Mon
7 Sep
2020

After all the bad and even ter­ri­ble news of the last cou­ple of weeks, regar­ding a poten­ti­al­ly dead­ly virus that keeps making ever­y­bo­dies lives dif­fi­cult and a very dead­ly polar bear attack, it is easy to for­get that Spits­ber­gen is still a beau­tiful place. It is time for a few pho­tos to bring that back to mind.

It is a cou­ple of weeks ago now, but that doesn’t mat­ter. Isfjord was flat as a mir­ror, so we took the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a Zodiac tour from Lon­gye­ar­by­en to Svenske­hu­set at Kapp Thord­sen.

Gal­lery: Svenske­hu­set

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

I am not going to repeat the dra­ma­tic histo­ry of the “Swe­dish house” (Svenske­hu­set) at Kapp Thord­sen here, as I have recent­ly com­pi­led a spe­cial side dedi­ca­ted to Svenske­hu­set – inclu­ding pan­ora­ma images, as you may alre­a­dy have gues­sed. Have a look the­re if you are inte­res­ted. I do recom­mend it. Final­ly get­ting the­se images was a strong moti­va­ti­on to take this trip.

And other than that, spen­ding a long day in fine wea­ther in a place like this, with fine views over Isfjord and all the big and small impres­si­ons of the sce­n­ery and the tun­dra, is an expe­ri­ence of the kind of which you (or, at least, I) just can’t get enough in life.

Regar­ding the small impres­si­onf of the tun­dra: I have always expe­ri­en­ced it as slight­ly dis­ap­poin­ting to pho­to­graph the flowers. Becau­se of the limi­t­ed depth of field with macro pho­to­gra­phy, only a small part of the flower appears in focus. But today, pho­to tech­no­lo­cy enables us to take it a good step fur­ther. “Focus stack­ing” is the key. It requi­res some effort regar­ding pre­pa­ra­ti­ons, equip­ment, pho­to­gra­phy and editing, but I think it is worth it in the end:

Arc­tic bell-hea­ther near Svenske­hu­set.
Fokus-stack­ing makes it pos­si­ble to have almost the who­le flower in focus.