This image has been sitting in my filing cabinet (I shoot transparency film) since February 2017. Volandstind is one of my favourite mountains in the Lofoten islands of Norway.

This image was taken on a particularly windy day in Lofoten with driving rain passing through every few minutes. Making images like this one doesn’t happen on a calm day, nor does it happen on a settled dry sunny day either. But you knew that, because that’s why you come to my blog. I shoot in inclement weather mostly, and if the weather is challenging, then it’s a good indicator that you might get something of interest in your photographs. If you can get over how rotten it feels to be outside on such a day.

I remember having to set the camera up and just wait as the squalls of rain passed through. Rather than just firing the shutter, I prefer to stop and watch the elements and look. Some times the visibility increases too much and that beautiful conical shape of Volandstind was lost to too much detail. Other times the visibility would decrease so much that the mountain was hardly visible at all. It was all a case of waiting for the right level of visibility and studying the weather.

You have to become an observer of weather patterns. Understanding what sort of day it is, and whether the rain squalls are passing through and what their frequency is, is important in anticipating what will happen next.

Most of my ‘strong’ images often leave a big impression upon me at the point of capture. Because I’m a film shooter I have no preview, so I have to trust what my memory tells me. With this photo, the residual memory of it stayed with me for so long that when I dug out the transparencies today I had it first and foremost in my mind to seek out and edit.