I photographed this parrot during a ten-day press trip through Guatemala several years ago. I believe it was taken near the Mayan pyramids of Tikal, or possibly around Lake Flores – both unforgettable places with an extraordinary mix of history, color and wildlife.

Anyway, I mention this because I recently licensed a completely different parrot image, taken on Maui, Hawaii, to a researcher in the Electrical Engineering Division at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK.

Having my photography spread across the internet is, unfortunately, a necessary evil. Over the years, many of my images have been used without permission or proper licensing, often in commercial contexts.

On a few occasions, after threatening legal action, I have been fairly compensated and I should arguably probably spend more time tracking where and how my work is being used or misused.

But as a lawyer friend once told me a long, long time ago, I am probably better off being creative than chasing infringements.

At this stage of my life, creating new images and having honest people license or buy them matters far more than spending my time as an image-rights detective. I know there are services that do this, but you still need to put in a lot of effort to figure out who is in the right and who is stealing.

A long day’s journey home has begun. Packed and ready, but packing is definitely not one of my hidden talents.

You would think that after decades of traveling and thousands of hotel nights, I would have developed some kind of technique or knack for it. But not a chance.

When it comes to packing a suitcase, I am actually a disaster. There is simply no happy medium – either I pack like I’m moving abroad for good, or I realize too late that I’ve forgotten some of the most important things I wanted to bring.

But my biggest problem is still the total lack of structure. No matter what I do, it always ends up with everything sitting in one chaotic, unsorted mess.

I push down, squeeze, and close the lid with brute force, which results in me completely losing track of what’s inside. If I need to grab a specific sweater, I have to root around like a badger and pull everything out onto the hotel bed before I can find it.

But now, I’ve discovered vacuum-packed travel bags. They might not help me become more structured in my packing, but I seem to fit significantly more stuff.

The concept is ingenious in its simplicity: you just stuff the clothes into the bags and suck out the air with a pump (or, a vacuum). Suddenly, that huge, cumbersome mountain of socks, underwear, t-shirts, shorts, and everything else has shrunk into flat, rock-solid, and ridiculously easy-to-pack packages.

The best part isn’t even that you save about half the space in your bag – though that is a massive plus. Through the transparent bags, I can see exactly where my things ended up. “Neat and tidy” might be stretching it, but at least I get a decent overview.

Not since ABBA’s Waterloo have I been able to say, honestly, that I think the Eurovision Song Contest is anything other than a professional and slickly produced spectacle where bad taste continues to prevail.

I did, however, partake once, during the finale here in Malmö in 2013 – not by watching the show, but by documenting how Turning Torso was spectacularly and colourfully lit up for the occasion.

One of the places I’m happiest to have visited – twice – is Cuba. From a purely visual standpoint, I sometimes think spending at least a week in Havana should be mandatory for any serious photographer.

Few cities I have visited reward serendipitous wandering quite the same way. You can turn a corner expecting nothing and suddenly find a scene that feels less like reality and more like a film set that forgot to wrap decades ago.

I remain in awe of the city and its strange magnetism. Havana is undeniably beautiful, though obviously not in the polished or carefully curated sense. Its appeal often lives in the cracks. Buildings seem to peel and sag under the weight of time and rule.

Balconies lean with an almost philosophical indifference to gravity. The city wears its scars openly. There is decay, yes, but also dignity and character among people trying to live their lives within that decay. It rarely felt staged or manufactured for visitors. It simply existed on its own terms – take it or leave it.

What stayed with me as much as the visuals, though, were the people. During both visits I met Cubans whose warmth and openness felt spontaneous rather than transactional. Conversations had a way of appearing out of nowhere – on street corners, in cafés, outside homes, beside old American cars held together by equal parts ingenuity and stubbornness. And probably a few smuggled Japanese spare parts.

Like with all places where I’ve spent some time, I find myself thinking about the people there now.

Cuba is going through extraordinarily difficult times.

Many ordinary Cubans seem caught between forces largely outside their control – economic hardship, shortages, political realities and circumstances that leave little room to maneuver. Sandwiched between a rock and a hard place hardly begins to cover it.

Perhaps that is also why the place stays with me. Cuba was never simply about old cars and faded facades. It was, and is, about the people living behind them and the hopes and dreams they carry. Despite the havoc. Or, maybe their dreams have never been more important.

We spent last night in Österlen after meeting with buyers at bookstores and specialty shops scattered across a few villages in southeastern Sweden.

So far, both Årstider in Södra Mellby and Simrishamn Bokhandel have purchased my photography book, Österlen, and are now offering it to their esteemed customers.

This time of year, before the tourist season begins properly, is the best time to visit Österlen.

Speaking of which, pre-tourist season travel, anywhere in the world, is still the way to go, though that strategy is clearly becoming less strategic as more and more people are discovering the benefits of visiting places when prices are lower and crowds are smaller.

My worst fear is not death. Not really. It is losing my cognitive ability and perhaps not even fully realizing it. Worse still – sensing it vaguely, like a distant alarm bell muffled behind thick walls. Knowing something important to my life has slipped away but being unable to grasp what it was or where it disappeared to.

The concept of being trapped in the fog isn’t something I want to have to deal with. Living in a mental landscape where familiar thoughts no longer connect properly. Where memories dissolve mid-thought. Where language, logic and identity slowly loosen their grip while the world continues moving around you as if nothing happened.

And perhaps the cruelest part of all – never quite being able to find your way back out again.

That was more or less how I felt yesterday when I visited my father-in-law Allan, Charlotte’s father, at a dementia care facility in Göteborg.

All things considered, Allan was surprisingly perky. Every now and then flashes of his old humor surfaced – small reminders of the man who once occupied the space more fully.

At 88 he is frail now, physically diminished, with very little strength left. He needs assistance just to move around.

Watching him stirred thoughts I normally try to keep at arm’s length. I could not help but wonder whether this is also waiting somewhere ahead for me. Whether the gradual erosion of body and mind is simply part of the contract we all sign without reading carefully enough.

I hope not.

Not only for my own sake, but for Charlotte and for Elle. Because when cognition fades, it is not only the individual who disappears in fragments. The people who love them are forced to witness the slow unraveling too. And there is something uniquely brutal about watching someone still physically present while parts of the person you knew quietly vanish. Regress. From pampers to pampers.

While going through my increasingly receding photo archive, I come across images that I haven’t seen in ages. This one is from my very first solo exhibition in a garage adjacent to the house I was renting while attending art college in Visby on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea southeast of Stockholm.

I have no recollection of whether I sold anything, but I remember how enjoyable it was to share my creativity and to welcome people who happened to pass by. The house I rented had once been part of Gibsons Bryggeri, a 19th-century brewery near Norderport run by the Gibson family, who still owned the property. I lived in the house for two years.