Frozen North
At the start of this month I returned to northern Norway, travelling from Lofoten north into Vesteralen and finally on to the island of Senja in the company of the maestro of north Norwegian photography, Trym Ivar Bergsmo. Each region is subtly different in look and feel but, throughout my visit, there was one constant - it remained bitterly cold. This made the business of capturing impactful images especially challenging as we waded through deep snow and countered the bitter windchill.
Snowstorm, Vesteralen, Norway
I made this image on an especially challenging morning in Vesteralen. There had been fresh snow overnight and as I peered into the morning gloom, another snowstorm rattled in from the sea, driven on by a sharp northerly wind.
Sitting in the warmth and comfort of my office back here in Oxford, I don’t feel that this is an image that will especially appeal to my clients. Nor is it likely to win any prizes in a landscape photography competition. However, it represents an important memory for me because I feel it conveys the sense of perishing cold I felt that morning - it was around minus 15 degrees - and reminds me again of the many difficulties, both technical and physical, that have to be overcome when making images in the intense cold. of an Arctic winter
On the technical side, a photographer has to offset for low levels of light, which means making judgements about shutter speed and ISO settings, simply to make an acceptably sharp image. The intense blueness of light north of the Arctic Circle also has to be taken into account, particularly when snow is included in the image. We all naturally associate snow with ‘white’ but in the far north, particularly during the winter months when the ‘cool blue’ is exaggerated by the absorption of shorter-wave warm colours, it literally appears blue, even to the brain-adjusted naked eye. This requires a photographer to make decisions about the white balance set in- camera and how much ‘blue’ to leave in post-production.
Personally, I find the blue light of extreme latitudes, counter-pointed by the slight warmth of the sun low on the horizon, very attractive. It is what gives the high Arctic a unique allure for landscape photographers and I feel that it is therefore unhelpful to over-correct for this naturally occurring phenomenon - it’s why we have gone there in the first place!. In turn, this means having to accept and balance the levels of blue in resulting images without making them seem too other-worldly - unless this is your intention.
Quiet Sunrise in Vesteralen, Norway
And once you have got to grips with these technical challenges, a photographer working in the north Norwegian winter has to overcome a number of physical challenges, which range from achieving a stable platform for a tripod in deep snow - a tripod which can deliver above eye-level maximum height is a godsend - to keeping snowflakes off the front lens element or, worse, a flat filter.
Finally, a photographer working in the Arctic winter also has to be able to stay warm while the wind nips and the snow drives into your body. The usual advice about layers, a good hat and boots certainly apply here. But I have found that the greatest difficulty is keeping my hands and fingers warm enough to keep working and not to have potential images spoiled by a loss of resolve as cold seeps into my hands to the point that I can no longer feel my cable release.
This year, I brought a new pair of double gloves made by The Heat Company with me. These proved to be very effective, although I found it easier to remove the whole shell mitten to operate my camera with the inner liner rather than trying to unzip the palm and thumb - I probably need to grow longer fingers! By keeping warm, I found that I was willing to stay out in the cold longer and this created more opportunities for interesting images.
Photography in Lofoten and further north is not for the faint-hearted. As the main image reminds me, the environment is often very hostile. However, viewing some of the work I created earlier this month, I am excited all over again by what a special part of the world this is, and why it is worth spending time, and making the effort, to engage with the Arctic winter. It certainly beats this year’s lacklustre winter here in Britain, and its seemingly relentless falls of rain from amorphous grey skies.
