Photography and videography to us is a free creative space and an extra motivation to get out there and make awesome things happen. Photography paves the way to new experiences more than solely ads on to what’s already happening. Our cameras get us out more and keep us searching for alternative ways. And with warm hands there is no stopping us capturing the adventure, are we right?

Vallerret was founded in 2014 by us. Carl van den Boom and Stine Lyng Jørgensen. For us Photography Gloves are the answer to the reoccurring problem of frozen hands, and most of all it’s a way to stay out there for longer during our favourite season.

We were training sled dogs in the bitter-sweet cold of Alaska, when one night with the fire blazing and the red wine flowing, we were staring up at the sky waiting for the infamous northern lights to come out. Finally, this tremendous laser show of green pink and purple exploded and with the camera in hand we ran out of our hut, taking turns at racing around capturing the glory then heading back inside to warm our hands.
This wasn’t the first time we dealt with the pain and turmoil of freezing hands whilst trying to capture those timeless events. However, it was enough to push us into a crazed search for a better solution and way to stay out longer.

Fast forward to September 2014, we were back in our Copenhagen apartment. Fueled with excitement from our previous Winters we started making the product we hadn’t been able to find: a funky and functional photography glove – a quality glove for cold weather photography adventures. 

We set about creating our first glove prototypes in our tiny Copenhagen flat. Fabrics and prototypes where flying everywhere! It was crucial to us to select only the best quality materials we could find and develop design features optimised for photography. Hence, we went through a bunch. Amongst the sewing machine going crazy and design programs humming, our heads were buzzing with ideas on how we could solve our Winter woos and start a community stretching far beyond gloves. 

In December 2015 we took our photography glove project to KICKSTARTER…. tripled our goal and has since kept going.

That initial phase, hatching the concept in our tiny Copenhagen apartment fueled by memories of winter pains, seems like just yesterday – however we have come a long way since then. That first year we packed every single pair of gloves ourselves and send them away from our tiny local post office. Even for roadtrips and holidays we packed gloves in our backpacks in all sizes so that we could send them off immediately to our customers no matter where we went. We remember sitting there in the back of the car folding our first generation packaging boxes right next to the camping stove. Classic entrepreneur style:)

Today we run our business out of Voss, in Norway – a magical place full of adventure, breathtaking waterfalls and stunning mountain tops. It’s an epic playground for any outdoor photographer shooting everything from landscape to extreme sports.

We are continuously “testing” our gloves (Yep, we go snowboarding, stay out for the northern lights or hike to frozen waterfalls with our husky in the hopes of capturing banger shots and putting our gloves to the test. It’s tough, but someone has to do it;-) so that we can help other photographers extend their sessions even longer and stay motivated when the world has turned white.

If you are ever around Voss, give us a shout!

Cheers and thanks for your support,

Carl & Stine