And now for something different...

I'm writing this on a Friday evening, sitting in the lobby of my hotel, just had a shower and some dinner. If you're reading this, let me kindly inform you, it's Friday evening and you should be out doing something way more interesting. I have an excuse for being lame on a Friday evening, I've just finished a 14 hour of legit manual labour. I have no care in the world right now except to get cracking on editing  a series that is long overdue to be delivered to the client. And some other trivialities like blogging and trolling Instagram for inspiration.

Something cool happened today though, NRK (Norwegian national broadcaster) followed myself and my team around for a few hours. People in the general public have no idea whatsoever about rope access, neither do you probably. Google it. They have decided to make a "thing" on us over the next few days while we carry out a job on the second highest building in Norway. There is a pretty cool edited clip that aired at 7pm tonight on TV, but that hasn't made its way into the channels of the deep, dark interweb yet. I'll be sure to post it as soon as it does though.

I usually dont do onshore work at all anymore, but I was headhunted because of my previous experience from South Africa when I was working for Skysite to come in and supervise this job. I kinda miss being offshore, but going home to a hotel every night does have it's perks. Regardless of where I am though, be it a floating power drill in the North Atlantic of a picturesque town in warm southern Norway, I want to be home shooting and making connections. Frustration has set in with the utmost intent of distracting me at every waking moment of this trip.

Here is the link to the video and some pictures courtesy of NRK photographer Thomas Nikolai Blekeli. Now, do yourself a favour and stop surfing the interweb and reading random bullshit and get out and do something rad! Regardless, have a good Friday night ya'll. N.

The Video:

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/ostafjells/telemark/1.8285196

Good-bye Reykjavik, Hello North-Atlantic.

So you might have guessed I'm back in Norway, well more accurately floating on a towering steel monstrosity in the lower half of the North-Atlantic off the coast of Norway. Quite a drastic change from the metropolitan romance I had the last ten days. Everything is far less sexy out here. Definitely.

I thought I should just bring ya'll up to speed on what I got up to and the nightmare that has been my life the last couple of days. Lets rewind back to Iceland. The shooting, OMFG!!! I shot pictures like a boss!!! Really excited to get working on these and get them out. Something very different to what I usually shoot, but you will definitely see that I had a finger in it. The hair, the make up, the drama, the love, the stress, the beauty, the sweat, the stuck rental car on the beach at 2:00AM. All of it. I want it all again. I've been on a kinda low after all of that. And I know why. Its like Laird Hamilton (If you dont know who he is, just google his name and check the images.) said when asked what he does when there are no 30+ft waves to surf. " Its like if you're a dragon slayer, and all of a sudden there are no more dragons to slay, what could you possibly do that compares to dragon slaying?"

I am such a perfectionist with everything when I shoot, composition, exposure, mood, colour, texture, and overall feeling. I put myself under such pressure to get the shot I'm after, I get buzzed off it. I literally go into another "stealth-brainwave-ninja-monk" state of mind. What can I do that gets me off like that that isn't shooting pictures?

Anyway, heavily sleep and sanity deprived fearing for my sexual orientation after being surrounded by women for 3 days in a row. I returned to dreary Norway with the feeling that my heart was still on a bench on a busy street in downtown Reykjavik. I was absolutely destroyed from the last three days, so tired that my fingernails and my teeth were sore. For real, never been that tired before. Then a quick 24 hours back in Trondheim I jumped on a plane at 5:00AM to get to another plane to catch a helicopter to flip out to my home for the next 14days, Visund. Before I go on with the actual point of this post, I'm going to drop a picture of Visund right about here, regular programming will continue shortly.

To put it in perspective, its about 110m x 110m deck space. Pic courtesy of :fylkesmagasinet.no

Right, the actual point of this post was to show some pictures. Some different ones aswell though, for a change instead of walking around looking like every other tourist with a DSLR and monster telephoto lens, I decided to use my iPhone. And because I'm not a hipster and care about how far off the line the saturation slider goes, I didn't use Instagram! I just could bring myself to do it. I tried one, and the vignette and the grain and the white balance warmth came on in such strong bounds in leaps, I couldn't help but laugh and think how is it this become so popular? Maybe to some iPhoneographers I over stepped the line and actually used a legit editing program (Lightroom) to jazz my pictures. What you think? Should iPhone pictures be edited strictly on iPhone software?

Anyway, think about it for a while, here's some pictures of what I did when I didn't have the 5D glued to my hand. More to come soon. N

He actually managed to fit the pint glass in his mouth.

Possibly my twin Icelandic brother. And a newly made girlfriend Sigga.

Yeah, that happened.

Steak burger and double thick choc shake. Quality.

Live DJ's and MC's almost everyday in the park. Good vibes.

A fairly large duckpond in downtown Reykjavik.

Symmetry, kinda.

Cars and stuff.

JUNGLE CAT!!! saw this on the way to the OMAM show.

The other side of the duckpond

Belt sushi.

Islandsk førfest.

Birthday girl.

Foos.

Kim Jong is illin'.

Vega Export Compressor.

Sunday afternoon and all is well. Finally going home tomorrow. Its about time. Cabin fever was starting to get the better of me. The weather at the moment looks pretty shite, hopefully it clears up for the chopper tomorrow though.

Last night was very cool though. I played a gig with some of my co-workers here on Gjøa for all our other co-workers. We are called Vega Export Compressor. Bit of an inside joke for those that work on Gjøa. Vega is the name of one the fields we produce from. And the Export Compressor part is, well... the bit on the platform that compresses and exports the oil/gas to land. Yeah.

Chances of getting a record deal with Sony or Virgin aren't looking that great right now. But hey, we actually played good  songs and had an awesome time doing it. Vega Export Compressor is comprised but not limited to:

Per - Rhythm Guitar.

Åge "Aleksandersen" Olsen - Lead guitar and vocals

Jan - Keyboard and Bass.

Me - hitting and kicking stuff.

We played some Pink Floyd, Clapton, and some other chilled tunes. What made it really cool was just thinking about what i was actually doing. Playing a show on a platform in the North Sea, the window behind my kit where we setup our stage was overlooking the North Atlantic. Pretty cool. I really enjoyed playing again as I havent played in over 3 years or something like that.  Hopefully when I get a bigger residence I will get a drum kit again. Here are some photo's courtesy of Edgaras Bira and some video footage courtesy of Pierre Lindberg. Cheers. N

Our official press release photo. Yip, should have brought the 5D with this time.
L-R: Åge, Per, TwoShoes, Jan.

Vega Export Compressor entertaining the masses.

Gjøa... 19days of gourmet food and shear boredom.

Hello people. I seemed to have lapsed a bit with finding cool things to put up here... Do not be afraid keen followers and random by passers (or bystanders if this blog has harmed you in anyway). I have been busy!
Alas it has not been my first preference of busy. Although this is a very close second.

Im at work on Gjøa again, if you remember, I was here last year for 14 days for the riser change out project. I love this place. I was just asked today to stay on the current project for an extra 5 days over Easter. On the one hand this is great for a few reasons. Im saving plenty money by not being on land for 3 weeks. Im also making good money, 3 days of holiday pay which is also overtime because of the tour extension. 200% O/T + 7,5 hours pay. Sweet. The food here is also mind-numbingly good. Tonight was mussels and pepper fillet with a dessert table the size of my apartment. (For those that dont know, I live in a box...). On the other hand, I might be going slightly befok. We have had one day climbing the last 9 days. The rest of the time we have been killing time with games, coffee, and plenty cigarettes. Hopefully there is a bit more in the next couple days. We have plenty to do, the weather just keeps on dashing our dreams of actually doing an honest days work.

The current job we are focused on and waiting for the weather to play ball on is an inspection and pre-build out plan for a replacement of a heatshield under the free-fall life boat station. The last one which weighed 760kg was ripped off during the big storm last year christmas time. The plan to replace it involves building scaffold, rope access, rigging and the north side deck crane. This is once again an awesome job on Gjøa.

Here are some pictures of the first days inspection. N.

Lifeboats 1-3. Notice the bottom left corner of the picture and you will see the lack of corrugated steel.

The original lux that held the frame for the heat-shield in place.

Rigging...

I'm in Molde right now, again, second time in two weeks. This is nothing to be proud of or something I would usually admit publicly. However, I am doing some pretty cool stuff.

Im taking a course in advanced rigging techniques and heavy lifting that relates to my actual work. Kinda cool to be getting more certificates and getting more experience in different fields. Most of the time when we are at work we use alot of rigging mixed in with rope access. This only limit is that with rope access, we can safely lift a mere 150kg's. With rigging though, we can lift up to 10 Tonnes. Big difference.

Anyway. Looking forward to shooting when I get home. Plenty of cool ideas that need to come to life. And!, Got a little something on the way in the mail! Will update soon! Check in again soon. N

Images shot with iPhone 4 and unedited.

Moving a 560kg tank over two floors. 

Fitting a 200kg section of gas transport plumbing.

Work.

Before this gets too outdated or i forget, I should put this up. I was recently out at work on Bideford Dolphin. The was built in 1975, which is a solid 12 years older than what i am. This is very evident when you walk around on deck.

The food was fantastic, the crew were in good spirit and we had some cool stuff to do. I was there for 9 days, and we were hit by one fairly large storm, 13-15m waves and 70 kts wind. This put a serious spanner in the works for us regarding working on the "bumper shield" of one of the columns.

Anyway, here are some pics. Im in the orange helmet. N

Getting wet. Not cool.

Chilled day at the office.

I was going to make the caption to this some tongue in cheek cliched one liner... But I wanted to avoid that,  so as not to sound as uneducated as most people presume me to be. So i'll give the technical and straight forward explanation instead. This is a picture of me aid climbing on some filthy beams above the Hydraracker (the machine that handles the drill pipes from the fingerboard to the top drive) in order to setup a couple of anchors for our ropes. Fun stuff. Especially when the said beams bounce every time i shift my weight. Catch up soon. N.

Back to work...

Going back out to work tomorrow for two weeks on Gjøa. Pretty stoked, its a brand new platform that was built in Norway (fairly uncommon) two years ago by Aker. So its going to be all new and clean and shiny! 

The platform looking kinda lonely just floating in the North Sea, interesting fact, this was the first semi-submersible platform in Norway to receive an electricity cable from land, so all the power for the platform is generated onshore thus resulting in less carbon emissions from the vessel. 

This shows the subsea tie-in setup to the Troll ii pipeline via the Vega templates that run to Scotland, where the gas is refined.

Up at 4am to take the bus to the airport, then to Oslo, then connecting flight to Florø, then helicopter out to the platform. Ah, the joy of it all.

Cheers. N