More from Lofoten Islands - Mountains, Ice, Sea and Fish. Lots of fish.

A few more shots from Lofoten, showing Spring in Northern Norway.  We totally lucked-out with the weather, seeing not only an incredible display of the aurora borealis, but during the days had cloud free skies.  The wind was icy though and lots of places smelt of fish.  A lot.

The sea was so clear - there seems to be no sediment around, giving glimpses of deep green water at the edge of the fjords.

And so to the fish.  The temperature and humidity here (i.e. zero for both mainly) means than drying fish in early spring enables the massive catches of cod to be preserved and exported.  Massive triangular hanging racks are everywhere, laden with cod; their heads removed and stored in bunches on the lower racks.  It is big business and an ancient business.  And it smells.

Solar Eclipse on Dartmoor

It was a bit last minute, but I decided to take a punt on photographing the partial eclipse using just Neutral Density (ND) filters.  Bit of a risk really, could fry the camera's sensor, so decided to use old camera.

Unfortunately, with FX lens on DX camera, plus teleconverter, plus 2 x ND400 filters taped together meant there was too much glass and interfaces to get a clean image.

Ho hum.  I'll show it anyway:

Yes, it's fuzzy, but it's OUR sun.  How cool is that?


More Lofoten Islands photographs soon......

Aurora Borealis in Lofoten Islands, Norway

I know that it isn't exactly local, but I just have to share some photographs from a long weekend in Norway's incredible Lofoten Islands with a brilliant friend:

Fox Tor and Childe's Tombe on Dartmoor

A finally managed to get to Fox Tor recently, my first visit, having negotiated around the edge of the infamous Fox Tor Mire (inspiration for Conan Doyle's 'Grimpen Mire').

An interesting feature of Fox Tor is the so-called "Mammoth's Skull" (Named as such by Eric Hemery).  It's actually two adjacent rock basins on a toppled slab, but looks at first glance like the eye sockets of a, well, mammoth:

Nearby is Childe's Tombe, supposed to mark the place where Childe, a Saxon Hunter, was stranded in a terrible storm.  In an attempt to survive, he disemboweled his horse and climbed inside.  Unfortunately it was not enough to save him.  Grim.

That's it for today, folks - enough of eye sockets, skulls and disemboweled horses...