A photography & travel journal

Notes from places where the light stays low.

Winter coastlines, early trains, cold hands, warm cafés. Updated whenever a roll of film comes back with something worth keeping.

Latest entries

Grey tabby cat with white paws stretched out on a patterned rug, looking straight at the camera — Pepper, office manager. Phone camera, because the real one was in the scanner.

18 October 2026

A season of scanning, supervised

No trips this autumn, so the backlog finally got its turn: forty-one rolls, one scanner, and one cat who has decided that every negative strip is a toy delivered to her personally. Pepper sits on the warm lid of the scanner, then on the drying rack, then on whichever sleeve I need next. Productivity is down. Morale is excellent.

The winter frames from Lofoten and Hokkaido are coming next. In the meantime, friends kept sending pictures of their own cats when they heard about the supervisor, so they now have a corner of their own further down the page.

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Moonlit winter night over Reinefjorden: snow-covered peaks, calm dark water and a deep blue starry sky — Hamnøy, Lofoten. 35 mm, f/2.8, twenty seconds of moonlight on a borrowed tripod.

14 February 2026

Moonlight on Reinefjorden

The sun never quite made it over the ridge, which turned out to be the point. After dark the moon took over and lit Olstind and the whole fjord in that deep, even blue that film handles better than I do. I stood on the shore with the tripod leg wedged against a rock and shot the same frame eleven times, changing nothing but my mind.

Practical notes: the ferry from Bodø runs twice a day in winter, the bakery in Reine opens at eight, and nobody minds if you stand in the road for a photograph as long as you wave.

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Seven bare larch trees in a row on an untouched snowfield under a pale pink dawn sky — Märchen no Oka, Memanbetsu. Minus nineteen, and the shutter still fired.

9 January 2026

The quiet side of Hokkaido

I took the slow train from Asahikawa with a thermos and no plan beyond getting off where the fields looked widest. That turned out to be Memanbetsu: a row of seven larches, a sky the colour of the inside of a shell, and nobody else for a mile. The snow absorbs sound the way a darkroom absorbs light; you can hear your own film advance from a field away.

Cold-weather notes for anyone trying this: keep the spare rolls inside your coat, wind slowly, and accept that the last three frames of every roll will be of your own feet while you look for the car.

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Narikala fortress and the tiled rooftops of old Tbilisi under a soft sunset sky, the city and mountains behind — Narikala and the old town, Tbilisi. Shot from a stairwell that smelled of bread.

27 October 2025

Three mornings in Tbilisi

Every street ends in a staircase and every staircase ends in someone's balcony. I gave up on the map on the first morning and let the city decide. The sulphur baths are exactly as warm as everyone says; the view from above them is better than any of the postcards sold next to the door.

A shopkeeper on Betlemi Street asked what the camera was. When I said it only took thirty-six pictures a roll, he nodded like that was the correct number.

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Gallery

Seven frames from the last two winters.

White lighthouse with its lamp lit on a brown headland at dusk, dark cliffs and the sea behind — Dyrhólaey, Iceland

Snow-covered wooden dock with a row of snowed-in rowboats on a half-frozen lake while snow falls — Boat dock in snow, Clear Lake

Tram with lit windows on a snow-covered loop under a street lamp at night — Night tram, Gdańsk

Raindrops on a cafe window with warm lamps and tables blurred behind the glass — Window seat, first snow

Mount Fuji and layered mountain ridges rising from a sea of clouds at sunrise — Dawn above the clouds, Southern Alps

Black-and-white photograph of a rangefinder camera, a box of film and two candles on a wooden hut table — Hut table, Savoie. Last frame of the roll.

Orange and white cat curled up asleep inside a new toilet bowl that has not been installed yet — The new bathroom arrived. Quality control was immediate.

Cats

Phone snapshots, not film: Pepper, her friends, and the cats that come with every guesthouse and every neighbour.

White cat with grey patches sitting in a loaf on a cushion on a sofa — Biscuit has claimed the travel pillow. Again.

Tabby cat wearing a clear cone collar, sitting on a cardboard box next to a jug of cat litter — Week two of the cone. Morale low, opinions many.

Tabby cat peering out from under green grapevine leaves — The neighbours' tabby, hiding in the grapevine. She thinks.

Close-up of a young tabby and white cat with large eyes, wearing a small bow tie and a bell — Milo, dressed for a birthday party he did not ask for.

Tabby and white cat lying on a carpeted wooden stair, paws stretched out — The guesthouse cat. Toll for the stairs: one chin scratch.

Cat lying on the floor with its head under a piece of furniture, looking sideways at the camera — Something rolled under the sofa. It is hers now.

White cat with one black ear, one blue eye and one amber eye, wearing a pink charm collar and pink claw caps, lying on a white quilt — Saw the cutest cat in the world – can't get enough of him.

Two kittens, one tortoiseshell and one orange, curled up together on a cushion on a wooden chair — Two kittens, one chair, no room for anyone else.

About

Forever January is one person, two cameras, one cat and a preference for the months everyone else stays indoors. Most of the photographs are made on film, scanned at the kitchen table and posted here with short notes about where they came from.

There is no newsletter and nothing to buy, although a few prints exist and occasionally find new homes. If you recognise a place and think I have the name wrong, you are probably right.