Creating a portfolio Northern Lights image from a remote mountain section in the Lofoten Islands
The midnight sun has returned to the Lofoten Islands. After a long and dark winter, it feels great to have long and bright days again. Though, the never-ending light means there’s a lack of sleep!
While the well-known locations are popular for a reason, I've been more drawn towards the no-name landscapes and dramatic atmosphere that describes the island. In this miniseries, the mysterious atmosphere is exactly what I've focused on.
I can’t believe that another year is over. Just like that. It felt like 2018 passed by in a blink. This has been a very exciting year for me where I’ve been able to keep expanding my business CaptureLandscapes, meeting new like-minded people, explore new terretories and spend a big portion of the year guiding photography groups around some of the most scenic places our planet has to offer.
Laatefoss is one of these locations I returned to because I could not get enough of it. It's located right outside of Odda, about a 6 hours drive from my home - and I've now spent two sunrises at this unique waterfall. What shocked me was how much the scenery changed in less than two months!
Reflecting upon my resent journey around North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina, on location often cross my mind. Two weeks of visiting beautiful locations, yet one seems to pop into my mind more often. Botany Bay. The more I think about it, the greater it gets. The most unique beach, an incredible road and thrilling wildlife. Could it be any better?
A couple weeks ago, a friend and myself decided to go photograph a rather unique mountain in our "local" area. We had been there the week before to do some scouting, exploring different angles and figuring out the angles of the sun. Since we were aiming to shoot both sunset and sunrise, we chose to camp up in the mountain rather than taking the steep hike in the middle of the night.
It's very rare that I aim to get a "classic shot" that has been taken thousands of times before me. I prefer to explore a place and try to show what I see, without copying what has been done before me. This time it was different. I have always loved those sunrises or sunsets of Smoky Mountains where you get layer upon layer, and ideally some nice light in between them too.
The weather on Iceland changes quickly and is often hard to predict. Most people experience rain, snow, hail, strong winds, fog, clear skies and heavy clouds during their visit. We got all of this in one morning.
We started driving into the mountains a couple hours before sunrise, to ensure that we would find the best spots to view the rising sun. As our scouting trip a couple days earlier was ended before we even reached the lake, due to extreme wind and snowfall and no visibility of the road, we had not yet had the chance to explore the area. However I had some ideas of where we could go after studying this place on maps and reading online.
There is no doubt that Isle of Skye in Scotland is one of the most beautiful locations I have seen in a long time. During the 7 days we spent on the island, we went to many different locations, and it was hard to say what was best. Even though a location can be really beautiful, it is hard to take a good shot if the weather is bad. Most of our time the weather turned out ok, but day six is a day i will remember rest of my life. We called it, "the yes-day".
Peaceful sunrise at Portree Bay.
After a huge disappointment for sunset the day before, we were ready to have a good day with shooting. Getting a couple hours sleep, we struggled ourself out of our beds around 03.00. That gave us just enough time to get dressed, take a glass of water, grab our gear and walk down to Portree Bay . This was a short walk, roughly 2-3 minutes. A couple of days before we discovered a small, closed, path walking down to a small cliff that had a good view of the bay. After setting up our tripods and cameras, we discovered that this was midge paradise. Luckily we had loads of midge spray and I also had a nett, Nick managed to forget his at home. The forecast had said that it would be misty, so we did not expect anything spectacular when we came. To our relief, there was no mist and the clouds were cracking up, and the water was like a mirror. We spent probably one hour at this place, shooting both the bay and the loch behind us. After one hour we had got our shots, and Nick was being eaten by midges so he was ready to go. Walking back to our house we realised that there was coming some good colours in the sky. Arguing both for and against shooting more, we ended up in the car and drove as fast as we could north. What we did not yet realise was that this would be the start of the perfect day.
Harmonic sunrise at Loch Fada.
Driving north we had our eyes wide open for a place good enough to photograph. We ended up parking our car in the ditch and running down towards Loch Fada . The sun had just hit the hills on the far left side of the lake, giving the scene a harmonic feeling. One thing I am extremely pleased with, is that we both had our midge nett. This was purgatory. I have never in my life seen so many midges at once in my life. Literally thousands of midges were around our heads, covering our cloths and my bare hands. I had to wave infront of my lens before shooting to get a shot without midges. Despite the midges, this was an amazing place, and we stayed there for rest of the sunrise.
Heather in front of mountains cover by clouds.
After this successful morning we agreed to only say yes rest of the day. This ment, if we saw a place that might be good to photograph, we would stop and check it out, not drive past. With this plan we anticipated to use a couple hours more to our sunsets spot then we would otherwise. On our way to Elgol we stopped approximately 5 or 6 times. The first place we stopped was alongside the main road. The light had a fantastic shine on some mountains, and the clouds were low and just covering the top. In addition there was some beautiful heather for some foreground action!
The next two locations did not have good enough light for us to get a good picture. We then stopped at a old church from the 1500s. The low clouds and good light made this a pretty interesting scene to photograph. It was almost a little bit creepy.
Moving on we stopped by a river we had discovered some days earlier. I was certain that this place was "the spot". The landscape and river was unlike anything I have ever seen before. I would love to upload them all now, but one should be enough for this time. Anyway, we were in heaven when shooting this landscape. The river had dug itself down to a cliff, and there was a chain of beautiful waterfalls. With heavy clouds above, and crystal clear water below, this river was perfect. It was hard to get a good composition though, I felt that i needed to get down between the waterfalls to get a great shot. So i climbed down the edge, placed the tripod with one foot on a rock on each side of the waterfall behind me, found my balance point and started shooting. It was worth it, just the feeling of standing between the waterfalls was worth it. We probably spent over an hour shooting before we recognised that it was only half an hour to sunset, and still 15 minutes of driving.
River running through amazing landscape
As if the day had not already been great, a double rainbow was painted over Loch Slapin. Sadly we did not have time or a place to photograph it. We arrived Elgol with enough time to find our composition before the sunset started. To our disappointment the rain was starting to hit us pretty hard. This made it extremely difficult to shoot, and the sun was pretty much drowned in the clouds. We tried our best to protect our gear, but ended up walking back under a big arch at the beach. After waiting there for about 5 minutes, the weather started to get better again. The clouds eased and revealed an absolutely breathtaking seascape. With the "Lord of the rings" reminding mountains "Cullin" behind, the rocky beach was an amazing sight. Slowly we moved back to the rocks we escaped during the rain, and we took our last shots before the darkness surrounded us. While packing up our gear, I noticed something move in my peripheral vision. Thinking it might be a new rock showing from the tide, I took a look, but I couldn't see anything. Suddenly I saw the movement again, and to our surprise it was a small seal! This young seal was a playful one, he swam a couple meters away from us, and he climbed the back of a rock to left for us, and jumped back in the water. We tried filming him, but with ISO 6400 it was not easy to get anything at all.
So this was our perfect day of shooting. I'm sorry the text became a bit longer than I had planned, but it was simply such an amazing day. The best part about it, and the part that might be most important to remember, is that this was the day we only said "YES". Who knows what would have happend if we said "NO" that morning, we might not have got the shots we were most pleased with from this journey.
I wish you all a great saturday!
Dramatic long exposure sunset at Elgol.
