Magic Fjord
Est. 2014
News & Announcements
1-13-3 Higashirokugo,...
Light, landscape, and the people within it
On working slowly

Where the fjord holds still

Oliver Kearsley photographs portraits, landscapes, and private events across Scandinavia, working with natural light and unhurried time.

Archive prints

3
  1. 01
    Shakotan Peninsula, October

    Shakotan Peninsula, October

    Shot from a kayak at approximately 07:20 on a still morning in October 2021, this image captures the fjord...

    From NOK 2,800
  2. 02
    Lofoten, February

    Lofoten, February

    Made during a four-day commission in the Lofoten archipelago in February 2023, this image shows a cluster...

    From NOK 2,800
  3. 03
    Bjørnafjorden, Midsummer

    Bjørnafjorden, Midsummer

    A long-exposure made from the shore near Fusa on midsummer evening 2022, when the sky does not fully...

    From NOK 2,800
Notes
Works alone. No second shooters, no assistants on set
Maximum two commissions per week, year-round
Scouts every location the day before the session
Delivers full-resolution TIFFs with no usage restrictions for personal and editorial use
Prints produced on Hahnemühle Photo Rag through a Tokyo print lab, proofed by Oliver...
Has worked along the Shakotan Peninsula, in Lofoten, and across the Swedish west coast since 2014
The light arrives sideways in October, pale and almost horizontal.
— Oliver Kearsley
Founder
60
Commissions per year
15
Prints per edition, no more
12
Years working in Scandinavia
News & Announcements

News & Announcements

2025-12-10

Colour grading in Capture One: why Oliver does not use presets

The most common mistake photographers make when opening Capture One for the first time is reaching straight for the preset library. It feels productive — a single click and the image already has contrast, warmth, a mood. But that click also fixes assumptions about colour balance, shadow lift and saturation that were made for somebody else's camera, somebody else's light, somebody else's subject. By the time the image looks close to right, five or six adjustments have been stacked on top of a foundation that was never designed for this particular file. Oliver, working from his base in Hokkaido, encountered exactly this trap in his early years and spent a long time quietly unpicking it. What he arrived at is a processing approach that is slower to start but far more coherent to finish — and the difference is visible in everything from the cool blue hours of a Shakotan Peninsula winter morning to the warm amber of a Japanese midsummer evening skin portrait.

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2025-11-04

The difference between editorial and commercial licensing for landscape images

When a client reaches out asking to license a landscape photograph, one of the first questions that arises is deceptively simple: what is the image actually going to be used for? It sounds administrative, almost bureaucratic. In practice, though, that single question determines the entire legal and financial framework surrounding the image. Editorial licensing and commercial licensing are not interchangeable terms, and confusing the two can expose a client to real legal risk — or result in overpaying for rights that were never needed. This article walks through the distinction in plain language, grounded in the way licensing actually works for landscape photography clients in Japan.

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2025-10-21

Documentary wedding photography at the Shakotan Peninsula: how the day unfolds

By half past seven on a June morning, Oliver is already parked on the gravel outside the farmstead, watching fog lift off the water in slow panels. The guests are still asleep. The couple are probably somewhere between nerves and coffee. This early hour, before anyone needs anything, is where the day actually begins — not at the ceremony, not at the first dance, but in the unhurried reading of a place. Documentary wedding photography at the Shakotan Peninsula is shaped as much by geography and Japanese summer light as it is by the people getting married. Understanding how a full commission unfolds, from the quiet of early arrival to the amber that settles over Sørfjorden by ten at night, helps explain why the work looks the way it does.

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