Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

And now for something completely different between all the landscape/nature photos on this blog 🙂 Last week there was a “fotomesse” in Tromsø, a kind of trade fair organised by a shop in Oslo (we don’t even have a decent photography shop in Tromsø!). Apart from selling all kinds of equipment, there were also talks by photographers and several workshops. All for free 🙂 I was lucky with my work schedule, and I was able to join 3 workshops and a talk. The talk was by Audun Rikardsen, a professor in biology who takes truly spectacular images around Tromsø – have a look at his website!

The workshops were by Roger Brendhagen, a nature photographer and ambassador for Nikon. The workshops were all really interesting and I’ve learnt a lot. One of them was called “Walk of Feature” and was about documentary photography and publishing in magazines etc. At the end of the workshop he gave us an assignment: to document an event in 8 photos, and to really plan which photos to take beforehand.

After his workshops, and the talk by Audun Rikardsen, I came to realise that many great photos are not taken “by accident”. They are planned very carefully and basically staged. I still have this romantic idea that good photos just come to you if you happen to be at the right place at the right time 😉 though of course I do sometimes have a photo in mind before I set out. So it was a new experience for me to sit down and kind of draw out which 8 photos I wanted to take – it’s like drawing a cartoon story. I had big ideas, but struggled with the practicality of them, and when I was running out of time, I decided to keep things simple and chose the making of a cup of tea as my subject 😀

A simple subject, but surprisingly challenging to carry out… I was alone when I took these photos, it definitely would have been easier with an assistent 😉 but it was quite fun to try and get these photos perfect. Of course they aren’t, and I still have a lot to learn, but I found this exercise very helpful. So here it comes…

Spring is slowly making its way to Tromsø, but this weekend we seem to have turned back to winter: snow showers! We were craving some fresh air though, so we decided to go for a walk anyway. We walked along the coast of the mainland, sometimes battered by snow and hail showers, other times enjoying bright sunshine 🙂 a great walk!

Here you can see that spring is actually here: buds on the trees and oystercatchers. We even saw little lambs! I didn’t get a photo of them though, as they hurried inside the shed when it started snowing.

The sky was changing so quickly and the clouds were really impressive…

We came across many boathouses which are great subjects for photos 🙂

Large parts of the beach consisted of big rocks grown over with grass – quite difficult to walk on!

We came across this boat-repair-project (looked quite hopeless to me 😉 ), and from here we walked back to the car along the road.

May is a difficult month in Tromsø, at some point there is not enough snow for skiing but too much snow for hiking… beaches are the best destination then, as they are free of snow. It was great to get some fresh air, and we both really enjoyed our walk on the beach 🙂

Yesterday evening the water around Tromsø was mirror calm and I (Paul) decided it was time for the first boat trip of the year! I had heard that the sea ice in Ramfjorden had recently broken up and thought it would be interesting to make a trip in the channels between the ice floes.

When I got to Ramfjorden, I found that all the broken-off pieces of ice had been blown out of the fjord so the maze of channels I was hoping for was gone. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful evening in the fjord.

The remaining ice was very thin (5-10 cm), too thin for a person to walk on, but plenty thick enough for sea gulls.

After taking some photos, I met up with a friend who lives by the side of the fjord, who invited me in for coffee. After the sun had gone down it was time to return to Tromsø. On the way back I found that the surface of the fjord had begun to freeze over, and I could hear it cracking under the boat. I was surprised how quickly the thin ice had formed. It was perhaps good that I did not stay longer 😉