Under arctic light

"You're mad going there in November"

That is what I was told by a few people when I mentioned that I was headed to The Lofoten Islands, Norway in the middle of November. It gets too much rain, its too windy, the light is bad... the list goes on. We had none of the above, We had epic light, amazing clear skies and even better aurora displays!!!

We arrived at our accommodation in Hamnoy, Lofoten late at night after a long day of travelling and we just hit the hay right away. I must admit I found it hard to sleep due to a mix of over tiredness and excitement at what the next week had in store for us. Skip to the next morning when we woke... I raced outside to check out the views from the cabin and to say I was blown away would be an understatement.

 (Below is a shot which was taken literally a 2 minute walk from our cabin at sunrise)

Hamnøy Village

The accommodation we stayed in on our tour was down here in this fishing village of Hamnoy in one of these red cabins. They are ideally situated for touring Lofoten, and this area itself without travelling has an array of photography compositions.

The first day we chilled out and just shot a bit around the village as the weather was "just ok", nothing bad, just cloudy. This suited us as we were still quite tired from the day before, so we made a plan for day two to hike up a mountain on the coast called Ryten (543m above sea level). This hike was pretty easy, but the views were absolutely out of this world. It had everything... deep snow, ice, sheer cliffs and made even better with little to no wind. Although the views from the summit were amazing, the shot I was most impressed with was actually on the way to the beach at the bottom of the mountain. It was a composition I stumbled across by accident while on the way down to Kvalvika beach.

Ryten (Close to summit)

En route to Kvalvika beach

From here on in, although we had brilliant sunrise and sunset light... It was all about the aurora displays we witnessed (The best I have seen to date). After shooting sunrise and sunset we got our dinner and made our way to Uttakleiv beach for what we hoped would be a decent display of aurora, even if stats were low. By god we did not expect what was to happen in the coming hours when the skies darkened.

Below is just three images of about 300 from that nights display, as you can see it was a pretty decent display considering the "low stats".

Uttakleiv beach selfie

Uttakleiv beach (5 image panorama)

Uttakleiv beach (Tangstad in the distance)

Another great thing about where we were based in Hamnøy is we had access to a small speed boat to use at our leisure, one of the days we took it out and after some engine trouble early on we managed to get her out thanks to some local fishermen. We used the boat to sail down between the Fjords (Reinefjord and Kirkefjord). We will also be able to use this boat on our November 2018 tour (details of this tour at the end of the blog)

There was one day where I stayed close by the cabin to shoot some of the mountains around the village... It was then I decided to send my DJI Mavic Pro up to get a different perspective of Hamnøy, and it didn't disappoint.

This shot from the drone is actually a six image panorama... It is my first ever pano with the drone, infact its my first ever shot taken with the new drone. Turns out it is one of my favourite ever shots that I've taken.

Our last day in terms of light and clear skies was probably the best, especially that we were due a pretty strong aurora display. The only problem was our ferry back to the main land was at 8.30pm. There was one shot in particular I wanted to get on this trip and until the last day skies didn't allow me to capture it, the thing is would the aurora appear in time for me to get! The answer is YES, YES it did... But first I just wanted to capture a little bit of light on the mountains at the resort for sunset. Just as the sun was going down the water on the Fjord started to calm and it allowed me to get a little light with a little reflection on the water.

Reinefjord

The above shot was literally a thirty second walk from the cabin and this is practically the shot I wanted with the aurora above it before I left. As the sky got dark (about 6pm) we left the cabin with 100% clear skies in hope of an early display of aurora before our ferry. For the next two hours

we were just dealing with small hints of green, nothing too exciting especially compared to our previous displays. As the clock ticked, about 8pm the display started to pick up very slowly. I did manage to get the shot I've been after...

Reinefjord

This was my last photo taken in Lofoten for this trip. It killed me to have to walk away from a display that was going from strength to strength, instead I had to make do with watching it from the back of the ferry as we headed to Bodø to catch our flight.

Lofoten is a truly magical magical place, definitely one of the best upcoming tours for 2018. We still have some places left for our 2018 winter tour to the Lofoten Islands (8th - 15th November 2018), full info in the link below.

https://www.bglandscapetours.ie/Home/tourDetails?tourID=54

Only 3 places remaining 

Should you require more info on this trip don't hesitate to email us at bernard@bglandscapetours.ie

Formatt HITECH Filters (www.formatt-hitech.com) 30% discount code BERNARD30

Keep an eye out next week for my BLOG on our recent Iceland tours and some more amazing northern lights displays.