Off in the distance, I wander. I walk with my camera on my shoulder. SLURP!!! goes my rubber boot as it sinks into Nordic moss. It’s normal moss for all I know, but everything in Nordic environments seems fresh to me. Even this ordinary moss, this Nordic-above-the-arctic-circle moss, seems special and new.

It hits me: the light!

No, not the Profoto kind of light you see advertised in fancy photography magazines. I’m talking about the partially-diffused-then WHAM! slice of vibrance on a small pocket of moss for five seconds kind of light. Welcome to Norway.

Asthetics, matter

Light first, then composition and moments follow. Light is the raw ingredient of photography. It gets us photography types up before dawn or keeps us shooting well after dusk. Us photography types resonate with this this cycle well.

My epiphany, paraphrased: Asthetics matter in Norway. You see it in the architecture, the furniture, and photography. Including natural light. No wonder Profoto and PhaseOne hunker down during the winter doldrums in science labs to do their technical wizardary on cameras and all things lighting. Just poised to frolic in their Midsummers light.

Lego, Volvo, Nokia, and Ikea share yet another thing in common: They REALLY love their summers.

Nordic Light

What makes Nordic light special?

An economist would tell you many Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism. Light capitalism. The scarcity of the resource in the dark winters makes it a commodity to behold in the summer.

This makes Nordic light, well, more valuable than your typical Floridian light in a watt-second/ dollar approach. No offense, Grandma and Grandpa.

When you’ve got 18 hours of it to play with, you feast all you can. It’s not too often one can head out on a sunset shoot at 9pm, only to return tired at 11:20 after the sky shaped and reshaped colors for 90 minutes. Pinch me. Quite a contrast to shooting a wedding in Hawaii at Sunset Ranch weeks prior when sunset lingered for, oh, about 10 minutes.

Pursuing Personal Fun Work

You see, part of the journey involves carving two weeks out of the year, turning away jobs, putting the dog into doggie day care, and sitting on a plane for almost a day just so you have a good excuse to tell your Burning Man camp that I couldn’t make it this year. And it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!!! Yes, this is the kind of personal work, adventure travel, and romantic bonding I can indulge in with both my wife and camera. And i don’t feel I’m cheating on either. At least when I show her the photos, she knows I didn’t Photoshop in the light. Yes, my wife will attest to the qualities this kind of light brings.

It’s the perfect balance between diffuse and soft, yet directional with angular contrast. Even better than the Irish light which is almost on par. I wouldn’t call it religious, but it’s darn near close to where nature meets divine. That’s my scientific / spiritual description, quantified in terms of physics.

But then again it rains almost every day in Norway in the summer. The roads are curvy and narrow. And it’s the most expensive country. However, as an eternal optimist with my Irish spirit, “continual cheerfulness is a sign of wisdom.”

Thank God I left my swimsuit at home. Creating these images made it worth it:

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