I think that summer just started for me. It’s green everywhere, the sunshine was warm today and I was attacked by swarms of mosquitoes in the forest. The day was so good that I’m not even complaining about the bites!

I drove back to the calypso orchids. There were in full bloom now, but I also found some buds. This time I counted 29 individuals and I also tried to keep track of the white vs coloured individuals and I guess it wasn’t quite fifty-fifty as I speculated last week. About one third of the flowers I found now were white. Sunny day as it was, I got a spotlight on one of the white ones while the background was shaded. Sometimes black backgrounds work and sometimes not, and in this case when the subject is white, it’s like an inverse silhouette!

Having done the macro, I tried a new thing – landscapes. Ok nothing new about it as such, but it certainly was the first time since the winter, apart from a few intimate landscapes here and there. I drove to one of the nice spots I found last year, this one north from Fågelsjö. It’s not an ideal location for the afternoon light because most of the photogenic scenery will be backlit, but the place is so good that there’s always something.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a family of Canada goose. It’s also possible that they were urging on their young to swim faster to get away from me… anyhow, I soon found many more Canada geese and I had my cup of coffee looking at the birds, they swam to a safe distance of about 50 metres and then they didn’t mind me anymore. Still too far for any meaningful photography, which didn’t matter because I didn’t have a long lens with me and even if I did, all the birds were backlit. So I could enjoy the coffee in peace and then concentrate on the landscapes, until a couple of the Canada goose decide to swim right into my frame! They even quite generously stopped for a moment so I could get some pictures (granted, not much a bird picture but a fair environmental shot anyway) until they decided that I was really up to no good and they took off on wings.

Summer, no doubt about it!