When I started out making pictures and putting them up on this website, I found over the years, that I’d get correspondence from all over the world. When I look back at the early days , I can still remember the first emailers. I had maintained a long standing dialog with them while I was an amateur myself.

Over the years while my own hobby turned gradually into my current profession, I had one or two stalwarts who maintained a beautiful correspondence with me. They never seemed to lose sight of me, nor I them.

One of those stalwarts was Vladimir Donkov.

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A young Bulgarian photographer, Vlad was busy carving a career for himself, and doing things in the photography world before he was 20 years old, that most of us in our 40’s are still dreaming about.

Vlad would email me perhaps once, maybe twice a year, just to check in, tell me about his own photographic journey. I’d never met him in person, but over those initial years of working on my own hobby and website, I felt I’d kind of got to know him well. To me, Vlad was and is still, someone I relate to because we share the same passion.

Then, in 2009, Vlad emailed me to tell me of his plans to go and shoot images in the Norwegian winter. Oooh, I’d always wanted to go and make images in the snow, and so I thought I would accompany Vlad on his journey there. For some reason, I was under the impression that he had invited me, but we have many jokes these days about how I actually invited myself along on his trip!

So in March 2010, I went to the Lofoten Islands, at the time, a still relatively unknown location for winter shooting and met up with Vlad. He was perhaps 24 years old at this time, and I was 42 years old. I kind of like to think it’s funny how the numbers are reversed. I was wary that he might think me an old bore, or that I find him too young or immature. I’m glad to say that I found a great friend in him (despite him probably finding me immature ;-)

Vlad was solely responsible for me coming to Norway’s Lofoten islands in winter, and I think he needs the recognition for being the one who started off what is now turning out to be a photographer’s winter paradise. Each month, I see images of Lofoten appear on my facebook page from amateurs and professionals that have been drawn to the place for the same reasons Vlad and myself love it. It is a stunningly beautiful and wild place.

Vlad emailed me today to let me know about a new project – a video – that he has been working on. He’s made a really nice video of his work in the Moskenes region of the Lofoten Islands and the video has been done in conjunction with the support of Hasselblad. The video is excellent, and I just want to share it with you, as I feel it’s inspiring to see him out there, in the Lofoten landscape, working his magic.

I think it’s fantastic when people realise their dreams, or have a ‘go-do’ attitude. Vlad clearly has this and is very much following his own path.

If you’d like to know more about Vlad, and see some of his work, his site is called VerticalShot.com.

I arrived in Reine, Lofoten a few days ago. Tonight I will be picking up my first group for the next week. The weather has been unseasonably mild, but there is plenty of snow here.

This is just a short post to send you all my little ‘post card’ from Reine.

I’ve got my trusty Mamiya 7II cameras with me on this trip, alongside a Lumix GX1 (fabulous little camera) and some fresh stock of Fuji Velvia. It’s been great returning back to my Mamiya 7II. It just feels so comfortable and there really is something to be said about working with a particular system for a very long period of time: it becomes almost an extension of you. Like a duck to water, I’m finding that although I haven’t really used the Mamiya 7II in a year, everything has come back to me like second nature.

I’ve given the Hasselblad system around a year and a half of dedicated time, to get to know, as I think it’s important to stay with a system for a while to get to understand its strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, to see what kind of impact it has on my image making. I do love square aspect ratio images, but I often find that if I’m going that way, I will simply crop my Mamiya 7II images to suit. I just think I’m really a rectangle shooter, that sometimes goes for square. It’s taken me a year or so to find that out. Just glad to return to a system that I feel works very well for me.

Ok, this posting is perhaps a ‘little out there’. So be warned :-)

I was sent through one of those e-mail circulars a few days ago, and in it, there was this graphic/photo of a big fish with a set of little red houses on top of it.

Lofoten, Norway?

As soon as I saw the image, It reminded me immediately of my friend Lilian’s house in the beautiful town of Reine, Lofoten. It was almost an immediate association I made with her home and with the Lofoten islands in general.

I sent the image to Lilian and asked her ‘did you know you live on top of a big fish’?

I think the reason why I made the immediate association is because of a few things: Lofoten is surrounded in fish. It is in their culture, their history and there are fish drying racks everywhere you go. So the theme of fish is quite prominent. But what really made me think about Lofoten was the little red houses on top of the fish in the image. They are exactly like the red-painted fisherman Rorbu huts you see dotted all about Lofoten.

Ok, I’m sure some of you may be thinking that I’ve left the planet here a bit, but not so. If you consider how I’ve made those associations, you’ll see that it’s all about symbols. I saw this image and thought ‘fish’ and ‘red houses’ and my mind made a very quick association to the Lofoten Islands. It was also an immediate response too, which I think is worth considering.

I often find while I’m in the landscape making images, that there are ‘symbols’ everywhere. Things that remind us of other places, of events perhaps. Sometimes I’m not sure why I’ve been drawn to a particular spot and I’m sure it’s all subconscious.

But I think it’s worth thinking about how us Photographers are first and foremost visual people. We interpret our surroundings by what we see. But we also interpret our surroundings by responding to the symbolic nature of objects we find within our field of view. And often times, these trigger emotions within us.

As soon as I saw this image, I had very warm thoughts of my friend Lilian, living her happy life on the little peninsula, in perhaps one of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever spent time in.

I think that’s just magic that our visual senses can take to us to another place.

If you’d like to read more about one of my ‘associations’, I wrote about photographing a piece of ice earlier this year in Iceland. The piece of ice reminded me of an animal. You can read that post here.

This will be my last post for the next few days, as I’ll be on the Isle of Arran tomorrow for a week, conducting a photographic workshop.

In the meantime, I thought I’d leave you all with this image that I shot in Lofoten islands, Norway – this March.

Sakrisøy, Lofoten, Norway, March 2013

I love to shoot during the cusp between night and day, as I often find the light to give the landscape an otherworldly look and feel. It is as these times when the light is so special that I lose myself in my imagination. I think that’s what we all strive to do with our landscape photography ultimately…. it’s that passion for being outside, experiencing the elements that we are chasing. I also have to say that I find I feel very ‘alive’ at these moments. So I think that’s why I love shooting in twilight and just at the cusp of sunrise.

In this respect, this is what I’m seeking in my images: to depart from the norm, to show a scene that conjures up a mood or a feeling that we have. To create something new and emotional. I’m not really interested in whether it is ‘accurate’. It just has to have some form of ‘essence’ for me. In this case, I think this image takes me into a dream-like world, and for that reason alone, it does have an ‘essence’.

This image was taken at one of the many times I’ve been down at the waters edge of Reinefjorden.

Reinefjorden, Reine, Norway

I can’t seem to stay away from the place, and I’ve shot it under vastly different lighting. The above shot was taken in February as part of a Safari I was running. We did come back in March too, and we got the light you see in the image below:

Reinefjorden, March

Quite a marked difference in light. Partly to do with the sun being more directional, hitting the edges of the Lofoten ‘wall’, this shot was very much a ‘throw-away’ effort at the time. But I’m glad I decided to stay put and just shoot. Literally a minutes walk from where we were staying, it was from a slightly different vantage point. But it was the same fjord, and the same mountains, just from a slightly different angle, and with much different light.

But I also shot this image in March too, of the same fjord:

Reinefjorden, March

But I think the last image is more a ‘standard’ landscape image. It shouts ‘vista-shot’, which is no bad thing, but just perhaps a little too ‘expected’ for my own liking. I much prefer the first two efforts as in each of them, there is a very strong message that I feel is less evident in this shot.

I think that what I’m striving for in every image I make, is some form of presence, or individuality. Certainly the first two are very unique. The first is mostly a play on lighter tones and calm reflections, with a dominant mountain in the frame, while the second image is mostly about directional, moody light.

Returning to the same location time and again, always yields something new, because each time the location is new. We are reactionary beasts and in photography, I feel that means we react very much to the differences in the quality of light – if we choose to observe, and notice those differences.

Just a quick post tonight.

This image is of my favourite mountain in the Lofoten islands – Oldstind. We had some spectacular light in February (there’s no guarantee what you’ll get, any month).

Red Morning, Reine, Lofoten

I love simplified compositions and anything that is distracting should be thrown out. You’d think that having loads of stones in the foreground would be distracting, but for me, I’m always looking for uniformity. They all are very much alike, that my eye quickly absorbs them. That, I feel, is the key to good images – nothing should really jar with your eye’s movement through the frame. It also helps that the snow is of similar tonal ranges to the mountains in the mid-ground. And of course, the light was spectacular this particular morning. Really something.

Enjoy your weekend. Many more ‘wintry’ images to come over the next few weeks as I work through my backlog.

I’m just starting to work through my backlog of images from my last two (recent) safaris to the Lofoten Islands this February and March.

Ytterpollen, Lofoten Islands, February, 2012

I loved the simplicity of these little ferns in the bay of Ytterpollen. It’s normally full of reflections of the background mountains, but when we got here in February, the entire bay was frozen over. While the group were eating their packed lunch out of the boot of the car, I made this shot at the roadside on my Hasselblad.

I love shooting shallow depth of field at the moment. Being able to see through the lens is a luxury for me, after spending so many years working with a rangefinder (which i still love very much).

Anyway, I’m looking forward to going back to Lofoten in 2013. I published dates for two consecutive safaris in February this morning, and all the spaces were sold out within four hours.

I’ll be back with more images from my trips, as the days progress. But right now, I’m off to watch some telly and enjoy some time at home. Enjoy your weekend!

Last night we had the biggest blizzard on the Lofoten islands (read Blizzard, not Lizzard!). It was so bad, that there was zero visibility on the roads and there were a few moments when I had to stop the car in the middle of the road, because I simply couldn’t see where I was going.

Winter Storm, Hamnøy, Lofoten Islands

Needless to say, my flight and the following three other ones got cancelled. I’ve been to Lofoten a few times now, always in Winter, and not had any cancellations, but even the locals were saying the weather conditions were something else last night.

So I’m stranded here in Norway until Thursday, and will be spending a lot of free time roaming around Bodo, which seems like a nice town (i’ve only ever seen it in the dead of night when coming in from Oslo en-route to Lofoten).

But if you’re reading this and thinking ‘sounds terrible’, then you should also consider that the reason why the Lofoten is so amazing to photograph in winter, is precisely because of the dramatic shifts in the weather. If you want to shoot dramatic light, then you have to do it at the edge of a storm, and storms mean bad weather. They also mean unpredictable weather, and it’s this unpredictability that you have to accept (and to some degree – hope for). Things won’t always go according to plan and having an open mind to this, and the surprises it might give to your photography is a start, but you also have to consider you might not get home on time either.

So if you are considering going anywhere like Lofoten in winter time (maybe Alaska, or even the Scottish Highlands), it’s always worth giving yourself plenty of contingency time to change flights if need be.

We’ve become too used to having things work on time, and in my own case, I’ve just been reminded that nature does not conform to timetables.

Today was the last day of my little photo-safari trip with a group of 4 to the Lofoten Islands.

Oldstind, Lofoten

These shots were made during last March and December’s trips. March’s trip had a lot of dramatic snow storms, while December’s trip was calm and serene. This February was a mixture of both, and I felt that I captured a lot more scenes that weren’t presented to me during my last two trips.

Reinevågen

We had a terrific time, and the weather really played ball – ranging from still reflections in the Reinevågen fjord over a couple of mornings, to blizzards where we were still out shooting in the most veiled light. It seems, that just about any kind of light here, is good light.

Reinevågen

I’d like to say a big thank you to Lilian at the guesthouse ‘det gamle hotellet’ in Reine for our stay. Lilian is an excellent host. Good company which I’m sure everyone on the trip will attest to, as well as a great cook too. Each day we had a really nice breakfast and found all our packed lunches for the day ready to go before we’d even got up from the table.

Utakleiv beach

So I’d like to thank Celena from Australia, Mike from England, Peter from Switzerland and Steve from Canada for coming along on this trip – some of them made some pretty big journeys to join me here. They were very good company, and I had a really nice time too running the trip and showing them some of my favourite locations in Lofoten.

I’m in Lofoten, Norway right now, with a small group, and we had a really great Aurora display last night.

In the image below, you can see the aurora behind our little guesthouse that we are staying in, right in the center of Reine.

Det Gamle Hotellet, Reine, image © Peter Boehi

Thanks to Peter Boehi for letting me use this picture.

We’re having the most beautiful light each day too. So the trip is going well and I’m really enjoying showing everyone around Lofoten.