Photos from Northern Norway: A photo blog

Taken with Olympus EPL-1 digital camera September 19th May 2013. Click image for larger view.

I went for a spring trip to Northern Norway this year, and oh my did it pay off. The weather has been fantastic with temperatures well above 20 degree Celsius, something that is unusual this early in the year.
In the picture above I have photographed the view from my bedroom at midnight on the 19th of May. It is about this time we get midnight sun, but the sun went behind the mountains. Nevertheless, the view was spectacular and making it hard to go to sleep.
The mountains that you see far in the horizon is the second largest island in Norway, Senja. Please click on the photo to view it in larger size.

Spring is such a wonderful time in the north with all the birds coming back, flowers are popping up everywhere and the boat is finally back on the water. I think I need to take a week off every year to visit the old house on Andørja.

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Information about the picture:
Camera: Olympus EPL-1 digital camera
Exposure 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 14 mm
ISO Speed 200
Lens: OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L
Location: Laupstad (Andørja), Troms in Northern Norway

I have been so lucky to be able to do some traveling with my work. My company has offices all over the world and recently they have needed me to go to some of their locations in Europe. Going to new places means new photo opportunities, if I can find time in between all the work. My last trip went to Stockholm, but it only lasted for two days. The time during my stay consisted mainly of meetings and staying at a hotel, but on the way back to the airport I was able to snap a picture with my phone of the Swedish Royal Palace. As I was sitting in a taxi I was not able to take a good picture (as you can see below), but it is awesome to have a memory from the trip. Hopefully there will be a lot of trips for me in the future, and I have to remember to bring a proper camera to showcase all the city sights.

If you get the chance you should really visit Stockholm. Especially the old part of the city (Gamla Stan which means The Old Town) is really beautiful with great architecture and it is nifty that this part of the city is placed on an island within Stockholm. When I was there it was really cold with lots of snow and biting winds. I would recommend going there when it is a bit warmer even though it can be nice and exotic to see a Scandinavian city in its winter clothes. If you really want to see what Scandinavia can offer in the winter you should go to Northern Norway to see the northern lights at this time of the year!

Photos from Northern Norway has finally entered the world of web 2.0. You can now find the site on Facebook. You can hit the like button in the widget in the right sidebar or follow this link http://www.facebook.com/PhotosFromNorthernNorway.

I haven’t posted much photos lately, but hopefully this will soon change as I have a large batch photos from my recent trips to Northern Norway. The photos are just waiting to get processed and posted online. Stay tuned for more pictures from the most beautiful part of the world

-Thomas

Taken with Olympus EPL-1 digital camera September 21st December 2012. Click image for larger view.

I had the pleasure of visiting my home place during the darkest days of this winter. Since we had clear weather it was not really dark at all in the middle of the day. Quite the opposite as the sky was filled with wonderful colors from a sun in the distant horizon.
I photographed the picture above a bit later than noon and the day was actually even lighter earlier in the day. The colors of the sky varied throughout the day and it was amazing to see, especially since I now live in the middle of Oslo where there is not so much landscapes to be seen.

The mountain you can see in this photo is called Drangen and I have photographed this magnificent piece of rock several times like here and here.

Information about the picture:
Camera: Olympus EPL-1 digital camera
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/3.5
Focal Length 14 mm
ISO Speed 500
Lens: OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L
Location: Rolla from Laupstad (Andørja), Troms in Northern Norway

I feel very blessed living in Norway. The economy is good, crime is pretty low (even though the tabloid newspapers and TV channels love to make it out like there are boogeymen everywhere) and all in all most people live a good and healthy life. Of course there are things that we can do better in Norway and we should always strive for a better society, but most of us can not complain. Since we have it so good, we have become an attractive job market where people from all over the world come to my country to find available jobs. We welcome this as there are many vacant job opportunities and not enough qualified people. Because of this there are many recruitment companies that target the Norwegian market like Eurostaff Group and other agencies.

Most job markets, in Norway, where you need high education is looking for people, but there is one market that stands out. That is of course the oil industry that seems to be growing non stop. The oil industry is moving further north and even into areas pretty close to where I grew up. They are even finding new major oil fields in the North Sea where they thought the amount of oil would soon decline.
Although I’m a bit skeptical about the drilling for oil and gas in Northern Norway it seems inevitably that it will happen and there will oil and gas production close my house in the future. When this happen I really hope the industry and the ruling bodies are careful to not damage the precious nature and large fish stocks. It would be a catastrophe if we should see a large oil spill in that area. We have to remember that we can only use the oil once, but the fish are there “forever” if we are careful with the stocks and their habitats.
Hopefully we will see sceneries like in the picture below also in the future.

Taken with Olympus E500 digital camera March 4th 2008. Click image for larger view.