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Back in Vejby Baby
Feels good to be back in Vejbystrand. Especially now when we are alone again. The consequences of precautionary safety measures stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic made living together (multi-generationally) increasingly challenging.
Now that Charlotte’s parents generously retreated back to Göteborg, the serene calmness I’ve always associated with being here on our own has once again returned. We already have plenty of demands on our shoulders. Not having to compromise with our time and space makes carrying them a little less laborious.
I’ll be busy for most of the next few days with all the film and stills I’ve brought with me from the near weeklong “island-hopping” along Sweden’s west coast archipelago.
Above: “Storm Horse” captured a few summers ago on the meadow.
Back in Göteborg
After about a week on Sweden’s marvelous west coast, I’m now in Göteborg. Very short visit this time around. Checked into a cheap but neat and clean hotel yesterday evening, had a tasty and fun Tex-Mex dinner with daughter Elle near the hotel in Vasastan, and went to bed fairly early to re-watch The Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. It’s one of Sidney Pollack’s best films and takes largely place in the UN building in New York where I had a gig a few years ago.
Heading back to Skåne with Charlotte and Lennart later today. Shot the above image of Poseidon during last year’s visit.
Fredrik Head Chef at Nösund Havshotell
For two years back in the 1980s, I worked as a hot and cold chef in a restaurant in Göteborg. I enjoyed it and learned a lot. The restaurant was part of a large jazz club and didn’t have any ambitions whatsoever with what they offered guests. But I soaked up whatever I could from coworkers with more experience than I had (everybody) and learned a lot about basic cooking there. After a while, I knew enough to start getting creative within the boundaries of the kitchen’s recipes and that’s when my interest in cooking really took off.
If I also count the sweaty year before the aforementioned jazz club gig, which I spent as a short-order cook flipping fatty burgers, frying frozen schnitzels and serving them with drippy fries, I’d say I’ve got a reasonably good idea about what working in a kitchen is like.
As far as I can tell, kitchen life hasn’t changed much since I last put on an apron. The stress, the heat, the burns, the cuts – they’re all still there, regardless of where in the world you take a peek inside a busy kitchen.
Whenever I’ve got a gig shooting food for a restaurant, I also take note of the camaraderie and the kitchen staff’s ability – and willingness – to work together in an often ridiculously small space and produce an abundance of meals in an unreasonably short time frame.
I’ve just spent a couple of days being reminded of this here at Nösund Havshotell while filming and shooting stills for the hotel’s marketing team.
Shot the above during today’s lunch service with supremely dedicated Head Chef Fredrik and his camera-shy colleague Chef Birgitta.
Back at Nösund Havshotell
After a weekend of intense albeit distanced socializing and catching up with the old crew from yesteryear on the island of Hönö, outside of Göteborg, I’m now further north along the coast in Nösund, the seaside hotel – run by Lars J Olemyr – on the island of Orust.
The weather’s been a bit shaky since I got to Nösund Havshotell – with several heavy rain showers passing overhead. How much of this evening’s scheduled shoot I’ll be able to do outdoors is as of right now very uncertain.
Regardless of the weather, the calmness here is soothing and when not filming at the hotel and its gorgeous surroundings, I’m spending most of my time alone, catching up with myself.
Boat Trip with My af Hälsö
Here’s a few selected scenes from yesterday’s amazing boat trip along the coast with Captain Jakob, Lars Olemyr, Tommy Sahlin, Jonas Bratt, Joakim Eklund, and I. While Skåne’s coastline is certainly beautiful, I’ve missed this part of Sweden since leaving Göteborg back in 1997.
Morning Swim at Hönö
Dragged Lars Johan Olemyr, one of my oldest friends, out of his bed this morning to join me for a morning swim in the ocean. After whisking away a tiny red jellyfish, we both eased ourselves into the mirror-like surface, adjusted to the nippy temperature (19C/66F) and then enjoyed one the best morning swims ever with thick seaweed under our feet.
On the island of Hönö in Sweden’s gorgeous west coast archipelago again. In my youth, I did quite a bit of sailing along this amazing coast. Got in yesterday afternoon. The weather is as wonderful as last time. As of Midsummer, we’re slowly heading back into the darker side of the year. But for now, summer evenings like last night – pictured above – are so beautiful and precious, you never want to go to bed.
Lollo & Bernie at Quality Hotel View
From yesterday’s shoot at Quality Hotel View in Hyllie/Malmö when the popular couple Lollo and Bernie checked into the hotel. Here with General Manager Jenny Benestam. Did I hear someone say I have a diverse job? More photos from the assignment here.
Bar Italia’s Artisan Gelato
I was increasingly yearning for ice cream yesterday while editing the latest shoot for Bar Italia and their handcrafted, artisan gelato. But since no reasonably good ice cream could be found here in Hyllie (just outside of Malmö), I opted for a bag of popcorn instead.
In addition to an uncompromising position when it comes to the quality of their products ingredients, which I can corroborate is best-in-class from filming the process in the factory a couple of weeks ago, the main difference between mainstream ice cream and Italian gelato is that the former’s base is made from air-filled cream while the latter is created from pure milk.
Bar Italia’s gelato base is made with organic milk from Skåne – which not only makes for a more dense eating experience (there’s comparatively very little air in milk), the creaminess in ice cream also tends to “steal” some of the oomph from the flavorings.
Soft Artisan Gelato
Created this advertisement the other week for Bar Italia and their artisan soft gelato (pistachio flavor). Apparently, it’s generating quite a bit of viewership on both Facebook and Instagram.
Exclusive Wine Tasting at Vejby Vingård (Winery)
I’ve been working on this assignment for a while now and delivered the final edit yesterday to loud cheers from the client, Vigneron Jeppe Appelin at Vejbystrand’s beautiful winery, Vejby Vingård.
As per usual, it was a shoot with all kinds of lighting conditions; morning, midday, and late afternoon sunlight. Most of the closeup scenes (on the ground) were shot with the Fujinon 56mm f1.2, a lens I just can’t get enough of. Indoors, the Fujinon XF 10-24 f4 proved to be the most useful, at least when I cranked up the ISO to 800.
The Mavic’s tiny drone sensor is still after two years impressing me and the aerial shots are by far the most spectacular of this project.
Black Hole Blues
This post is inside baseball for the unitiated and will only be fully appreciated by those that know me well.
I’m usually good at focusing on something interesting about people I socialize with. And I enjoy seeking out a bridge, a common thread, some shared experiences – be it leisure or professional – with just about everyone I meet. At my age, it’s not too difficult to identify commonalities with folks I interact with and I’ll build our short or long relationship from there. While some might call this social engineering, and, to a degree, at least occupationally speaking, it is, but being professionally friendly and a “smooth operator” is in my opinion part of the gig in almost every kind of business, including mine.
Even if I prefer the creative process over the formal and financial aspects of being a freelance artist, there is just no denying that putting on a smile and a little obsequious behavior will often lead to something beneficial – for all involved. It’s the lubrication that keeps the machine wheels turning and essentially what being human is all about. Everyone wants something.
Conversely, when I have to interact intensely – over long periods of time – together with people that I have zero in common with or what we do share is no longer able to bridge the wide gaps between us, I get easily bored and ultimately, irritated and frustrated.
With folks that I have so little in common with – people so superficial and lacking depth or substance, I end up feeling like I’m being sucked into an event horizon and eventually their soulless, eternal black hole of nothingness – a place so empty, every breath feels like it could be the last. After a while, my cortisol levels seem to shoot through my veins like fiery lava, causing stress and anxiety. These interactions inevitably break the creative spell which will soon put me in a fight or flight mode. And as we are living in this singularly peculiar times, neither of those choices is very simple to make. But, as so aptly put in The Big Lebowski; the Dude abides. I’m on top of it, figuring out my next moves. Literally and figuratively.
Not sure where I discovered this wall. It’s definitely going to be part of my Resurfaced series. I call it “Black Hole Blues”.
Happy Midsummer
Happy Midsummer Everybody! Here in Sweden, Midsummer is the start of the summer and for a lot of folks, yet another Swedish holiday where we to get together, eat herring, fresh potatoes, and perhaps a chilled schnapps or two. This year, there’s no dancing around the Midsummer pole like above (from Styrsjö where we were with the recently COVID-19 deceased friend Lars Fransson, Åsa, and Lars Olemyr) and social distancing will be certainly be upheld as a few of our close friends celebrate this ancient holiday with us.
Home Grown
Here’s what tonight’s harvest looked like from green box to salad bowl. Crunchy fresh and organically grown – from seed to the earth it grew in. Nothing beats a salad made from your own veggies.
No Number Cows
I always remove the bright, yellow number tags from the ears of cows, sheep, and goats that I photograph. The tags are not only ugly, but they also remind me of how much easier it must be for their keepers to not have to think of them as living creatures – which in turn I associate with the mindset the Nazis had when they tattooed numbers on prisoners in the labor and death camps. Why not insert a discreet RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip somewhere on the cows/sheep/goats instead?
Editing Stills and Film
Still editing and composing a collection of short films from last week’s shoot in Svedala and Malmö. As much as possible, I follow my storyboard chronologically while filming. But much of the “story” I am trying to convey ends up coming together on the timeline – the spot within the editing software where all the individual film clips are placed in chronological order. The thing with editing film (as when compared to editing still images) is that you need to take a break from it in order to fine-tune your story and minimize excessive (boring) sequences. It’s a reductive process, much like cooking a sauce or a soup. You know from the start that you’ll end up with something much closer to your vision but that it’ll take a while to get there.
I am still impressed by the high-resolution film clips produced by the Fujifilm XT-3. At 4K, 25 fps, 10-bit color depth, and 400Mbits/s video, each and every second represents 25 individual images that provide more than enough information to be used as a standalone, printable still photo.
Since the vast majority of my film projects are delivered at 1080p (HD), the abundance of recorded video information allows for generous re-framing options and exposure/color tweaking. So handy.
The shophouse above is from somewhere along Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River. Shot with the Fuji last year sometime and edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. A lot of folks are opting to move to Capture One as their preferred photo editing software. I’m sure it’s a capable editor. But I don’t see how leaving my current workflow would grant me any creative or time-saving advantages. I know of only one (older) photographer that somewhat strangely uses Adobe Bridge instead of Lightroom’s superior organizational features. Adobe Bridge seems archaic, one of those Swiss Army Knife applications: lots of tools, none of which are implemented very well.
I suppose that’s the way it is. Once you try a piece of software and it gets the job done without getting too much in the way, it becomes hard to abandon. I suppose I’ll be sticking with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Final Cut Pro for a long time yet. Definitely going to dig into Logic, or, at least Garageband sometime over the summer. Really yearning to dip my toes in the music creation universe.
Stoicism vs Zen
During a conversation with an old friend in Los Angeles this morning, the ancient philosophy of Stoicism came up. In a nutshell: The ancient philosophy of Stoicism teaches that keeping a calm and rational mind – no matter what happens – will allow you to understand and focus on what you can control and not worry about stuff you can’t.
While I full-heartedly subscribe to Stoicism, I sometimes have the opposite approach. Worry about stuff you have absolutely no way of impacting and leave the stuff you can actually change unchanged.
In this era’s pandemonium, I find myself gravitating towards a zen-like philosophy where I try to apply a meditative vibe to much of what I do. Which isn’t easy and far from smooth, but having this mindset helps me get through some of my mundane obligations and day-to-day trivialities.
We’re living in paradise right now. It’s sunny and warm. Every garden, meadow, and grove is lushly green and brightly colorful. It’s undeniably beautiful this time of year, but also a little overwhelming. Having “off days” are hard-managed when everything outside screams picture-postcard-pretty at you. I don’t know for sure where these cobblestones come from. Possibly Göteborg.
Juneteenth
Just read this article in the New York Times. I don’t know which is worse – that I had never heard of Juneteenth, that the school system I was enrolled in didn’t consider the historic event important enough to educate me about, or, the shameful fact that the day isn’t a national/public holiday.
For those of you that like me are ignorant about Juneteenth, it’s an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States and an event African-Americans have celebrated since the late 1800s. While it feels messed up to not ever having heard of Juneteeth, it’s emblematic of how lopsided the whole holiday/celebration calendar is in favor of Anglo-Saxon Christians. Not to mention the lackluster curriculum on the topic of slavery and the emancipation of hundreds of thousands of African Americans. Fortunately, we now finally have a president totally focused on this and healing the nation’s cataclysmic divide, socio-economic equality, and global peace.
I don’t remember exactly where I shot this young woman. But I sincerely hope she has a better life than her parents, grandparents, and ancestors likely did her. More importantly, I hope her children don’t have to deal with the rampant racism still so prevalent in our time and age.
Santa Monica Images
From Santa Monica Beach, somewhere north of the Santa Monica Pier and not far from where I used to surf in the mornings. In the fall of 2013, I often spent whole afternoons walking around the beach, photographing people on the bike path, and in the waves. It felt purposeful, somehow. But above all, these long, daily walks were a meditative, zen-like routine that I enjoyed. I rarely returned to our apartment on 2nd Street without at least a couple of good shots to include in my collection at Santa Monica Images. Like the lady above – one of many colorful people riding up and down the coast.
Born To Run – Lennart af Lejontass
This is Lennart. The Raboff family’s third dog. After Mini Schnauzer Torsten (rest his soul) and Standard Schnauzer Palma (happily relocated to Göteborg), Lennart af Lejontass is our first Mini Dachshund. He’s cute, cuddly and slowly acclimatizing to life in Vejbystrand.
While Lennart is Charlotte’s long-awaited dream dog, I find the uninhibited love and compassion, not to mention the enthusiasm dogs so generously and spontaneously provide, is quite frankly irresistible. I melt every time he looks at me with those beautiful puppy eyes. Follow Lennart’s adventures: @lennartminidachshund