Photography series · Nature

The Smallest Hours

For: Personal project
Location: Lofoten, Norway
Scope: Photography
Published: 02:50:00 26/08/25

Lone figure under a green aurora over still water

A green aurora over still water and one figure waiting for it to move. The series is about the hours after midnight: long exposures, cold hands and the patience of standing on a shore for a sky that changes every minute.

After midnight

The forecast said maybe. We drove out anyway, and at ten to one the whole fjord turned green. Eight frames, then the cloud came in and it was over. The figure is my assistant, who was asked to stand still for twenty seconds and stood still for forty.

Everything about this kind of picture is waiting. You wait for the dark, you wait for the cloud to leave, you wait for the exposure to finish and you wait for the screen to tell you whether the last twenty seconds were worth it. Mostly they were not. Eight times that night they were.

Crescent moon in a black night sky — The moon two nights earlier, when the sky did nothing else. Photograph by Xavier McLaren.

Crescent moon hanging in a dark starry sky above a thin band of cloud — And the night after, with the one cloud that would not go. Photograph by Pascal Debrunner.

The sky does not owe you anything. That is what makes the eight frames worth the drive.

Silhouette of a fisherman casting a line into morning mist, in black and white — The lake at dawn on the way back, and a man who had been there longer than we had. Photograph by Collins Illich.

Exposure

Fifteen to twenty seconds at f/2, ISO 1600, the lens focused on a star and taped so nothing moves it. The water is still because the fjord was; the green is what the camera saw, not what we did, which was mostly grey with a hint. The camera has better eyes at night.

After midnight

Exposure

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