Last Photo from Sweden
My last photograph from Sweden is just about the last picture that I took. The night before we came home there was a big solar storm forecast so I was scrutinising the weather forecast anxiously to see if we would get clear skies. It was a cold, still and frosty night so ideal for seeing the aurora – if the predictions of its arrival and strength were right. Luckily for us the forecasts were spot on. We went out to a nearby lake – Stångtjärn – where I’d recce’d a couple of potential locations for setting up the camera. It’s important to do that as it’s going to be dark and icy when you are taking pictures and you’re not going to want to fall into the lake.

This picture’s taken whilst the aurora was still building up – it stretches right across the northern horizon – from a floating pier that stretches right out into Stångtjärn. I was keen to get some reflections from the water. It was a tricky picture to take as I had to wait for the pier to stop rocking and the ripples in the water to die down. The pier was also covered in frost and I was kneeling only a few centimetres above the water line. I’m really happy with the picture – it was a ten second exposure, the aperture was 2.0 and ISO 1600. I caught a meteorite flashing across above the trees and you can just make out some of the autumn colours in the birch trees around the water’s edge. I love the glassy green reflections.

RODDY FOX

Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa. 

His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.

His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.