I’m often asked why I take pictures? The answer is two-fold: for myself, to remember the places I’ve been, and for others, to inspire them to see the world. Every day for 6 years I would walk by a photo of this scene in the Lofoton Islands of Norway. SmugMug had a giant panorama print of Reine — it took over the whole wall — and it was hung in one of the main hallways. Every day I’d walk by it and say “one day I’m going to go there.”
After 3 trips to Iceland, Rebecca finally said to me “damnit, we’re going to Norway. I’ll plan the trip. You can come along if you’d like.” So we booked flights, invited Andy along … and then promptly kicked Rebecca out of planning the trip. Andy and I did most of the planning and a 7 day photo trip turned into a 5 day trip with 2 days of backcountry skiing. I’ll cut to the chase and skip the long story about how we nearly didn’t make it here and just leave it at this: We stopped in Iceland on the way, photographed some ice-caves, beat the largest snowstorm in Reykjavik’s history and caught our flight with 5 minutes to spare. Everything was easy after that.
This is probably the most photographed scene in all of the Lofoton Islands, with a similar photo from Hamnoy coming in a close second, but I don’t care. This inspired me to travel halfway across the world and see and do something different. So here’s my own take, taken at 6:30am on a cold morning, when the wind died down long enough for the unnamed mountain peak to reflect in the water. Reine (pronounced Ray-nuh), is a gorgeous fishing village, now turned into tourist attraction. We stayed in some of those red huts on the right. I find it interesting that the tallest peak here is, as far as I can tell, unnamed. All the other peaks are named except for the main peak. Strange.
Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8:
38mm, f/11, 4 sec, ISO 400
