Sometimes it’s simply all about observing the quality of the light. Whilst in Lofoten last December, I remember standing on the frozen beach at Flakstad, and watching the mountain you see in the distance being illuminated in the twilight. The mountain had a ghostly effect to the upper ridges of it, which I feel, I haven’t really managed to convey in this edit so far.

Flakstad

But I think one of the aspects about image making, is to not be too possessive of it. Let it be what it is. I don’t consider images failures, just different personalities from the ones I’d hoped for. You can’t force your children to be something they’re not.
I did however, find during the editing of this collection of images, that I seemed to go for a more uplifting, brighter feeling. I think this has a lot to do with how I felt on the days during the editing, and my general frame of mind. There was the occasional image though, that didn’t really fit uplifting, and required a darker mood to it, to convey what I felt at the time – that of deep crimson tones in the sky and landscape, as you can see here in this photo of Oldstind mountain.

Red morning, Oldstind, Lofoten

The edits are nice, and I’m happy with them. But comparing them to the images I shot last March is interesting. I’ve noticed that there is much more drama in the edits from last March, and that is down to the fact that the weather was completely wild back then. I was getting snow and sleet thrown at my lens and I often had to run for cover during the shoots. You can’t force your images to be moody and dramatic if the subject wasn’t. As much as I love the edit of Oldstind above, it’s still a rather pleasing, calm photograph.

So I’ll be back in Lofoten this week for a personal shoot, before I meet my clients for the trip I’m doing with them. I’m curious to see just how different the light will be.

As photographers, we respond, first and foremost to light, and that is purely dependent on the elements around us.

Do you ever have those moments, when you see something from your car window and you go ‘ooh, that looks good’, but for some unknown reason, you decide against stopping?

I often find myself doing just that, and on the occasions when I force myself to stop, I very rarely actually carry out the entire motivation. There seems to be some form of weighing up the effort of stopping the car, walking back to the location that grabbed my eye, against the effortless motive to keep on going…..

I could perhaps turn this question around and ask – how many photos are made near the roadside? Should we not call landscape photography ‘car boot photography’ or ‘lay by photography’?

The image above, taken just outside Leknes, in Lofoten was one of those occasions where I saw something, and thought it looked like a great photo, but passed on by. I did it several times, and each time I did it, I wondered why I did, and why I was also, each time, attracted to the location.

I have a theory. Some places are very magnetic. You can’t stay away from them. They tend to be iconic, and require very little effort in recognising that there is something of value there. Other places, like my little photo above, are anonymous. They don’t register in the same way that iconic places do. But they’re beautiful in their own, understated way.

I loved the collection of little red buildings on the far left shore, and there was some minimalism evident to me in the space the sky and water provided. I needed to experience this for myself, and so I parked the car down a side road on a sheet of ice, walked precariously back onto the main road and set up my camera on a steep embankment overlooking the bay. I get myself out there by telling myself that it’s beautiful to just sit and watch the landscape, even if there’s no stunner of a photography behind the motivation.

And once I was there, I just grew into the moment.

I’ll be heading back to Norway – the Lofoten islands specifically, this coming Sunday for a two week trip. I’ll be running my first photographic safari out there – that’s right – a safari. Don’t worry, I won’t be wearing any khaki outfits, shorts, with a net to catch some wild hippos, I’ll just be giving an excited group of four, a whirlwind tour of the parts I love to photograph in the Lofoten.

I do however, have a week before the group arrive, in which to make my own images. I was in Lofoten last March and December and both yielded very different kinds of images. I’m told by my friends in Lofoten (who make up an unlikely bunch – Australian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Russian), that each month the light there is so different. So I’m looking forward to that.

I’ll also be visiting a polar centre, that specialises in tours around the Aurora. It would be great to finally see it in all it’s glory, but well… that is down to the fate of the lucky stars I’m afraid.

Of course, there’s always another point of view, or interpretation of the same location. That mountain – Geitelva, across the water from Fredvang is quite a formidable character, and I was always looking for vantage points to photograph him.

Geitelva, near Fredvang, Lofoten, December

Driving into Fredvang one evening, there was so little light, that I felt that I was always reaching for the area of the sky where the light was. It took me to a little outcrop, just across the water from Geitelva. You wouldn’t know it, but right behind me, where I made this shot, was a fishing factory. I could hear the loud muffled blare of a radio playing Norwegian electronic dance music. The electronic dance music seemed to accompany me in my car throughout my week’s stay in Lofoten – and it was the best radio I’ve heard in a long while. Still…. from looking at the shot, you wouldn’t get the idea that there was a bit of a din going on behind me (even though I liked it, since it kept me company for this 20 minute exposure).

Eggum

On a different day, the light levels were much more appealing. The cloud cover had gone and with it, the sunrise of 11am and sunset of 1pm didn’t feel so short. The day was full of pink light wherever I went and I found it quite a challenge not to rush. I would be at a location, wondering if I should move on soon, because normally, this sort of light doesn’t last long in Scotland. Half an hour, maybe 10 minutes…. but here in Lofoten, it was lasting for hours. This shot is of a large frozen bay up near Eggum.

Oldstind, across from Sakrisøy

There’s a temptation to make everything dark and moody, but sometimes the scene demands a lighter touch, as in the case of this photo of perhaps my favourite mountain in the whole wold – Oldstind. The weather was unusually calm for most of my stay on Lofoten, which isn’t what I tend to prefer. I like drama and mood, but I always remind myself there is beauty in everything, whether it’s an overcast day, or a bright, almost colourless day like this one. It’s really about me bending to the landscape, rather than it bending to me.

I’m slowly working my way through my images from Lofoten, shot this past December.

Geitelva, near Fredvang, Lofoten, December

I love the process. Scanning images, allows me time to review what I shot on my light table. I take each sheet of film out and work on that, one at a time, and I don’t race. I don’t delve further down into the collection of films until I’m complete with the top sheet. It’s a very relaxing way to work. The scanner whirs and clicks away in the back ground, and while it is busy scanning the currently chosen image, I study the ones that are currently grabbing my eye.

And every now than then, the collection of scanned and edited images are reviewed. I use LightRoom – just as a catalog preview machine. It’s nice to load up all the images and rate them. Some make the grade more so than others. Take the image above of Geitelva, a mountain near Fredvang (fantastic name for a place, don’t you think?). I’m not too sure about this one. I love the mountain, but I shot this under very unsatisfactory conditions. Fading light and a severe lack of colour. It does have a mood though, so It might get through to the last selection, but somehow, I don’t think so.

This is the point really. I can’t tell until the entire edit is done. Like a story being told, it can only be understood once all the characters in it have been presented and explained. As I add new images to the collection, it feels as though it begins to steer in a new direction. ‘Ah, so it’s going to be that kind of portfolio?’ I’ll hear myself exclaim. If the images are overly light, then I can see that the whole feel of the collection is going towards a more lighter mood, but then two days later, the images I’m working on are taking a more darker mood, and that seems to steer the collection in a new direction…. and then I find that some images work better than others.

I feel that making a collection of images work together is all about the collection being ‘greater than the sum of its parts’. It should be cohesive, work together, and feel like it all belongs.

That’s why I don’t rush home to edit. It’s also why I let the images sit for a few weeks after the edit, to see how I feel. Sometimes things I didn’t see at the time of the edit start to grate. I may be aware that something feels ‘on edge’ about a particular image, and that’s often the sign that it either doesn’t fit the collection, or requires further adjustment…..

I’m off to take a break now.

I’m just getting a chance to sit down and go over all the new images I’ve shot since December. For those of you who haven’t been following me, I spent a while in Lofoten, Norway this December shooting, followed by a trip to Iceland. I’ve got around 70 rolls of film to go through.

Here are som of the first I’ve looked at, and thought it would be nice to share a scene with you :-)

Uttakleiv

I think these are only preliminary edits. I don’t think I’ve found my ‘flow’ yet. I sometimes find when it comes to getting back to editing work, it takes me a while to reach a space in my head where I’m at ease with what I’m doing, and I feel I’m building something that fits my mood of how I felt at the time I was on location. Sometimes the edits drive me, and other times I drive the editing. I’m sure it will all settle down in a day or so.

vågspollen

I’ve spent quite a while in the cold this past few months, and there are still a few more trips to come that will require me hanging around in the white, minus stuff for a while too. Vågspollen is a beautiful place and I had to climb down from the road to the waters edge to get this shot.

Uttakleiv

I’ve seen quite a few images mangled by using the Hasselblad – the film backs do not perform in the cold and tend to slip. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to check the film has wound on fully (it will still take the image, as it’s like a clutch that is slipping), and simply give the winder a little help by moving on the film a little bit manually until it reaches the next counter position.

One has to ask – why does each piece of equipment have a ‘gotcha’ feature or in the case of the Hasselblad system ‘gotcha feature set’ built in? Only by using the stuff for long enough can you get familiar and overcome the quirks of a system.

I’ll be back to show you some more images over the next few weeks I’m sure, as I continue to work my way through the backlog :-)

I’m just back home from Norway, and I found it colder here in Edinburgh than I did in Lofoten. We had no storms while I was there, but that doesn’t mean that Lofoten escaped some of the mad weather we’ve experienced lately. There is a lot of damage to the coast line, and some of the beautiful little red huts (Rorbu), have been damaged.

Reine, March winter sunrise, 2011

I’m glad I went to Lofoten this December. Each day was completely different in light levels, and this made a big impact on my mood each day. I know we respond to light in lots of ways, and we often express how we receive light by our own moods.

Some days were filled with gorgeous pink hues, that lit up the newly arrived snow. The locals told me that if it weren’t for the recent snow, the days would be very dark indeed. The snow provides reflection of light and coupled with a cloudy sky, the light bounces around the landscape. I certainly noticed this, because the first few days there were so dark, miserable even, and I really felt as if was going to be a very long week in Lofoten. When the snow arrived, along with clearer skies, I found the day was so much brighter. But when I say brighter, it was still at the brightness level of dusk or dawn… yes, my eyes had become accustomed to experiencing low light, so any conditions where I saw colour or something that suggested ‘white’, gave me a heightened sense of contrast, but I knew that the new contrast levels I was experiencing each day were considerably lower than those I’d see normally.

By Wednesday, the sun was no long rising above the horizon, and therefore, it never set too. I had wondered how the light levels would be affected, and thought I would experience a constant twilight of extreme low light levels, but this too, did not happen.

In short, I felt this week was extremely productive and a great way to shoot the most beautiful parts of the day: Imagine a day where sunrise and sunset are separated by an hour or so, or in some cases, it seems that the entire day from 11am to 2pm is on constant long sunrise-set !

So I’m home for a week, but will be off to Iceland later this month, to catch up on some more shooting there.

This was written at the beginning of this week. I’m currently back in the Lofoten islands, Norway. It is now a week later, and I’ve experienced so much different light than the kind I describe in the draft posting I wrote earlier this week, which I hope to share with you in a few days time. Until then, read on…..

hamnøy, Lofoten, March 2011

This week, I’m back in Lofoten, Norway. Sunrise is at 10:50am and it set again at 12:57.

When my friend Lilian suggested I come here to experience Morkid (the dark time) I was intrigued. I thought it might bring some new dimension to how I look at things around me and how I perceive light in general.

Today is the first day that I’ve been outside with my camera. Because the sky is heavy with dark clouds, the entire landscape feels much more low in mood.

There were a few things that happened today, which I feel I’ve learnt about the light in Norway. It seems that everything here is the inverse of how I normally work with light. I favour cloudy skies because of the reduced contrast. Clouds also help light bounce around the landscape, making everything appear to be lit from the ground up. Clouds also make for interesting skies.

Here in Lofoten, there was so much cloud cover today that I felt really hemmed in. I had a feeling of claustrophobia and tiredness because the light levels were so low. However, the light levels at sunset appeared to be brighter, and I felt more alert and happier than I did during the middle of the day. I think this was because having such low light levels in the middle of the day felt very strange to me. It was as if my body clock didn’t quite know where to place itself, and once sunset began, it was as if I found my timing and things were back on track. It also however, felt brighter at sunset today, simply because the cloud cover dispersed and I was able to see colours in the sky. There were reds and blues that I had not detected during the low mood of the rest of the day, and as subtle as they were, I found my eye reaching for them.

My mood was also affected by what I experienced today. I had no idea that we could yearn for the sun so badly. I’ve only been here a few days, and I’m not aware of missing the sun just yet, so it was interesting to find that instead of wishing to photograph away from the sun, as is my normal practice, I wanted to chase where the sun was, keep heading for it, and also point my camera in its direction also.

I had never considered that we are like plants that need to be fed by the suns rays. Nor had I considered that the sun would be so central to my sense of wellbeing and belonging. Because there was so little colour today, when I did detect some very subtle shades of blue and red in the sky (almost non detectable), they had me routed to my spot, attempting to drink them in with my eyes. I felt that light and colour was out of reach, something just off shore, a little bit out of distance from me, and I looked upon them with a sense of wonder. I found my spirits were extremely uplifted by the spectacle of noticing some subtle colour in the sky.

I feel I’ve learned a little bit more about my attraction to light. When there is very little of it, what is there, behaves as a beackon, a source of inspiration and happiness to me. I seem to find my mood is immensely affected by light or the lack of it. I’m not surprised that there are many stories in the world where good and evil are signified by light and darkness.

Postscript: It’s been a few days since I wrote this, and I’ve shot quite a lot of film, in very different light. Each day seems to be entirely different and I’ve seen dark days that were so dark I didn’t really feel happy about things, to beautiful days with magenta skies and pink snow for 4 hours of daylight a day and it’s been really stunning to shoot in it.

I took my Mamiya 7II system along with my Hasselblad 500CM with me to Norway, and I’ve not used the Mamiya at all. I’m really pleased to have found time to focus on getting into the Hasselblad. I find that the square aspect ratio is ’shaking up’ my photography style a little and making me look differently at the landscape. I also like the entirely mechanical aspect of the camera. I’ve been making exposures into the minutes and even beyond 10 minutes at times here, and it’s nice to know there is no battery drain happening while I do it. I’m feeling very enthused by the change of camera. I guess we all need to try new things once in a while, and certainly by using a camera with different features, or a different aspect ratio, it really does exercise the brain into working on compositions in a different way.

I still love my Mamiya 7II camera, and I won’t be parting with it, but just like the Contax 645 system I have for making portraits, I feel that the Hasselblad this week has allowed me to expand what I do, and reach a little further into longer exposures and to think differently about composition.

pps. The sun is now rising at 11:30am and setting at 12:23pm!

Tomorrow, I head to the airport, for a long overdue break.

I know… you probably think that I simply spend all my time making images and having a great time. But the truth is that I spend all my time making images, and having a great time. Ok, only joking, the truth is, that I’ve hardly had any time this year to make my own images.

Five days in Lofoten, Norway, March 2011

I have a photography workshop business to run, and that requires me to be there for my clients, and work with them while we’re on location. Doing workshops is extremely satisfying, but also very demanding of my time, and once i’m done with a workshop, I’m often looking forward to heading home for some down time. So recently, I’ve been thinking that I don’t often get the chance I’d like to make images.

So I’m heading back to Lofoten tomorrow for a break. I’m looking forward to catching up with my Lofoten friends whom I met through my friend Vlad earlier this year when I made the collection of images you see above. I love to mix my photographic trips with social occasions if I can, as I feel that since I became a full time pro, that I seem to spend my time away from friends and family a lot.

So I thought I’d leave you all with this little postcard of images that I shot last March. I don’t think there will be any snow there, but certainly, a lot of very changeable light, not to mention late rises (yes!) as sunrise is around 11am and it sets around 3pm in the evening. Ideal really, as the best light is around sunrise and sunset, so with a schedule like this, there’s not much waiting around.

I will be back in touch once I’m home. But I won’t be back for long, as I’ll be heading back to Iceland (very) late December to take advantage of the low light and shoot in the south east of the country. I feel I have two possible future projects for new books on the horizon, but I’ll wait until the current book, which is more or less a retrospective of my work, has had a good chance to be viewed and enjoyed by you all.

Speak soon.

In a few weeks time, I’ll be back in Reine, Lofoten for around 11 days. The trip is really to catch up with friends and also, to spend some time photographing Lofoten in the winter months before the snow comes next year.

Reine - image © Vladimir Donkov, VerticalShot.com

I was chatting to my friend Vlad today and he emailed me this photo of Reine, Lofoten from a trip he did there recently. It was really nice to hear from him, and also to see a recent photograph of Reine. I feel as if it is a home from home.

As we were chatting, I remembered that Vlad also sent me this photograph of the Aurora, witnessed from our friends house in Reine. It happened just a few nights after I’d left to come home. Vlad was still there, and I couldn’t believe he’d seen the Aurora happen from the balcony of the house I’d just left.

Aurora above Reine - image © Vladimir Donkov, VerticalShot.com

Of course, there is no guarantee about seeing the Aurora, and any photographic workshop that promises it, is to be avoided. It is a rare thing, and you really need a lot of time, and luck, to see it.

If you would like to see some more of Vlad’s work (he’s a really lovely chap too – he has a bit of a deep soul to him), then please view his gallery. Vlad also has a facebook page, which you should check out too.

Many thanks to Vladimir Donkov for letting me use his photographs, while I have no new ones to present.