Having enjoyed a few days in Senja as an appetiser, it was time for my main course, a week in Lofoten, my photography heaven. Before heading to Reine I went to Haukland to take a walk along the long flat sandy white beach. There were no other people there at the time, but I was not alone, a juvenile White Tailed Eagle passed over my head on its way into the mountains beyond. This was a most helpful bird, calling repeatedly to announce its impending arrival and make it easy for me to be ready to shoot. I captured a long sequence of frames as it flew overhead, three of which are shown in a montage below.

The beautiful mountains and picturesque fishing villages of Lofoten tend to steal most of the attention (they are truly spectacular) but the many beaches of the area are a major attraction in their own right . The violent waves and huge boulders of Uttakleiv, the calm serenity of Haukland and the unexpected paradise for arctic surfers at Unstad are all very easy to reach but some of the more scenic ones require some hiking or even camping in order to visit.

After spending a couple of hours at Haukland I made my way towards Reine (my home for the rest of the trip), stopping at Skagsanden beach (perhaps my favourite of them all) for another walk on the way. I checked into Reine Rorbuer, my Lofoten accomodation of choice, and headed out to check the local sights as the sun went down. It was too cloudy for any useful sunset pictures but it felt good to be back in Lofoten once again and I stayed out to shoot some long exposures in the dark.

Those who have followed my blog for a while will start to be familiar with the magical triangle of villages - Reine, Hamnøy and Sakrisøy - all of which are right next to each other in this remote part of the world. They start to be extremely familiar locations for me but I never seem to tire of shooting them (hopefully you are not fed up of seeing the results).

The next morning I climbed the very wet, muddy, slippery hill on Olenilsoy in order to catch the moment when the sun's rays first hit the yellow cabins of Sakrisøy. There are no bad times to capture this amazing view, but I think that the time of Sakrisøy's personal sunrise (usually many tens of minutes after the actual sunrise) is one of the best times. This time I was rewarded with a day where there was plenty of cloud, but high enough cloud to preserve full visibility of the mountains behind.

Sakrisøy is also a great photography target from sea level, the yellow rorbuer (fisherman's cabins) and mountain background make it a distinctive subject from many angles.

I sometimes feel like I haven't seen a good sunrise or sunset for months, despite many tens of very early starts to be in position to take advantage of the best parts of the day. Days like this one are maybe not the perfect one that you dream of, but there is at least enough richness to the light and drama in the clouds to make it feel like it is worth it to keep setting your alarm clock.

When staying in Reine, the Bringen Cafe is a vital part of my morning routine. Great coffee, delicious cakes and snacks, and friendly helpful service makes it a perfect place to recover from early mornings and cold weather. It also provides pleasant surroundings while you make a first review of the photos from the morning.

Refreshed, I headed for a location I have not visited before, a waterfall near to Sørvågen.

The weather was a bit variable, but I continued to the village of Å, the end of the line in Lofoten.

While the road (highway E10) ends in Å, the Lofoten islands continue as mountains and fjords for some 10-15 kilometres and then beyond that there are a number of decent sized islands as you head south towards Røst, a set of islands which are even more remote than Lofoten. I walked away from the town towards some cliffs, allowing a distant glimpse of Røst and also scouting the area near the cliffs where I was able to observe some black guillemots and cormorants flying around.

The daytime is not usually an ideal time for photography, but it is a very important part of the day for getting to know different possible places you might like to return to at sunset, at night or for sunrise. If you are familiar with your spot and how to get there then it makes things 100 times easier when you are fumbling around in the darkness trying to shoot a few hours or days later.

After investing some time into this area I headed back to Reine to have some food and some rest before the evening session. Once again the sunset was quite a non-event from the point of view of interesting colours in the sky, there was significant cloud cover, but the clouds were well defined (rather than being a shapeless mass) and that provided at least some interest in the sky as I went to shoot at Hamnøy.

As the blue hour progressed the cloud cover started to disappear and the light was very nice as I drove back towards Reine.

The aurora conditions now seemed rather promising (only a few clouds plus a Kp index of 3) and I headed back towards Å to see what I could capture at two locations that I had scouted earlier in the day.

The first idea that I had was to use one of the lakes near to the waterfall to capture aurora reflections, but that turned out to be spoiled as a possibility by the street lights which ran all the way round the lake (which I had brilliantly failed to notice earlier). When shooting auroras you would ideally like to get away from all artificial light. My second idea, using a very small pond near to Å as my reflector, worked a lot better.

The lights were still dancing for me as I left Å, so all thoughts of sleep were put on hold, I decided to stay out as long as the auroras were active.

As is often the case during an aurora evening the lights were coming and going in phases, appearing in different shapes and in different parts of the sky. As I got to Sakrisøy the auroras were tracing a wide highway across a huge area of the sky, far too big and high to fit into any picture I might have planned.

One of the fun things about photography is that, no matter how much planning you have done, it is still very often necessary to improvise and react to the light. The unpredictability and impermanence of auroras really emphasises that need.

I continued through the night towards Skagsanden beach, about a 30 minute drive from Sakrisøy, hoping that the auroras would still cooperate and that the clouds would not be winning the battle. I arrived at Skagsanden about 2am, one advantage of that was that the beach was not crowded, although my arrival in a car with all associated light and sound was probably not that popular with all the people sleeping in their camper vans at the Skagsanden car park.

The auroras were still present but no longer very active, there was some low cloud in the distance over the town of Leknes which amplified the effect of the lights of the town, making it almost look like there was a fire on the horizon. Normally you want to avoid all light pollution if you can but this time the effect looked interesting to me.

By now I was getting a bit tired and the auroras were not doing much, so i headed back towards Reine. As is so often the case I have a hard time driving past Hamnøy without stopping to shoot... even in the dark at 0330 it seemed like a good idea to stop... so I did.

After a late night I did not have much enthusiasm for chasing the sunrise 3 hours later... a quick look out the window confirmed that the forecast was correct (miserable rain) and I went back to sleep. This depressing weather was set to continue for a couple of days.

When you are inside the Arctic circle you have to expect that at least some part of your time is going to be disturbed by the weather, this is part of the deal... but it is still frustrating when it happens. I guess I must have been pretty bored at this point... it is not often that I even consider taking a selfie...

Having spent most fo the day resting and sheltering, I decided to go exploring the following day even thought the weather was still horrible. I drove along the very beautiful road 815 which follows the eastern coast of Lofoten from Leknes before joining up with the main highway (E10) a bit further north. The weather prevented any mountain views and any useful photography. I continued along E10 with the idea to end up at the fishing village of Henningsvaer... but then the increasingly awful storm clouds ahead of me caused a change of mind and I started to retreat.

This turned out to be a fortuitous decision. As I was approaching Bøstad from the north I spotted a magnificent Elk (Alces Alces, known as a Moose to those in North America where there is a different animal they call an Elk) splashing though a wet field. I stopped my car as soon as it was safe to do so and grabbed my camera.

This adult male had a tremendous set of antlers - I believe (based on studying my pictures from different angles) that there were 20 points in total on this impressive set of weapons. This was a sizeable animal, probably weighing about 450 kilos and standing around 2m tall.

The antlers are used to determine dominance among rivals, either just by display (this specimen would have intimidated many others) or if necessary by using them in battle, and are also key in their mission to impress the Elk females. The displaying, fighting and breeding seasoon is in the autumn so at this time the antlers would have been at their peak.

This confident beast wondered out of sight behind some trees, still about 100m from the road (the above photographs were taken from that range). This was such a great sight that I wanted to try and get more pictures. I walked up the road a bit and saw a wooded hill which I thought might give me another distant sighting if the Elk continued on its last known course.

I jumped over a stream and stomped up the slightly boggy hill. About half way up the hill I heard a noise to my left and turned to see the Elk about 25-30m away from me. From a photography point of view this was great... but from other points of view it might not have been ideal - usually these animals are not aggressive without cause, but in the mating season they can be more agitated than usual. The Elk and I spent maybe 20 seconds just looking at each other, while I took some pictures but otherwise tried not to do anything to irritate it, before he decided (correctly) that I was harmless and left the scene. He headed to his right and walked slowly (and safely) across the main highway before disappearing into the scrub on the other side of the road. This was a most unusual encounter!

Well, that's it for this time... the story from my Norwegian road trip will be continued and completed in my next post.

Thanks for reading, and thanks a lot for your shares, likes and comments in Facebook.

Andy

When I visited the Lofoten area of Norway for the first time at the start of March this year it was like a trip to heaven itself... I am sure that many photographers and non-photographers have had the same feeling. The beautiful vertical world of fishing villages framed by mountains and fjords offers many majestic views and a peaceful atmosphere within which to appreciate them. Last week I made that pilgrimage once again and experienced Lofoten in magnificent autumn colours, very different but no less spectacular than the winter wonderland that greeted me in March.

As I said in my previous post, I took a different route to Lofoten this time - driving to Vaasa, ferry to Umea, driving to Bodø, ferry to Moskenes. The timings of the trip worked out quite well, although anyone who was not interested to take pictures of the night sky might have objected to the 0330 arrival time of the ferry to Moskenes. The drive from Umea (in Sweden) to Bodø (in Norway) was an unusual experience, the roads being rather remote from population centres, in both directions I encountered more reindeer than other cars on the road. These are certainly an interesting sight, but when you see one up ahead in the middle while driving at 100km/h your feelings are not exclusively positive!

The ferry from Bodø arrives in Moskenes (at 0330) which is in one of the most spectacular areas of Lofoten, just a few kilometres from Reine where I was staying for the week. At this point I had been awake for 20 hours and driven about 700km since last sleeping but would not be able to check-in to my accommodation for another 11 hours... but it was a beautiful clear night and I had a chance to practice some astro-photography before heading to Hamnøy for the sunrise.

The weather for the first 6 days of my stay was remarkably good, warm and sunny with clear skies and only light winds. This was much better than you could realistically hope for in late September when you are 200km north of the Arctic circle... although Lofoten does benefit greatly from the warming influence of the gulf stream. The warm sunlight really brought out the autumn colours in the landscape.

The unseasonably beautiful weather caused both positive and negative consequences from a photographic point of view. On the positive side the lack of wind left the surface of the fjords in a mirror-like state allowing for great reflections, the morning and evening light was very beautiful and the clear skies opened up great possibilities for starscapes and auroras. On the negative side the lack of cloud cover meant that the light during the day was too direct and harsh for successful daytime shooting and also left the sky quite featureless in many cases.

I found that the Bringen cafe in the middle of Reine was a perfect place to review the results of the sunrise session while taking on much needed caffeine each morning, giving a chance to plan the daytime activities and maybe share a picture to my Instagram or 500px pages. I have used 500px to share full resolution versions of my best pictures over the last 2.5 years, whereas I recently started to use Instagram as an easy way to share quickly edited snapshots while on the road.

During the daylight hours I took the opportunity to re-visit three beaches, each ringed by mountains, namely Skagsanden, Haukland and Uttakleiv. In my previous trip I had really found it difficult to get good pictures at Haukland and Uttakleiv and I had a target to do better this time, this was therefore a scouting mission to get an idea how, and at which time of day, I might try to photograph them.

The beaches at Haukland and Uttakleiv are almost adjacent to each other in a remote corner of Vestvagøy - connected by a short tunnel through a large mountain - and are approximately one hours drive from Reine. After leaving the main road (the E10 highway which runs the length of Lofoten) to head for the beaches you pass through some beautiful countryside with lakes, forests and the occasional residential dwelling, the road is narrow and winding, scenic in the summer but slightly treacherous in the winter.

After spending the afternoon on the beaches it was time to head back to base, pausing to capture the perfect twilight reflections in the Reine fjord.

I had learned from previous efforts that trying to photograph auroras as part of a scene containing any artificial lights was not ideal, the difference in exposure needed for the artificial lights and the auroras is so large that you almost certainly blow out the highlights or completely under-expose the rest of the scene. For this reason I headed away from the village to test whether any of the locations I had in mind would be good aurora shooting place. My thought was that Skagsanden beach would be a perfect place, I had noticed previously that the smooth shallow incline of the sandy beach retained a film of water as the tide went out, allowing for reflections in the surface, reflections that could include both mountains and auroras in the correct conditions. I headed to that direction and was rewarded with a better aurora shot than I have ever previously managed to capture!

It did feel good to eventually get to bed... about 0130... with four hours for sleep until the alarm would signal that it was time to shoot once again.

The next day, over a cafe latte in the Bringen cafe, I decided that it was a good idea to drive and then hike to the beach at Kvalvika. According to various online sources this was a spectacular beach, surrounded by mountains, and could be reached by an "easy to moderate" 45 minute hike over a hill. I was pretty sure I could handle that. It had rained a bit over night and the ground was a bit soft as I started the easy to moderate hike but no particular cause for concern. About an hour later, as I was clambering over jagged slippery rocks on a fairly steep incline, I started to re-assess my capabilities for easy to moderate hiking. It seemed to me that the chances of slipping (although I had not done so thus far) were rather too high and that the consequences of slipping were potentially rather serious... so having hiked over the top of the hill and some way down the other side, I decided that I would enjoy the view from where I was and turn back rather than taking any further steps downward. This would be altogether a safer destination to visit in dry conditions.

On the way back home I checked out some possible aurora locations for the evening, and at one point, near to Fredvang, I became aware that I was under surveillance - a harbour seal was watching with great interest from the water while I tried to capture a mountain panorama. After running back to the car for a different camera and lens I was able to photograph my observer and capture a seal on camera for the first time.

I was quite hopeful that the two locations I scouted (at Fredvang and Storvatnet pictured above) would be great for auroras later in the night, allowing for mountains and reflections without interference from artificial light... but things don't always work out how you expect. At Fredvang it turned out that some lights on a bridge, about 100m behind the spot I had in mind to shoot from, were illuminating the whole area with a strong and nastily orange glow (which I might have been able to reduce when post-processing the pictures) and also causing a huge "photographer and tripod" shaped shadow in the scene (which would have been more difficult to handle). At Storvatnet the location was as I expected but the auroras were refusing to appear in the correct part of the sky.

The addition of an aurora shooting session to each day meant that I was burning the candle at all three ends (sunrise, sunset and aurora time) and building up quite a shortfall in sleeping. I can survive quite well without sleep but I knew I had to be a little bit careful when my return journey was going to involve a day of driving for up to 10 hours... so instead of rising at 0515 for the pre-sunrise colours I took a lazy morning and left at 0700 on foot to see if I could find a new (meaning something I had not previously photographed) shot of my "home" village of Reine. Another beautifully calm morning meant that reflections were almost perfect for this panoramic shot of the harbour as the sun was breaching the horizon.

The rest of the day was spent scouting, on foot, for possible new compositions in Reine, Toppøy, Sakrisøy and Olenilsøy before heading for the beaches at Haukland and Uttakleiv where I thought to take in the sunset and then wait around for a few hours to see if the auroras would once again make an appearance. On my way there I stopped to capture a shot of the tiny village of Bø in it's beautiful setting.

From the calm sheltered beauty of Haukland I proceeded through the tunnel to Uttakleiv, its somewhat wilder neighbour. The sunset colours were still very much in evidence and I expected that I would need to wait around for 2 or 3 hours in order to see auroras.

I had understood that it is usually best to wait at least for the astronomical twilight (when the sun is 12-18 degrees below the horizon) if not the actual night (sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon)... so I was extremely surprised to see that there were very strong auroras already clearly visible while the sunset was still ongoing at Uttakleiv! Maybe this phenomenon is not so unusual at this latitude but it seemed very special to me.

The following morning I headed for Hamnøy and Sakrisøy once again. Having explored many wonderful places in Lofoten I still find myself drawn back to these same two villages and have not so far got tired of photographing them.

After grabbing a couple of hours sleep I revived myself with an 11am latte at Bringen cafe and set off for Fredvang to wonder around on yet another beach.

I had taken my wildlife photography equipment (different camera, huge telephoto lens) along for the trip but not found much chance to use it (reindeer, a white tailed eagle, a harbour seal, a magpie and a sheep had however been captured). One thought (based on advice from Jorma Tenovuo)  had been to head to the island of Røst after my 6 days in Reine but at this time of year the ferry connection is not good, I would have needed to return to Bodø, then wait for a day or two and then travel to Røst before travelling back again. It would have meant extending my trip by 4-5 days just to get a day in Røst... so that is one destination that will need to wait for another time.

The Fredvang area is quite typical of the scenery all around Lofoten, remote villages, jagged mountains, an almost completely unspoiled natural environment.

My final full day in Lofoten was marked by the best shooting conditions of the whole trip. The perfectly clear skies (beautiful, but sometimes uninteresting) were upgraded to include a few wispy clouds, capturing the sunrise colours and diffusing some of the light with quite beautiful results. Once again I stayed very local, shooting first at Reine about 45 minutes before sunrise, when hints of purple and pink were caught in the clouds...

... and then moving to the hill at Olenilsøy from where I could shoot along the mountainous coastline as the horizon turned to deeper orange...

... and then down towards the magical island of Sakrisøy as the orange gave way to brighter yellow.

After the sun cleared the horizon, there was still a period of very beautiful light with the clouds providing some interest despite the absence of pastel sunrise colours.

While climbing the hill in Olenilsøy I struck up a conversation with a Norwegian photographer who was visiting for the weekend from his home in Bodø. I asked him about locations I might like to visit and he recommended that I drive to see the beaches at Eggum and Unstad, some two hours drive from Reine.

​Having already visited all the locations that I had planned for this seemed like a good idea and I set off after grabbing some breakfast. The beach at Eggum was an interesting destination, as was the scenic village that you drive through on the way, and I hiked along the rocky coast for a few kilometres.

Attractions, besides the coastline itself, included a world war 2 radar station and the 1996 sculpture of a head by Markus Raetz, a Swiss sculptor, painter and illustrator. The sculpture is remarkable in that while it looks like a head from all different angles, it does not look like the same head from all different angles. It is said that there are 16 different views available.

After Eggum it was time to visit Unstad, where it was possible to observe large numbers of intrepid surfers riding the impressive waves! This was not a pastime that I would have associated with life inside the arctic circle, but there they were.

Even on this relatively calm day there were pretty sizeable waves available for these arctic surfers, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was fun to watch them for a while. After making my way back to Reine, it was time to pack my things and make sure that I got a proper nights sleep before the long journey home.

I awoke to a rather different variety of atmospheric conditions to those which I had enjoyed throughout my stay... a storm was in full swing. The winds were steady at 51km/h (31mph, 14m/s) with gusts of over 60km/h and the waves on the coast beside Reine were huge and violent. Perhaps the surfers at Unstad would have been in the next level of paradise, but for me there were some concerns about the ferry I should take later in the day from Moskenes to Bodø - would it still operate and would it be safe if it did?

I spent the day walking around near the villages of Å, Tind and Sørvågen, trying to get some pictures of the waves while not getting too soaked, but neither of those objectives was reached very successfully.

That evening I made the rather hair raising ferry crossing from Moskenes to Bodø, along with a couple of hundred other passengers and about 40-50 cars and trucks. The vessel, MF Bodø, weighing nearly 4000 tonnes, was thrown about by the sea on many different axes, as if it was a small rowing boat. While the ferry was heaving, swaying and surging, the passengers were concentrating almost exclusively on the heaving part as the provided sick-bags were in heavy use for multiple travellers from 10 minutes into the journey. The journey lasted 4 hours. I discovered during the journey that I don't suffer from motion sickness, but I believe that I was in the minority. We did however arrive safely in Bodø, from where I drove to Umea, took the ferry to Vaasa and then drove home, arriving 46 hours after I had left Moskenes.

Overall, this was a fantastic trip. I loved being back in Lofoten and it was very much worth going through the long and tough journeys to and from in order to get the chance to be there for a few days. I hope to visit again towards the end of winter.

Still to come this month, another quick visit to Utö and a few days in Amsterdam. Field reports from both locations to follow in due course.

Andy

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P.P.S. - I decided that I would start to include more images in my blog posts and I also reduced the resolution of the images to help with the speed at which the pages would load. In case you want to see higher resolution versions of my images it is worth checking out my 500px page or contacting me through the link at the foot of the page.