Creative vacatons

Creative vacatons

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Creative Vacations goes internatianal and I get my 15 minutes of fame


We had a visit from a French TV crew and yesterday I saw the result. I must admit that it was a bit embarrassing to hear myself speaking French with a heavy accent. But I was the only Norwegian who did speak French. I guess that counts for something.

The program shows Northern Norway in a very nice way. Big thanks to Echappées belles!


Then today  Alice Choi sent me this photo:


It's from a Hong Kong newspaper. The only word I understand is "Vidar" so I hope they write something nice about us. The journalist spent two nights with us. The first night was all cloudy. Then she changed her flight to be able to stay for one more night and she got a lot of great shots. 
I'll update this post when I get the link to the articles and blog.


Vidar

Sometimes sitting on a rock is enough.


The last week of February was really tough in many ways. The weather was bad everywhere. Driving conditions were very difficult with a lot of ice and big dams of water on the roads. Clouds everywhere, no northern lights to be found and both Silvia and me were down with the flu. On the last day of February things changed to the better. We drove through snowy weather and I could hear a few people in the back of the van mumbling about not being able to see the Aurora. When we reached the destination it was very windy, very cold and a clear sky with Aurora dancing over our heads!


We went down to the beach and had a fantastic time. These three young gentlemen from tropical Singapore were laughed in the face of cold arctic climate as long as Aurora was having a beach party for them.


When I made this picture I was thinking of the use of foregrounds. Someone said about photography that "the World has been seen." Meaning that it is super important to try to find new angles to things. Bring your camera low, bring it high. Use the golden rule, brake the golden rule. Make pictures, don't just take them. It's too easy to get so overwhelmed by the northern lights that we forget to be photographers and just click away at the lights, forgetting to compose. 


Joe McNally, a great photographer and an excellent writer about photography, says he always tries to put a ballet dancer in the photo. So I did. Unfortunately Mariann Csikesz had hurt her foot so she couldn't strike a pose with a foot in the air or something. But she did great just sitting on a rock. Sometimes sitting on a rock is enough. We let Aurora do the dancing.