Hiking in Sweden

Going on a hiking holiday means you won't have much time for photography. Especially if the evenings are or too windy/cold to spent a lot of time outside, or there are too many mosquitoes to be outside the tent. But after three weeks and 230km there have been enough photo opportunities to show some results here.

Another problem was that, because of the weight of our backpacks I had to leave some lenses behind. The one I missed most was my 180mm macrolens. But this also gave nice opportunities to try different things. Like the first picture of the Hawkweed in the scenery. Normally I would have taken this with the macro but I think this result is a lot better.

Of course there was also enough animal life. The Golden Plover is an animal characteristic for the Scandinavian fjells. The vast emptiness of the place is reinforced by the melancholic whistle of the Golden Plover. When you hear it, and start looking around, you often find one, sitting on a rock, like this bird.

This year was the first year in northern Sweden that I paid attention to dragonflies. I saw quite a lot, most of them Azure Hawkers, a species that has never been seen in the Netherlands. Here a male resting on a pine tree.

More pictures can be seen in the Sweden '09 gallery.