In January 2024, I was on a photographic journey in Oulanka NP, Finland. It has a unique river ecosystem and is an example of an untouched and unlogged boreal forest, close to the Arctic Circle. Temperatures were between -20 °C and -30 °C. The landscape is almost totally monochromatic, black and white, and great for the abstract intimate landscape photography that I like.
That morning, I had to walk a lot through deep snow along the river to get to this place. Thick layers of clothes, heavily breathing, and sweating... When I got to this spot, I got close to the river. You cannot get too close, because of the snow, you cannot see the bank of the river. The Kitka River is wild and very fast flowing with big chunks of ice tumbling in the water, so you have to be alert. The river looks like a black vein in a white landscape.
There was a lot of mist, the sun was peeking through it, so the light was diffused, which I really like. To photograph in snowy landscapes, you have to set the exposure 1 to 2 stops higher to avoid a blue hue on the snow. I worked with an ND filter stop 6 to get a flowy feel in the image and not to freeze the water. The twigs and branches are all frozen because of the mist and extreme cold. I took a few images to see the flow of the river. I love the square format, but I also took some 16:9 images. I use a Fujifilm medium format GFX 50Sii. The camera shows you the square but keeps the whole image in raw in the camera, so you can review the whole image in post-processing in Lightroom.
Post-processing in lightroom is easier when you get the blacks, grays, and whites correctly in the camera. I avoid the contrast slider (too harsh for my taste and too global). I work first with the black and white slider, and after that with the highlight and shadow slider. I use radial masks for small adjustments.
