Currently viewing the category: "Journeys"

Northern lights in Lofoten

By On · 3 Comments

Aurora Borealis, Lofoten – February 2013

 I’m back from northern Norway and Lofoten where I was leading a photo tour the last week. Together with a small group I had a wonderful week with all kind of weather conditions. On top of that we had one night with a completely clear sky and a magical northern lights display. It was one of the best I have ever seen.

Photographing the northern lights is very challenging. Composing in the dark is hard and you better have scouted the location before so that you know what framing you are after. Even then it takes some time; making a test exposure, adjust, make another test exposure, re-adjust. When you are finished you have to focus as well. In this scene it was pretty simple as the focus distance is somewhere close to infinity. I used live-view and focused on the small group of houses to the left (barely visible in the small web version) and pulled it back ever so slightly to get optimum sharpness on the mountains closest to the camera.

All this was done during a few exciting minutes while I was also helping the participants to get their cameras ready. The aurora then faded away to a barely visible. We waited for another hour or so before we headed back to the guesthouse, but nothing happened. The elusive aurora borealis…

A new photo tour to Lofoten will be announced soon. Send me an e-mail if you are interested to join me and want to make a pre-booking.

 

Morning Blues

By On · Add Comment

Morning Blues, Varanger Peninsula, Norway – October 2012

Here is another image from the Varanger Peninsula. It was one of those moody mornings with quiet light, which I love to work in. Well, enough with the words. I’ll let the image speak for itself…

A postcard from Northern Norway

By On · Add Comment

Uttakleiv, Lofoten, Norway

I’m just rounding up a fantastic photo tour in Lofoten. We had a really nice week with northern lights and good light during morning and evenings. It’s always nice to travel together with a group and share the experience. Now I will travel further north to explore some new terrain by myself, which I look forward to.

The image is from Uttakleiv, one of the most known beaches in Lofoten and one of the most beautiful. Although I have been there a lot of times by now I always find something new that inspires me to make new photographs.

Back from Iceland

By On · Add Comment

I’ve been home for one and a half week now after returning from my photographic trip to Iceland. The impressions of the whole thing is starting to sink in a bit. Iceland is truly a wonderful country for a landscape photographer. During my journey I’ve seen some stunning sceneries and experienced some real weather too. The latter being kind of an issue. Most parts of the trip was either windy, rainy or foggy. Or not uncommonly a combination of the three.

I’ve now started to go through the images which is not an easy task; a month of shooting resulted in 80 gigabytes of raw files. It will take some time to edit them down to a final selection, but I’ve already found some images that I’m really pleased with. These will be posted here soon as I get my new computer system up and running.

Preparations…

By On · 1 Comment

Right now I’m preparing for my upcoming trip to Iceland. I’m leaving on Tuesday and just wanted to share some thoughts here before I go. Upon each photographic trip I try to prepare myself as good as I can. I research the areas that I will visit to find out places of particular interest.

But going to a place for the first time, which is the case for me here, research can only be done to a certain point. No matter how many maps you study, no matter how many images you go through, no matter how much you read, one thing is certain; you don’t know what the place will feel like to you until you get there.

I will be in Iceland for a month. The first two weeks I will be on my own hiking around in the highlands. Then I will meet up with two fellow photographers and together we will rent a car drive across Iceland in search of photographs, but more importantly to see and experience the landscape. Good photographs, I believe, comes from a connection with the subject. As a landscape photographer I want to connect to the land. Only then can I make the place justice in a photograph.