The Quiet Picture

I had originally planned to ski another stretch of the snow mobile trail from Hamra, but after almost getting stuck in the snow when parking my car yesterday, I didn’t feel like trying my luck. So I took the same old trail in Loos, the one which goes over three lakes, up to Ryggskog and then back to Loos. It’s a nice 12K trip and the most photogenic of all the routes I have in Loos, although of course the law of diminishing returns is eating into my results. What helps is the changing conditions and today the landscape was at its snowy best.

Initially it looked like the clouds would break up like they did yesterday, but the sun never showed itself so the light wasn’t a problem. And initially I wasn’t getting any interesting pictures done, I’m raising the bar by using the small Tokina wideangle and for some reason I just have trouble making it work in the snow. But like I said, I’ve taken a picture of almost every photogenic or semi-photogenic spot along the way, so I’m trying to create something different using the wideangle instead. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

And lucky indeed! When I got to Ryggskog, I finally decided to check out a deserted house that the trail passes. I’ve been looking at it for years, wondering if it’s safe to trespass… but with all this snow, it’s pretty obvious that nobody’s been at the house all winter so I didn’t worry about it any more. And am I glad that I did this! The place turned out to be a real gem. Maybe the house itself isn’t so fascinating, but there’s a few barns as well and as soon as I had a closer look at them, I knew that I just have to get back there in the summer. It’s bound to be even better with things growing in the garden, so now I just have to find out if the house is inhabited in the summer or if it’s free for me to shoot!

I wanted to find some new places, so I drove to Västersjön in Hamra today and took the snow mobile trail from there. I did part of this trail last year but now my plan was to ski to the Voxnan river, which wasn’t possible last time because the trail wasn’t used. I was hoping for some nice landscape as the trail crosses some mires, but it turned out that it wasn’t particularly photogenic anyway. The clearing cloud cover didn’t help, it was one of those strange days when there’s snow falling without any significant clouds. All the while the sun wasn’t completely out so the light was kind of 50-50 and I had no ideas what to do with it. Better luck tomorrow – the forecast says overcast, yes please.

It was another great day with overcast weather. The difference to yesterday is that there was no fog, but it was snowing a little bit from a thin cloud cover. That cloud cover provided a very special light that made the snow radiate in pure white in contrast with the different hues in the sky. Towards the sun, the clouds were yellowish grey. In the opposite direction, they were blueish grey with just a touch of sky showing behind the clouds. And between these, it was just plain old grey. That luminescent snow is just awesome and when it happens, you have to be out there to enjoy it. It was a brilliant day – both figuratively and literally!

I’ve been thinking that January has been quite disappointing so far, but just one weekend like this and it turns around the whole month. Sure, I’m not creating any masterpieces here, but the funny thing is that I’m also skiing for the sake of skiing and not just to take pictures. Before I moved to Loos, that would’ve been unthinkable!

Couldn’t ask for anything better than this. In the dead of winter, these overcast and slightly foggy days with snow on the trees and cold temperatures are my favourites. In the spring winter when the days are getting warmer, those sunny days with snow on trees are preferred… but it’s only January now and I spent three hours skiing and shooting and enjoying every second of it. Well almost, by the end of it I was absolutely starving and wondered why I didn’t pack any snacks when I knew that I would do this long trip. Tomorrow then… it should be an equally nice day!

This must be a personal record. I’ve waited until Thursday to upload Sunday’s pictures! The reason is quite simply that last weekend was not very good for photography. Saturday was completely wasted (good for skiing, but not for photo) and on Sunday it started snowing a little bit, but not enough to decorate the trees to any significant degree. I just took some snapshots but since this blog also serves as some kind of diary for myself, I’m posting one of those snaps. So that in the future when I try to remember what the weather was like in the middle of January in 2012, I can refer to this one…

On Friday when I was skiing, I noticed that some others had been skiing the same trails. I was very surprised, because normally nobody skis these trails except me so I thought maybe some new people have moved into the village (as unlikely as it sounds). Then today when I was skiing, I met no less than three other skiers. That’s like… three more than I’ve ever met on these trails, all winters combined. It turned out that they were visiting relatives, so that explains that. We chatted a little bit and agreed that it’s a crying shame that the locals don’t take advantage of these fine trails, other than for snowmobiling, of course. They made a perfect analysis of the villagers’ mindset – “åker snöskoter, fiskar, grillar korv och blir feta” (ride snowmobiles, ice fish, grill sausages and get fat).

Since these visitors were going back home today, the trails will be my own again. Except for the snowmobiles and their sausage chomping riders.

The day had started overcast but by the time I came back, the clouds had started to dissipate. The sky cleared completely by moonrise so I had a go at it. I’m getting really annoyed that I can’t find any good spots for moonrise/moonset or sunrise/sunset within an easy walking distance from home, so doing anything like that on a short notice is almost impossible. There is no lack of good viewpoints, but good foregrounds are conspicuous in their absence. And to be honest, I haven’t found any good viewpoints without any signs of logging within a reasonable driving distance either, so I’m always in trouble with the full moon scenery. It has almost lead me to hoping it would be overcast weather every full moon so I don’t even have to search for a spot…

With the late winter and some bad weather in between, I haven’t done any skiing this winter. Until today! I was so excited about going out that I was on the move before sunrise and it really was great to be back on track. I was happy to see that I wasn’t completely out of shape either, so I did a small extension to my trip instead of taking the shortest route back home. But now that I’m writing this, the trip is catching up with me and I’m half tempted to go to bed already and it’s not even 9pm yet.

And yes, I know that the copyright stamp in the pictures is old, but I’m way too tired to fix that now!

Awesome! It’s snowing, so the snow cover will be pretty again.

I wanted do a long hike that would take me to some areas where snowshoes are required, while about half of the hike would be on a road where snowshoes would be more of a hinder. I’ve never liked carrying the snowshoes in hand for any longer stretches, so I decided to do something about it now. I rummaged through my sparepart drawer and found a shoulder strap which was just perfect for the snowshoe bag. As long as I’m hiking lightly (small backpack with only the camera, no tripod), it’s possible to sling the snowshoes at the back so they’re not hindering hand movement while walking. Problem solved.

Part of the trail goes under the power lines. They were making their buzzing bad-weather sound and it was a bit creepy to walk under them, with this constant reminder of the high voltage just above my head. For a moment I imagined that the power line was affecting my heart rate, but of course it was all that heavy walking through the snow with snowshoes on my feet that got my heart racing… a good workout for sure!

Sometimes I’m absolutely convinced that I am the stupidest person ever to hold a camera. This morning I had this great plan to do a double whammy – drive to a spot which would provide me a view to both the moonset and sunrise. I was even going to take a closeup of the almost full moon so I had the 300mm lens mounted on the camera. I figured, first the closeup, then swap lenses, shoot sunrise, shoot moonset. Great plan, eh? So I was driving to my spot and on the way I saw a very nice scene with snow covered pines lit by the early dawn light and full moon above. But I was going to my spot, so stupid me drove on without stopping. I got to my spot, viewed the sky towards sunrise and noticed that there are no clouds, boring, viewed the sky towards the moon, there are clouds in the horizon and the moon was rapidly going down. Stupid me decided that it’s no point in stopping here when I wasn’t going to shoot the boring sunrise and drove on. And drove on… at this part of the road there were no spots to get a decent foreground for the moon and time was running out. But then my luck changed and I found a great spot and half ran out of the car so there I was, stupid me, with a 300mm lens attached to the camera and a scene that required the 24-105mm lens (in the bag)… and the moon disappearing behind the clouds. Absolutely no time to change lenses any more so I just stood there in total disgust and hated myself for not stopping at that first good spot I saw.

When I got back home, the first rays of the sun where lighting up the bird feeder and my anger quickly subsided when I saw that I had quite a few birds as well. It’s been relatively quiet at the feeder in the past weeks, I’ve only had to refill once a week instead of every other day like it was in the autumn. But with that sweet light now, I made use of the 300mm lens that had been so wrong a moment earlier and desperately wished for a bird to settle down on the perch during those few minutes that it was lit by the early sun. No such luck – goes without saying – but if there’s any benefit of the short days, then it’s definitely that the light is good any time there’s any of it so I got a few pictures when the sun had climbed a bit higher in the sky and the perch was lit again.

I’m still thinking about the missed opportunity with the moon. Sure, it was a big mistake to drive past the first spot. But the second spot I found, it would’ve been ever better but I got unlucky with the clouds. Last week we caught the sunset because we took the first best spot instead of searching for something better, but it appears that I didn’t learn anything from that. Stupid me.

In the past few weeks I’ve been thinking that maybe I don’t like winter as much as I used to. Or rather, I still like winter, but I also really really want it to be summer so I could go hiking, I have all these big plans already.

But then it started snowing. A lot. And I can’t even think about summer any more, I was just so happy to be walking around in this winter wonderland and marvel at the snow covered landscape! So that’s the problem I’ve had in the past few weeks, it’s not the longing for the summer but it’s the longing for the snow.

It would’ve been a total lunar eclipse today and I was ready to jump in the car and drive to my designated spot at the first sight of a crack in the clouds. But it only started snowing again so it was pointless to drive out, not that I’m terribly disappointed anyway – I’m too happy about the snow to care about missed opportunities!