Behind the Shot - Ridge Creatures
Finland is amazing. Its amazing during summer and fall, but its in winter that it goes beyond amazing and just turns into somekind of fairytale frozen planet. It really is incredible. And if you like trees, Finland has just what you need. There are trees everywhere. Endless forests stretching endlessly beyond the horizon. Do i like trees? No, i dont like trees. I adore trees! If i was forced to choose between shooting trees or mountains for all eternity, and i had to choose just one of them, i would choose trees. Thats how much i love photographing trees.
The trees in this particular shot is not typical for the area we visit in Lapland. There is mostly the incredible conifer trees as well as birches that are dominant. But on our way up to Riisitunturin National Park we passed a small patch of these almost dead spruce trees. They looked so naked and cold, yet so strikingly beautiful. And the shape of the ground made the whole scene a bit sensual in a weird way. Its hard to explain what attracts me in certain scenes, and in this case i think very few would find this attracting, but i absolutely love the stark zombie like beauty present in this scene. No colour at all. A very monochromatic scene, stripped to its core. I couldnt take my eyes away. I framed it so that the curve shape of the ground became prominent and gave some kind of harmony to the composition.
Preparing for Shipping of Heime
The books are about to arrive any day now and i am preparing everything for shipping. The limited editions will include a unique fine art print, all 50 of them with a different one, and each is one of only 5 copies ever to be printed of that image. I could have made it easy and just keep this open editions, but I chose to keep it as exclusive as I could. Our print guy, Steinar at fineartprint.no does an incredible job with all our fine art prints and i was stunned when the limited edition prints arrived. The paper and the quality is just amazing.
I am deciding which print to send to each customer decided by a feeling of what they might like. I actually try to figure out what each one might enjoy and appreciate, either by checking out their own images or just by my gut feeling. It feels way more personal that way.
I also haven’t told anyone, but each copy will consist of the main book HEIME, but also a booklet with behind the scenes images and stories. I thought it might be interesting to see what went on when some of the images were captured, the effort and also some of the fun and love for the outdoors. Everything all presented in a slipcase.
I have around 20 copies left of the limited edition of HEIME. You can find it here if you want to grab one: HEIME – LIMITED EDITION
Behind the Shot - Ocean Force
There is not much that triggers me more than a proper blizzard. And this one was furious! We were on our Secrets of Arctic tour and found ourselves down on the rocks at Tungeneset at Senja. Most of our group was seeking refuge in the van while i decided to have a go at the raging waves. I wanted to capture something that would give a sense of the raging feeling i felt while standing there. As often is the case while shooting seascapes, the chosen shutterspeed will make all the difference. I tried out all kinds of shutterspeeds, but i ended up using a 0,6 sec exposure. This gave a sense of motion, yet not too blurred to pass on a feeling of that angry ocean.
Compositionally its all about repeating diagonal lines and an anchoring triangle in the bottom. I felt it was a composition that really worked quite well. My camera did not like this at all. Constant splashes of salty spray kept hitting my gear, its a recipe for disaster, but miraculously everything survived.
Post-processing was minimal. Just whitebalance adjustment and curves.
Fuji GFX 50r – GF 32-64mm @ 41mm, f7,1 – iso 250 – 0,6s
You can buy a fine art print of this here. Only 4 editions left.
Behind the Shot - No Mans Land
I usually don’t feel I have much to say in a photographic world dominated by Youtube and Instagram and an endless flow of information and inspiration. But I thought I might do something just to keep my mind occupied in these crazy pandemic times. So I will do a series of posts where I go behind a specific shot and share the backstory. Maybe some technical info or whatever might be interesting.
The first shot is one called No Mans Land from my Alpine World gallery. It’s a shot I took on a hiking tour in Lofoten back in 2018. The hike took place in early June which is normally a great time for hiking in Lofoten, but this year the weather gods decided to have some fun on our behalf. We had crazy blizzards and insane winds on our first campsite, deep in between the mountains just north of Reine. This particular area is hardly ever visited by anyone. And its totally understandable given its tricky access. We were camped out under a few of the many jagged peaks that surrounds lake Solbjørnvatnet and decided to go for an evening hike even further into no mans land. This gave us a few angles on the peaks that I hadn’t seen before, or after for that matter. The grim and moody weather was perfect for capturing the sense of drama that this area presents to anyone who dares to visit. I framed this so that the small pond would balance the mighty peaks that are a little left sided in this scene. A slight burst of light came through just at the right moment and the way the peak on the right is diffused gave me the depth i wanted.
I shot this handheld on my Fuji XT-2 and the 10-24mm at 11,5mm. Nothing worth noting technically, a straightforward exposure with minimal post-processing. Basically just balancing the light. I went for a rather cold toning to further accentuate the sense of a harsh and rugged environment.
Later that night the wind violently attacked our camp and the next day we stayed in a cabin instead. Awesome memories!
HEIME - The Long and Winding Road
When I first started getting serious about my photography, sometime around 2008, I had no idea where my photographic journey would take me. But even at this early stage I played around with a future dream of making a photo book. I’ve been a bookaholic since I was little, obsessing on books about birds and fishing. So the dream of making a book was present for a long time. And a few years later an idea started to take shape.
Early on in my project I had a vision of a book solely focused on the mountain areas up here in Northern Norway. I knew that if I somehow was able to put together a book, it would have to be something involving my home area, the place that has shaped me into who I am today. It had to be something I’m deeply connected with. And the mountains that I often call the Misty Mountains, is as close to my heart as anything.
So I kept on shooting the areas over time. Slowly collecting images for a future publication, but as time passed I started to rethink the project. I realised that a book deserved so much more than only the mountains. My home area has so much to offer; rivers and waterfalls in all shapes and sizes, ghostly forests and an incredible coast line. All of these needed to be in the book.
In the fall of 2019 I contacted the publishing company that has been doing most of my print work for many years, and we started to make a rough outline for the project. I have a large collection of photo books and I have a clear opinion on what makes a great book. I wanted a simple yet elegant design. Heavy matte paper with no reflective shine at all. I don’t like looking at pictures in my comfy chair and have light reflected all over the place. So the paper has to be really rough and non-reflective. My all time favourite photo book is “Arctique” by Vincent Munier, and in my head I used that as a guiding star.
So I brought my wish list to the publisher and said “this is what I want!” The response was exactly what I hoped for. “Sure, we can do this.” So from that moment I knew that I could realize the project and make it exactly the way I want it. No compromises, just 100% ME from A to Z.
Then the real work started. Design and image selection. In terms of design I wanted it simple and clean. No words, except foreword and a statement. The rest is all about the images. I already knew the storyline and how that would set the premises for the image selection. The book will take you through the year, from the cold white January all through the warm arctic summer and ending in another cold and dark December.
I thought image selection would be easy and quick. Oh how i was wrong! After shooting the area since 2008 I thought I had most of the material I needed, but I couldn’t have been further away from the truth. Since those early days my photography style and vision has changed dramatically. My older work feels like the work of another person, one that I once knew but have since lost contact with. I spent weeks working my way through the archive trying to find images that I felt could work. This was such an eye-opening experience. It forced me to look at my own work with a new pair of eyes. And it taught me a lesson. Never delete raw-files that you think is not good enough! As I went through folders from the early years I discovered some gems that at the time seemed rubbish to me, but now, with my developed vision, seemed really good! And this happened quite a few times. The images that I had posted at the time, now felt like poor work, while others suddenly came to life. A true eye-opener for me.
I quickly realized I had work to do. I needed more material. Much more material. I didn’t want to make a book of half decent work collected over the years, I wanted a book that represents me as a photographer 100%. And to do that I had to get to work. Over the following year I shot as much as possible and I spent more time out in the field than I dreamed would be possible. The Covid-19 pandemic turned out to be a positive aspect in this. All our workshops around the world suddenly got postponed, so I had a calendar filled with absolutely nothing. I could explore and shoot more than ever and I made good use of the time I had available.
So I worked simultaneously with the image selection and design, as well as producing new material along the way. That way I was able to shoot images that I knew would fit right into the book and my success ratio reached new highs. For instance, during 6 days on the yearly Misty Mountains tour I managed to produce 19 images that ended up in the book. This was only possible because I worked on the timeline in the book simultaneously with shooting for that same timeline. I knew what kind of images I needed, the tones, the detail shots to accompany the bigger shots. All these things that I normally don’t consider at all, they were suddenly taking a lead and telling me how to see, shoot and process.
Choosing the page layouts is tedious work. It is crucial for the end result. Which images work well together? This took months to perfect, and the selection changed constantly. And since my inspiration was at an all time high I kept producing new material all the time. So the whole process was like a living organism, taking new directions and making twists and turns constantly. It was exhausting and extremely time consuming, but in the end, the final layout was exactly what I had dreamt of. I couldn’t have done it any differently. This was me. My work. 100%.
When we made the rough outline of the project we aimed at around 150 pages in total. We ended up with 248 pages. I hoped for around 120 images, but ended up at 205. Out of these, 144 images has never been published anywhere. And I don’t want to show these before the book is out, which is really hard cause its just SO tempting to post some of the images, which i considered to be my best work to date. But it allowed me to let the images rest for a while and as months passed I would have a look at them within the context of the book and see which one worked and which didn’t. The whole process was very interesting and rewarding.
Along the way I had to get input from someone outside the project. I need fresh eyes to look carefully through it all. Thankfully I have plenty of capable eyes available, so I gathered important input and opinions that made me able to do small, but crucial adjustments to both image selections and layout.
When I got the pdf version of the book from the publisher, my eyes teared up a little. Seeing all the work and envisioning what it will look like in print, was just too much. When you finish a project like this, you feel empty. Like your creativity has been drained. That’s how I feel now. Mentally exhausted and nervous. A couple of weeks ago i received the print samples. The samples were just a tiny tad too dark, due to the rough paper that literally sucks a bit of the brightness out of the images. So I had to go in and brighten up all the images, based on what I could see from the samples. Frustrating and stressful.
Right now I’m in a state of anxiety, exhaustion, happiness and adrenaline rush. I`ve let the baby fly away and its ready for a life on its own.
The work is me. 100%.
– HEIME – is available here
-Arild-
