A Shadow of our Future Selves

Living in a Nordic city, you get to experience wild shadows throughout the year. Okay, shadows are perhaps not "wild" but the length of the shadows is one of our surest indicators of season. The longer they get, the closer to winter we are or, as is the case right now, the shorter they get, then spring is on the way.

As is so often the case, we sit down to write a blogpost and then it morphs into a larger theme.

Looking through our archives we realised that shadows have featured prominently over the past five years. Aren't shadows lovely? And when combined with the very aesthetic bicycle, all manner of visual pleasure is to be had.


The shot at left gives you a good indication of the length of winter shadows in northern climes. A person on a bicycle is as long as a truck in the late afternoon. You either chase your shadow or it follows you like a puppy.


Onesome or twosome? Twosome or foursome?

Sometimes your shadows are so long they wrap around the world and you can see the end of it just ahead of you on the cycle track.

This is a rather famous photograph, taken during the Second World War by the photographer Tage Christiansen. He has always been a source of inspiration for me, not least because of his bicycle shots. It's hard to say what time of year this photo was taken but it's either early spring or late autumn, based on the length of the shadows.



Aerial cycle chic with shadows.


Shadows make the world topsy-turvy.


Nobody says shadows have to lie down on the job.

Nobody says that you even need daylight.


Here's a photoset with all our shadowy photographs featuring bicycles: