I‘m a big fan of the wilderness of Sweden and indeed the country generally. I still remember vividly when I shot this. We were on a recce trip to Sweden with Ice Driver’s Andy McKenna, 550 kms north of Stockholm in early January, scouting for locations for his then new business. We were staying in a hotel nestling on the edge of a most colossal lake that wasn’t completely frozen, due to it’s size.

After a few excellent beers and a burger, we chatted in the bar with the staff. “The lake will freeze tonight, then that will be it until May”
“How do you know?”
“Just a feeling” was the sage reply.

Waking next morning at around 7.00 am, drawing back the curtains, something looked different, but I couldn’t figure what. Grabbing a camera and a coat, I walked quickly down in the pre-dawn light to the waters edge to see an amazing sight. What had been a vast expanse of open water last night was frozen. The blackness of the brand new ice was amazing, not yet thick enough to support my weight, but the vastness of it took your breath away. I’ve often heard the phrase, “silence ringing in your ears” and that morning, I felt that for the first time. The stillness made the air sing, my Canon 1DS sounding like a Howitzer as the shutter released. The only other sound was the tiny clinking of ice fragments along the shoreline, like rocks in a glass of malt whiskey. Watching the rapidly rising sun, a thin edge appeared on the horizon, giving the light that look that you sometimes see out of the window of long-haul airliners, with a thin, blood orange, line across the distant hills.

I shot a few more frames and then just stood, drinking in the scene, resisting the temptation to step out, onto the virgin ice.
As I stood in the cold, cursing my haste at leaving my room and the lack of clothing layers, there was the most amazing sound. Beginning far off to my left, then moving across the vastness of the lake to the right, a sound like a bull whip cracked down the lake, from one end to the other. The sound of the new ice shifting and settling.
I walked back to the hotel, grateful for one of those powerful cups of Swedish coffee, as I reflected on the amazing environment in that part of Sweden and that silence like no other I’d ever heard.

Previously, I described how I prepared the lightest possible collection of gear to use the Canon 5D in Sweden, hoping that we could cover all the bases and get what we needed. My 1DS works fine in temparatures below -30c, so I had no worries about the camera dying, though previously when shooting stills and rigging cameras on cars, the speeds are very low and the shutter speeds slow to create speed. This time, we are shooting HD video, so the speed was real and the effect of wind chill on the 5D was a factor on my mind. No way to test beforehand, we just had to rig it up and shoot.

Because of the light weight of the 5D compared to my 1DS, I was able to rig the camera on the roof and bonnet (hood) of the car with just a couple of Manfrotto Magic Arms and some suction cups. Normally, I’d be using several suction cups, some Arri grip heads and all manner of belt and braces. I’ve since read on Luminous Landscape and other photographer’s forums about Canon 5D’s failing in the cold. If I’d read those pages before I set off, I’d probably not have tried this, as the air temp was -25c, plus the cars was travelling at up to 80mph at the fastest part of the track….

Photo by Beefa

Happily, the mounts stayed in place, the camera kept rolling in various configurations and rigging points and everything worked just fine. In my next post, I’ll try and cover some of the points we found when editing Canon 5D video footage, plus what it’s like to use the Steadicam and the 5D together.

Finally, although I’m used to working in these low temparatures, I forgot about the effect on cold metal of a 80mph breeze…. Taking off my glove to remove one of the Superclamps resulted in a sharp burn across my palm….

You’d like to think that more than two weeks set aside for a trip to northern Sweden would be plenty to shoot a short movie about driving at high speeds on frozen lakes, wouldn’t you? Me too. I’ve been to Sweden working plenty of times before and while there may be a few days overcast with snow, it’s never long before the sun breaks through and the stunning landscape makes you catch your breath.

But as we reach the seven day point with snow waist deep outside and more forecast, the light dull and flat I’m reminded of Joe Cornish and his book First Light It’s not a book full of dawn photography, but a play on words, because as he so rightly points out, without light, we can’t do anything. Joe spends a lot of his time waiting…..and waiting…for just the right light.

Previous trips had produced similar conditions, but then I was shooting stills not video. On that ocassion, a result was needed with no time to wait, so that time, we worked around the dull skies by using Lee ND Soft Grads and a couple of strobes on Pocket Wizards, giving the shot you see here. It’s not a view of Swedish wilderness, but it illustrated the Subaru for the magazine I was shooting for. This time, the project is a video shot using the new Canon 5D Mk2, so we wait….