Tivedens National Park - Part 1
There’s a photography adage, often attributed to Ansel Adams, that goes, “Bad weather makes for good photography.” Landscape photographers know how true that can be, but like all adages, it doesn’t tell the whole of the story. More often than not it’s the transitions between or within bad weather that makes for good photography, the breaks in weather or the downpours. Regardless, it means getting out when the weather is not so great and all too often becoming wet, cold and miserable with no guarantee of getting a good photograph. That’s pretty much how Tividens turned out for us, except for the last part.
We spent good parts of three days photographing there, in three different parts of the park. Only on the last day did we not struggle with the weather in one respect or another. Fortunately, our patience paid off, with periodic moments that tested our ability to make strong images in often challenging and ever-changing conditions. I’ve broken the Tivedens images into two blog posts, each with only a few images. This is for two reasons. First, I felt it was about time to work on and show the images I feel best about from the trip. I didn’t want to lessen the attention one might give to what (at this point) I think are stronger images by surrounding them with lesser-quality work. Second, I wanted readers to spend a bit more time with each image, click on them to enlarge them to really look at them, rather than zoom through a bunch of images that tell or support a story instead of standing on their own. There’s no real story here, other than of the place and the images I felt compelled to make. So while I might write about making the images, they really should stand on their own. Perhaps you should ignore the words and just look at the images?
Photographing in bad weather is not easy. Especially when it’s not quite what you’d expected. The weather forecast for that first morning was for drizzle and light rain until about 9:00 am. It was barely sprinkling when we left the bimobil and headed up a trail. The landscape was amazing and as we topped a spur, I saw a potential image that included three boulders, typical of what we’d been seeing in this landscape. As I set my pack down to set up my camera, the drizzle turned to light snow, which didn’t stop me from setting up and making an image.
That didn’t last very long, because it turned back to drizzle, and then rain. I began to suspect we were on the wrong trail (I was right, we were on a horse trail - though we did get an image thanks to that mishap), so we backtracked and made our way back to the information center. By then it was raining rather hard. Rather than get soaked and possibly sick early in the trip, we retreated back to the bimobil to wait the rain out. It was going to stop in about an hour anyway, no reason to push it. An hour later, it died down a bit, we went out light to make some images, and then it started raining hard again and we retreated once more to the bimobil. Three hours later (well into the early afternoon), we headed back out in what proved to be the last of the sustained drizzle (the important word there is sustained), for the day.
We continued along one of the proper hiking trails and I saw an interesting formation set back from the trail, so I made my way over and set up for an image. While I was composing it (and periodically checking to see where Ann was) I noticed that the sun was starting to peep out here and there. So I waited, and waited and waited. After 20 minutes or so, the waiting paid off. As I suspected, the three images I made as the sun quickly lit and then died off on just my spot (unlike the 10 or so times the sun was 15 feet away, but not where I wanted it to be (you can probably still hear the echoes of my swearing)), feel much more alive than the images that were made in full overcast. This was one instance where patience paid off.
For awhile there we really didn’t know what to expect. The breaks of sun were few and far between, and sometimes the image benefitted from being sun lit, and other times not. But the breaking clouds were good because it gave a variety of lighting conditions over fairly brief moments of time, and even when it didn’t provide direct sunlight, it often provided just enough light to give soft definition to objects in the image when compared to the exposures made when the cloud cover was densest. This type of photography really challenges the eye and one’s perception of light. The eye tends to normalize light, giving definition to objects because we see with two eyes, where a camera (with its one objective) needs light to add dimensionality to subjects. It can be incredibly rewarding and challenging to photograph in this type of light because you have to see the very subtle shaping of subjects to recognize they are there to be utilized.
And then, all of a sudden, we started having the best of all possible conditions - true partly cloudy skies. You want overcast light? Wait until a massive billowy cloud blocks the sky. Want stark shadows (generally a nightmare for woodland photography)? Just wait for it, because it will come. Something in-between? Wait for the transitions from one to another. Just make sure you’re ready to act in anticipation of what will be because the transitions can be short and the effect might (read: will) pass before you realize it. You have to see it coming and then make the photograph before you see it “just right” because if you wait, by the time you press the shutter, it’s gone. Again, it’s a pleasure to photograph in these conditions despite the challenges because it requires you to immerse yourself in the environment, come to understand the clouds that day, the wind, the forest you’re in and to see the potential before you make the image. And you have to understand that everything about the light and the place is changing. Five minutes later it can be and will be very, very different.
And just as suddenly, the skies can grey out again (or go totally clear . . . and then grey out). No more billowy skies, no more gaps for the sun to break through. You learn to adapt to the conditions and to take what the location and the weather have to offer you.
As I said earlier, the landscape at Tivedens National Park has much to offer. Granite bedrock uplifted from the violent creation of Lake Vättern, giant boulders strewn across the landscape by inland ice sheets, and nature, as it always does, steadily reclaiming the landscape. The weather was both friend and foe. And the photographic opportunities abounded, leaving us in awe.