inspection of the image to know it was taken in winter, as it looks more like a typical autumn dusting of snow or maybe something from late spring. If you look closely, you can see some small patches of snow here and there on the mountain as well as some remaining snow in the gullies on the right of the image. These are small signs that more snow had previously been present but that almost everything else had melted away at some point. It has not been a good year for us skiers who live in the western half of Lofoten.
And while the image doesn’t look very wintry to me, I actually do like the look of the image overall and think the snow line helps add a little depth to the scene. Luckily, this was also a rare morning of still wind, so the reflections in these small tidal pools near Gravdal worked out quite nice in my opinion. Perhaps some areas are a bit dark and heavy – it was low tide – but I think it works as a nice framing of the mountain as it rises into the deep blue of the early morning sky.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 48mm ISO 100 f 7.1 6 Seconds WB Daylight
Photo: Setting winter sun behind misty waves at Unstad beach, Vestvågøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 25, 2025. 16:47
One benefit to this year’s windy and stormy winter is that the sea is anything but boring! Unstad in particular is always better photographically when large swells are rolling into the bay and I always try to take my groups there in such conditions.
This day was quite a stormy one, with the strong offshore wind blowing mist off the tops of the waves as they broke across the bay. At first I was just shooting the waves themselves with a telephoto lens from up near the parking lot. But as the setting sun emerged from behind the mountain Helligberget (the Holy Mountain), I headed down the the shoreline to see if I could come up with something different.
And while I love this conditions, it is also quite hard to capture the sense of being there amongst all the chaos into a single, still image. The wind, the mist and spay, the rumble of the waves, the smell of the ocean, the approaching storm, the surrounding mountains – there is a lot so see! For me, I was manly looking at the atmosphere of the mist blowing into the air and the atmosphere this created with the sun setting in the background.
Unfortunately though, the angle needed to get the mist blowing into the sky meant getting down by the beach where visibility of the larger waves breaking further out in the bay was lost. Overall I like the feeling of this image, but it does fail to capture much of the drama and the size of the waves on this day.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 97mm ISO 100 f 8 1/50 Second WB Daylight
Photo: Northern lights dance over Storsandnes beach, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 6, 2025. 20:46
Like every year, the ever shortening nights of April mean Lofoten’s northern lights season is quickly coming to an end. This season has been a good one. Especially so for my photo workshop clients, which, despite some challenging weather, each group had at least 2 nights of aurora, and some 3-4 nights. And not just nights of a bit of green between some clouds, but nights of dancing light across the sky.
This image was taken on the last night with my fourth group of the winter. It was raining and heavily clouded as we showed up to the beach after dinner. But as the forecast said, the clouds began clearing after 20:00 and soon enough the sky was dancing with light! This particular moment was so bright that I only needed a 1 second exposure.
Not a bad way to finish an otherwise stormy week on Lofoten.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Viltrox 16mm f/1.8 16mm ISO 2500 f 2.2 1 Second WB Daylight
Photo: Snow and no snow at Haukland, Vestvågøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 17, 2025. 09:55. And March 6, 2025. 12:40
In the last days of March it finally feels like spring is in the air and that winter is coming to an end. However, much of the winter so far has already felt this way already. For many visitors to Lofoten this winter season, snow has been a rare element on the islands, and many weeks looked more like May or October than January, February, or March.
That is not to say there hasn’t been a lot of snow this winter as well, as there has been. But more often than not, a nice snowfall has been followed by warm rain and then an extended period of mild weather. Particularly so in February, which ended up being 2.8˚c warmer than normal. For Lofoten’s already fine balance between snow and rain, this tipped the scales heavily in the rain direction this year.
Lofoten was not alone in the mild weather this year. Much of northern Norway experienced the same and rain was no stranger in Tromsø or Senja either. So the difference of winter wonderland or brown dead grass was just a bit of luck this year – more so than most years. Hopefully a little more snow falls in the following weeks, as after two months of back to back photo workshops, now that I have some free time, I’d at least like to be able to pull out my skis for a mountain or two!
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 40mm ISO 100 f 6.3 1/400 Second WB Daylight
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 41mm ISO 200 f 8 1/500 Second WB Daylight
https://www.68north.com/content/2025/03/friday-photo-638-snow.jpg10001500Codyhttps://www.68north.com/content/2016/12/68north-logo-V4.pngCody2025-03-28 04:34:232025-03-28 04:34:25Friday Photo #638 – Snow and No Snow
Photo: Aurora Highway – moonlit northern lights rise into the sky over Gimsøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 24, 2024. 22:17
Eight months after their first appearance in Lofoten’s night sky, the northern lights will soon be making their departure for brief summer break. Out of all the weather, seasons, climates, etc of Lofoten throughout the year, the northern lights are actually the longest lasting of all. They are not there every night, of course, but nothing else in Lofoten’s natural world hangs around for 8 months of the year. So, with as much mystery and awe there is, the northern lights are one of Lofoten’s most frequent events.
I guess what makes them special is they only occur in the north, where few people live. Anywhere else there can be a nice sunset, pretty autumn colours, etc. But the aurora are in the north. Though personally, the longer I’m here, I now probably get more excited about a 20˚c summer day – which is definitely more rare!
But at this time of year, I’m content with my last aurora nights, which are actually my favourite, with the horizon still glowing in the north. Now it’s hopefully time for a bit of skiing in the last of the snow and then waiting for summer green to arrive and all that brings with it. But this year will also be a busy one and hopefully some long term projects I’ve kept a bit quiet about with will find completion.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Sigma 14.. f/1.8 14mm ISO 1250 f 2.2 2.5 Seconds WB Daylight
Photo: View across the sea from the cliffs at Å to Værøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 18, 2024. 13:49
I make frequent visits to the end of the road at Å each winter and despite being quite familiar with the location, still find it a bit of difficult place to photograph. I think mainly that the mountains of Lofoten – mostly out of frame on the right of the image – can be so dominant, that it’s often hard to find balance in the scene.
The best conditions are when there’s a moderately stormy sea – which can be safely approached – to use the flowing waves as a foreground while looking a bit more towards that mountains than in this photo.
The 2nd best conditions are probably in this image, when there is a nice fresh layer of snow all the way to the edge of the cliffs. Without the snow the rocks and grass are a bit too messy for my general preference. But I nice layer of snow cleans up the foreground allowing for a little more balance to the location, and in this photo, almost mirroring the sky.
Overall, I’m usually quite happy if I can come away with a decent image from here.
Camera Info: Nikon Z8 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 46mm ISO 64 f 9 30 Second WB Daylight 10 Stop Nisi ND Filter
https://www.68north.com/content/2025/01/friday-photo-636-end-of-the-road.jpg10001500Codyhttps://www.68north.com/content/2016/12/68north-logo-V4.pngCody2025-03-14 03:00:002025-01-26 09:13:00Friday Photo #636 – End Of The Road
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