This time the guest is Mario Gilardelli, who paid us a visit at Länsmansgården with his nice family, and now shares in the Chronicles an elegant view of Njupeskär waterfall. It should have been just a couple of days of nature guiding, but because of the amount of things to see and the pleasantness of the participants it ended in a full week... full of wildlife, photos and high spirits. I'm talking of the visit paid me by the Marche section of AFNI (Italian Nature Photographers Association) here in Särna at the beginning of June. You can see some memories from the Family Album. Here it is now a selection of pictures they kindly shared with me to be in the Chronicles. Let's start with some landscapes... ...and let's finish with some animals.
At the end of September two Italian photographers came here for a vacation, and stayed one week at our hostel; guests for the first time, then, in the term's classical meaning. Nature and outdoor enthusiasts as they are, they got things going in the right way, exploring the territory without sparing any energy, following the hints by yours truly. This way they have been able to enjoy most of the beauty of these latitudes' autumn, albeit a weakening one. I am glad to give visibility to their passion and niceness devoting this post to a gallery made with a selection of the pictures they made here around: thereby, they are guests a second time. At the same time it's a way to show what results the commitment and a correct approach could produce – from a wildlife standpoint – even in such a short period of time, and not in the very best season, at least for the animals.
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you, in strict alphabetical order, the dynamic duo Perlino & Pons (Luca and Massimiliano respectively), whom I thank here for the helpfulness. By the way, the Chronicles are today passing the milestone of 400 pictures, since May 2007. I once again went back to Fulufallen, close to Fulufjället National Park, where a river creates, along a half kilometer span, ten waterfalls nestled in the forest for a total drop of about 80 mt. It's a perfect place to photograph the water and the trees reflections with long shutter speeds, above all in autumn.
Found a suitable water jump and set a 1/8 s speed, I was ready to do my usual things, when a passing white cloud lit up the water surface with a fan of bright brushstrokes. That slightest mental flexibility which still strenuously holds up clinging to some obscure spot in my brain made me change my mind at once; so I switched from 1/8 to 1/80, in order to preserve the individuality of those shining curtains, which would otherwise dissolve one in another with the overlapping from the long speed. The resulting structure bears itself the whole image composition (click on the photo to further enlarge it). The forest is a green ocean. Like planks from stranded wrecks,
among backwashes of blueberries and waves of ferns, dead trees lie. Several are the reasons why the Fulufjället has been declared a National Park, ten years ago. It hosts the Swedish highest waterfall, where the Scandinavia southernmost pair of gyrfalcons (world's largest and rarest falcon) is nesting every year; its origin goes back to 900 millions years ago, not coming from recent ice ages; the oldest tree in the world grows on it (almost 10,000 years old), and it is, consequently, also the oldest individual living being on the planet. Last, but not least, the vast plateau (34x15 km at 1,000 mt height) on its top is the only mountain area in Sweden with no signs of reindeer grazing in centuries. The result is a peculiar, pristine vegetation, unique for number and diversity of species: bushes, plants and carpets of whitish reindeer lichen as far as the eye can see. And here I close the advertisement. I was facing this environment in a late afternoon with a dull light, totally unfit both for the lichen cushions and the autumn blueberries quilting them. In a short enlightenment of lateral thinking, I then asked myself “Why not just use a flash?” Obviously, only directed toward the area I wanted to enhance, leaving the rest of the landscape to its lifeless light. I went up to "Erik-Knutsåsen" observation tower nearby Gördalen, along the northern borders of the national park Fulufjället. It's a lovely viewpoint upon a wild area covered by a high ground, sparse forest with spruces and birches, wavy hills alternated with marshes and small ponds. Just got to the top, I spot on the platform some tiny masses of material, which at a closer look reveal to be droppings (or hairballs) from an owl. I raise my eyes: twenty meters away I cross the magnetic ones from a hawk-owl, which clearly chose as well to take advantage of the view from the tower. A wonderful encounter, unexpected and not so usual. You can’t be ready for anything anytime, and I had climbed the tower with a landscape, “short” photo set up: thus this picture is a generous crop, which, however, reflects the spirit of the original composition, where the animal (by choice, by need or both) is placed in the environment. The kind of wildlife image I prefer. I believe I could spend the rest of my life in Sweden (and, to be honest, I hope to do so) and yet continue to experience a special emotion at every encounter with the Nordic fauna. After all, I am and I’ll always be a foreigner, a man from South of Europe raised between broad-leaf forests and Mediterranean scrub. To whom "Capercaillie" is a name which the aftertaste of a myth, that urogallus taken as paradigm of the endangered wildlife in the Alps. A shape which still makes me jump anytime I see it, despite I meet it quite often. Moose, balck grouse, dotterel… those are now my fellow travellers, the characters that accompany the days of that journey which is my Swedish life. The Capercaillie, but not just, is also a road companion in the literal meaning: along the roads it's easier to spot it and distinguish it from the depths of the forest; and it’s along a road, from the privileged point of observation of a scarcely nature-friendly car, that it’s possible to get closer to it, being it more confident towards a car than to a human. Urogallus, then, and one from yesterday: a cold and windy morning where I met several female squatted in holes dug in the earth, warming up; then, who knows, bringing that warmth to the chicks probably waiting nearby, under the shelter of the undergrowth. Not more than two and a half months have gone since I first saw these little ferns, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, unfolding their leaves like petals of flowers, with such a tender green to be almost impossible to catch on picture; like wings of just hatched butterflies which are filling with air, lying in thousands under the protective watch of pines and birches, drawing a living carpet that seemed to swarm though it was completely still, or, at least, barely stirred by a puff of forest breeze. Now, twelve weeks later – a time which in other species might mean a gestation, not a whole life - here they are giving up, shrinking, turning brown, standing in colors from the blanket of moss that grew after them, and under them; it being still green indeed, as if it is sucking their hue from below, and the life force with it. Autumn comes soon in the North, and by what a mountain of trivialities I could muddy this space on such a subject, that I'll leave to you to imagine; and I refrain from doing so. |
All site contents are: © Vitantonio Dell'Orto, all rights reserved worldwide. The Chronicles of Särna, and other stories from the North.
I live in Sweden, in Särna (Dalarna). The Chronicles are a photo diary about the nature (but not just) here around and from all the Scandinavian areas where my photo job takes me.
My book: "My Sweden - Tales from an Italian photographer in the North" is available in the bookstores and by the publisher.
Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|