Photography Expeditions in January

Lofoten gives you three distinct photographic subjects depending on when you arrive. In January and February the northern lights are frequent and predictable, the fishing villages are covered in snow and almost empty of tourists, and the long blue-hour twilight around noon gives sustained soft light for landscape work. In June and July the midnight sun means 24-hour shooting light, with puffin colonies on the sea cliffs and fishing boats working the channels at 2am in full daylight. Year-round, the mountains that rise directly from the sea create a compression of foreground and background that photographers specifically travel for. The rorbu cabins rent by the night and put you directly on the water.

Churchill is where you go to photograph polar bears. The tundra outside town in October and November holds the largest accessible concentration of polar bears on earth, waiting on the shore of Hudson Bay for the ice to freeze so they can begin hunting again. Specialist tundra buggies and rover vehicles put photographers within meters of the bears in natural behavior. The same location in January through March delivers exceptional northern lights over a dark, flat, snow-covered landscape with near-guaranteed clear skies on many nights. In summer, the Churchill River estuary hosts one of the world's largest beluga whale aggregations. Three completely different subjects, one remote location.