Here on the 56th latitude, the forests are on the verge of exploding into green and - I'm guessing - making the Garden of Eden look like your average city park. Spring is my favorite time of year, not just for photography but for being alive.

So let's talk about something completely different: winter! The season that has just ended. And let's start with this image...

That's what winter in a Danish forest normally looks like. Gray, bleak, and dull. And that's how this past winter started. Not that that is necessarily a problem. My philosophy is that you work with what you've got, so if gray, bleak, and dull is what you've got, you somehow make it work, which I think I did with this image.

But then something happened.

At first it was just a slight sprinkle of white, but that was enough to get me excited. To which you may say, "But isn't Denmark, like, almost at the North Pole? Don't you have snow most of the year?" And no, we don't. First of all, we are  nowhere near the North Pole. When you see pictures or film from Scandinavia with snow-covered landscapes, reindeer, and log cabins, those are from way up in Sweden, Finland or Norway. Denmark is much further south in the temperate zone, plus we are a very flat land with very little elevation and therefore relatively warm.

Still, even considering our placement on the map, the snow drought we've experienced in the last 10 years is new and is probably somehow connected to climate change. When I was a child (he said with a squeeky old man's voice), snow was much more common, and even in my adulthood, there have been years when my snow shovel has been on heavy active duty. Not so anymore so even a tiny bit of snow was a welcome change from the grayness.

Fast forward 1½ months where the above snow cover, which lasted less than a day, seemed to be all we would get. It looked like it would be another typical snowless winter. Until...

That day marked the beginning of a long stretch of snow and cold that would last a month or more. Mind you, it's not like we had several feet of snow. What you see in the image is about as deep as it would get, but it was enough to turn the world white, much to my photographer self's delight (my car driver self hates snow and ice).

The image shows one of my favorite trees (you can also see a couple of pictures of it here), old and steady as life and seasons come and go around it. It was actually snowing as I was taking the picture, but for some reason I couldn't for the life of me get the snow flakes to show, no matter what shutter speed I chose.

Winter culminated a few days later after another snowfall that made it possible to capture the below pictures on a magical afternoon in my local forest. Due to not having had the opportunity to do any real snow photography the whole time that photography has been my passion, I  quickly had to learn the basics about it. The number one rule is to shoot while the snow is still covering the tree branches. It makes a world of difference, but also limits your window by a lot. Another rule is, of course, to not over-expose the snow, which can be difficult to avoid, but I think I managed. Last but not least, capture the snow while it's falling. I failed that one for sure.

Winter photography doesn't just equal snow. By the middle of February most of the snow had melted, but the cold returned for another round. At first it didn't result in new snow, but instead we got a period of pretty harsh frost that turned lakes and even coastal waters to ice. I missed most of that, but did catch this interesting jigsaw puzzle of ice breaking up.

At the time of the above shot, I thought for sure that would be the last we would see of winter, but - true story - two days later, my local forest looked like this...

That picture was taken around dusk, and no, it's not black and white. This is what it looked like, revealing yet another one of winter's many faces.

However, I have saved the best for last. The below image was shot during a photo outing in the woods that, despite a bit of snow on the ground, was terribly uninspiring and - until I stumbled on the below scene - hardly yielded anything worth keeping. Then, accompanied by heavenly trumpets, this sight appeared before me and instantly made me drop to my knees... That is, in order to capture the scene from the low angle that would perfect the "door to spring", as I call it.

At the time "Door to Spring" was shot, spring was actually still 2½ months away, so the door closed again pretty quickly. Now, 2½ months later, I look back on a winter season that, I feel, for the first time since I got into photography, offered plenty of opportunities for real winter landscape photography. And real winter landscape photography, as we all know, contains plenty of that white stuff. Next winter I will most likely be back to shooting gray, dreary, snowless woodland and telling you how awesome it is, when you think of it, but you'll know that when I put my head on the pillow in the evening, I will be dreaming of snowclad trees, icy lakes, and snowflakes gently falling from the sky.

On the next episode.... Green, green leaves!

But first, a few more winter favorites:

A patch of forest not far from my house where I had only been once before. Back then I wasn't all that excited about what I saw, but I thought I'd give it another shot. I did not regret it. Despite dull, gray light there was no shortage of compositions. One young tree in particular caught my attention. The tree had just come into leaf and was surrounded by older trees that were still bare. I was spellbound by the green whirl that seemed to float in free air around the tree.

The forest is located next to a riding center, so you constantly run into horseback riders and horses grazing along the paths, which of course, I took full advantage of.

An evening walk in the forest that started out with the most amazing light, but it fizzled out and for once, I didn't come home with 100+ images on my card.

What a difference a different time of day means. Until now most of my spring photography has taken place in broad daylight in sunny and harsh light conditions. Today I went out as the sun was lowering in the sky and captured the spring leafs in magnificent ways. I love this time of year, when the bright green leafs are are coming out in little, apparently free-floating, bursts here and there and before they take over the forest completely. The scene today was my local forest where I have been a million times before, but I keep capturing new aspects of it. Spots that one day are hardly worth a glance turn into explosions of light and patterns and beauty, just because the season, the time of day, and the weather conditions are different.

April has been extremely bright and sunny and with hardly any rain. Today was no exception, and again it put a damper on my ability to create great photos. But as is almost always the case, I gradually got carried away and enjoyed myself tremendously. My first stop was Ulvedalen (Wolf Valley) in the middle of the forest, a location I have talked about before. The free-roaming horses were still there, but that wasn't the only thing that caught my attention. Looking through my long zoom lens, a surreal sight caught my eye: a man was sitting on a far hilltop, lotus position, hands spread out in meditation. Apparently he thought he was all alone. As I was watching him, the horses started to approach him. Soon they were so close to him, he could no longer focus. He got up and rode away on his bicycle.

The rest of my day went with standard forest photography, and a picture of the train that criss-cross the forest.

I'm going for a lot of walks these days due to the corona lock-down, where I'm otherwise stuck behind my desk working from home and hardly moving all day. Today the walk took me to Frederiksborg Castle Park, which is always worth visiting. The light on the castle was worth capturing, and so was the spring leafs on my way home through the local forest.

Bright sunshine, a clear blue sky... in other words, awful conditions. But, although most of my images from this day were garbage, I was happy with how I ended up documenting the emerging spring leafs. And there is that very Danish farmhouse again, and it even had the Danish flag flying.

A bike ride without my real camera and with no intentions of taking pictures turned into a cell phone photography extravaganza when the forest I visited turned out to be quite photogenic. Especially when the sun started to set and the shadows grew long.

Another marathon day on the north coast. I started out in Tibirke Hills, which is the closest thing we come to mountains in my part of the world (and that's not saying much, because they are very far from mountains). You could see for miles, and though the light wasn't great it being in the middle of the day, I still managed to shoot a few images I was happy with. Later I walked and walked through the extensive forest and captured a selection of interesting forest scenes. The Tisvilde forest is strange and exciting and doesn't look like anything else that I know, and I absolutely love going there.

This walk into Gribskov was well on its way to be rather disastrous photography-wise. The light was so harsh and my inspiration was lacking. But then I came across this little wetland area with these young birch trees growing in the water. The water was completely still, and the reflections from the birch trees were so sharp, you couldn't tell where the trees ended and the reflections started. I was mesmerized and spent a ton of time there trying to capture this magnificent spot. By the time I quit, the sun was low in the sky and the light was improving, which I took advantage of in the two other images.

As is so often the case for me, I went to a location with a loose plan and came home with something completely different. This piece of forest on the outskirts of Hillerød is known for its little island in the middle of a lake. On the island is a picturesque ruin of an old building. I have been there before about three years ago, but wasn't satisfied with my images of the ruin. I figured I should give it another shot. And what happens? I came home with some amazing pictures of something completely different. I did shoot the ruin too, but again, I wasn't happy with the result. So here instead are pictures of the surrounding lake and forest. Just before sunset the most brilliant sidelight penetrated the forest, illuminating it from the side and behind in the most amazing way. I was mesmerized and forgot all about the old ruin. This was 10 times better.

Another walk in Gribskov at mostly well-known locations. However, I believe that at least the waterfall image is my best attempt at capturing that particular spot so far. The day also saw me experimenting with myself as the subject. I was wearing a knitted hat with a built-in headlight and positioned myself in an underpass while shooting a 15-second exposure. As hoped the result was quite interesting, although I did have to enhance it quite a bit to make the effect more noticeable.