Another scorcher of a day, it was 28°C in the shade by 11am. The best place to be on such a day is to sit in an airconditioned car, and the next best thing is to walk on a sea shore to let the sea breeze bring relief to the heat. So that is what I did – after paying a visit to my white waterlily spot and shooting the cosmos flower in my garden, I headed east to Hornslandet. It’s eight years since my last trip there!
At first I drove to Kuggören, it’s a small fishing village. My first impression after getting out of the car is, it’s not just hot but it’s also humid. And it smells rotten. I’ve always said it and will say it again, I’ll take a lake over the sea every time. But, there are some things about the sea that you’ll rarely get with a lake, so I’m not saying I have anything against sea shores as such. Variety enriches life…
Just a few minutes in, I lost the sunlight. This huge but thin cloud drifted in front of the sun, making it impossible to do anything with the landscape. But mute swans to the rescue – I fetched the Mega-Tamron and sat down to get some mute swan pictures. Not the prettiest of circumstances, but I didn’t have any mute swan pictures yet (we seem to only have whooper swans in my neighbourhood) so this will do. Complete with an ugly duckling and a display of behaviour when the papa swan made sure that the Canada geese wouldn’t get too close to the cygnet.
Just when the swans were swimming away, the sun came back out. I drove down on the east coast and stopped at the spot where I took one of my favourite pictures during my analog years. The tree was still standing! But the light still wasn’t the best possible with the thin clouds in the sky. Nothing I can do about it, just try to find subjects which are less demanding about the light. Like some flowers, for example.
Rocky shore
I drove to Hölick and found that half of Hudiksvall had had the same idea. Since this was late afternoon, a lot of them had already gone home (I had a steady stream of cars meet me when I was driving to Hornslandet) so it was easy to find a parking spot, but it was obvious that parking space was a rare commodity earlier in the day with cars still lining the road.
I had no interest in the sandy beach so I walked past in a hurry to get rid of the children and the commotion. Hornslandet is much more than sandy beaches though, and so I came across these nice cliffs. Unfortunately, the little bit of sunlight that was available quickly faded and the situation was hopeless for landscape shooting. No despair though, I had a macro lens! There are a lot of flowers here that I don’t see at home, so I was happy anyway.
When I came across this yellow flower, I had to remove some grass around it to give me a clean view. Having done that, I spotted a yellow crab spider that somehow had ignored my gardening and just sat waiting for me! Beautiful. So with all my intensive shooting all day and struggles with the light, my favourite picture of the day is a result of a lucky strike. Of all the hundreds of yellow flowers, I chose the one with the pretty crab spider!
207/365