Travel Diary: An Arctic Trip (Day 4)

2 weeks ago 47

This diary entry covers our fourth day of the trip. For details on previous days, see the ‘Further Reading’ section at the end of the article.

See the video of An Arctic Trip; Day Four on YouTube
Sample images in high resolution here.

On the fourth day of our trip, the weather was clear and at sunrise a beautiful light fell on the snow, so I went out alone to take pictures.

Nikon Z6 | Nikkor Z 24-70/4 S | f/8

The main reason for changing camp and choosing this specific camp, that does not have more than five small cottages, apart from the fact that I wanted to have variety in our camps, was that this camp belonged to a Sami family.

The Sami people, who are native to northern Sweden, Finland and Norway work mainly in forestry and reindeer farming, and this camp is set up on a reindeer farm, so one can easily and closely visit the reindeer and even walk among them and feed them.

After that we moved on and went towards the next camp in a Sami village in the mountains. This new place was about 80 km away from our previous camp. But considering the roads’ winter conditions and the risk of meeting road crossing reindeer and elks, we had to drive slowly.

This is the end of the road. This is the outpost, the last bastion of civilization before the vast, untamed wilderness of the mountains.

There are about twenty families living in this village. Some of the people are retired and some of them are working in this camp, the rest of them are engaged in forestry and deer farming.

This village and the adjacent lake is completely surrounded by mountains.

Currently the lake is completely frozen and like the mountains around it is covered with snow and these reindeer are strolling around on it.

The sky was clear that night too, and although the solar activity did not seem to be that much that day, I wanted to try to go Aurora hunting and see the aurora borealis again if possible. The weather there, which is usually the coldest place in Sweden, was too cold that night, and my companions did not leave their cabins at all. I went out alone.

The sky was not that exciting so I waited out there in the dark about one hour. The extreme cold made tears flow down my face, but I couldn’t dry them as they instantly froze my eyelashes to icy daggers. So, my sight was not the best and my hands were almost numb despite the double pair of gloves I had and I struggled fixing the camera on the tripod as its legs and ballhead had become stiff and I could not fix the tripod properly. I desparately tried to hold the camera and the tripod by hand without fixing it, which wobbled precariously on the tripod. I thought that I should try another lens. Guess if it was a mistake. My numb fingers slipped as I attempted to change the lens, and with a sickening thud, it plummeted onto the icy ground. That efficiently put an end to my aurora hunting attempt that night. Of course that night’s photography wasn’t any success.

The next morning at the camp reception they said, last night the temperature had been minus 25 Celsius (-13 F), no wonder I did not function properly. Only one night before our stay it had been minus 31 degrees Celsius (-24 F), they said, but the record of that month there was minus 37 degrees Celsius (-35 F). Luckily we were not there any of those nights.

See the video of An Arctic Trip; Day Four on YouTube
Sample images in high resolution here.

Gear

When I tell about the trips like this or any photography travel, a very common question is what gear do I bring with me on the journey. To answer this specific question upfront I list the gear I will take with me if I go today (what I had with me back in 2021 within parentheses).

Photography:

Camera 1: Nikon Z7ii (Nikon Z6) (Affiliate links)
Z7 Camera L-bracket (Affiliate link)
Memory card: Lexar Professional (Affiliate link)
Memory card2: Sony Tough 128GB (Affiliate link)
Camera 2: NIkon Zf (Nikon D7200) (Affiliate links)
Camera grip Nikon Zf (Affiliate link)
Memory Card: Kingston Canvas React V90 (Affiliate link)
Memory card 2: Sandisk Extreme Pro V30 A2 (Affiliate link)
Drone: DJI Mini: (DJI Mini 2) (Affiliate links)
Lens 1: Nikkor 24-70/4 S (Nikkor 24-70/4 S) (Affiliate links)
Lens 2: Viltrox 16/1.8 AF, Amazon (Nikkor AF-S 20/1.8) (Affiliate links)
Lens 3: Pergear 14mm f2.8 II ; (Voigtländer 15/4.5 Super Wide Heliar) (Affiliate links)
Lens 4: Nikon Z 35/1.8 S
Sturdy tripod:
- Premium: Gitzo series 1, Feisol, Really Right Stuff (Affiliate links)
- Midrange: Manfrotto Befree, 3 Legged Thing Punks Brian , Sirui (Affiliate links)
- Small Tripod: Sirui 5C travel tripod (Affiliate links)

Video

NIkon Zf (Nikon Z6) (Affiliate links)
Insta 360 X3/X4 (Insta360 X2) (Affiliate links)
Sony ZV-1 (Samsung Galaxy S 20) (Affiliate links)
DJI Mini: (DJI Mini 2) (Affiliate links)
Nikkor 24-70/4 S (Nikkor 24-70/4 S) (Affiliate links)
Pergear 14mm f2.8 II, Amazon (Nikon 10.5mm f2.8) (Affiliate links)
Tripod: Gorillapod 3k kit (Affiliate links)

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Martin M.H. lives outside Stockholm, Sweden. He is a M.Sc. in Computer Technology but he has been a passionate photographer for over 45 years. He started his photographic adventures when he was thirteen with an Agfamatic pocket camera, which he soon replaced with a Canon rangefinder camera that his mom gave him in his teenages. After that he has been using Canon SLR, Nikon SLR manual focus and Autofocus, Sony mirrorless crop sensor, Nikon DSLR and Nikon Mirrorless. He has photographed any genre he could throughout the years and you can see all kind of images in his portfolio. During the later years though it has been mostly landscape, nature, travel and some street/documentary photography.

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