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

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

The way up had been quite tiring, but the way down was lots of fun! Nice soft snow, and enough space to make turns. In the “forest” (the trees are tiny) we found a lot of ryper (ptarmigan/grouse). They don’t seem very keen on flying, they run around a lot. Some of them would stand underneath a bush and jump up repeatedly to reach a branch – it was hilarious to watch! I tried to come close to get some photos, but some ninja decided he wanted to be in the photo too and of course scared the bird away…

The sunset was beautiful!

On our way back we stopped at the supermarket at Tomasjordnes, an area on the mainland with very new apartment blocks. It’s really modern, with houses on poles standing in the water. I’d recently seen someone who live there post photos from his balcony and I was really impressed by the view. So out of curiosity, we decided to walk around and look at the neighborhood. It’s surprisingly nice

And look at the view some people have from their flats… I’m jealous!!

It’s really nice that the days are long enough now for after-work trips although it does mean that the northern lights season is over for now. But that evening it JUST about got dark enough for the northern lights to be visible… a last farewell I took this photo behind our flat, it was nearly 1 in the morning and I should have been in bed as I had a shift starting at 06:30 the next morning… oops

I had fun taking photos of the sunset with my neutral gradient filters, and Paul flew his kite for a while – there was just about enough wind. Sunset that day was at 21:18, but it rises again less than 6 hours later (at 4 in the morning). Although it doesn’t really get dark anymore, the sky turns this intense orange near the horizon – so beautiful!

We climbed Ørnfløya just after sunset to get photos of Sommarøy from above. There was a large flock of reindeer on the mountain too.

I could have stayed there all night, I was hoping the northern lights might make another appearance, but Paul was going on a skiing trip the next day and he was keen to get some sleep We made it back to Tromsø by midnight, I was tired but very happy

Our first day in Inari was very sunny, and we enjoyed a leisurely ski tour along the partly frozen river. For most of the way, you could ski on the ice of the river, but sometimes the river narrowed and there were rapids, so you’d have to get on the shore to pass. It was really pretty And one of the first creatures we met was this cute little bird that I remembered from our trip to Kiruna. It’s a white-throated dipper, and apparently Norway’s national bird – but I’ve only seen it in Sweden and Finland They can sing very prettily, a welcome sound after Tromsø where you mostly hear seagulls, crows and magpies who don’t exactly sing If you want to see some really good photos of this bird: check here and here.

We had a nice long break in the sunshine looking over the river. We met only a handful of other people all day, either skiing or ice fishing.

The river was a paradise for macro photography, I had lots of fun capturing these icicles. In the afternoon, it got more cloudy and the temperatures dropped. We headed back to the hotel – sauna time!

It cleared up again in the evening, and I was keen to try and see the aurora. Inari is at about the same latitude as Tromsø, and the days are getting very long now. At midnight, the sky had this incredible deep blue colour that silhouetted the trees on the other side of the river. Magical! And to add to the magic, even the aurora showed up very briefly though, so unfortunately I didn’t get any good photos. Still, I love the colour of the sky in these photos.

The next day started very sunny, and we went for a ski tour on lake Inari. This is the third-largest lake in Finland, and that means it’s BIG! But first I found some small bushes with branches covered in ice crystals…

When we left, I could see a front of clouds on the horizon. Unfortunately, it moved really fast and within about an hour it had become overcast. Without the sunshine, it was quite chilly.

We didn’t stay out for very long once it got cold and cloudy, but I did take some more photos of the different shapes of ice… wonderful

The next day was our last full day in Inari, and we went for another ski trip. It was a cloudy, snowy day, and we kept getting lost in the forest (guess we are spoilt in Tromsø where you hardly ever have to use a map ). Soon the sauna was calling We visited the museum (Siida) shop in the afternoon, though not the museum itself. I think it’s one of the best museums in the world (seriously) but we had already visited 2 years ago on our way to Murmansk. I started to regret that decision when browsing around the shop, as they had a temporary exhibition of paintings by a Swiss artist called Séverine Cuénod. I only got to see her work through the postcards they were selling (it was almost closing time), but I LOVED it. I can’t find much information about her, but here you can see a few more works. We also visited the local supermarket, where I was amazed to find that they sold rolls of film and FLOPPY DISKS. Wow – this place is frozen in time

The next day it was time to leave… It’s a 650 km drive back to Tromsø, so it was great to stop in Kautokeino for a bit. I had been looking forward to visiting Juhls Silver gallery for quite some time On our last visit (2 years ago), we were really short on time. Of course I didn’t leave empty handed I bought some really pretty glass birds to hang in front of the window.

The rest of the drive home was long but uneventful. As real Norwegians, we made sure to stock up on wine in Finland Finland is a lot cheaper than Norway. It was a great little trip, and we’re thinking of coming back to Inari in summer to explore the lake by boat

That first evening, our goal was to get a picture of the so-called “crown”, the splash when the drop has hit the water. After a lot of trial and error, we managed

We also played around with dripping milk into our red liquid (water with food colouring), which gives quite neat results! As a sneak preview of what we were going to do on the second evening, they showed us the drop machine. The really impressive drop photos are the result of 1 drop hitting the water, bouncing back, and then being hit by a second drop, creating a sort of umbrella. This is very hard to do by yourself, so you can buy a drop machine (controlled by a computer), which enables you to set the size of each drop, the time between firing the drops, how many drops you want, etc… In the photo below we used milk dripping into a cup of coffee

The next evening we got to play with the drop machine ourselves. Turns out it’s still very tricky to get it set right. We struggled for quite a while to get the famous “umbrella” photo, similar to the one above.

But it’s all good fun, even when the timing goes wrong…

At some point we created a soap bubble over our glass. We tried to get an umbrella image within the bubble, which took some attempts before we got it right. But again, the failed attempts are just as impressive – and I thought it was really cool to see how drops can pass through a soap bubble!

It was a really fun workshop! I’d love to do more, but I am a bit overwhelmed by the equipment you need (though they showed us how to build our own with cheap materials) and maybe most of all: how much patience is required. Patience has never been my strongest virtue But just take a look at Corrie White‘s to see where patience and perseverance can take you amazing!

I was a bit nervous as I was the only one on snowshoes, and this mountain was a lot steeper than what I’d done before. The first bit wasn’t much of a problem though, and on the steep bits it’s actually easier on snowshoes as the crampons help you to go straight up instead of having to zig-zag.

On the second half, the snow was quite deep and I started to struggle. Even though we were able to follow a well established track made by all the early birds, I was still sinking in a bit with every step, and that made it quite tiring. Still, I enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the sunshine.

After a short lunch break, I was tempted to give up and let the other three get to the top without me. It’s hard to give up though, with the top in sight and not much further to go so I just kept going. And I made it! Well, we never made it to the actual top as the last 20 meters are very steep and exposed, and we decided not to risk it.

We had a great view from our pre-top and enjoyed a long break

And heres a panorama of the great view we had:

Our shadows were getting longer and it was time to come down… Paul, Eelke and Roy went straight down, while I took the same route as we had taken up, to avoid the very steep slopes through deep snow.

I tried to end up underneath a slope to take photos of the others skiing down, which isn’t easy when you’re a lot slower but I did succeed in the end…

It had taken me more than 3.5 hours to reach the top, but the way down was a lot faster: 1.5 hours. I was completely exhausted when I got back to the car though, this mountain was not quite in sync with my fitness level But it was a fantastic day!

For those who want to see even more photos (or read about the same trip from a different perspective ) here is the blog post by Roy about the same day (in Dutch).

He caught two more within half an hour Here is a video of him catching the biggest of the three, this one weighed over 6 kg! A steinbit or wolf fish/seawolf in English is quite a scary fish with lots of TEETH. Steinbit means “stone bite” and when we gutted the fish, we could feel several “rocks” in his stomach. They don’t actually eat other fish, they keep a diet of crabs, cockles, sea urchins… crazy!!! This makes the meat very firm and very tasty

(For best viewing, choose HD and watch fullscreen!)

My rod is not suitable to catch really big fish, so I mainly got small cod and haddock. The water was so clear that you could see what was on your line when it was still quite deep. I got a surprise when I looked at my line, and saw a cod on it – with a big halibut following it!! Paul is really keen to catch a halibut, but I knew my line wouldn’t be able to hold it. So while I was trying to keep the cod away from the halibut, Paul was trying to catch it with his own rod Unfortunately the halibut was too clever and swam away. Amazing!

Joking around, here is a fisheye photo of a fisheye I drove the boat back, which was lots of fun It did over 40 km/hr, but that did make it feel very cold!

It quickly got cold after the sun disappeared behind the mountains. We kept catching (too) small cod, so we decided to head back. The owners of the boat rental place were really friendly and came to chat with us when we came back. They let us use their cleaning room so we actually filleted all the fish before going home.

After filleting, we had over 5 kg of cod, haddock, brosme (cusk) and of course the steinbit which made up almost 4 kg of the total. We drove home after 22:00, with the northern lights dancing around while it was still not dark. We dropped almost 2 kg off at Eelke and Roy’s, as it would take us quite a long time to eat that much fish We came home completely exhausted, I was really glad I had a day off on Monday to recover from the busy weekend

I’ve finally gotten around to using lightroom to edit the raw images instead of the jpg’s – really impressed how much difference it makes! And now I have to run, I have a workshop in drop-photography tonight. Very excited, hope to share some results soon