Ersfjord, Senja, Norway

For our last morning on Senja we planned to go out to shoot the sunrise. After the continuous snowfall and blizzards all day yesterday, the forecast was for sunshine today. We were up at 5am, and I checked outside my window as I got ready - it was clear and looked promising. It took us about 15 minutes to get the car out of its parking space as we were stuck with all the snow, somebody brought a shovel and we had to dig the car out and it was skidding on the ice!

When we got to our planned destination about 15 minutes away, the sky closed in and it started snowing! So much for the sunny forecast... We sat in the car looking at the weather and decided to go back to the hotel, it was all rather disappointing.

We packed up, had breakfast and were checked out by 10am, and then went back to the beach at Ersfjord. The sky was clear and there were some lovely reflections on the sand. We started photographing and after about an hour the sky closed in again and it started snowing, at first it was soft snowflakes and then it got a bit icy and was stinging! We retreated to the car and waited it out, and then some of us got out again and photographed the beach after the fresh snowfall - the sky was very dark as the next snowfall was already on its way, as can be seen in this image. It was a wonderful morning on the beach, I took so many photos as there was so much to photograph - see the extras of the ever changing weather.

At about 12.30 we left the beach and started our journey back to Tromso. We had terrible weather, it was misty and snowing and difficult driving conditions for Lee. We stopped about halfway for a toilet break and coffee at a garage, where we noticed a large military presence, we think they were doing some training drills as they had enormous tanks in the deep snow and huge trucks carrying soldiers.

We arrived in Tromso in awful weather, it was so misty we could barely see where we were going. One person was dropped off at the airport and I have no doubt his flight will depart in such conditions, if it was Heathrow they would have cancelled all flights!

We are now checked into our hotel and I am about to go downstairs to meet everyone for a short walk to a local Italian restaurant for supper. Our workshop has now come to an end, and we leave at 6.30am tomorrow morning to go to the airport to fly to Oslo and then connect back home to London. It has been a wonderful experience, the cold has been very challenging at times but I think I have got many photos that I am pleased with. In my opinion cold weather conditions make the best landscape images!