Another year has come to an end, so I will do my traditional month by month review.

2012 was bit of a ”meh” year. I moved from Loos to Föne in March, which naturally affected my photography a great deal, both for the better and for the worse. The best part is that I found new places to shoot and new kind of landscapes that I didn’t even knew exists. The worst part is that I lost all the flowers – I have no idea where the best botanical places are. Then I was sick a big part of the summer which reduced my enthusiasm to even try and find something. And finally, in the winter, I realised that there are almost no photogenic places here. It’s a very different landscape than in Loos and I definitely miss the mires now. But it’s only my first year in Föne and to be honest, it took me a couple of years before I found all the good spots in Loos!

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January

After 7 years of living in Loos, I was sure that I had seen all the best places already. Then I finally had a closer look at an abandoned house that I had skied past many a time, but never dared to get close because I’m always hesitating to get into people’s gardens without invitation. But with all the untouched snow, I was finally convinced that nobody was at home. I found some very lovely barns and made a mental note to visit again in the summer. So I paid another visit in May and it was a total disappointment!

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February

February was a bit tough on photography, which is not unusual. Sometimes it’s cold and sometimes it’s warm so the snow cover can be good for short periods, but mostly it’s bad. I just don’t like snow-less trees in my winter landscape, simple as that. I did some landscape work but in the end the wolf portrait from Järvzoo won.

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March

My cabin is isolated enough to be used in the winter. I wouldn’t live there in very cold temperatures but it’s ok in the late winter when the daytime temperatures are not so bad. I had a week’s vacation and got lucky with the weather, it was clear skies during the full moon. I will never forget standing by the Fiskhålsgraven ravine and waiting for the full moon to rise… and then get back to the cabin in the moonlight. Meeting a friendly fox on the way made the night just simply magical!

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April

I have said it before and I will say it again – Aprils are difficult for me. Another visit to the cabins meant a great deal and now of course I had moved to Föne and had some new places to discover. April however is hardly photogenic, no matter what kind of exciting places you find…

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May

Normally I would start my flower photography season in earnest in May, but like I said, I found it difficult in Föne. No idea where the flowers are. But living closer to other places like Gröntjärn is a great thing and I got to shoot my long awaited pale pasque flowers! I had this idea to make it high key and I like the result very much, I think that this is actually my favourite of the whole year. Providing that I found some other flowers next summer, I will make more use of the light tent and shoot other flowers with this white background. It’s not natural, but I need to do something else than just the usual flower portraits.

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June

One of the new places I found – and without a doubt, best place – was Mon, which is an area along the Ljusnan river that I normally call ”flood plains”. This is because the first time I visited it, it was all covered in ice on dry ground. It’s a labyrinth of dry land between pools of water, which means that there’s potential for photography after every turn. One of the biggest surprises was finding a birch forest with the floor covered in lily of the valley. Fast forward a couple of weeks and the lily of the valley had been overtaken by wood horsetails. It was an incredible sea of green that was just begging to be photographed!

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July

I mentioned in the beginning that I was sick half the summer. It started in July and although I wasn’t really sick-sick, it affected me mentally and I didn’t have the energy to go out on excursions as much as I normally would. I had a vacation at the cabin before I got sick but with the weather like it’s been all summer, the results weren’t anything to cheer about. So my favourite picture from July is this lucky encounter with a wolf cub in Järvzoo. It was extra nice because my sister and her daughter were visiting so they got to see the cubs as well.

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August

I wasn’t fully recovered until mid-August, but with August being what it is, it is often difficult to find good opportunities. The summer is winding down so everything is past their prime, without turning colours like it does in September. And with this lack of flowers this summer, it was just as well that I had planted a lot of flowers in my new garden because it provided the best opportunities.

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September

The autumn colours in the mountains were a really bad in 2011. I mean, they virtually didn’t exist at all. It was a completely different story in 2012 and I had managed to pick just the right week for my vacation. I have always dreamed about the colours with snow on the mountain tops, and sometimes dreams come true! I couldn’t have asked for anything better. My favourite however is from the day before the weather changed. I just like the mountain birch forest!

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October

Living in a new place means that I have a new bird feeder setup. Because I wasn’t quite sure which would be the best spot, I put up two feeders, one at the back of the house where I would have the field in the background (which turned out to provide an amazing light green background for the birds) and one in the garden, with an apple tree in the background. In October when there still were leaves in the apple tree, it gave me a background that was even better than the green field. But obviously as soon as the leaves dropped, the spot became a lot less attractive. But not before I got this blue tit picture that is probably my all time favourite of this beautiful species, and together with the pale pasque flower, my favourite picture of the year.

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November

It’s November. When everything else fails, go to the zoo. That’s what I did, and I got a wolverine which was surprisingly well exposed – I mean, the background isn’t over exposed and the animal under exposed. Because that’s what my wolverine pictures are normally like!

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December

December 2012 was great. But only because I got a new camera! It’s a Canon EOS 6D, described as entry level full frame camera. So it was a great thing with some new hardware after using the 40D for five years, but this is when this problem of not being able to find any photogenic winter spots in Föne started to eat into my production. I was able to make use of the first proper snow though and got a sunburst. My first time out with the new camera!