#justtwophotos
When it’s cold – -17 °C yesterday morning – and large parts of the Baltic Sea is still open ice fog forms over the sea. When this fog turns to the land hard rime will cover the bare trees making them look like fragile snow sculptures. A wonderful view.
Today? Thursday. A normal working day at my home office in Obbola, Sweden. Well – almost.
(1) There’s this incredible view from my home office.
(2) … and the possibility to take a small break and plunge through deep snow. First to our “own” bay Grundviken, then to the coast. The ice fog above the open sea glows in the rising sun.
(3) … and the after-work cross-country skiing on “Olles Spår” together with Annika. It’s -19 °C but as long as you are moving, you stay warm.
After that: Thai food. Then home. Hot shower. Outside temperature: -20.4 °C, this winter’s coldest day yet.
The first ski premiere was already last Saturday. We were not the only ones who read that Olles Spår, a cross country ski track northwest of Umeå was freshly prepared. The parking place was filled with eighty other cars when we arrived. We took the 5 km lap. Oh, so nice to be able to ski again!
Being back at the car there were even more cars. They filled the parking place and parked along the road as well. But at least one of the skiers didn’t came by car but by bike.
Today I had my backcountry premiere. I was so eager after the snowfall yesterday and last night.
It took some preparation. First I had to dig free the garage door to fetch the old skis (the new ones are in Tromsø). Then I had to thaw the door look of our house with a hair dryer to be able to lock the door. But finally I could start. I took the way to our beach Vitskärsudden but as expected it looked quite different from last week.
The car roads were cleared but there was just enough snow to ski. The plain was partly easy to ski, partly the snow was so loose that my skis went submarine. Here I heard and felt the first **whooop**, the sound of a larger area of snow settling under my weight. A clear sign of avalanche danger in the mountains but no problem here.
And then I arrived at the beach. While the sea was open again, the beach was only ice and snow. Probably the ice floes that prevented our previous winter bathing had been washed ashore yesterday morning, when we had a water level of +60 cm.
I decided to follow the shore to the left. I never went there before. There were snowdrifts where I sank to my knees with skis on and I know that there are a lot of rocks, but skiing went better than excepted.
Oh – so many motives. But this tour was only an extended lunch break from work. I didn’t have as much time as desired. Following the coastal line slowed me down because of the uneven and icy underground and finally I had to go back into the forest.
Anyhow I was slowed down even more in the forest because the snow was so loose that I got bogged down to the ground all the time and then my skis got caught in the underwood. I was glad when I reached a road again. Now I just headed back until I arrived home two hours later – later than planned.
And after the ski tour? Back to work!
Five days ago at Vitskärsudden, Annika’s and my favourite all-season bathing place looked like this:
Looks like bathing season would be over there soon, I thought but last night’s hard wind had crushed a lot of the sea ice along the coast. Annika and I packed our bathing things, wrapped ourselves up in warm winter clothes and headed to the beach for a winter bath.
Well, it didn’t look looked too promising, but I gave it a try. The first obstacle was the ice wall at the beach – at least half a metre high. Slowly I crossed it barefoot until with the last step the wall collapsed and I stood in the shallow water. Well, standing in water was part of the plan. Check.
Then a wave came. Not a huge one but nevertheless it covered me with sea spray from tip to toe. Brr! At the same time the wave pushed ice floes and crushed ice against my shin with more power than expected. The water was too shallow to knock me over but the sharp ice cut my shin on several places.
So I just shouted “Back!” to Annika in case of her making a try as well and instantly returned to the snowy beach to dry myself off and got dressed again. I’m glad, that I didn’t try it any longer. Probably I would have got so many cuts the I would look like a survivor of a piranha fight.
So – home again. No winter bath today.
Later I took the car to the same beach again to make some photographs. The pictures hardly transport the energy of the overlapping waves and the impression of wind and snowfall. Anyhow, here are some of the photos:
Was the action stupid? Well, perhaps. At least it wasn’t dangerous since we never planned to go into deeper water. So it’s more under to motto: “Another good idea that didn’t work!”
And suddenly, after some days with temperatures below -10 °C the Baltic Sea at our house has started to freeze over.
And suddenly even Vitskärsudden, the bay where Annika and I took a winter bath just two days ago is covered with ice, too.
December was an odd month regarding the weather. It was quite warm and extremely cloudy. There was hardly any sun and when it snowed it turned into sleet and rain. But at the turn of the year the weather finally changed. We got 10–15 cm of snow before New Year’s Eve, a short warmer period and then finally permanent frost. Right now, at the morning of 3 January the thermometer shows -12 °C.
Yesterday Annika and I made a short excursion to Strömbäck-Kont by the sea, where we took a promenade by the mostly open sea. It is 4 km linear distance to Strömbäck-Kont, but 30 km by car due to a long bay that separates the island Obbolaön where we live from the mainland in the west.
Some photos from our tour. The first 5 are made at Strömback-Kont, the other three in Degernäs on the way back.
It seems, that the shallow bay outside of our house is nameless. I cannot find any name in the maps of Lantmäteriet, OpenStreetMap, Eniro or Google. So I decided to give the bay a name today. From now on its name is “Grundviken” (shallow bay), at least in this blog.
After one millimetre of snowfall and waves crushing the thin ice on Grundviken it looked like this today. I shot the first photo at 9:30 and the second at 13:35.
The next wintry photos of Grundviken may take some time, since warmer temperatures and rain are forecasted for the rest of the week.
It was fresh in Obbola this morning. Blue sky and -6 °C. Time to take a break from my work and make some photos.
I went to a place with a better view on the sunrise at 8:41. I had however to wait a while because there was a layer of grey clouds above the horizon. Some locals in Skelleftehamn use to call this cloud layer vinterväggen – the winter wall – since it is quite dense like a wall and typical for the beginning of winter. But that’s not a common term.
So I had some spare time for crouching and taking this photo of the ice covered plant standing in the water – a reminiscence to the high water level the last days.
And then the sun finally rose above the vinterväggen and everything was illuminated in warm shades.
In the lunch break I took the car to “Obbola town” to have a pizza for lunch. Parts of the mouth of the river Umeälven were already covered with ice.
Sunset today was 14:11 but I was in online meetings from 13 to 15, so no sunset photos for today.
Why I write about this? Because without the Corona restrictions I would have worked in Tromsø today. And in Tromsø I wouldn’t have seen a sunrise. And neither for the rest of the year. That’s what the Norwegian weather service yr shows for Tromsø today:
Sun and moon, 27. Nov 2020 | Sun: ut is polar night, the sun does not rise.
So today is the first day of the period of polar night that will last until 14. January. Maybe I’ll be able to work in the office in Tromsø right after New Year. Then I’ll experience the polar night there. For the first time in my life.
This article is part of the series “2020-10: New in Tromsø”.
Ok everyone, let’s talk about making photos. I say “making” instead of “taking” on purpose. Photos are not lying around just waiting for you to pick up some of them. It’s you yourself that has to create a photo – or as I use to write to “make” it. It’s about two things: Your camera and your choices.
The better your camera equipment the more choices you have. Each piece gives you additional possibilities whether it is a telephoto lens, a flashlight or a sturdy tripod. Sometimes the choices can be overwhelming. Which photos do I want to make today? Landscape? Architecture? Sea birds? Night shots? People waiting at bus stops? Some of them? All of them? Phew!
I want to become a better photographer. To get better you have to practise. For me practising mostly means focussing on a certain aspect of the whole. This weekend I drastically reduced my possibilities. Instead of using my Nikon DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera) I used my new iPhone. Instead of the normal camera app I used an app called Lenka which only takes black and white photos with a fixed focal length (which means you cannot zoom). The only freedom I took was to post-process the photos by changing the contrast and the aspect ratio (and a bit more).
Here are the results. I’ll show the photos without any detailed comments.
I’m not content with the last photo. Maybe it’s because the house lacks three-dimensionality but I’m not sure. Beside from that it was real fun to use my self-set restrictions to get another kind of view on the motives around.
But no practising without a goal! My goal is to use the black-and-white photo app to train finding good motives and even when using my DSLR making full-color photos to be able to imagine how it will look black and white.
And you? What do you think about these photos? Criticism is welcome.