A CABIN ON THE BALTICEvelyne & Oskar

Go through the journal on this site and it is almost all white dresses. Weddings and elopements, one after another, with the odd session like this one in between: Adriana and Ondrej at the Muralla Roja, Ines and Michi up the coast in Hälsingland.

For about ten years my wife and I knew we would end up with a piece of this coast, and that we wanted it for something other than logging. I have worked in hospitality one way or another since I was a teenager. Add fifteen years of travelling the world and staying in beautiful places, and the plan was simple: a cabin on the Baltic that we could rent to people who need to get away from everything.

Part of that dream was always to host people in the cabin and then photograph them in the country around it. An area I love, a cabin I built, and a camera in a place I care about. Our own family cabin sits two kilometres up the shore, and we have had it since 2016. So when Evelyne and Oskar booked three nights and asked me to shoot them on the last evening, it was exactly what I had pictured. This is Hop Farm Beach, at Söderhamn, and it is what I made it for.

Evelyne is Canadian, from Quebec. Oskar is Swedish, from Gävle, an hour down the coast. They marry in Quebec later this year. I am Canadian too, and I married a Swede, so I know Evelyne’s story from the inside: falling for someone from here, and deciding that Gävle is home now.

The cabin itself is small and deliberate. Thirty-two square metres of black timber, two double beds, heated floors and triple glazing against the winter. An electric sauna that is hot in half an hour, and a wood-fired shower out in the open air. The beach is two hundred metres one way, the dock two hundred the other. There is no wifi. It is two hours from Stockholm on the train, then a fifteen-minute drive, and it is open all year.

These photographs are from winter, which is the version of the place I would choose. The sea half freezes, the sauna gets used properly, and there is nobody else on the coast. You can see the cold in every frame.

If you want the same, the cabin is here and I am here. Book a few nights, bring the person you love, and let me photograph the two of you while you have the whole coast to yourselves. Wedding or not.