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….
