Ingela Bohm's Blog, page 25

A day for outings

Today was mostly cloudy and wet, but the animal kingdom apparently loves this kind of weather. Everywhere I looked there were birds. Some of them are just now returning for summer from warmer climes, like these two crane couples.

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Others, like these geese, just take the opportunity to float on the water and enjoy the odd ray of sun that makes it through the blanket of the clouds.

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These swans kindly arranged themselves to look as symmetrical as possible with the patches of snow in the background, and then smack dab in the middle of the lines left by the autumn’s harvest.

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And these are… dancing?

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To add some atmosphere, I filmed them as well. Just listen to those eerie crane cries that echo over the landscape!

Something old, something new

From a distance the world is grey and brown right now, but move closer and a shiny spectacle takes centre stage.

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Because most of nature is still dead at this time of year, it’s better to see individuals than a crowd. Like this withered lingonberry that no one picked last autumn. With the sun filtering through it, the leathery skin glows as if alive again.

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Or these perfect catkins.

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These delicate stems form a tiny forest against the background of an actual forest of pine trees and firs.

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Sometimes it feels like cheating to take these close-ups, because everything becomes so much more beautiful. This isn’t what we normally see when we take a walk in the woods, after all.

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But maybe we should. Maybe we don’t need a camera to get down on our knees and view the world through the shining prism of a melting ice crystal, hanging like a chandelier from last year’s grass.

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On the other hand, a simple dried leaf that dangles from a twig in the sun can be quite as lovely, and we don’t even have to make an effort to see it.

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It’s all about perspective. About where the light comes from.

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So the moral is, I suppose, not to see ‘the bright side of life’ exactly, but to put yourself in the right position in relation to the light.

Happy Easter!

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Spring skyscapes

I’ve just realised that I’ve never really noticed the turn of the seasons. Sure, I see the big things – everyone does – but I’m not talking about snow melting or buds bursting. I mean the more subtle stuff, like what the clouds look like.

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I bought my camera last April and started photographing a lot of sunsets, but as time went on I shifted to other things. Now that spring has arrived again, I sort of understand why. As I look out of the window in the evenings, there it is again: the dramatic sky I remember from last spring.

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This time of year also has a specific palette. When the sun sets the clouds turn golden, and then a coppery-salmony red that’s unique to spring. I would never have known if not for my camera. I even have evidence from last year on this very blog.

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Hubby seldom takes walks just for the sake of it, but spring gets to him too. So tonight we went for a stroll through the village, just to smell the wet mud and last year’s grass, and to see the last rays from a sun that will grow ever stronger as the Earth turns.

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I’m so grateful to have found a way to experience the more subtle signs of the turning seasons – the small things that you don’t see unless you make a project of it. It makes me think there are probably a lot of other beautiful things that we fail to notice just because we don’t have a reason to really look.

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Roof drip and winter-spring

Winter suffered its final defeat the other day. Granted, it hasn’t been much of a winter at all compared to a normal year, but it’s still very clear when spring – actual meteorological spring – is about to arrive. There’s a special kind of humid softness to the air, and the once-fluffy snow melts into a compact pile of ice granules, pock-marked by dripping water and dotted by pine needles and birch twigs that have been ripped from the trees in spring storms.

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I have no idea what this is about: is it an actual spring bud, or is it a dried bud from last year that’s been sort of mummified at the moment of birth?

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Under the trees, there are pools of melted water, plip-plopping with the sound of spring.

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We call it spring-winter, and here’s a small video about it. All the signs: the windiness, the crumbling snow, the drip-drip from trees and roofs, the crystal wetness. Nature slowly waking up. I think it’s really soothing.

Low-hanging stars

This weekend, the stars were about to fall to Earth. I’ve never seen so many of them, or seen them so big for want of a better word. They were swollen with spring warmth, hanging like plums from the vault, ready to drop into our laps. The pictures don’t do them justice, but I had to document it.

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Feeling small.

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Pretend it’s an actual shooting star and make a wish.

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But spring or no spring, it was a bit cold in the long run, so it was nice to go inside and sit by the fire afterwards.

Right now I’m in a phase where I’m trying to leave the pa...

Right now I’m in a phase where I’m trying to leave the past behind and start a new chapter, and part of that work is deleting a lot of stuff in my computer, archiving old WIPs I will probably not finish, and sorting (getting lost in) blog pictures from the past year. And looking through my folder, I found that with a little distance, I enjoy some pictures more than others – and not the ones I would have thought at the time I took them.

So as we await spring here in the north of Sweden, and also drawing near to April, which was when I bought my camera last year, I thought I’d celebrate/mark my new chapter by reposting the photos I love best. They may not be anyone else’s favourites, but this is an entirely self-indulgent post, so I don’t care, haha!

First out is me in the forest, where I belong, with the sun just barely filtering through. That golden green light… *sigh*

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Next is me by a nearby lake, backlit and calm like I almost never am.

The thing about icicles

It always jars me out of the intended illusion when people feature icicles (in films or pictures) to show that it’s really, really, cold. Because icicles don’t mean cold to me. They mean spring’s coming.

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When it’s really cold, my world is covered in frost. In dry and glittery snow.

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In contrast, icicles are what we get when the thick cover of snow starts to melt in March – slick spires that cling to the remnants of snowy roofs. They’re a response to a sun that’s suddenly giving off some warmth again. They’re a promise of melting lakes and new buds. They’re a sign that soon we won’t need jackets any longer.

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How different the world looks, depending on where you’re standing when you’re watching it!

Reindeer Monday

During an outing today, we ran into two herds of reindeer. Normally the roads are full of them this time of year, but they’ve been kind of absent lately, probably because there’s been so little snow: they can find things to eat in the forest, so they don’t have to come out and clutter up the traffic. But now that it’s snowed, they’ve finally showed up.

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When I say “finally”…

Not everyone loves them. They’re kind of a nuisance – a bit like sheep in Wales or Yorkshire. Won’t leave the road for hell nor high water. Just run in front of you for miles. I think they’re related, reindeer and sheep.

But for photography? Yes please! Look at these beauties.

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The Sami still herd them for a living, but they use modern machines like snow mobiles to work nowadays. During the winter, the reindeer are allowed to roam freely, which means that we see a lot more of them than in the summer, when they’re in the mountains.

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They’re nosey creatures.

Sunset over frozen lake

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