After four days with just a glimpse of the sun, I was beginning to think that my trip was going to turn out just like it did in 2023. Barely a glimpse of the sun during my entire time shooting on the Lofoten Islands. The 7 hour layover in Copenhagen...the cancelled flight out of Bodo due to the wind...It took two and a half days to get here and now my trip was already almost half over and WHERE was the light?
So...yeah. I was grumpier than usual as I set off from my Airbnb. As I made my way down through a small fishing village, I kept staring at the clouds on the horizon. Yet another day with no sunrise. Stupid clouds...
And then...a bit of pink on one of the clouds. Not wanting to spook it off, I crept up through the deep snow to this small corner of the fjord. Sure enough, the clouds were breaking and the entire sky began to light up in front of me.
And then...it just kept going! I hiked out to the coast and shot the coast! I came back and shot this small lagoon from the other side! I shot the entire fishing village! And the light was STILL GOING! I knew the sun was lower in the sky in early February, but this was SIX SOLID HOURS of great light! Good light is like crack for me. I just can't stop. And yet...after several hours, I finally tore myself away...and HAD LUNCH! And the light was still good!
So jealous of the residents on the Lofoten Islands. The rest of my trip went by in a blur, but I was able to take advantage of incredible light for a few more days before my trip was over. Episode III of "Winter On The Lofoten Islands", detailing the windstorm that took out the power in the whole archipelago, my ticket in a blizzard, and other adventures will go up soon on YouTube, so if you are interested in checking that out, please head on over at the link below. :)
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Thank you so much for your views and/or comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Nusfjord Lofoten Lofoten Islands Winter Snow Sunrise
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Getting to the Lofoten Archipelago this year proved to be a much bigger challenge than last year. The 7 hour layover in Copenhagen was kind of a bummer, but nothing compared to the our cancelled flight out of Bodo at 11 PM after gale force winds arrived. After spending the night on a bench in the airport, we snuck in a quick flight in a heavy snow storm before the next round of heavy winds blew in for the next two days. By 9 AM on the following day, the power was out almost everywhere in the Islands.
In spite of several setbacks, the weather this year was a thousand times better than what I had last year. Last year, it RAINED for 10 days and I came home with almost no shots at all. This year, it snowed literally every day that I was there after the monster wind storm left, and I actually saw the SUN for more than 10 minutes at a time! My 12 days of shooting flew by in a blur of Rorbu cabins, aquamarine coastlines, 6 hour sunset/sunrises, snow covered massifs, roads that were way too small, pizza, frostbite, dead batteries and major traffic jams (due to cars and trucks that had careened off of the road).
The other big difference this year was that I was able to use my drone after registering it and completing the online training for Europe/Norway. While I was very happy with the shots that I came home with, I am really looking forward to sharing the video footage from the drone. That footage, along with a ton of other video content, will be coming out soon in an upcoming episode on my youtube channel, so please feel free to visit my channel at the link below if you are interested. (My first two Lofoten episodes went up about 9 months ago.)
Speaking of which, this is officially the first drone shot that I have posted on flickr. This was taken on my last day on the islands and on my apps, it looked like the only viable light for the day was going to be going off back down in Reine. I was tempted to try to make it to the top of the hill above Sakrisoy, but past experience has been that it is always a good idea to shoot the light before it disappears. I pulled over, put the drone in the air, and started shooting. Sure enough, the light pretty much died a few minutes later.
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Thank you so much for your views and/or comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Lofoten Winter Snow Reinefjorden Reine Sakrisoy Sunset
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Winter is easily my favorite season to shoot in Yosemite National Park. On this particular morning, all of my weather apps were telling me that there would be 100 percent cloud cover at sunrise and that it would be best to sleep in and just not bother heading out. As I sat in Yosemite Lodge looking out at the snow coming down, it suddenly began to get a bit lighter over toward the falls. By the time a tiny patch of blue appeared over towards the East, my boots were on and I was trying to plow my Prius through several inches of newly fallen snow. (Even with chains, the Prius can only handle about 4 inches before it begins to bottom out.) After sliding into a parking spot, I quickly beat a path down toward the Merced River and I arrived just as the sun rose over the ridge, lighting up the newly fallen snow.
My latest youtube episode features this winter scene and several others like it as it covers trips to a snow-covered Yosemite in 2017, 2019 and 2021. 2019 was a particularly fun year as I got snowed in, arriving in the park just as they closed the roads behind me. If you would like to check out this episode, please feel free to visit my youtube channel at the link below.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Yosemite Winter Snow Merced Half Dome
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In my most recent youtube episode, I complained at length about the non-stop rain that I ran into on my recent trip to Senja in Northern Norway. There were many days in a row when I would look out the window of my Airbnb and then look at the forecast and seriously consider just watching Netflix and giving up on any kind of a photo while I was there. But I knew from experience that all you really need is 2 minutes of light to go from something drab and horrible to something amazing. So… I loaded up the car and set off in the pouring rain for my FIFTH attempt at finding a break in the clouds at Tungenesset. It was coming down in buckets on the way there and it came down even harder as I parked. I grew frustrated as squall after squall blew in with only about 5 minutes between…just enough time to get the tripod set up…and then take it down. After an hour or so of this, I just covered the camera, hunched down in the rain, and just waited it out. As one of the final squalls finished blowing over, the sky suddenly erupted in the West as the sun found a small crack and lit the sky on fire. As rain was still continuing to fall, it was a challenge to keep the rain off of the lens, but I kept wiping and shooting for the few brief moments that the sun was able to break through. All too soon, the sun disappeared, the wind picked up, and it was time to call it a day.
I left the one individual in the shot as I felt he was staring in awe at the sky, and for some reason, the James Taylor title seemed to work here.
If you would like to see what happened on the second half of my Autumn trip to Northern Norway, please feel free to visit my youtube channel at the link below. If you do make it over there, be sure to say hi. :)
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Tags: Senja Norway Autumn Sunset
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I just got back from an early Autumn trip to Senja and Lofoten in Norway. This trip was a bit more challenging than usual as I caught some sort of virus, fought off a fever, drove back to the airport to pick up a bag that was left behind by Finnair, and then slipped on a rock and threw my back out. Oh…and it rained 13 out of the 14 days I was there, LOL.
In spite of the craziness, I had an amazing time shooting while I was there. On most days, I was lucky if the sun broke through at all, but toward the end of my trip, the sky finally opened up a bit and I was able to get some shots. On this particular morning, I had just driven through the night to Lofoten down from Senja. I arrived at 3:30 AM, got an hour of sleep, re-parked since the Reinebringen parking was closed, and set off in the dark while it was still raining at 4:30 AM. In spite of my stupid back, I grunted out all 1566 steps to reach the top before sunrise. Even in the blue hour, the view from up there is spectacular. The official sunrise came and went and I was a bit bummed until I remembered that in September, the angle of the sun can remain low much longer at sunrise and sunset as the midnight sun is still transitioning back as it moves to the South. Suddenly, without much warning, the sun burst through and lit up the ridge in front of me. I shot my butt off before slowly descending the 1566 steps back down.
My adventures from this trip will be up on youtube soon, so if you’d like to see more of what happened behind the scenes, please feel free to follow me at the link below. I’ve uploaded two more episodes since my last post which include chasing thunderstorms in the Canadian Rockies and the first half of my trip to Austria and the Dolomites.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
Youtube | Instagram | Blog | Website | Facebook | 500px | Twitter
Tags: Norway Reine Reinebringen Sunrise Autumn Lofoten
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