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Friday Photo #184 – Ramberg Beach

Friday Photo 184 - Lofoten Islands, Norway

Photo: Ramberg beach from Nubben, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. June 29, 2016. 18:55

I’m slowly working on my next Lofoten ebook, and the view from Nubben, will be part of it. A small rock outcropping rising above Ramberg, there are fantastic views over Ramberg beach – also if you hike out to the edge of the mountain on the right side of the photo.

I would not label myself a typical landscape photographer, who typically only shoots in dramatic light with the sun low on the horizon. I like to shoot everything! And sometimes, a summer day is just a nice time to be out, it needs a clear blue sky and bright light. I often label these days ‘too good for photos days.’ Days when it’s simply enough to sit outside and enjoy the weather, and maybe get a little sunburn in the 24 hours of daylight.

For this site, I think it’s important to show some ‘normal’ sides of Lofoten. Too often I get shown examples of once-in-a-decade lighting conditions, with the person wondering when they can shoot such photos. It creates a bit of an unrealistic goal for someone to achieve in a week, much less a couple of day, which could very well rain the whole time!

For this image, I really should have been up the mountain a bit earlier – the clouds were slow to burn off.  The sun is just off camera to the left in this scene. It works okay here, however, as I headed out to the edge of the hill, forcing me to shoot more left, any decent compositions became too backlit, with the sun in the corner of the frame. One of two hours earlier would have been better in this particular case

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
35mm
ISO 100
f 11
1/250 second
WB Daylight
4 image panoramic

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Friday Photo #183 – Volandstind

Friday Photo 183 - Lofoten Islands, Norway

Photo: Volandstind winter sunrise, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 16, 2016. 08:05

Last week’s Friday Photo was a view of this same peak, Volandstind, but from summer and taken just out of frame on the left of this image. But it’s an example of how perspective on Lofoten can change so quickly – the mountain becoming a steep pyramid in this photo, whereas, if viewed from the side, it is actually a flat mountain ridge.

This image was taken during my photo workshop in February. We had stopped on the nearby bridge to photograph the distant peaks of Moskenesøy, but I could see the light quickly changing and knew this would be a good image. So I ran back to the van to quickly get to this vantage point. The light lasted about 5 minutes before it moved away from the scene.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
24mm
ISO 100
f 11
1/13 second
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #182 – Flakstadøy

Friday Photo 182 - Lofoten Islands, Norway

Photo: Summer afternoon over Flakstadøy, Ramberg, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. June 29, 2016. 19:13

After a week of mostly grey and misty weather, proper summer returned to Lofoten on Wednesday afternoon. Though the forecast called for the low clouds to clear by early afternoon, the clouds remained quite localized, even after midnight, with some peaks perfectly clear while the next range of mountains were completely hidden.

In such conditions, it is not always easy to choose where to go. As I initially though about going up Røren, I was glad to have changed my mind to Nubben, the small hill above Ramberg, as Røren quickly became lost in a sea of clouds for the remainder of the evening.

I normally don’t like roads in my images, but somehow this photo just feels like summer on Lofoten to me as it is a good summary of what the islands are at this time of year.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 14-240mm f/2.8
20mm
ISO 100
f 11
1/250 second
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #181 – Hestraeva

Hestraeva - Lofoten Islands

Photo: Five minutes till midnight on the summit of Hestræva, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. June 5, 2016. 23:55

The summer solstice has now passed us and the sun will once again begins its journey south. However, here on Lofoten, we have several more weeks of the midnight sun until it once again sinks below the horizon in mid July. The term Midnight sun, while romantic sounding, isn’t quite accurate. While the sun is above the horizon at midnight, the lowest point isn’t until near 01:00, and it remains well above the horizon even then. Summer on Lofoten is a sun that never sets.

This image is from a few weeks back in early June while spending a still evening on the summit of Hestræva. A light layer of cloud was hovering over the northern horizon, casting a soft, golden sunlight as the sun grew low on the horizon.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
38mm
ISO 100
f 10
1/30 second
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #180 – Munken

Friday Photo 180 - Munken

Photo: View over Fjerddalsvatnet towards Munken, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. June 10, 2016. 23:31

Friday saw me joining some others on an exploration hike to Støvla on Moskenesøy. We reached a high point around 750 but being off route and with substantial amounts of snow covering the high country, we turned around late in the evening – no worries about darkness in June though!

Descending towards a good spot to camp we found the correct route towards the mountain. However, snow conditions above made the route overly dangerous, so we didn’t continue on.

Spring and early summer is one of the most dangerous periods on Lofoten as the mountains begins to thaw out and substantial amounts of snow and rockfall can suddenly occur – often unseen from somewhere above.

In this image, you can see the large chunks of snow and ice on the slabby rocks in the foreground, which had fallen off the mountain in recent days/weeks. And on the popular peak of Munken, rising on the opposite side of lake Fjerddalsvatnet, you can still see a large amount of snow covering portions of the hiking route.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
24mm
ISO 200
f 13
1/60 second
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #179 – Ytresand Midnight

Midnight Sun, Ytresand, Lofoten Islands, Norway

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

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Friday Photo #178 – Volandstind

Volandstind, Lofoten Islands, Norway

Photo: Spring hike on Volandstind, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. May 31, 2016. 14:03

The midnight sun has arrived in the north with the snow is melting fast while the spread of green creeps higher and higher up the mountains. There have been some fantastic summer days in May thus far, and I’ve already complained of the heat on more than one occasion. Perhaps I didn’t more far enough north! 😉

But with summer just around the corner, it is now my time to head into the mountains over the next months and start gathering the data and photos for the next series of hiking guides and ebooks. And now that I’m getting more settled in to life on the islands, I’m finally beginning to realize that I don’t need to rush. There will be another sunny day and the sun won’t set for 6 more weeks.

Heading up Volandstind the other day the weather was a bit wild. Layers of cloud were spinning across the mountains and fjords – with the actual summit of Volandstind just in the cloud, unfortunately. However, the route up was mostly cloud free, which provided a spectacular overview across the surrounding, surreal looking landscape.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
28mm
ISO 100
f 7.1
1/600 seconds
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #177 – Kvalvika Beach

Kvalvika Beach, Lofoten Islands, Norway

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

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Friday Photo #176 – Spring Aurora

April Northern Lights - Lofoten Islands

Photo: Spring Aurora, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. April 1, 2016. 22:03

This is the final image from my 2016 northern lights season on Lofoten – though there were some displays afterwards, so it wasn’t the last of Lofoten in general.

Overall, having been on Lofoten since early February, I would call in a below average northern lights season for me. There were many clear nights this February and March, but the sky seemed to be quite, something which can be quite frustrating while waiting on top of a mountain in otherwise perfect weather. Perhaps I’m just getting a little more picky in the images I want to create – simply seeing a faint green glow on the horizon no longer excites me – I want to creating dynamic and exciting images of the lights.

With the nights no longer dark, I’ll be eagerly waiting till autumn for my next chances of camping under the dancing sky.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
16mm
ISO 1250
f 4
25 seconds
WB Daylight

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Friday Photo #175 – Andenes Whale Watching

Andenes Whale Watching

Photo: Whale watching, Andenes, Vesterålen, Norway. May 3, 2016. 19:30

Prior to the other week, I had only seen Andenes from the sea while on a sailing trip to Lofoten in 2014. So when the opportunity came up for me to go do some whale watching with Sea Safari Andenes, I hopped in the van and began the 5 hour drive north from Lofoten – It may look close on a map, but it is quite a ways up there!

I will be guiding a couple Lofoten and Andenes whale watching tours next year – some spots are still available for the January 2017 Muench Workshops tour – so I wanted to see what it was all about first.

Whales are in the area of Andenes year round, however in January and February there can be a bit more action when the killer whales are present. In the spring, it was Sperm whales, diving deep for squid a few kilometers off the coast. Despite what looked to me like a basically flat and open ocean, Marten, the guide, was able to find the first whale within about 20 minutes. And then several more were spotted in the following hours. The RIB boats are fast, and pretty fun in general, but also provide a good, low vantage point of the whale, helping to separate them from the sea as in this photo.

As I am not much of a wildlife photographer, the longest lens I have is a 79-200mm. And this image is a crop from that. I think a 200-400 would have been ideal for the trip I was on, though that won’t be in my budget anytime soon, unfortunately. However, for next winter, I’m hoping 200mm will be long enough for the faster and more active killer whales.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 70-200mm f/4
200mm
ISO 200
f 4.5
1/1600 second
WB Daylight

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