After arriving in Longyearbyen, the northernmost settlement in the world, I had an afternoon to myself so headed off with my camera to explore. 24 hour sunlight with a scrim of high cloud gave lovely soft light and the unique landscape, buildings and colours were quite inspiring photographically. New and unfamiliar locations are always so visually stimulating and interesting and the contrast from a hot modern Oslo was extreme.

I followed a pedestrian path that heads down through the centre of town down to the museum and university

One of the landmarks is the old coal cableway central station where cableways from different mines merged and altered direction when taking coal from the mines down to the port. Wooden pylons as shown on the left of the following photo remain on the hills and through town (top right in the panorama at the head of this post) but mining operations have now ceased. Previously coal from the island was burnt for heat but this is now achieved using imported diesel with a reduction in emissions.

I found the colours and buildings quite appealing and foreign to my Antipodean eyes. The flat light gave the opportunity for some almost 2 dimensional images.

Photos with Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z 24-200mm f4-6.3 VR, the perfect walk around combo, apart from the mouth of the Svalbard river photographed with iPhone14 Pro in live mode and output as a long exposure image.