Lofoten Islands Norway February 2014 Photo Travels

Photo: Patterns of snow on a frozen lake Agvatnet, Lofoten Islands, Norway. February 2014

It was a long journey in the north for me this year, with more than 5 weeks north of the arctic circle, most of which was spent on Lofoten. And as usual, not everything went according to plan. To start, there was hardly any snow on Lofoten, but at least this meant that it didn’t rain much either. The islands were simply dry. So while the snow covered beaches were few and far between, there were lots of other interesting elements and textures in the land to photograph. And it also meant that hiking was pretty easy and so I enjoyed nights camping out at Bunes, Horseid and Kvalvika beaches, and found some nice light.

I have now been in Wales for about 3 weeks. I would have made some updates sooner, but I have largely been computer-less most of this time. With plans to ski tour on the Kungsleden, I didn’t bring my laptop from California as I normally would. Wanting to keep by backpack as light as possible under the extra burden of ski gear. But in a case of bad timing, as soon as I landed in Germany and had phone reception again, I was informed that something was wrong with the iMac I use here in Wales. Well, it turns out that the hard drive had crashed. Great. So when I arrived here in early March, instead of getting to work on images right away, I was left figuring out what to do. It turns out a new computer was the best, and quickest solution to get me back on my feet. It was almost time for an upgrade anyhow. But between this, and dropping my D800 in a lake in Sweden last year, I’ve had a few more hardware expenses than I would like.

With my savings nearly completely eaten up, it’s always nice to see emails along the line of, ‘Wow, you take wonderful photos! I would like to use them [on a money making website] for free in return for credit [which will get me more people wanting free images]. Oh, and by the way, I need you to remove your watermark for me. Cool, Thanks!’ Sure you can use my images for free if you buy me a new camera and computer. Cool, thanks.

On a more positive note, I’m going to be involved with something pretty cool next year. More on that later.

I’m not sure if I’m going to do a long writeup for this trip, or maybe break things down into smaller stories to keep the post going as long as possible, as I’m feeling like I’m falling into the ‘silence’ rut again. But there should be no shortage of images, that’s for sure. Looking through the 100 or so images that I have edited so far, I think this will be one of the most diverse collections of images from any single trip to Lofoten. And throw in a couple nights of Northern Lights as icing on the cake.