A Change in Approach
After months of doubt I was relieved to hear that Norway had opened its borders again for travellers from the Netherlands and other European countries.
This wasn't my first time in Norway (nor will it be the last), last year I traveled through a big part of Southern Norway but I ran out of time to visit all the beautiful bits the Norwegian landscape has to offer.
The result of ditching expectations.
This year my approach was different, I planned to take it slow and spend more time at certain locations. Guided by last years experience, I knew where the beautiful, special and photographically potential locations were. But also the places that were amazing to just spend a day and night, to enjoy and to take in the landscape around me.
This is where building my own campervan has enabled me to take the slow approach, it sounds very cheesy, but… home really is where you park it. It is my basecamp on wheels when I am traveling.
Last years trip to Norway wasn't the best, and I’m not talking about the experience, weather or the landscape itself, but the kind of photos I returned home with.
Many photos were mediocre -and most importantly - didn’t move me at all. They were just photos of a pretty landscape. And I didn’t really know why that was, until a couple of months later.
The transition from an ice covered landscape to bare rocks. A new landscape is forming.
I slowly became aware that I was just photographing the stuff that was the ‘standard’ in landscape photography. Like setting up a composition according to the ‘Rule of Thirds’, relentlessly searching for that leading line and to top it off, it was only good enough when epic light struck the landscape in front of me.
In preparation of those moments I spent way to much time online, researching every location, and going off by photos that others had taken before me. And all of that was just to be sure that the effort I put into it, resulted in an image that I had already made in my mind, an image that was just how I expected it to be.
And while there is not necessarily anything wrong with the approach I described above, it just didn’t work for me anymore. It didn’t fulfil me, make me proud and most importantly, the images didn’t feel personal.
And that’s what changed this year.
While the sky was turning orange from the sunrise, I was mesmerised by the shapes in the glacial deposits.
Being aware that something needed to change was a huge milestone for me, because creating just pretty pictures wasn’t going to cut it for me in the long run. I wanted my photography to have more depth, be more meaningful and maybe something to work on for a while. Like a project.
After doing some research and going through other photographers work it seemed like most had found a deeper meaning to what they were doing. At that time I came across the work of Theo Bosboom, which was the complete opposite of what I was doing with my photography, but his images and approach were very appealing to me.
After having a glance at the workshops he organised I signed up for a workshop called ‘My Project’.
This new way of thinking and coming up with a project-idea was very challenging for me to say the least, but the whole process made me think hard and beyond photography itself. In such a way that it truly became something more than just taking pretty pictures. As I am writing this, my personal project isn’t finished yet, but my new way of thinking has slowly evolved how I approach my photography.
This years trip to Norway happened about halfway into the project and the photos I took there are a clear result of this different approach.
The different colours and their shift from the warm reddish to the colder blue tones in the rock’s surface caught my eye while I was standing above one of Norway’s most famous waterfalls. Can you guess which one?
My 2020 trip to Norway started with 4 days of continuous rain, lots of low hanging clouds and I must have driven past countless breathtaking views, if only I could have seen them...
But that didn’t bother me too much, because I had no plans, no expectations, just some points of interest that I marked in Google Maps in the months prior to this trip.
I was living in the moment, observing my surroundings, taking my time and letting my fascination guide me. Whenever I saw something interesting I pulled over and explored the area further by foot.
An experience I can remember so vividly is when I stopped next to a waterfall because the rocks surrounding the waterfall looked very interesting to me. Upon getting closer I noticed this waterfall was the last one in a series of cascades. By the time I realised, I had hiked the entire cascade and spent hours there without even having a clue of the time that had passed by.
The photos I took there weren’t necessarily any good, but that didn't bother me at all, because the experience of being there and the exploration of that beautiful place was, and is worth much more to me than a photo.
Characteristic birch trees standing in the drizzle of the low hanging clouds
My route took me from the south coast, along the western edge of the Hardangervidda, up to Jotunheimen National Park, then east to Rondane National Park and back south again via Telemark to Kristiansand.
And now that I’m looking back at my photos of that trip it occurs to me that they’re all very different. Most of them are intimate photos of particular things like a rock formation, a flow of water or a pattern. But there are still some wider, maybe more recognisable photos in there as well. And it’s the diversity that not only represents Norway’s beauty very well, but also how I see the landscape now.
The bare mountain peaks of Rondane National Park bathing in the evening light.
I wrote down some keywords that helped me write this blog, but I think they’re very helpful to others as well, for a variety of reasons. So I’ll just leave them here for all of you to take in.
Observe
Take your time and travel slow
Explore
Lower or get rid of expectations
Find beauty in all kinds of weather and landscapes
Follow your fascination
All the other photos of this trip can be found in the dedicated gallery ‘Collection - Summer in Norway’