Where the ice giants dragged their feet...

This past week I've been on holiday with my family, on a P&O cruise ship called the Ventura, sailing across the North Sea and up and down the great Fjords of Norway.

We visited Stavanger, Skjolden, Geiranger and Bergen, due to the toddler amongst us we weren't able to do any particularly adventurous treks into the mountains or Norwegian wilds however we did see some extraordinary views as we sailed right up the middle of some of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

This also gave me a brilliant excuse to put the Tokina 11-16mm lens I bought recently to a proper test and try my hand at some landscape photography. Having such a wide angle is something that takes some getting used to. A lot of things can sneak into frame that you wouldn't necessarily expect and often the details within the shot are too seemingly 'distant' or small to comprehend when reviewing them through or on the camera. In some cases it wasn't until I got the image home and post-processed it that I realised what I had.
Hopefully with sufficient practice I'll become more accustomed.

The following three shots were the first few shots I took on the top deck of the cruise ship in Stavanger. To amuse my self-sense of irony I decided to use the wide angle lens to see if I could make a panoramic 'photo-stitch' image of an even wider angle.

I didn't take many photographs in Stavanger itself, most of what I did were very touristy, more so than the above three (The third isn't very obviously stitched anyway).

The following shots are from the departure of Stavanger and the sunset that punctuated it.

Some random shots from Skjolden

... and then Geiranger...

The views from our rear facing balcony on the journey out of Geiranger.

To put things into a bit of perspective I snapped this one of the back of the ship.

This was the very last shot I took on the trip. I just held the camera against the window in and took a photo on almost full auto settings(I think it was aperture priority)I after the shutter stayed open for longer than I expected I assumed it'd be a waste of time so never thought to review the image before putting it away. I never expected that taking a long exposure on a moving object(The ship) could work as well as it did. If i'd realised this sooner I would've played with the technique much more.

So there we have it. My trip to Norway. :)