"Spring-winter" Sweden's fifth season

"Vårvinter" is how Swedish people describe a unique season, in between winter and spring, when the days are warmer and the nights are still below zero. A gorgeous time of renewal and excitement among splendid surreal landscapes.

Sweden has a very specific way of determining the seasons. Winter is deemed to be arrived if the temperatures have been below zero for 5 consecutive days, while it's spring after 7 days of temperatures above zero ... In the middle, there is "vårvinter" which literally, simply means "spring-winter".

Sweden weather agency calls it the "fifth season" explaining that "during the latter part of winter, high pressure often means sunny warmer days and clear, cold nights" that's to say above zero during the day, below zero at night.

It is such a unique time, and one of my favorite seasons. In fact, even a winter lover as myself welcomes with immense joy the first warm sun rays and the longer hours of daylight after 6 months of cold temperatures and darkness.

Everything gets a little easier ... your car starts with no issues, there's no ice on the windshield, the ground under your feet is no longer a peril, no need to keep the fire alive or to worry about the animals of the forest lacking food ....

The sun rays eagerly absorbed by your body fills you with a renewed energy ... although, all that super bright light, all of the sudden, can give you migraines, especially when snow is still on the ground, as its reflection is extremely blinding.

There's excitement and little confusion, as occasionally snow can fall again if a perturbation comes ... but then again, you enjoy that break too, as it helps you gradually adjusting to the incoming warm season, especially when you are back from a very cold winter.

That's when you can't wait to open the conservatory, unwrap the outdoor furniture and the deckchairs on your balcony, often only to realize that yep ... maybe it was too soon!

It's the time when nature emerges from darkness, starting from the heather and their gorgeous pink-purple tones and shades. They are the first color patches that you can see on a ground that has been covered in white for months, and the first textures that your hands can touch, which I can assure you, is an immensely pleasant sensation when you have been under the snow mantle for a long time ... exactly like when you walk for the first time on snowless soil and you feel grounded again ... such an unforgettable feeling!

It's the time when the ice in the lakes is thawing ...

the snow starts melting in some forests ...

while in others it's totally gone ...

When misty cold dawns

turn into summer like sunny days ...

A time of contrasts and beautiful surreal landscapes ...

When it's finally easy to stay outside, hike in the forests, explore again ... when the mosquitoes aren't yet arrived and you can sit on the ground undisturbed ... when you take off your jacket ...

and when the sweaters are finally stored in the closet ... Oh I miss them already!!

It's a time of hope and renewal, of new projects and ideas, a time of adjustment, a beautiful one to be alive.... so however you call it, wherever you are, whatever you like to do, I wish you all a joyful vårvinter!

Till the next time ... remember to enjoy the outdoors and take good care of you!

Love, Simona 💜🌿💜

We all need some magic

Finding some magic moments in our busy week it's so much needed and simpler than we might think. It's just a matter of using the whole spectrum of our senses ...

Hey everyone!

This is just a short story I posted on Instagram yesterday.

I thought to publish that here too on a Monday as a way to bring some magic to the beginning of a busy week for us all. In fact, my Mondays have always been filled with an unpleasant, anxious feeling, as I often felt forced to re-enter kind of a "boring reality mode" after a couple of days of distraction from the everyday life. Maybe you can relate to that? 😉

It wasn't the vacation that I wanted to prolong, but that sense of being able to live my life to the fullest by doing what I was passionate about. Avoiding that unpleasant feeling of being stuck in a boring life has been so important to me, that since I was young I've done all my best to make sure to be able to do whatever job I just loved to do, regardless of whether that would bring me money or carrier. That of course has caused much struggle, as my parents were often not happy with my unconventional, in their opinion unwise choices 🥴

Anyhow, Mondays aside, I think we all need to season our days with some magic to make the most of them, and "magic" to me is just a way to enjoy the mystery of the Universe surrounding us by using the whole spectrum of our senses, something which somehow seldom happens in our everyday life as we have been kind of forced to "cut ourselves off them" ...

But back to the story ...

I was sitting in the forest the other day, enjoying the relaxing view of the snow that was falling abundantly. There was a soft and soothing atmosphere all around, as the sounds of the wood were absorbed by the fresh snow covering the ground and the trees whit its mantle.

It was so pleasantly quite that I must have entered a sleepy trance, as I found myself staring for a long while at a dark gap among the trees standing in front of me in the distance, where the falling snow looked so defined against that midnight blue background.

It was such an enchanting view and I was really tempted to reach that place, but I knew that it was just one of the many illusions created by the forest. In fact, had I stood up and walked towards it, the magic would disappear as soon as I’d stepped into that gap, as the darkness would dissolve along with the contrast. It's a bit like when you are trying to chase a misty horizon that moves further forward every time you think you’ve reached it. Watch out! The forest is so good at creating optical illusions! I don't know how many times it has made me walk for hours following some deceiving light 😁

So, this time, I decided to resist its tricks and rather than moving towards that magical place, I zoomed into it with my camera, closer and closer ....

The darkness was still there, the falling snow was even more defined ... and the magic was preserved ... ✨✨✨

That simple, unwilling act of staring at the falling snow, resulted in a precious moment of calmness and mindfulness, that has brought so much peace into my busy mind, restored my good mood and all my energies .... and it was achieved by just getting a hold of the magic that exists all around us.

I wish you can enjoy your magic moment this week! You don't need a snowfall or a forest to find it, just let it go, trust your senses, connect with nature and the magic will find you.

I would love to hear about your magic moments! Leave a comment below if you feel to!

Before saying goodbye ... I just wanted to let you know that I managed to get 30% discount from my posters supplier! It is valid till 31-03-2023 so don't miss it! Have a look here and use discount code ARTIST11340 at checkout. Hope you'll enjoy it 😊

Till next time, take good care of you 🌹

Love, Simona 🤍🤍🤍

Forest bathing, inspiration and creative photography. Episode 2

A full immersion in nature and a crazy photographic experience. Taking the picture that you have felt rather than the one you have seen, like reproducing the visible with the invisible.

Dancing with the ghosts

Hi everyone!

As promised, here's the second episode of my post on "forest bathing" and photography.

In Episode 1, I shared my thoughts on what this trendy word means to me, by describing a day out in the wild, and my way to immerse myself in nature, restore my polluted brain and my energies and enjoy the adventure to the fullest.

When I left you, I was by the shore of a lake, that I had reached with the hope to clear my busy and worried mind, so that I could enjoy that photographic journey and find some inspiration.

It worked. Thanks to the lulling slow motion of the ripples in the water that served as a kind of hypnosis therapy, I had managed to actually stop thinking, reset my brain to its neutral status, and to enter that much blessed peace of mind I was looking for that renewed all my energies and my enthusiasm.

By that time, the light had almost gone out. It was what I call "evening in the wild", when it's just you and the most feral essence of nature, when the animals regain full possession of the territory and you feel like a guest who has lingered too long.

Evening in the wild

I thought it was a pity to have wasted all the afternoon with a polluted brain, and I was fully determined to get the most from the rest of that day. The adventure had just started.

I climbed up the hill and I was back in the forest just above the lake.

I wandered for a while, was I seeing anything? Not sure. Certainly, the forest in itself wasn't among the most beautiful I had visited so far. Kind of a repetition of straight red pine trees with little personality, tall but tiny in their trunks, like many other I've seen in forests that have grown little and with much effort on a rocky, hilly ground. Still, there was something attracting me, something that kept me there, that made me pull my camera and the tripod out.

Maybe I wasn't seeing the forest, but I was surely feeling it and my experience was telling me that if was feeling something, something was actually there.

I started taking pictures in different spots and from different angles, moving a lot through the forest that was wide and seemed repeating itself to infinity in all directions. I shot countless times, never happy with the result, keeping on going, one shot after another, a hundred meters forward and back, to my left and to my right, focusing in and out.

Repeating to infinity

A dark shade of blue

The light had become so blue, the bluest of the blue hours I have seen within a forest.

A dark shade of blue, this was the color I was seeing everywhere. The darkest of the dark, lit up by the last beams of light that were still entering the forest.

I loved that blue so much, surely it was something I had managed to find there, but still I wasn't satisfied with the pictures, so I kept on shooting almost without even composing, taken by a kind of an irrational sense of frustration and determination at the same time that eventually turned in a sort of trance status.... At a certain point, it went so crazy that it felt like I was spinning and losing my balance ... Again that sense of being there and not being there that I felt down by the lake, that total focus of eyes and soul, a full connection with the place.

And then I saw it. The one I was there for. The picture representing the forest that I was feeling, rather than the one I was seeing, like representing the visible with the invisible.

I had actually spun ... and my camera with me. What I got as a consequence, was a kind of mild ICM photo.

ICM stands for Intentional Camera Movement, an old photographic technique involving moving the camera in whatever direction with a slow shutter speed.

It is used to achieve a more abstract, impressionist rendition of a scene, and if well managed, it results in a more artistic kind of photography. It is not an easy technique though, it requires a lot of practice and many attempts to reach a result that has any kind of sense.

Dancing with the ghosts

I was not thinking about taking an ICM image, in fact it isn't, although it resembles to it. I rather like to think that it's the spirit of that forest that has called for that. My spinning around was caused by that forest. The slow shutter speed was determined by the lack of light in that forest in that moment of time. And the result makes sense to me.

I usually don't like the typical blurriness of ICM photography and I am very pleased that I somehow managed to keep some of the texture of the trees, and that even the spinning motion has a kind of definition and did not ended up extremely blurred.

I called this photo "Dancing with the ghosts", because this is what I actually did that evening. I was dancing with the spirits of the forest.

I wouldn't have been able to achieve this result without a total immersion in that wood. Without reaching that sort of trance status that comes only after you have cleared your mind and focused with your whole soul.

This is what taking a picture means to me. The most beautiful and yet most difficult kind of photography, the one taken with all your being. It doesn't happen everyday.

Once home, I reviewed the pictures that I took at the lake, when I had just started reaching that blessed status of mind. When I was in the forest and I discovered that shade of blue that I loved so much, I had thought of returning down to the lake to take new pictures under that light. But there would have been no light at all by the time I had descended again the forest hill.

So, I post-processed the two pictures to reflect the dominant color and the dominant feeling of that photographic journey.

I like them definitely better now.... Have a look at the first version of them in the First Episode. Which do you like the most?

Winter textures

The tiny ice mountain

I guess it has been a long journey for you, reading this two posts of mine, I mean.

I really hope though that I have been able to describe an experience of total connection with the natural environment you are living and the wonderful effects that come from this immersion of the mind and the soul, for you as a person and as an artist.

Finally, as usual, I hope I have inspired you to get out there, step into nature, and live plenty of wonderful experiences.

Till next time .... Take good care of you,

Love, Simona 🌲🤍🌲