Photo: Midnight sky, Ytresand beach, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 30, 2016. 24:02

Since moving to Lofoten in March I have been receiving a lot of emails about what the current conditions on the Islands are and is so and so mountain okay to hike. Unfortunately, living on Lofoten still means I have to work, which mostly involves me sitting at the computer 14-16 hours a day. However, when the weather is nice, I do my best to make some time to get out and explore.

I think for the summer I will experiment with a bit of a change in the Friday Photo series. Instead of being a more or less ‘best of,’ I will try and keep the photos as recent as possible, so that you can see how the islands are looking over the last few weeks. Of course, being Lofoten, this can only be so accurate; I was in a t-shirt last week, while there is cold temperatures and fresh snow over the last couple days. But as summer progresses, I should hopefully show the general trend of what the Islands are looking like.

So, first up is midnight at Ytresand for a week ago. The midnight sun arrives on Lofoten in late May, and now the Islands are under 24 hour sunlight until mid July. I was surprised to come across 2 vans of a photo workshop at the beach – something which is rare outside of winter. But luckily, they seemed to be wandering mostly aimlessly across the beach, leaving me with this composition to myself. A layer of clouds was low on the horizon, softening the sun as it hung low on the horizon, yet the sky still had a nice glow and with no wind and low tide at Ytresand, this reflection worked out nicely.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
35mm
ISO 100
f 13
1/16 second
WB Daylight
2 images – top, bottom

Photo: Spring light over Kvalvika beach from Ryten, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 19, 2016. 20:37

May is the month of melting snow and the arrival of the midnight sun over Lofoten. Yet even in the near endless days, winter doesn’t always easily give up its grip over the islands, as experienced on this cold evening on Ryten, with knee deep snow which had fallen over the previous 2-3 days across the higher elevations of the islands. A couple days later, all was gone again.

Even with the sun in the sky for 24 hours as it begins today, the sun’s location in the sky is still an important element while photographing the islands. In my Seasons on Lofoten – Winter eBook I have gone into some detail about the movement of the winter sun and its influence on when to photograph certain locations, so perhaps in the coming days of summer, I will begin to write a bit more about the midnight sun.

Kvalvika beach as viewed from Ryten is a perfect example of this. Even though the sun might not set below the horizon and this sounds like a good location to watch the midnight sun, the beach actually receives the best light, shining directly into the bay, from about 19:00 – 23:00. When the sun reaches its low point on the horizon around 01:00, the beach will be left in shadow, due to the mountains shadowing it from the north.

So, if you’re planning to head up to Ryten for ‘sunset,’ go up a few hours earlier to get the light across the beach as well.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
24mm
ISO 320
f 10
1/250 seconds
WB Daylight
5 vertical image pano