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Happy Friday everyone. I’m officially back from 8 days in the beautiful country of Norway. What an amazing place. I swear that every corner I turned while driving around Norway showed yet another postcard picturesque view. It was a photographers paradise. And what’s really crazy is that even at mid-day, the sun wasn’t too harsh, and the skies had this beautiful crisp deep blue color to them all the time.

Lots of Photos = Little Sleep
Man am I tired though! The sun sets close to 11pm and rises around 4am. But it never really gets dark there this time of year. Even though the sun does go down below the horizon, it’s not far enough to make it totally dark. So for about 4-5 hours it’s twilight. Here’s an iPhone photo taken around 2:30am and it’s about as dark as I ever saw the skies get.

night

Because of this schedule I didn’t get much sleep. I shot sunset just about every night which means I wasn’t getting to bed until at least 12am (usually later). Then, on most mornings I got up to shoot sunrise. But since the light was so great before sunrise (and I needed time to get into place) I found myself getting up around 2:30am. I’d shoot for about 4 hours then go back to bed around 7am for a few hours. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity while I was there to shoot as much as possible 🙂

The Golden Hour (or 3)!
Here’s what was really cool. Because of how the sun sets in Norway this time of year, you get amazing light for like 2-3 hours. Most outdoor photographers know that when the sun is going down (or coming up) we get maybe 20-30 minutes of that magical light where the sun is really low. There, you get at least 2 hours where the light is just great. Throw some dramatic clouds into the mix and it made for some spectacular sunrises and sunsets that lasted a long time. So it was really cool to be able to go from one location to another and keep shooting, where as most places I go I’d have to pick one spot to shoot because that’s all the light I’d have. The photo below was taken at least 3 hours before sunset.

(click to see it larger)
pano3

Where’s the Rest of the Photos?
I’ll post more photos (and stories) next week when I get some time to go through them all (and rest). And I wanted to give a big thanks to all the people at IGM for having me out to Norway to teach. We had a wonderful group and I’m truly grateful for the opportunity. Have a great weekend!

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