Kastrup – Los Angeles – Hawaii – Los Angeles – San Francisco – Los Angeles – Las Vegas – Los Angeles.

Arrived earlier today at LAX after a short but somewhat bumpy ride on a Southwest Boeing 737 from the neighboring state of Nevada where I partook in meetings at the massive CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.

I’m not a gambler in the sense that I play poker, Lotto or any other game of chance where the odds are inherently  low. But at the airport, mostly to kill some time prior to my flight, I actually sat down, inserted a twenty into one of hundreds of slot machines and on my very last dollar, won $75. Perhaps a sign that during 2016, I may need to roll the dice more often…

I’ve been to the consistently idiosyncratic Las Vegas several times, but never experienced a trade show there. And certainly not one as sprawling or intense as CES. On some anthropological level, it was certainly interesting to experience first hand one of the world’s largest trade shows and all the folks that participate in such a spectacle, i.e. upper echelon executives, sales reps (in various stages of exhaustion), presenters trying to lure visitors into their booths with loud music and young female hosts in hot pants, sparkly skirts and towering high heels.

Stayed once again at Mandalay Bay at the head of the Strip. This time with a nondescript view of the resort’s closed, but nonetheless gigantic pool. If you stay there, make sure to stay high up and ask for windows towards Luxor and the Strip.

Sadly, I did not get a chance to ask someone at the front desk of Cesar’s Palace if it was the real Cesar’s Palace.

It’s soon time to return to the Swedish winter’s meteorological doldrums after many weeks with mostly sunshine, balmy weather and lots of surfing. Charlotte and Elle are home already, hopefully recovering from the horrid trans-continental, multi-timezone induced jetlag and ever so slowly sliding into everyday life.

As per usual, I’ve worked far more than I had anticipated. It’s still so hard to relax and let myself go numb and forget about work. When you enjoy what you do as much as I do, it feels darn close to being a curse.

As per usual during visits to beautiful places, we’ve now fallen madly in love with Kauaʻi. It feels downright sad that we have to leave today. Particularly Hanalei Bay where we spent many hours surfing in the friendly waves. Fortunately for me, we’ll be traveling to one of my all-time favorites; the crusty and salty L.A. neighborhood,  Venice Beach. Already looking forward to both surfing in Venice and adding new surf shots to my collection as well as producing what I hope will be a most inspiring video essay on the merits of winter surfing in Southern California for a client.

During our ten days here on Hawaii, I’ve shot many hours of HD footage and several hundred stills from all over the island. And for the first time ever, I’ve been able to successfully backup every clip and image to the cloud, in this case, my Dropbox account. I can’t give the folks  at Dropbox enough praise. There are many “free” alternatives, but none that can match the ease of use and reliability that Dropbox provides at a most reasonable fee. It’s really become a ubiquitous part of my workflow.

As an extra precaution whenever I’m afoot, after offloading each card to my computer, uploading the roughly sorted material to Dropbox, I’ll let all the video and RAW files remain undeleted on the SD/CF cards – until I get back to the studio (where everything gets backed up once more to my Backblaze account).

In addition to my primary backup – a five year old 17” Macbook Pro – I’ve also copied everything to a 1TB external HD. After all this, I sleep pretty well at night.

The new Canon EOS 5Ds has performed well. I absolutely love Canon’s new, rather dampened shutter sound, the handy intervolometer (finally!) and the focus tracking feature in the otherwise somewhat featureless film mode. In reality, the Canon 5Ds is basically a Canon EOS 5D Mk III with double the resolution, crammed into a full frame sensor.

As each RAW file is a whopping 50MB large, I’ll probably delegate the 5Ds to studio work and use the forthcoming 5D Mk IV (rumored to arrive next spring) for travel work.I’ve not even tried editing any of the hires video or time-lapse clips on my  almost vintage laptop. Just viewing a single RAW file in Lightroom takes far too long – even with the new 1TB SSD I added a few months ago.

The day is just about to break here on the south coast of Kauaʻi. I can here my young daughter breathing, almost in sync with the lapping Pacific waves below us. It’s time to make a cup of java and get ready for the year’s last journey – towards California!

Recently, I was quoted in a local Swedish magazine as saying that I’m “damn bad at being bored” – a quote that in itself defines me as a somewhat erratic, unruly and maybe even a bit of a whimsical dude. All true. I am all those things. And then some.

Basically, I’ve improvised just about every moment of my entire life. I know no other way, have no master plan, definitely no mission nor any kind of long term vision. Aside from staying alive and keeping life as interesting as I can, that is.

My loosely assembled philosophy is to actively take advantage of the ad hoc, unscripted and unpredictable moments that life serves up. Inherently, this perspective steers most of my everyday choices and for good or bad, the vast majority of my decisions as a photographer, business owner, father and husband. Seize the moment. Don’t be a victim of circumstance. Use it to your advantage. Turn the page. Shove off. There’s nothing to see here – move along!

I’m rambling. On Christmas Eve, no less. Just needed to give the magazine quote some context.

Anyway, I started this most auspicious morning with a invigorating run along the Pacific Ocean just as the sun was on the rise. And yes, it was a spontaneous decision to slip on my joggers and hit the road…

First visit to the Garden Island, Kauaʻi. Fifth visit to the Hawaiian islands – when you include a week long stay back in the mid 1990s when I traveled around the world for 3 months with a remarkably small backpack and a lightweight mountain bike. Boy, was that a trip to remember. Flew -> Stockholm -> New York -> Los Angles -> Honolulu -> Fiji -> Auckland -> Denpasar -> Singapore -> Stockholm with a bunch of shorter domestic trips at each destination of which Kaikura on the south island of New Zealand was the most memorable.

It’s pretty breezy this time of year on Kauaʻi – so the waves on the south coast are fairly choppy and less than perfect to surf in. Elle and I still hope to enjoy a few good sets. And I would love to add a few good shots of local surfers to my portfolio during our visit. If not, then I’ll just focus on the amazing nature that quite literally encapsulates this garden island.

The video is from a recent afternoon visit to the studio of our favorite charity, Hang on Hangers, founded by the always thoughtful generous and kind friend, Annika Jonasson in Bangkok, Thailand.

Shot on an iPhone and edited in Final Cut Pro X.

Slightly nippy but still absolutely gorgeous SoCal sunshine welcomed us back to Los Angeles this mid December afternoon. Weather-wise, it feels just about the same as when I was here in February. That’s California for ya.

The sun really lifts my soul.

Staying in Santa Monica for a few nights before flying westward to the Hawaiian Islands. Both surfboard and camera gear survived the transatlantic flight with Norwegian. Brother Nick was kind to pick us up with his ginormous new truck at the unusually busy Tom Bradley Terminal.

I’m writing this literally a block away from the Santa Monica Pier, not far from where I’ll be filming local surfers these next couple of days. Excited to see what the new camera can accomplish.

In Paris for a weekend of travel photography. Enjoying both surprisingly good (warm, sunny) weather and seeing my sister (and her family) who’s here from Alaska as a delegate during the climate conference.

Haven’t been in the French capital for about 5 years and it’s probably twice as long ago since I was here wintertime.

There’s been a tectonic shift in the way Parisians interact with non-French speakers. I ascribe the change to both how today’s younger generation has more to lose by not learning at least a basic understanding of the language most visitors speak and that English, is the de facto lingua franca.

We’re staying in the 10th arrondissement, not far from Gare du Nord and where Canal Saint-Martin links the northeastern area of Paris with the River Seine. It’s a truly eclectic neighborhood with lots of Middle Eastern grocery stores but plenty of classic Parisian brasseries.

As a nation, Sweden is decidedly at the forefront on many important environmental and human rights issues. But when it comes to food, however, this country is sadly pretty much slave to a few dominating corporations that dictate the relatively slim range (and contents) available in grocery stores.

Exceptions exist – and we’re lucky to both work and live near one of the country’s only Whole Foods inspired stores. And despite having a really good selection of organic, locally sourced products, I still order many of our kitchen’s basic ingredients via Amazon UK, including organic cashews, sunflower seeds, almonds, pistachios, sun dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives and a bunch of other specialty foods.

Ordering weighty stuff from Great Britain isn’t cheap and sometimes, my purchases are unreasonably expensive. Admittedly, a few times, when I haven’t been paying attention, the shipping charge has even exceeded what the products themselves cost. And one might rightfully question how environmentally friendly it is to order food from the UK.

Fortunately, my qualms are usually quite literally quieted by our loud, two horse power monster blender while it mashes, crushes and whirls nuts, seeds, coconut flakes, kale and almond milk into my breakfast smoothie…

The other day I was interviewed for a Swedish lifestyle magazine about my work and life as a photographer. And though my dedication to Västra Hamnen was the general theme of the piece, I’ve read the journalist’s first draft and it also gives an nuanced and factually accurate account of who I am and what’s important to me.

I put some extra emphasis on how I feel about traveling as compared with, say, spending a third of my life being entertained by what’s shown on an ever-so flat or gigantically wide television (and other viewing mechanisms).

During the interview, I realized and felt obliged to  vocalized how sad I felt about how there still are so many places, cultures and people that are difficult – if not life threatening – to experience.

The map above is generated by Google via TripAdvisor which then generates the absolutely absurd statement that I’ve visited 33% of our planet. I should only be so lucky to have covered that much in my life. It’s probably a single digit percentage, if even that. Still, I feel infinitely lucky to have a career that takes me to so many fascinating places.

One could easily presuppose that because I travel so much, I am not happy at home. That my need to constantly keep moving derives from a rootlessness of sorts. This may very well be the case as I’ve been traveling since I was very young and have had many, many “homes”. And perhaps I’m retrofitting the narrative of my yet-to-be-written autobiography here, but when I dig back into my memories or flip through some of my oldest photographs, I still feel mostly intrigued and inspired when I see how interesting my life has been thus far.

This shot is from Sunday’s mega-multi-class-workout-photo-session. Twenty or so models of all ages and sizes participated. Everything went super smooth and I have a whole slew of inspiring photos of folks in various stages of exercise.

Instead of traditional strobes/flashes, I opted for a fairly new solution: several high-powered LED bicolor panels on stands. I knew from previous projects in the same hall, that the wide spectrum of color (yellow floors, green walls, white ceilings and various coloured clothes) was going to be tough to deal with in post. But thanks to the extra exposure strength and relatively low ISO provided by the LED panels, I was provided with enough latitude in the images dynamic range to make all kinds of relevant adjustments.