April weather by the sea Apr 9 2021

Yesterday at lunch break: The sky is blue and the sun illuminates our little bay. After last nights frost it is still covered with fragile, transparent ice. I stand ashore and take a photo of some ice floes. The inner part of the bay behind me is still covered with thick, old winter ice you can walk on.

Today at lunch break: The weather forecast of SMHI was right: a hard and gusty wind drives wet snow from the sea. The water level is more than 60 cm over normal. (Remember: no tides in the Baltic Sea). The breaking waves have broken all the ice that yesterday still covered the bay and wash the ice floes ashore.

Impossible to make a photo without spray on the lens! Therefore you can see some pale bubbles on the photos.

I stepped from one large ice floe to the other. They float and move under my feet, they raise and fall with the waves but they are still stable enough to bear my weight.

And so looks our house from the middle of our bay Grundviken:

Time to show some more abstract black and white images that I made today. One of the wooden barrel (or whatever it is), almost covered by the sea. Another one of the snow bucketing down from the low hanging clouds.

Four icy points of view Dec 11 2016

Another clear and cold day today with temperatures round -14 °C. This time I took the car to the coast of Fäbodarna near Burvik. The Baltic Sea was partly open, party covered with drifting pancake ice. Today I tried different approaches of taking (and editing) photos which the goal to only show water, ice, air and light.

Landscape

How to show landscape without showing anything other then the elements above. Well, I failed since I wanted the sun within the image and there were trees at the horizon. The only chance was to use a wide angle and go close to the motive to decrease the size of the forest line. (I had one foot in the water and had the camera so low, that I had to lift it up for every tiny wave rolling in.)

Architecture

I didn’t plan to make architectural photos but when I found this group of icicles I thought it looked like an old Greek temple or a portico. Again I had to lower the camera, the icicles weren’t so large.

Contrasts

Quite often I think, that I should make more black and white photographs. Today I started again. Especially when it comes to extreme contrasts I really like the reduction to black, grey and white. This type of photo however demands a bit more effort on the viewer’s side.

Abstract

Mostly I walked on different types of ice, each with it’s own structure and texture. Some where as clear as glass, others were composed of ice needles. I stood on the ice and tried to adjust the camera perpendicularly. This image became black and white as well and I increased the contrast a lot to make the textures more visible. After editing I started to see a cubistic figure in the photo. This was not intended but I guess that most people unconsciously try to see concrete things in abstract art.

Between ice and spring Apr 16 2016

Flood along the Skellefteälven Dec 6 2015

The river Skellefteälven had much water today. Water level was 87 cm above normal according to a hiker I met at the river today. The hiker had to turn because parts of the way were still under water just as the ground besides.

It was funny walking on this “way” – the ground was frozen, 15 cm water above, slightly frozen over, too. I even saw a fish fleeing my rubber boots under the thin ice cover. And I was so glad about my crampon-like spikes, that I had with me, since the ground was almost frictionless.

After a grey morning the weather was nice with blue sky and sun, but still much too warm for the season. I really wonder how the river succeeds in freezing over when it’s hardly frosty. I also wonder why the river ice can rise almost 90 centimetres without getting any visible cracks. Probably it’s quite soft.

Ten, fifteen centimeters above water level you could see ice round the branches and twigs of the smaller trees and bushes, marking the high water peak of last night. I had to crouch and lie down to make the next picture.

It was easier to make pictures of the beautiful frost patterns that covered the ground. By the way: These are colour photographs.