I made this photo two weeks ago in Solberget and I think it’s a nice contrast to my last blog article here. Both photos show the Swedish winter but there are quite different. I like both the cold and sunny type of winter as snow fall.
What do you prefer?
Some sunrises are more intense than others. Today I was lucky to witness a really intense and colourful sunrise in Skelleftehamn and even had the time to find a nice place.
Even the larger bays of the Baltic Sea have been frozen up within the last two days, but the open sea is still free of ice. Only at the shore the typical early-winter pancake ice floes drift on top of the tiny waves, turning and rotating. The ice seems to mirror the bright sunrise colours even more intense than the water and the snow glowed in an almost pink shade.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Another clear and frosty morning in Skelleftehamn. I stood by the Baltic Sea in good time before sunrise which was 9:24 today. The sky was orange, the sea was blue and the mirage of the coastline lingered at the horizon.
I changed place right after sundown. Here at a more sheltered part the sea had started to freeze over. I laid down onto the icy shore to get a picture of both the island Gåsören and the crisp structures of the newly built sea ice. Then I realised that the Baltic Sea is not blue, it’s of pure orange – almost amber – at least when it’s early morning and your chin is hardly above sea level.
Photographers hints: use a tele lens, try out extreme low angle shots, dress properly due to the weather, use the warm morning or evening light ;-)
Pancake ice at the Baltic coast near Kågnäsudden today.
I have stopped counting the times I was in Solberget, the beautiful wilderness retreat in Swedish Lapland. This time I was asked if I want to join a three day first aid course in Solberget. Since my last one was long ago I accepted gladly.
The course, arranged by the German Outdoorschule Süd, was both intense and fantastic and I’m glad that I was able to participate. I stayed another day after the course to make a ski tour. It has snowed quite a lot in Lapland in November and round about 60 cm of snow covered the forest soil. I started the tour at 8:30 – an hour before sun rise. The air was crisp and cold with temperatures round -15 °C. I borrowed a pair of wooden Tegsnäs skis. They are long and broad and fit to every boot which makes them ideal for the powdery snow in the Northern forests. I crossed the street and entered the narrow forest path that leads to the hill which bears the same name as the wilderness retreat: Solberget – the Sunmountain. I crossed the Solbergsvägen, which was covered with a half metre of snow and soon went slightly uphill through the old forest with its mighty spruce and pine trees.
Even though I didn’t take the smoothest way up it didn’t take long until I arrived at the top of the Solberget, which is 459 meters above sea level. I ignored the cozy mountain hut and went straight to the old fire lookout tower which provides a unique 360 degree view over the landscape.
As fastly as I arrived at the tower as slowly I climbed it, since the handrails and the steps of the three ladders were covered with a thick layer of hard and crusty snow. Finally I was on the top of the tower, just in time to see the sun rising above the hilly horizon.
I stayed on the tower for more than an hour, happy to see the snow covered trees in the warm and ever-changing light of the low hanging winter sun. First the sun got free of the clouds and started to illuminate more and more of the scenery. The colours changed from a pale pink to shades of orange and many other colours I don’t have any name for. After a while a cloud layer approached from the north changing the mood of the landscape again. At the end almost the whole landscape was shadowy beside of the fog that still hung above the swampy areas in the southwest.
Finally the sun vanished behind the cloud layer. I climbed down the three ladders of the tower and continued my ski tour. First I headed southeast, then I turned more and more to the right while I descended the hill. After a while (and a bit of squeezing through the pathless thickets) I reached the Solbergsvägen again, however more in the south. This part of the path was completely untouched beside of a track of a hare that you still could guess under the fresh snow of the last day.
After a while I came to the turn-off to the swamp Solmyran which I followed a bit. The sun was low again and illuminated the snow in bright orange colours, while the snow in the shadows looked more blueish. There are many colours in winter, you just have to go out to spot them.
I can highly recommend both a stay at Solberget and the first aid courses of the Outdoorschule Süd. In February you can combine the two, if you can speak and understand German.
This article is part of the series “2016-11: #snowember16”.
It was round two weeks ago, that Västerbotten, and especially Skelleftehamn got a lot of snow, more than 70 centimetres within four days. Such had happened before at least four times since I moved to this place but never so early.
Anyway, I love winter and was very happy to get it so soon. Sad to say, it was only an intermezzo. It became cold for two days the last weekend, when I tried canoeing but since then it has been quite warm and most of the precipitation came as rain that melted much of the beautiful snow away.
Two weeks ago the fence in the backyard was fully submerged in the snow, not it is completely visible again.
I definitely prefer the first. Since the peak of 76 cm in my backyard thirteen days ago the snow cover become less and less deep. Today I measured 23 cm, which is less than a third of the former depth.
It is still quite warm and the global weather constellation is quite special: At the North Pole it’s 20 °C warmer than usual (and there’s full polar night!), whereas Siberia and Mongolia have witnessed an early cold wave with temperatures below -30 °C, partly below -40 °C.
How will the swedish winter 2016/17 will be? Too warm or freezing cold? Sleet and rain or masses of snow? Well, we’ll see … . What do you think?
Voilà, bon appétit!
(Finding the items of the third row was really easy. It’s almost the same I paddled along through the ice half a day ago.)