Let’s trade out one sort of coastal scene for another. Last week, we visited Oregon’s Ecola State Park. Now, let’s mosey on over to somewhere a little further north. Ok, a lot further north. This past February, I had the pleasure of visiting the Lofoten Islands in Norway. It was during the peak of winter, so there was plenty of snow, wind, and bitter cold temps but the quaint, cozy surroundings more than made up for it. My goal was to capture the area for its rugged landscapes and small clusters of colorful cottages available for rent. I ended up spending about a third of my time in Reine, which has a beautiful river and a regal mountain range in its backdrop. My initial thought was to focus more on the rocky environment and let the cottages fall in the background. For whatever reason, neither a horizontal or vertical crop really sang to me. It was missing something.
Realizing that I wasn’t getting much here, I turned my body 180 degrees to my left and noticed a holder of sorts that had fish bodies and heads hanging off, drying themselves in the cold winter air. Perhaps I could play around with layering the various elements in front of me together. I tried several attempts by varying my focal length but I couldn’t get enough separation because my foreground was too far out from me to make it visually appealing. It simply didn’t allow me to convey depth.
I even tried putting on my widest angle lens to see what would happen when I present a sweeping view of the entire river, cottages, and fishing huts. While it certainly caught my eye upon reviewing, it also felt flat. There was too much space in the middle of the frame that didn’t contribute to guiding the eye in any one direction. That’s something that I always strive to achieve.
Abandoning the rocky shore that I was standing on, I continued roaming around the village and even asked for permission to explore behind some of the fishing buildings that were open for business. Despite the language barrier, the locals were so polite and hospitable. One woman even brought me a cup of tea while I waited for my exposures. I decided to use the wooden pier I was standing on as a primary leading line. The warm wood would play beautifully off the rest of the cooler scene. For the most part, I really like this photo but it didn’t really capture the Reine that I wanted to share.
It wasn’t until I moved even further down the road that I noticed a cluster of bright, orange cabins perched right at the water’s edge. Across the body of water was another rocky pier. As soon as I saw this, I knew that I had found my location. Now, I’d have a strong foreground element that I could use as a leading line. I’d have something in the front, something in the middle and something in the back of the frame. I tried a few different compositions, experimenting with how I introduce the rocky pier into the frame. To be honest, I really enjoy both of these photos as they stand on their own merits.
With these photos in hand, I turned around to go back to my cabin and warm up. As I returned to the main road, I spotted a path going up a hill right behind where I was standing. I must have overlooked it in my haste to get to the water’s edge. It wasn’t a terribly hard climb and I wanted to see whether changing my height with respect to the scene in front of me would yield anything good. Fortunately, my chance paid off. From the top of the hill, I had a commanding view of the entire region including beautiful separation between the water, the village, and the mountain range. I grabbed a series of photos and knew exactly how to process them. The key here was to apply a tilt shift blur using Photoshop’s Blur Gallery so that the village was in focus and everything in front of and behind it. From there, I applied a split tone that went heavy on applying a blur-green tint to the shadows and a slight warm tint to the highlights. The result ended up being my favorite of the entire day.
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Brian Matiash is a Portland-based published photographer and author. He is a member of Sony’s Artisans of Imagery as well as the owner of Matiash, Inc. and the Matiash Shop.
To find out more about Brian’s work, click here. To get his new eBook, Stories from the Lens, for free, sign up to his newsletter.
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Filed under: Inspiration, News, Opinion, Photography, Technique & Tutorials Tagged: Brian Matiash, inspiration, lofoten islands, method_bm, Norway, reine, scenery, travel, village 
