RETURN TO LOFOTEN
Less than two weeks after returning from Lofoten I was heading out there again for a second workshop. As soon as I landed at Oslo it was immediately apparent that a lot of the snow from earlier in the month had disappeared, and then when I arrived in Lofoten, after a pretty windy final stage of the flight, I was amazed at how different the landscape was. After a rise in temperatures and some steady rainfall almost all of the snow had gone. Still, Lofoten is such an incredible place that even without snow and with moody weather, the landscape there is just great for photography.
For the first part of the workshop we had some pretty dire weather. Rain and very high winds, which made shooting pretty challenging, but there’s always something to shoot in Lofoten. It’s such a varied place and sometimes the heavy weather can really contribute to creating a fascinating mood.
And even amidst all the poor weather there were moments when the sun cut through giving us some fantastic storm light. There’s a clarity and a vivid saturated quality to this kind of light that really picks out the landscape that’s wonderful to shoot in.
The good light continued into the second part of the workshop and we were blessed with a fantastic sunset at Uttakliev beach.
The snow also finally returned, blanketing the landscape in white and giving us a chance to shoot some of the iconic locations of Sakrisøy with snow contrasting against the beautiful orange of the cabins.
And just to finish the workshop off perfectly, we were treated to a stunning display of the northern lights. At one point the light was so strong that it blew the highlights in the camera even with a 6 second shutter time, but eventually it calmed down to give a deep green glow to the whole sky. Sometimes when shooting the aurora it’s hard to find a foreground that is in the right place and so to avoid having a flat shot of just the sky, it works to have a figure in the image to give the scene some scale and context, as well as an focal point for the image.
I’m already looking forward to returning here next year with another workshop, it’s just one of those places that you can never get bored of shooting, there’s always something new to see and the changeable weather only adds to the experience.
