khalliysgraphy

Sideblog for my animal and landscape photography. Mostly dogs and wolves. Main Blog: Khalliys

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It's been 3 years since I last took photos of wolves, but snow happening (rare these days) in the first week of January was a great opportunity to dust off my telephoto lens.

In the first three pictures, you can see Freddy (5), a handsome boy with a cool eyebrow scar. Not a care in the world that guy because he's the only male in the pack, lol.

Also in pictures three and four is his mother, Rieke. She's 10 years old now, teefs perpetually sticking out.

Then there's Ylvi (6), Rieke's oldest daughter, and don't let yourself be fooled by that face. She's the one in charge, despite a long-term disability leaving her with restricted mobility. (She started limping when she was like 2 and an X-Ray found a piece of metal stuck in her elbow joint if I remember correctly. No one knows how that happened, and it couldn't be removed) She's a confident girl.

Lastly, Selma (5), Freddy's littermate, seems less so and just tried to stay out of her sister's line of sight.

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Of the places we visited last year in Norway, the one my mind returns to most often is this Fort at what feels like the edge of the world.

In combination with autumn at the threshold of winter, an almost never-ending sunset, the remoteness and an icky human attempt to commercialize a WW2 relict but still feeling completely abandoned at the same time - there was an almost liminal atmosphere there.

At first we were disappointed. My friend had visited this location a few years ago and always wanted to return to it with me to explore it more thoroughly. Back then she realized that the bunkers there went deep into the earth and didn't dare to go in alone (her husband didn't want to go in).

When we arrived, the place had changed. The old roads had been filled up with gravel and widened out to create parking spaces. A big new sign greeted us, telling us to download an app to pay a fee. But there was no one there. A few construction machines stood abandoned at the site.

We parked and started looking around. When my friend visited, an old little ship was still resting in the bay, untouched for decades. It wasn't there anymore. Metal plates had been affixed to some of the old sheds and bunkers, telling us what they used to be - those at least were interesting. "Dangerous Area - traffic at your own risk" signs littered the place. However, instead of really leaving it up to someone's own risk, the bunkers we tried at first were all sealed shut and chained off. Frustrated we thought we had missed our chance to explore the bunkers.

Eventually we did find a few spots where we could still enter the bunker complex, though. Which means whoever sealed most of them shut made the place MUCH more dangerous, because now when you go inside this underground labyrinth most of your options to get out again are dead ends. Great management, A for effort.

Fortunately, my bestie's sense of direction is impeccable and it still turned out to be a very fascinating and surreal experience. I didn't take any photos inside, but I filmed the whole underground exploration with an action cam. Maybe someday I'll have the energy and patience to process all that film material.

And I'd still love to return there, maybe in the endless winter twilight.

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Polar lights somewhere above Norway's arctic circle on a mountain.

The above is how the camera sees the northern lights after being able to expose the night sky and capture the lights for (in this case) 15 seconds.

The human eye however, obviously cannot see the northern lights with the same intensity of a prologed exposure and in general it's dark vision is usually not good enough to perceive the colors of the aurora, unless you've got a crazy high activity. Most of the time you'll only see shades of grey and white, or a very very faint tint. The second picture is closer to what my eyes actually saw when I took the photo.

However, even without color they're beautiful to witness and can turn into a spectacle no still image could ever capture. The strongest aurora I've ever witnessed was pale green and like pure light was dancing and racing between the stars and raining down on me. It's like experiencing magic.

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I haven't posted pictures of my own dog yet, so meet my boy Yari! I can't say he's my partner in crime - because he's a Jack Russell Terrier, so it'd be more accurate to say I'm HIS partner in crime.

In October 2023 I travelled to Norway again and took him along, because I just missed him too much when I couldn't take him with me in 2022. He was very happy to be able to accompany me again and was the gooddest boy.

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I'm suffering from decision paralysis because I have way too many photos from like the past 15 years, but since I definitely want to show some of my wolf photography too, why not start with the first time I ever photographed a wolf pup.

This is Bootsmann (or just Bo) and he was born in 2010 in Wildpark Lüneburger Heide. He's 2 months old in the first picture, 3 months old in the middle and 6 months in the last, after his move to Wildfreigehege Saerbeck.

Last time I've seen him was in 2017 with his mate and two of his kids, kinda just haven't gotten around to visiting him since then. Hope he's still alive and kicking, since he'd be an Oldmann now!

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Every time we left a place to travel northwards, I kept thinking, okay, the next place has gotta be more boring than the last at this point. And yet, every time we stopped somewhere new for the night, I just got amazed anew. There's just spectacular sights everywhere in Norway, especially during the golden time of the year.

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Very close to the Artic Circle Center in Norway is a Stødi Sami Sacrificial Site, which we roamed around a little bit. The sacrificial stones are in the background in the last photo. I actually kind of forgot to try and get a good composition of them. I was more drawn to some ponds and other stones close by and the mountain view.

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Autumn river somewhere in Norway

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Peace in the autumn sun.

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Sometimes you discover the most beautiful places after looking at a map and going "We have time, the landscape looks rocky there, let's make a detour." We don't even think this specific plateau has a name. Its juuust southwest of Børgefjell/Byrkije nasjonalpark, as far as I can tell. But my friend and I spent half a day just exploring with awe on our faces and light in our eyes. Definitely a place I want to return to.

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Loving the new blog, these are some gorgeous shots! Incredible work!

Thank you so much! :3

I hope with a place that a) doesn't kill the quality of pictures and only allows for tiny viewing (Instagram) b.) doesn't impose a character limit (Twitter) c) allows you to post multiple photos without hiding or horrible cropping that I have more motivation to post my photography. I have thousands just sitting on my harddrive.

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There's this type of pale green moss? in a lot of places in Norway that is really soft and spongy when it's hydrated. Very comfy to lie in. Love how it looks like frozen grass and how it made sasr_photography's (Insta) dogs running around in it look so wild.

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Jotunheimen - Cotton Flowers

We saw these all over Norway. They glow so prettily in the sunlight.

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Jotunheimen - Valley of the Giants

We only stopped at this place for a few hours, but after travelling through Norway and it's Lofoten Islands for two weeks, this is the place my mind wanders to most often.

While exploring this comparably small area of Jotunheimen I just had this profound sense of "I could sit down in this landscape and do nothing but look forever and be fully at peace" which says something for someone fairly restless, who doesn't like to do nothing.

My friend and I had this interesting conversation where we compared Jotunheimen and Dovrefjell (which is about a hundered miles further north) and which place made us feel at peace the most. We love both places, but for me it was Jotunheimen and for her Dovrefjell. Jotunheimen has Norway's highest mountains, is more jagged and has a little bit of a shattered vibe, while Dovrefjell has a lot more barren and empty plains with smaller mountains in the distance.

I would say Jotunheimen feels like a place of calm after a storm and Dovrefjell like a place untouched by storms. Our different answers here - again - probably tell a lot about us.