Rainbow!
“Rainbow!” was the single word message on my phone. So Steve had seen it too then. I was about to send him the same information. I carried on marching towards the top of the rise, expending laboured breaths in a race to get to a better vantage point before the rainbow vanished. This really was quite overwhelming. Not a second to pause and breathe as magical moments filled every compass point. Where was he anyway? Oh yes, over there. Bright yellow coat for ease of identification, more than two hundred yards away, pointing his camera in the same direction as mine. It’s not as if there were more than three or four other people dotted around this huge open space anyway. Behind us the sun was hovering low over the horizon, while directly opposite, the rainbow sat heavily over the mountain range that had been dragging our attention all afternoon. Most of the time I try to stay focussed on one subject and no more than two or three different compositions. Here, that was impossible. Everything was going on everywhere and all at once. Did you see that film by the way? No, Ali and I didn’t understand it either. I was in a similar state of bewilderment now, with the sensory overload that our first day in the Rondane had brought. All of this untainted landscape perfection and a rainbow sitting on top of it all like a colourful crown. The first day in Norway was setting a very high bar.
The rainbow hung around for a long time as our paths eventually converged. We agreed this had been an exceptional day and that there was unfinished business at Storulfossen, the double drop waterfall that now lay in a hollow at our backs. We’d return to the hollow tomorrow afternoon then. And then we began the long walk back to the car park, following tiny tracks across the colourful carpet of moss and bilberry plants, a sea of green, gold, orange and deep reds below our feet. We each moved at our own pace, stopping for subjects that caught the eye. A lone silver birch here, a mammoth view across to the Jotunheimen mountains there. I moved far more slowly than Steve did. The lens with the huge focal range is both a blessing and a curse, and I ground to a halt plenty of times before the light fell; sometimes to take a picture, and at others just to stand and stare. Wow, wow and wow again! As good days go, this one was close on the heels of Super Saturday in Iceland three years earlier, when Lee and I spent an entire day driving around the Snaefellsnes Peninsula as the light and the subjects we stopped at got better and better. Apart from the short trip to the car park, no driving was needed here today. Just stand on the spot and spin around on your heels for any number of stunning views. On days like this I thank my love of landscape photography for bringing me to places such as the Rondane, more wildly beautiful than I could ever imagine and so remote that I would probably never have otherwise even heard of the place, let alone actually come here and seen it for myself.
At first the narrow rutted track was easy enough to follow, but after a while it stopped abruptly in the middle of nowhere. Unencumbered by a slow-you-down “one does all” lens, Steve had marched on ahead and seemed to be negotiating the wild boggy terrain well enough, despite the dodgy knee injury from earlier in the day. In retrospect, what we should have done was to take the path along the river, up to the bridge where it forked away to the right for the car park. A longer distance, but probably quicker and certainly easier. But now, there was no going back. And there was still a glow in the west that had me stopping again and again to admire the distant Jotunheimen range, more than twenty miles away from here. Just one more shot then. Better do another couple for insurance. Is it a focus stack at four hundred? Can’t tell in this light. Belt and braces then. Do a couple on that bit of foreground I can’t seem to lose. Another five minutes of standing in a bog in disappearing light. I pushed on towards the road. I could see a yellow splodge a quarter of a mile away. He'd picked up his pace. I sent a message. He had just arrived at the road. “I won’t need the gym for a month now!” he replied with a grinning emoji. “It’s very mushy in the middle, but the last bit’s ok.”
He was right about the gym thing. This was a proper leg tester. We’d already covered a fair old distance today, both before and after lunch, and what you really need at this stage of the proceedings is a nice gentle downhill toddle, not a Special Services march across no man’s land. It got worse before it got better, but after what seemed forever, I made it to the road. Steve was already at the car, about to get in and head in my direction. The gentle downhill toddle wouldn’t be needed after all. Nor would the gym. Not for quite some time I think.
Rainbow!
“Rainbow!” was the single word message on my phone. So Steve had seen it too then. I was about to send him the same information. I carried on marching towards the top of the rise, expending laboured breaths in a race to get to a better vantage point before the rainbow vanished. This really was quite overwhelming. Not a second to pause and breathe as magical moments filled every compass point. Where was he anyway? Oh yes, over there. Bright yellow coat for ease of identification, more than two hundred yards away, pointing his camera in the same direction as mine. It’s not as if there were more than three or four other people dotted around this huge open space anyway. Behind us the sun was hovering low over the horizon, while directly opposite, the rainbow sat heavily over the mountain range that had been dragging our attention all afternoon. Most of the time I try to stay focussed on one subject and no more than two or three different compositions. Here, that was impossible. Everything was going on everywhere and all at once. Did you see that film by the way? No, Ali and I didn’t understand it either. I was in a similar state of bewilderment now, with the sensory overload that our first day in the Rondane had brought. All of this untainted landscape perfection and a rainbow sitting on top of it all like a colourful crown. The first day in Norway was setting a very high bar.
The rainbow hung around for a long time as our paths eventually converged. We agreed this had been an exceptional day and that there was unfinished business at Storulfossen, the double drop waterfall that now lay in a hollow at our backs. We’d return to the hollow tomorrow afternoon then. And then we began the long walk back to the car park, following tiny tracks across the colourful carpet of moss and bilberry plants, a sea of green, gold, orange and deep reds below our feet. We each moved at our own pace, stopping for subjects that caught the eye. A lone silver birch here, a mammoth view across to the Jotunheimen mountains there. I moved far more slowly than Steve did. The lens with the huge focal range is both a blessing and a curse, and I ground to a halt plenty of times before the light fell; sometimes to take a picture, and at others just to stand and stare. Wow, wow and wow again! As good days go, this one was close on the heels of Super Saturday in Iceland three years earlier, when Lee and I spent an entire day driving around the Snaefellsnes Peninsula as the light and the subjects we stopped at got better and better. Apart from the short trip to the car park, no driving was needed here today. Just stand on the spot and spin around on your heels for any number of stunning views. On days like this I thank my love of landscape photography for bringing me to places such as the Rondane, more wildly beautiful than I could ever imagine and so remote that I would probably never have otherwise even heard of the place, let alone actually come here and seen it for myself.
At first the narrow rutted track was easy enough to follow, but after a while it stopped abruptly in the middle of nowhere. Unencumbered by a slow-you-down “one does all” lens, Steve had marched on ahead and seemed to be negotiating the wild boggy terrain well enough, despite the dodgy knee injury from earlier in the day. In retrospect, what we should have done was to take the path along the river, up to the bridge where it forked away to the right for the car park. A longer distance, but probably quicker and certainly easier. But now, there was no going back. And there was still a glow in the west that had me stopping again and again to admire the distant Jotunheimen range, more than twenty miles away from here. Just one more shot then. Better do another couple for insurance. Is it a focus stack at four hundred? Can’t tell in this light. Belt and braces then. Do a couple on that bit of foreground I can’t seem to lose. Another five minutes of standing in a bog in disappearing light. I pushed on towards the road. I could see a yellow splodge a quarter of a mile away. He'd picked up his pace. I sent a message. He had just arrived at the road. “I won’t need the gym for a month now!” he replied with a grinning emoji. “It’s very mushy in the middle, but the last bit’s ok.”
He was right about the gym thing. This was a proper leg tester. We’d already covered a fair old distance today, both before and after lunch, and what you really need at this stage of the proceedings is a nice gentle downhill toddle, not a Special Services march across no man’s land. It got worse before it got better, but after what seemed forever, I made it to the road. Steve was already at the car, about to get in and head in my direction. The gentle downhill toddle wouldn’t be needed after all. Nor would the gym. Not for quite some time I think.