Ever since last year when we did some driving around in Orsa Finnmark, I’ve been wanting to go back to explore the places. Last year it was late autumn and the weather was a bit iffy so I didn’t really stop anywhere, just made mental notes about the places we drove through. Well today, the conditions were going to be better so we had made plans for a day-trip to see if these places were hiding any photogenic spots. The weather perhaps still not ideal, but most of the rain came down when we were driving anyway and then, with a little of waiting, we got those sunny spells when we wanted to shoot something.

The first stop was at Trollgraven at the Vässinjärvi power plant. It’s a man-made ravine for the water run-off, the photogenic qualities can be debated but it was worth checking out, especially because we were going to drive past it anyway so no de-tours required. I was more interested in the next stop, the Korpmäck mountain. It’s over 700m high, although you can’t really appreciate the height as such because the road goes at over 500m altitude. However, the eastern side of the mountain is steep so it provided a great background for whatever we could find as foreground.

From Korpmäck we continued to Majkölen, it’s a large mire at an altitude of about 600m so you can see some sub-alpine character in the forest. But I have to say, from that drive-through last year I had the impression that this would be a great place… it wasn’t. Sure, it’s nice to look at, but when you have a camera in your hand, you find your options are quite limited. So this was a disappointment.

Then we headed back north and stopped at the Sundsjön Nature Reserve. A couple of years ago I drove past here, saw a potential good spot and kicked myself for not stopping to take a closer look. Remedied.

By now it was late afternoon and we finally arrived at what I considered to be the main attraction of the day, the St. Gönsjön lake. Unfortunately the wind was blowing a lot harder than I thought it would do today, and the surface of the lake was completely whipped up. Using a long shutter speed, you could create an illusion of calmer waters but then you have the moving clouds to deal with, and there was even a moon in the sky and that doesn’t tolerate any long exposures without blurring out. So it was a kind of a lose-lose situation. Use a short shutter speed to keep the moon and the clouds sharp and you’ll have ugly water. Use a very long shutter speed and water is nice and the clouds are blurred but the moon is just a streak. Use something in between… and nothing really works. But I’ll say this – St. Gönsjön is a great place and deserves more visits, just during calmer waters. Later in the evening a bank of clouds moved in and we lost the light so there was no point in exploring the lake any further, so there’s still plenty to see for new visits.

Looking at my pictures now, I didn’t get anything that I’m completely happy about. I’m a little bit disappointed, to be honest, I had a lot more expectations. But having said that, I’m not disappointed at the trip as a whole – I think it was a great day of exploration, it answered all those questions I had in my mind. Most importantly, it gave me St. Gönsjön, I definitely I have to get back there!