These photographs were all made in Norway a bit north of the Arctic circle, in the first half of May 2019, and mostly on the island of Senja. As ever in cold countries, my aim was to be there when the roads were good enough to drive around without fearing for your life, but when the surrounding hills still have snow and the lakes are generally still frozen or just beginning to thaw. That bit of thaw is really important to some of these photographs, and midwinter wouldn't have made it better- just slower and more difficult to stop to photograph. It doesn't always work, and indeed the southern half of Senja had little snow. But it worked in the northern part of the island where most of the good scenery lies, and we had almost a week of good photography between this series and some coastal landscapes.

The snow wasn't in bad condition for so late in the season, though walking on it ran the risk of sinking without warning up to knees, thighs or higher. So most of these pictures are roadside. The blue and green colours seen in some of the pictures tend either to be melted areas round the edges of lakes or rivers, or places where the ice is very thin so the water beneath it becomes visible- places that will melt very soon. Given the importance of these colours to some of the photographs here, and their transient nature, I feel fortunate that we timed the visit to Senja so fortuitously, for to be honest I hadn't anticipated making photographs like these quite so late in the year.

I haven't given location details for these- not out of any desire for secrecy, but because the photographs are mostly in the middle of nowhere and in any case the real subject is a set of very transient conditions that are just as likely, in another year, to occur in different places and at different times.