After a mild winter with little snow in the inner parts of Middle-Norway, the cold and snowy April was a delightful surprise. As a consequence, ski conditions were better in the beginning of May than during the whole winter. And I was lucky to spend this wonderful period of spring in the mountains…
Late spring is a season full of contrasts in Norway. While birches turn green in the low lands, the landscape is still covered by a thick blanket of snow in the mountains. Animals living here adapt to these conditions, such as the stoat that kept his elegant white winter coat in the mountains until the middle of May.
The hares started to change coat a little earlier, in the end of April, and as the start and the length of this process varies from individual to individual, I could observe hares with white, spotted or homogeneously light brown coats at the same time. 5 different individuals were visiting my feeding place, so I could add many new hare images to my photo archive.
After some weeks in the mountains, now we move to the coast where we will spend the whole summer and a great part of the autumn. We are very excited about what new experiences (and images) these travels will bring along...

We are delighted to announce that our images accompanying a story about Iceland has been published in the May issue of the National Geographic Magazine.

Excerpt from the article: ”It was five days before Christmas, and in the hut on the north flank of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that grounded airplanes all over Europe in 2010, Sigurður Reynir Gíslason was dishing up fish soup and pickled herring. Lunch felt like a gift. The volcano was quiet, its glacier muffled in clouds, but we’d forded icy river channels to get here, and twice Siggi’s SUV had got stuck. Outside the warm hut, gnarly birch trees formed a spiderweb of branches against the white hillside. “This is what it looked like when the Vikings arrived,” said Guðrún, Siggi’s sister. As we arrived, a ptarmigan fluttered out of the snow.

Guðrún is a geographer, Siggi a geochemist at the university in Reykjavík. They were telling me the story of Iceland’s landscape, and if you counted the smoked lamb, all four main actors were present... Humans and their beasts, struggling to survive in a land of volcanoes and glaciers, have degraded it to an astonishing degree.

If you don’t know that story, you see the astonishing beauty that remains.” (Rob Kunzig)

You can read the whole article here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/iceland/kunzig-text
©Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg/National Geographic
“The volcano Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, just before dawn on April 23, 2010: The worst is over. Lava flows freely. Earlier, as it punched through the ice cap, it triggered a meltwater flood that destroyed roads and farms, and a steam explosion that hurled ash into the stratosphere, stopping air traffic for a week.”
©Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg/National Geographic
“A shifting stream drops bog iron onto volcanic sand near Háfur, on the south coast.”
©Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg/National Geographic
“A glacial torrent pours over a 40-foot-high ledge at Gođafoss, "waterfall of the gods." After the Icelandic assembly adopted Christianity in 1000, its leader threw his pagan idols into the falls. The mossy island, notes geographer Guđrún Gísladóttir, "is protected from sheep.""

You can browse through the images by clicking here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/iceland/haarberg-photography

Visit National Geographic Magazine on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NGM

I am happy to share with you, that I have 7 awarded images (out of total 57) in the Russian Golden Turtle Nature Photo contest! I won the Landscape and Mammal categories, and 5 images were highly commended in their categories. See all my awarded images under menu “Awards” on our website – I included three of them in this post below.
Jökulsárlón, Iceland / “Landscape” category, highly commendedFeeding red knots, Iceland / “Harmony of life” category, highly commendedThe ghost of the lava field (Arctic fox I Iceland) / “Harmony of life” category, highly commended

The all-over winner of the competition was Sergey Gorshkov. Congratulations Sergey! :-)
See all the winning images here: http://animalphoto.ru/catalogue/archive/?catalogue_id=233

Orsolya Haarberg