The Quiet Picture

Some may call it a dull grey day, I call it Winter. A few degrees below, overcast, snow in the air and fresh snow on the ground. On with the skis, and out in the forest. I skiied about 17 km, which is probably the longest I’ve ever done (yeah fine it’s not much, but it’s much for me!) and I was dead beat when I got home. But oh so happy!

I’m always looking for interesting snow formations to shoot. When the land is covered with snow, you’d expect it to be an easy task. Well it isn’t. Especially on a weekend like this, when the wind is blowing and the temperature rises dangerously close to zero. The pristine snowcover is ruined by snow falling down from the trees, and the wind is blowing small debris all over. What I need is a series of alternating pillows of snow that allows you to create a composition which will carry the picture without including any other elements. I skiied my backside off and got very little for my efforts - not counting the after-ski hot chocolate!

Or Skiing, Shopping and Sightseeing

Some weekend. I had two days off because my family (my parents, sis and her two kids) came to Sweden to celebrate my Dad’s 70th birthday.

My mini-vacation started with a great day of skiing. New snow, suitably cold weather and sunshine - can winter get any better?

Then I had to change the pristine winter scenery to the hustle and bustle of Stockholm. It was strange being in a big city again… and I discovered that I can live without them. Big cities smell weird, there’s a lot of people, and the city folks keep even their trees fenced in. I prefer mine wild and untamed, thank you very much.

(Yes, the small picture above is just about the worst I’ve ever published in this blog. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to do anything better either - just wanted something for illustration purposes!)

We even managed to squeeze in a visit at the Vasa Museum. The lighting is very low in the museum, so I had to push my camera and lens to the limit - 24mm, lean on the railing, ISO 1600, f4 and IS - and I got away with handheld shots at 1/8 sec!

Overall I must say that it was a great weekend. I didn’t have a single fight with my parents, I didn’t even get irritated (other than mildly, once, but no one’s perfect). You want to eat lunch at McDonalds? Sure, who would want to eat real food anyway in one of the many restaurants all over the city! We ended up on the wrong floor at the department store because you didn’t check the store guide? No worries, I love the escalators! Oh and I’m sorry I didn’t remember that —gården doesn’t always mean —puutarha in Finnish. My bad, for living abroad for 12 years!

But that’s just me being hyper-sarcastic. I can do that, now that I’m alone again. Otherwise, I have come to realise that the older we get, the better we get along. Deep down, I think I miss my family more than I’m willing to admit. Happy 70th, Dad!

The weekends just seem to drag by. Some would say that we had good weather, but I was rather disheartened. Zero degrees centigrade, high winds and sunshine is not my idea of ideal conditions - for photography anyway. The scenery is downright depressing in fact. Ugly snow, that’s the problem. Rather optimistically, I took the camera with me when I went skiing and rather unexpectedly, I even got to use it today. I followed a new snow mobile trail which lead me to Österhocklan (where I’ve done a lot of white water shooting in the past months) and found another delightful, rickety old bridge. I would post a picture if only I would bother to download them from the card… maybe tomorrow.

As for the skiing, it’s been an ok weekend. But the lack of any new snow is making the trails well worn, the grit is mixing up with the snow and it’s wearing down my skis fast. The only alternative however is to not ski, and what’s the point of having skis if you’re not going to use them?

Since I’m always talking about the weather, it’s time to put down some figures to back me up. I have started keeping a weather journal and will summarise the monthly weather here in the blog.

The reports should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are many factors which contribute to the unreliability of the observations, these being:

- I can only make the observations in the evening between 18:00 and 18:30
- I don’t have any large open space to measure snowcover
- I live on top of a “mountain”
- etc

If I really get into this, I will invest in an expensive weather station to keep track of the weather even when I’m not there. But I can’t change the location, so whatever I do, my weather records will only be indicative at best. That said, I will have something to support my failing memory next year when I complain about the weather again…

Temperature (High): 2°C
Temperature (Low): -15°C *
Temperature (Average): -6°C

Barometer (High): 1019 mbar
Barometer (Low): 970 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 994 mbar

Total of sunny days: 11

Snow cover (High): 30 cm
Snow cover (Low): 1 cm
Snow cover (Avg): 16 cm
New snow: 48 cm
Days with snowfall: 8

Rain: 8.5 mm **
Days with rain: 4

* The coldest temperature I observed was -17°C on the morning of 24th. When it gets really cold, we often have higher temperatures here in Loos than in the east in Ljusdal, because of the higher altitude. Conversely, when the weather turns milder, we often have lower temperatures here than in Ljusdal.

** Guestimate. It turned out that measuring rainfall during winter time is tricky - the precipitation can go from snow to rain during the same day, and temperatures fluctuate on both sides of zero. When the rain meter is half filled with slushy snow with some water on the bottom, which part of the water is melt snow and which is actual rain? Yeah…