Archive for January, 2010
Tolerable
The cold spell has finally broken. I always say that it isn’t a proper winter if the temperature doesn’t dip below -20 degrees centigrade but four weeks of it in a row… is a bit a much, only a handful of days when it wasn’t quite that cold. Somehow I prefer my photo excursions without frozen toes, fingers, face and camera gear. 
When the tripod leg locks freeze, it’s too cold for photography! Anyway, today it was only -12°C so really a pleasant day to be out, I picked the afternoon so I could see the sunset. It wasn’t very interesting though because it was all clear skies, so what I would really have needed was an interesting silhouette against the blue/orange post-sunset gradient. But all of these cold temperatures also mean that it hasn’t been snowing, and the existing snow we have is looking a bit old. The scenery is somehow broken with only patches of snow hanging on the trees, but sometimes you find something that the wind hasn’t destroyed yet so you just have to take the opportunity then.
The Moose Lake hike
My favourite winter trek has got to be the trail to the Älgsjön lake. For starters, it’s just the perfect distance for a snowshoe hike, maybe a tad short but it’s also nice to come back home and have some energy in reserve. In the summertime there’s a road to Älgsjön, but it’s not really the lake that’s interesting, it’s the trail there. I take this trail many times every winter, and somehow I always come back home with pictures. It’s never the same – the conditions are different, the time of day is different, every winter is different… if you didn’t find anything interesting, then you were just staring at your feet all the time.
When you come to the lake in the winter, you approach it from the north. There’s a marshy area just before the lake, so the low winter sun shines right on your face and I swear I felt a little bit of warmth… or maybe I was imagining it, having not seen the sun for a long time. Normally the marsh is good for me, but this time I left empty handed as the wind had whipped the trees bare and snowless trees in the winter is a bit of a turn-off for me. But if the wind takes, it also gives – I found some lovely snow drifts elsewhere along the trail and that’s all the inspiration I need.
In my skiing past, if I wanted to sap out all of my energy, I sometimes continued the trail to Öratjärnen and Ryggskog but that’s a lot of pain for no gain (=big blisters and no pictures). So Älgsjön is all you need, all the excitement is bound to happen before you get there anyway!
2 commentsHigh note
If I felt that 2009 ended with a photographic low note, then 2010 started with a high note. No genuine high key (even if I tried), but I found a lot of other things that I didn’t expect at all. When I left in the morning, my only target was an old and broken tractor down at the mill. I hoped that it would be covered in frost so I could get high key pictures of broken tractor detail… well, turns out that there was no frost. Zero. 
So much for that plan. But these broken windows on the other hand, they were interesting. For the colourful picture, I kind of over-processed it in LR and found that I liked the result, so the picture was worth keeping just for the colour.
It kept snowing all the time and I felt like doing a long walk, so I took a de-tour and snapped a few frames I hoped would work as high key. They didn’t, but failing is also learning so at least I’m learning what doesn’t work.
And then to my great surprise, the sun (almost) came out. It didn’t paint the landscape in golden light, but there was no mistaking the orange orb in the sky. So I made another extension to my walk, in case the light would improve… well it didn’t, but I was incredibly happy with the day anyway. Wonderful weather, I had a lot of photo ops and my legs weren’t dead tired despite the long walk. I guess it helps when you’re not treading through deep snow though…
1 commentWeather – December 2009
If November was unusually warm then December was unusually cold, the last half of it anyway. Perfect winter month, actually. A nice mixture of winter weather with some days with constant sunshine (well, those 4 hours of it anyway) and some days with constant snowfall but most days just simply winter grey.
Temperature (High): 0°C
Temperature (Low): -21°C
Temperature (Average): -8°C
Barometer (High): 1028 mbar
Barometer (Low): 989 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1009 mbar
Totally sunny days: 3
Rain: 3 mm
Days with rain: 1
Snow cover (High): 42 cm
Snow cover (Low): 6 cm
Snow cover (Avg): 20 cm
New snow: 48 cm
Days with snowfall: 20
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