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Norway (follow up on Elena…)

It already passed some time since I’m thinking about a follow up on my story of o photo. Cezar’s comment make my final decision so I will post some images to show the context in wich I made Elena from… Litloya picture. I will not present only the picture with a close connection but also some from Vesteralen, a Norway area north to the Arctic Circle

Lighthouse keeper’s house, now transformed by Elena in a very cozy pension. Lofoten Islands on the horizon.

On the Litloya Island boulder beach

Another Lighthouse in Vesteralen Area (not the Litloya one)

Inner lake in Vesteralen Area

Midnight Sun, at 12 o’clock sharp in the night

Playing with color on a rainy day

Drying cod fish. The drying process starts on February/March and is finished on the end of May

Sometime cod is also a land mark for rum and coffee bar …

… where you can arrive by bicycle

Nyksund, a place forgotten by fisherman for over 30 years and rediscovered by romantic travelers.

Helen of… Litløya

Tom’s small fishing boat cuts across the waters of the Norwegian Sea like a tank vessel. Watching  how it approach the pier for anchoring, it seems to me nothing could stand in its way. With short, precise movements, Tom, an experienced fisherman and owner of the boat, anchors at the pier and invites us down on the deck, as the sea is retreating and the boat is far lower than the pontoon. We can’t say we went “on board”:). As it’s my first time on a professional fishing boat, my curiosity urges me to open the cabin door: the sonar, radar and GPS are easy to spot. I’ll see the rest “at work” as soon as we’re out in the open sea. Exactly as performed while anchoring, the same two precise movements are required for lifting the anchor from the pier, and here we are marching towards the open sea and the fishing areas. Until the free waters are within our reach, we can take our time admiring the hundreds of visible rocks or submarines which the Norwegian coast is well known for: they are the famous fjords scattered all over the Nordic coastline. If we were to think about counting the number of kilometers covering the Norwegian coast, we’d be surprised to find out it is four times larger than the Earth’s circumference. The purpose of today’s journey is not merely a fishing day with Tom, wonderful otherwise, but a small island called Litltoya in Norwegian (which means “small island”, as opposed  to a bigger “neighboring ” one), home of one of the most important lighthouses from the far northern Norwegian coast.

Tom skillfully manages the boat between the rocks edging the small bay where we can set anchor near a floating concrete pontoon (yeah, that’s correct, I didn’t misspell it ). We   anchor indeed and I try to spot the deck that will take us to shore. To joke a little, I’d say there’s no more deck left . Watching how the boat is tied to one of the pillars on the pontoon, I can hardly notice a motor boat anchoring near us. So this is how we’ll get to shore. The motor boat “captain” is remarkable. The captain arranges us on the boat fast and efficiently and in no time we are near the broken concrete stairs of the old pier. Until we realize it, here we are face to face with the owner, who, to our surprise is a woman.

It is said that a photo expresses more than a thousand words. To paraphrase this, Elena’s face says more than a thousand words.

Elena Maria is the owner   and our host on the “Small Island”. It’s one of those rare moments when you see someone for the first time but you feel like knowing them for a lifetime. She quit her job for an ONU agency in Cisiordania to follow her dream in far northern Norway .This must be “the spell of the great north”, that Jean Leroy-Guyo was talking about in his great travel book. In 2006, Elena brought her dream to life: she bought a part of the island where the old lighthouse is located (it was built in 1912 and functioned until 2009) as well as the small building where the lighthouse keeper’s family used to live. Three generations of keepers lived on the island together with a small community of fishermen. The community left the island back in the 50’s, so Elena Maria lives alone on the island. Well not alone, with her two cats .Does this dream sound familiar to you? I bet we’ve all had it as teenagers..

As it was lunchtime, we had a chance to get a taste of the local food (island food to be exact). There were some exceptions though:  nettle soufflé and rhubarb compote with sour-cream. Although I was born in Transylvania, where most of the dishes are served with sour-cream, the rhubarb compote was a “tasty” first.

I told Elena I wanted to “take” her portrait from the first time I saw her. The perfect moment was after lunch. The light outside  was to harsh during noon hours , so I asked if we could go inside the house where she could pick her favorite spot and spend 15 minutes chatting with me. She invited me in the living-room, a white room, simply decorated but in very good taste as only Norwegians seem  to know.

The key light I needed for the portrait was coming from a window that was big enough  to fill the room and turn it into a big light-box imperative for filling and soften  the  shadows from the opposite part of her face. The lighting plan was simple but as generous as can be. During our conversation, I took photos. Taking photos was the easiest part, the difficult one was choosing the frame afterwards.

“Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.” – Minor White

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