A Month North of the Tree Line

This was the first long trip with the camera. A month in the Norwegian Arctic, north of where any tree grows, with the X-T5 and a single zoom at the top of the pack and most of the rest of the pack reserved for skis, skins, and food.

The light up there in February runs maybe three hours of usable color and another two of low blue twilight on either side of it. The wind is the constant. The peaks rise from the sea, and the storms come in directly off the open Norwegian Sea or down from the Barents — there is no foothill, no transition, no warm afternoon to retreat into. The work happens in the gap between fronts.

Most of the touring was the same shape every day. Out by four with a headlamp. Skin to the col. Take the camera off the pack at the col. Make the first photographs while the light came up. Ski something. Ski back to the car or the camp. Sleep five hours. Out at four again.

The recurring image, by the end of the month, was always the same — a single skier on a long ridge, with the sea behind, and almost no other reference for size. The whole trip was in service of finding that image in slightly different versions of itself.

The X-T5 was, more than anything, the right camera for this kind of trip. Light enough to keep on the pack belt for the cold approaches. Fast enough to handle the skiing when it came. Honest enough that the photographs from the trip don't lie about the conditions they were made in.

The full series lives here. The next trips, in order, are Yosemite and the North Cascades. Notes on those when they happen.