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.

A little divertissement in cross-fade (click Play)

Subtle and pinky, the last lights of the day, reflected by the clouds, fall softly on the snowy scenery and the river Stor-Fjätan, in the nature reserve Långfjället.

One to end it.

The month just gone has been one of the warmest in the last 50 years, here in Dalarna. Wind, temperatures regularly above zero (even today, December the 31st, a day in which we use to struggle against -25/30°) and frequent rain.
I could well have stayed in Northern Italy to get such a weather...
Consequently, that has been a really poor photo month, with a bare landscape, little and dirty snow, grass emerging in the meadows, and wide sections of underwood entirely green.
For this end of the month (and year), then here it is a shot from its beginning.
Have a Happy 2014, everyone.

Few days ago in the flooded forest of Göljån: lynx's footprints, not older than a handful of hours.
This gives me the opportunity to narrate an “almost” close encounter with the big cat of the subject, few years ago, in the very same location. I was there to photograph a dipper which was hanging out along one the several creeks crossing the wood devastated by the great flooding from 1997; by the way, exactly the one, frozen, in the picture here.
To get there, you have to walk on a narrow wooden boardwalk. I was a twenty meters from it, bent on the tripod and focused on the dipper coming and going on a fallen tree not so far. After just ten minutes I picked up my gear and was heading to my car: on the boardwalk, well clear and obvious on the dry wood, a very fresh track of linx's wet footprints was there, and it wasn't there before.

To make it short, a lynx passed by my back, just 20 meters from me and in open sight, while I was staring exactly at the opposite direction.

Ever since, inevitably, everytime I recall that moment, with a bitter smile the old commercial I embed here below comes to my mind.

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).