New Inspiration

I'm still alive. Everyone calm down. It might have seen like I have fallen off the face of terra firma, but I have been scrounging for a while now. But fear not followers and passer-byers.

Today I had a meeting with a company in Trondheim called Spætt Media. I have an old friend that is one of the partners in this small but very creative and very dynamic company. We will hopefully be looking at co-operating on some productions in the future. I love working with like minded people and especially people that are in similar creative areas as me.

Im really glad I got to connect with these guys as it gave a little inspiration and motivation to get off my ass and start doing what I apparently love doing again. Im amped as hell again. Just such a damn shame Im going out to work for 10 days on Monday!!! Frustration.

As a photographer, or a videographer we are in very seperate areas, but we share alot in common, this why I look forward to any projects that involve working with people like the guys at Spætt. All of us have different perspective of seeing things and working together and sharing ideas is a great way to build up relationships and great art together.

We hope to put together something fun and interesting that can showcase our respective talents. Watch this space closer to summer. In the mean time, here is a little showreel clip from Spætt and a link to there website. I dont have any new photo's right now, because I havent shot anything vaguely interesting in about a month. But here is something cool anyway. N.

Please be sure to check out Spætt Media here:

http://www.spaett.no/

I take my hat off...

Long time no see... What have you been doing? Hopefully lots of good things and making yourselves happy? What have I been doing? Nothing. Thats right. Seems that I have acquired a horrible case of creative block. That coupled with general lack of enthusiasm and laziness has lef me bored as hell and not really motivated to anything new and fresh the last couple of weeks. Am I that worried about this? Is Jacob Zuma worried about the state of affairs in the country he "leads"? For my Norsk followers: Is Anders Breivik seemingly worried about the judgement he faces? Put shortly, No. I could be as phased right now as the ignorant wallowing hippopotamus is about climate change and global warming.

Can I blame others for my lethargy and unwillingness to create? Yes. But I'm not going to. I hate complaining and the miserable part of the unhappy population that sees fit to do so, so I will spare all of us the hypocrisy and self indulgent whining that all of the married men reading this have come to endure. What I can moan about though is the sheer uselessness of some of my intended clients. It seems that Norwegians have to much damn money or time or both. Why does no-one in this ice-blasted hell hole want anything for free? And how under God's scarcely seen sun can they drink so much?

Some of you may recall a post I made a while ago where I was looking for a job as a photo assistant? I offered myself pro bono, with no luck. I still struggle to understand how this didn't work out. At the moment Im trying (admittedly not too hard) to get more into entertainment photography, Bands, Musicians, DJ's and so on. Im also offering myself either free, if the work could potentially benefit my portfolio or lead to other paying work, or at a ridiculously low rate. How many callbacks have I got? mhm..... NONE! I cant really be that gobsmacked, considering the amount of effort that needs to be put in to make this work. Unfortunately the associating factors with musicians is the general lifestyle they lead. I know, I was one too. Thank God I gave up smoking bags upon bags of dope and drinking and railing lines before I was old enough to make the decision to be a muso as a career choice. Communists. Its seems like all the musicians I surround myself with are damned Marxist believers. Oh well.

This is where the actual point of this post comes in. If you are a photographer thats out there shooting all the time and being fresh and doing new things and trying new techniques and cranking out brilliant pictures, I take my hat off to you good sir(s) and madam's. I was under the romantic allure that my last creative nosedive would be abruptly ended when spring came back to the north. Spring has started batting her eyelashes, and Im still stuck. But why? Sun and warmth and all the things that my inspiration needs are coming back into place. And not to mention that you need somewhat decent light to take decent pictures. Some people just have it... The hustle, the gift of the game. Some people are the game, some people make their own game. Look at photographers like Peter Hurley, and his signature headshot business. I can even look 200m down the road at one of my friends, Elisabeth Jakobsen. I can see a picture of hers a mile away and see its here. Another friend of mine Linn Heidi also, she only shoots film, and mostly medium format. But she has this gorgeous look. All of these people are unmistakably talented and unmistakable when you look their work.

I guess the take away here is that the first thing is to be good at what you do, your particular style and your look are important too, but you need to be good at that. Being different helps too. These days with everyone basically remixing everyone else's work, being different definitely helps and will go along way.
The second part is the hustle. Just so you guys know, when I mean hustle, I mean how you sell your service or market yourself/ product. I dont mean shortchanging your client. This will comeback on you quicksticks and will cut out your future work possibilities sevenfold. You have to have hustle... You gotta know what it is you are good at and be able to understand how you can interest people in that. I can hustle. I could sell whale steak to Greenpeace. And Im coming up on the aforementioned side too.

Do I have anything recent to show that will make you eyeballs pop out of your head? No... Apart from an extremely gay sunset and some random snapshits. Which I choose not to show. However I do have a little collection of B+W pictures that have not seen the light of day. Speak soon. N.

The view from atop a grassy knoll somewhere in the lesser visited Eastern Cape

My old friend Bianca.

My new friend Dean

  

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.

LARK.

Possibly one of the most underrated bands in SA, and also one of the bands that unfortunately does not fit the mould of radio-friendly pop. On one hand, this is sad, because they do miss out on a lot of potential exposure. On the other hand, I love it that only a handful of people (in the grander scheme of things) know about this little gem.

What can I say? They are South African, you wouldnt guess it, when you hear the majority of the other "music" we churn out. The trends have come and gone, and will continue to do so. We saw the angry kids sings punk rock songs and be pissed off and misunderstood, we are now seeing its cool to be redneck, cheesy and rap in afrikaans. (I actually like afrikaans rap.) One things that has always stood out for me about Lark, apart from the voice, sex appeal and on stage presence of the mesmerising Inge Beckmann, is the inability to put them into a category. Glitch? Electro melodramatic opera? Scandal? Melodic chaos? A rythmic gangbang? What the hell do you call music like this?!

Their new album is dropping soon, Im really looking forward to this one, Ive heard one of the singles which is rad, and similar to the last warmth and eccentricity we have come to love. Although the new video was slightly short of the mark in my opinion, I am excited none the less. Here is are two videos and some tracks that i loved. N.

Some tracks on SoundCloud:

http://snd.sc/Hf4edI

http://snd.sc/sVvLyk

Prince, not really, but his face.

Been a while, Im at work right now, have been for 3 days and will be until the 4th of April. So not much going on in terms of shooting and photo stuff.  I have some cool stuff though, so I will be posting it when we have some down time.

Although, before I left Trondheim, I shot something for some friends that run a cool little bar in town. They  are hosting a "Tribute to Prince" party next Friday. What is that dudes name now actually? The artist formerly known as Prince or The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince? Dont know.

Anyway, they had seen or found a picture of someone creating an optical illusion of being Prince or the artist formerly known as Prince or the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince by holding one of his album covers over their torso. I wish like hell I had that picture now, so you could actually see what we did. Before and after vibe.

The shoot was fun and really easy because I knew my only deliverable would be one image. And we knew straight away when we had the shot. The look for the image was kinda voyeuristic, amateur, Terry Richardson-ish (not disrespect to him! But he has a very cool style that resembles this.) on camera flash style. But I always take my flash off camera as god intended it to be. Enjoy, N

Strobist Info: One hotshoe in a Lastolite 8-in-1 setup like a soft box (reflective back) with a choke/snoot on a white umbrella. Shot to camera left over shoulder. 

Dancing on a Saturday afternoon

Once again, something very different. I originally got inspired to shoot some dance orientated photography because of a couple reasons. Firstly, I love to dance. I dont know if I'm good at it or if you can even be "good" at dancing. Secondly, the movement of the human body is something that has always fascinated me. Whether it be sports, posing a model, shooting portraits, or taking snapshots, the body expresses a lot.

The natural shapes, angles and asymmetrical lines and forms are something unique with each one of us. I had never shot any dance photo's before today, its pretty difficult. I thought that I could use my 7D and just motor-drive my way through all the blur of the fast movement. But actually I want to carry some of the movement throughout the pictures. I shot this all on my 5D Mk2. Another reason aside from the full frame sensor is the better ISO performance. This camera does magic in low light, The ISO 400 - 500 files straight out of camera looked on par if not better than ISO 250 files out of the 7D.

I asked a friend of Elisabeth's, Vilde, if I could tag along and watch and shoot some frames while watching them practice. It was really cool to see the energy and movement that I had imagined come to life in a studio. Thanks Vilde and everyone else whose name I don't know.

Enough with the nerdy stuff. I hope to put a shoot of some sorts together in the near future utilizing the dance aspect to my advantage. I have some ideas and would love to put them into motion soon. Anyway, here are some pictures. There are a lot of them, as I was really not in the mood to make crucial decisions. Boom, N.

Happy feet.

Shoot inspiration

I was walking around a mall today and I saw these two ladies doing cheese promotion. Im not cheese fan, especially Norwegian cheese. They have concocted some god-awful-stick-to-every-nook-in-your-mouth cheese before. Hence my skepticism. But something here sent the bells off in my head. I remember watching the Annie Leibovitz movie, A Life through a lens. That scene where she is shooting Kirsten Dunst for the Marie Antoinette movie is awesome. The wardrobe, the location, the props, the pictures.

I always wanted to a really glossy, high-end, fashion inspired shoot. These two girls really got the wheels turning. I approached them with clear intention of not sampling any dairy produce. But instead asked them if I could snap a frame of them each. They had no problems.

I would love to shoot something with wardrobe and make-up like this in this quaint little shop called Fairytale Cupcakes. I approached the owners the other day about using their shop as a location, apparently I was number 12 that day. Seems like Trondheim is hustling for a change?! Hopefully I get to work out a deal with them as their shop would be AMAZING as a location for shoot that I'm thinking of.

I also saw a clip from a Louis Vuitton campaign, that kinda tied in with this. So my idea merges this Victorian and 60's style diner, bakery kinda place. Could be interesting. Here are the shots and some other stuff so that all of you are on the same page as me. N.

http://fairytalecupcakes.no/ - Check out Fairytale Cupcakes, if youre in TRD, go eat one too!

Cheese selling girl #1.

Cheese selling girl #2

  

The Louis Vuitton shoot. Slick.

Headshots in my "studio".

I love clean shots. It might not show so much in my current body of work. But I love the timeless feel and simplicity of a seamless background. I really want a studio. Or, I really want a space that I can have 6x6m of open plain wall. There is soooo much you can do with that. It'll come eventually I guess. But for right now I just have to hustle and make things work for me the way that they are. Which is kind of interesting and challenging because I get to learn and problem solve one side, but really frustrating on the the other side.

I met a guy working at a new bar that opened in town about a week ago. And like always, if I see someone interesting or cool looking, I dont really hesitate to ask them if I can take pictures of them. So we started chatting and a couple days later I had him infront of my camera in my "studio" AKA Elisabeth's bedroom.

This presents challenges when using strobes. First of all space. Lightstands with umbrellas or softboxes take up space! Especially when there are two of them. Secondly, when trying to over-expose a wall in the background, or when the wall that is the background, flare from the light bouncing around the room becomes very apparent very quickly, this is only magnified by the size of the room and the colour of the walls. White walls in a small room = more light to balance out than I care to think about. I think I managed to suss out a good balance with key light + fill light + background light + ambient. This is part of the learning, getting it wrong and figuring out how to get it right quickly.

So here are some of the shots that I chose, Thanks a lot to my man Ardito, for chilling and being so easy to shoot, and to my lady Liz for letting me use her bedroom to shoot in. Hopefully no-one can tell the difference? Sweet. N

Love this shot. Cropped to 1x1 on purpose.

Clean, sharp.

B+W, couldn't decide between this and.....

.....the colour alternative.

Bit more pensive and tense.

Pirate Pictures delivered.

So the story of my life at the moment is this set of pictures I originally shot as a test shoot for myself. The pictures turned out great, I am really happy with the end result, and I have gotten great feedback about them from all parties involved. This is awesome.

I delivered a copy of lo-res images to 4SOUND, the company that loaned me the guitars. They are currently being discussed as part of a national print advertising campaign. That would be amazing! I'm totally not expecting it, but hey, if it comes right I will be over the moon.

Couple things I noticed that I could improve on and things I learned through this shoot. Need to watch out on cropping in camera. I guess this will be a bit easier with umm.... *cough* MY NEW 5D Mk 2 *cough*
Yeah.  I bought one. I will post some shots I have taken with it later tomorrow. But it is something I need to watch out for regardless of shooting crop or full-frame. Really super excited to shoot that camera!

Otherwise, here are the remainder of the shots from my pirate-ish rocking shoot with Pia and Kristine. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed shooting them. N

Kristine and Pia

Kristine with a nerve-wreckingly expensive borrowed guitar.

Pia with an equally nerve-wreckingly expensive borrowed guitar.

Pia

The girls rocking it.

Pia

Got slide?

Something kinda experimental here. As most of you know, I love my action sports, skating, climbing, all that fast moving and energy fueled activity. Be that as it may, why do so many "action shot" looks so similar? I dont know, over saturation, high contrast, pin sharp. These things are'nt bad. They have their place. Im just bored of seeing the same type of shots with the same technique and same presentation.

I wanted to take some cool shots of my friends skating and sliding downhill, but add something different and give a different feel to them. So I looked at what do I feel confident with in terms of post processing and applying a to different environment? Portraits, I shoot people, so what about taking the style of portrait editing and applying that to downhill skating? Sweet.

The main goal I try to achieve when I edit portraits is to make the eyes connect, to have a gesture that symbolises something, to have a pose that conveys a message. This proved to be quite a challenge in this scenario as most of the time with skating you aren't really able to shout directions to a dude gassing it down a hill about to initiate a slide at 60kmh. Right, so what next. Composition has a fair bit to play here. Once I've picked which shots are for my final edit, I work on making the rider "pop" out or contrast with the background. This sort of replicates the connection that would have been if there was a clear contact with the eyes. That is the time consuming part. The end result is something that I am particularly happy with and stoked that I tried something different.

Mad props go out to Sam Merg....Mergatroid? Mega-Astroid? Mergertoid? That guy. (Someone please give me Sam's last name!) He was launching into his slides faster and later than anyone else on the days we shot together. I will post up some more shots of him soon where you can see what I mean. Really cool to see that "balls to the wall" mentality.

Here are the shots. Let me know what you guys think, pulled it off? epic fail? I wanna know. Enjoy. N.

Sam, digging rail and skiing a solid 10meters.

Herbert, power stanced stand up slide.

One of the Hout bay groms blitzing Tarragona.

Sunday evening again

This Sunday evening posting is becoming quite a regular occurrence. Kinda cool if I can maintain it. Whats happening? Plenty. Things are going really well on the photography side of things. Im hustling.

I find myself more and more often introducing myself as a photographer. Not so sure how this started, probably from something Zack Arias said. If you dont tell people what you do or what you want, they wont know. The one problem with this is that once they're like: "OH! Thats awesome, Im a visual merchandiser for a clothing group that has 25 stores throughout Norway, I would love to sit down and look through your book with you sometime, potentially for a campaign we have coming up". Right, now you have to deliver on claiming to be a photographer. Having to deliver images that make people want to give you money is a daunting task. Producing something that is on par or better than professional photographer isn't a worry of mine. Im not a professional photographer. Producing something different is what counts. Being different, and letting that shine through in your work is way more important than being better. Photography is one of those things that you cant be competitive about. No one is better than anyone else. To a certain degree. Annie Leibovitz is a better photographer than most of us. Joe McNally has a better understanding of light manipulation than me. See what I'm saying?

I see things for what they are though a lens. Nothing more, nothing less. The final image that you see is different to what or anyone else sees. We all interpret things and see different things in a picture. A friend of my moms said to me on my recent trip back home: " In France, one thing that isn't up for discussion is another's taste." So well said. I think there are a lot of people out there, photographer's and lesser beings alike, (it's a joke, really) that are comparing and trying to measure up to a pre-determined level or standard.
Why not just be different? Im pretty convinced that I will keep shooting photo's based on the same philosophy and with the same intention of wanting only to produce images that I am proud of. I dont shoot for anyone else but myself. It is a luxury. There are plenty of photographers that are shooting pictures of apartment interiors for money to pay for their studio time to get test shoots done for portfolio work. That has to suck. I am grateful for the fact that I have a paying day job that affords me the luxury of choosing what I can and will shoot.

Alot of this is in direct relation to our (as photographers) relationship's with our clients. Be that art directors, agencies, couples as wedding photographers, or business's. I recently watched an episode of Chase Jarvis LIVE with a very interesting guy called Ramit Sethi. You can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tsJ_-yINxs

This deals with how we present and market ourselves and how we fail to see some of the most basic elements of negotiating. Little bit of psychology, little bit of business mind. Very interesting and I definetly picked up a few tip and tricks from it.

Ive been extending my networking feelers more than usual lately. Connecting with people on all kinds of different levels. Mostly its hunting for more interesting subjects, just going up to random people on the street or in bars and telling them I want to shoot pictures of them. What is there to lose?  Im getting inspired and frustrated all the time. The weather is still shitty and will continue to be so until the end of April. I dont have a studio. This makes my options very limited. I am sooo amped for summer though. Got so many cool  ideas for shoots. Going to be awesome.

Its late now, and I had'nt reaslied I just wrote the foreword to a book. Heres are some images I cant really make my mind up about as to which processing i like better. They are from the "pirate" series I am busy editing for two different clients. Will have final selection up this week some time. N

Kristine. B+W with added grain and
desaturated background.

Polished colour with negative clarity, sharpening and desaturated background.

Pia. Smooth B+W with a little vignette.

Desaturated colour with added grain and a vignette.

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.