August 5, 2019
Shaky at 30000ft
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Last night’s flight over Europe and much of East Asia was extremely bumpy.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I’d apparently picked an aisle seat far back in the cabin. When I arrived at 56C, a Danish couple roughly my age had already made themselves comfortable and were busy munching from a greasy bag of pork grinds – or something equally disgusting. As soon as I sat down, the chubby Danish fellow sitting next to me struck up a conversation.

Now, I’m a social creature on any given day of the week, but I usually prefer being quiet and if I’m lucky, even snooze for a spell, at least until we leave the ground, level off and reach cruising altitude. But once he got started and I had politely answered his first questions (where you from, where you going, how long will you stay), this dude’s rambling just wouldn’t let up. Not even when I turned my head the opposite way, flipped up my hoodie and filled my ears with bright white Airpods, was my pertinacious neighbor clued in to my need for some alone time. I had about a half dozen podcasts to catch up with, so I was anxious about zoning out.

Once the plane had reached 30k, I kindly asked one of the cabin crew if I could possibly switch seats. I’d learned during checkin at Kastrup that the flight was far from full, and during a visit to the loo I noticed that there were a dozen or so empty chairs to choose from behind me in the plane’s last few rows.

The attendant approved my request and I left the talkative Dane to his fate and me and my stuff moved downstream to seat 69A.

I forgot to ask the crew, but I’m reasonably sure that the Airbus 320 I flew to Asia on was about as old as our soon 19 year old daughter, Elle. It had been retrofitted with larger entertainment screens, but everything else, especially the seats, oozed vintage. Which is perfectly fine, as long as the aircraft’s essential equipment is in good shape (which, since I’m writing this from a hotel room, it obviously was).

I don’t remember when the turbulence started, but it could have been about an hour after our first meal service. And even if I slept through some of it (thanks to a tall glass of white wine), we seem to have flown on a flight path lined with rough air for a good two to three hours. Sitting in the far back of an old plane isn’t exactly an ideal place if you like me, get a little freaked out by persistent turbulence. It’s kind of like feeling an earthquake arriving as it reverberated down the fuselage from the Airbus’ nose to its tail.

It was during one of these many bumpy spells before finally landing, that I shot the above photo of the rear galley. Curiously, the crew were nowhere in sight. Check out my small collection of aircrafts here.

August 3, 2019
Monika on a Harley Davidson
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This was our gorgeous model Monika Bauden on Majid Raoufpanah’s beautiful Harley 1250 – captured during yesterday evening’s shoot. We had three different locations around where Nordic Street Food is located at the railway roundhouse “lokstallarna” in Kirseberg, Malmö. Just discovered the area a

nd really loved shooting there with Henry, Monika and Majid.

Here’s the entire collection.

August 2, 2019
Fryin’ Freedom Fries
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I was hired the other day to photograph tasty looking burgers, crispy fries and a bunch of drinks at a new restaurant here in Malmö called “Dockside Burgers & Bar”. Shot the above video with the Gopro Hero 7 and my iPhone X.

“Freedom Fries”, for those that don’t get that reference, was what Republican Bob Ney renamed french fries in three Congressional cafeterias in response to France’s opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq in 2003. While France doesn’t exactly have a squeaky clean history, in hindsight, their position was clearly correct, regardless of what actually motived it. Whatever you call them, the fries at Dockside are crispy as can be. More photos from that elaborate shoot are viewable here.

July 31, 2019
Americana: Drive-Ins
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I just stumbled on to this great pictorial at Buzzfeed about a classic Americana concept; drive-in theatres. They still exist today, but aren’t nearly as wide-spread or in vogue as they were when I was a kid. Especially in rural America.

Now, growing up in West Hollywood meant there was clearly no shortage of movie theatres. And even if my friends and I would prefer riding our bikes up to the Cinerama on Sunset (the big-ass white dome) or pick one of the dozen or so theatres on Hollywood Boulevard (like Groman’s/Mann’s Chinese Theatre) to watch a double or triple feature on Sunday afternoon, I could just as well have chosen to see a film closer to home on Santa Monica, Beverly, Melrose or Fairfax. Come to think of it, that small theatre on Santa Monica Boulevard, near King’s Road and the old Mayfair Market, was called the Pussy Cat and only showed XXX flicks. I remember looking at the marquee as the bus to school swished passed the Pussy Cat, wondering what went on in that place. In the late 1970s, West Hollywood was an interesting place to be a teenage boy…

Anyway, so I’m old enough to have experienced the concept of “drive-ins”. Can’t remember where, when or what movies I saw, though. Even if the screen was probably huge for that day and age, I can only assume how inferior the picture and sound quality must of been, at least when compared to what you got at a regular movie theatre. The small speaker that attached to one of the side windows, must of sounded horrible.



The auto industry must surely have embraced this car-centric entertainment venue wholeheartedly.

I shot the old Buick above on Main Street in Santa Monica about six months ago. More images from L.A. can be enjoyed here.

July 29, 2019
Guilty Pleasures for Lunch
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We had friends over for lunch yesterday. Like us, they too are addicted to traveling the world, exploring new places, meeting new people and being inspired by new cultural experiences. Unsurprisingly, most of lunch was spent on travel talk; favourite destinations, future travel plans and how we’d all love to be able to afford business class tickets on our long-haul flights. I’d guess that between our two families, we’ve been to just shy of half the countries in the world. That’s a lot of places…and sadly, a lot of jet fuel.

While sat there munching and chatting excitedly about trips to Namibia, Georgian and Transylvania, I wondered when there would be an appropriate opportunity to shoehorn in the environmental perspective of our addiction. I’m pretty sure all of us thought about it, but cause it’s such a downer, no one wanted to spoil the fun and bring it up. And I think that probably sums up how must people think.

The fact that so much of our guilty pleasures are bad for the planet is so numbing, that we mostly only allow them to loom in the background. If Earth is really heading towards a cataclysmic climate catastrophe and the only way of braking the impact is to more or less give up 90% of the lifestyle we take for granted today, including, but obviously not limited to pollution-generating activities like intercontinental air travel, how and more importantly, by whom will that movement get started by? And who is going to explain to all the good folks in South America, Africa, India and China, many now slowly startings to ascend from poverty, that they have to forfeit all the material goodies we have enjoyed for decades in favor of saving the planet? Just sayin’…

July 27, 2019
Dogs I’ve Loved
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So far, there have been four dogs in my life. Two as I was growing up in the US and two in Sweden. Grandfather Eskil had a really smelly Beagle named Ingo that showed me a lot of affection when I lived with him and Grandma Agnes in Trollhättan in the mid 1970s – but I’m not counting him.

My first dog was a beautiful German Shepard named Co-Co and to this day I clearly remember how maternally protective she was of the family. Especially when I was really young. On one traumatic occasion, while we were staying in a rented summer beach house in Malibu (this is when Malibu was more hippy than chic and not nearly as astronomically expensive as the community is today), Co-Co rescued me from being pulled out to sea by an unusually strong current. I was laying on a red, inflatable, canvas raft and she seemed to instinctively sense that I was in literally in deep trouble. After barking intensely for a few minutes on the beach, Co-Co doggy-paddled out to me from shore, grabbed a corner of the raft with her jaws and then swam back the land with me on the raft in tow.

I hadn’t thought of this for many decades until just now, but I also have a vivid memory of how Co-Co would nip me in the butt, not bite, just a distinct pinch, whenever my mother and argued or yelled at each other, which was frequently.

Our second dog was a black Belgian Shepard named Todo, which was short for Todo el Mundo (All the World). Not entirely certain if my memory serves me correctly here, but I want to remember that Todo was a rescue dog. Being a male, his character was totally different from Co-Co’s – but he was nonetheless loving and lovable. Before moving to Sweden in 1978, Todo and I parted ways. He lived out his life among many other dogs on a ranch outside L.A. in Thousand Oaks that belonged to a friend of my mother.

Torsten, a Miniature Schnauzer, was the third dog in my life. Gentle and cute and with all the typical attributes of a schnauzer (stubborn as hell), Torsten didn’t really have much of a personality. He lived out his life in Göteborg with Allan and Agneta, Charlotte’s parents.

Our most recent dog is Palma and she’s been living with a new family just outside of Göteborg for the last five years. We gave her to them after finally realizing that all the travelling we were doing at the time was making it practically impossible and emotionally irresponsible to have a dog in the family.

I’m definitely open for owning a dog again. Not sure what kind, though. Charlotte’s counting on us getting a Dachshund of some variant. I’m not sure what kind of dog I prefer. Certainly not one as small and fluffy as “Happy” above.  Not that that tiny Pomeranian didn’t have character when he dropped by the studio earlier today. But after two Shepherds and a couple of Schnauzers, it’s going to take a creature with some serious personality to lure me back to life with a dog.

July 25, 2019
Summer Nights in Malmö
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Charlotte and I biked into town last night to have dinner at “Mineral”, which, according to my dear wife, is still one of Malmö’s most popular vegetarian eateries. We’ve dined there before, so I kinda knew it was going to be good. I’ve just started a period of intermittent fasting and so, since dinner was yesterday’s only proper meal, I was famished and thought everything tasted outstandingly delicious.

We rode through Kungsparken (King’s Park) on our way home and I quietly promised myself to return sometime later this summer to capture a few night views from the park’s many beautiful sceneries, like the fountain above which I shot late last summer. Interestingly, I’ve eaten lunch at Malmö’s casino (behind the fountain) there, but I’ve never been there to gamble.

July 24, 2019
Fabian at Nösund
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Back in Malmö again after a couple of days of work and birthday celebrations with friends up at Nösunds Värdshus on the island of Orust, northwest of Göteborg.

The 22nd was my 56th year on this strange, beautiful planet. I’m no less confused today about what life is all about than when I first opened my eyes at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica that summer day in 1963.

Before enjoying a thoroughly tasty dinner and a cool, laid-back concert with eminent soul artist Eric Gadd – together with long-time friends Alexandra and Pär – Charlotte and I took a long walk around the village, tried out the hotel’s seaside spa and even went for a short swim in the ocean (my first on the west coast of Sweden in eons).

An hour or so before our dinner, an odd couple we used to socialize with – but whom for some unknown reason abruptly ended our friendship – showed up at the hotel. They too were there to eat and see the show, but though dressed as if they’d waddled straight out of a cheesy ad for the “WASPy“, quasi-New England lifestyle brands Gant or Ralph Lauren, both actually work as puffy middle managers for a huge Swedish furniture company. A company where an often well-polished facade and energetic social competency covers a shameless level of disingenuousness – one that I’d not encountered anywhere else prior to consulting there a while back. Meeting the couple for the first time in a few years was really weird and their exaggerated enthusiasm not only felt fake, it also left us with a really bad aftertaste. Kind of like much of the stuff they sell at the furniture store’s big box warehouses; there’s a colorful alluring coat of superficiality purposely designed to camouflage what inescapably turns out to be mostly dodgy innards. Honestly, I wish I’d told them and their fat asses to just fuck off. I am so through with fake folks pretending to be real.

Fortunately, we had such a blast at our table, that after a while, I completely forgot about the unfortunate coincidence. In no small way thanks to Eric Gadd’s excellent performance – but also the sumptuous food.

The fellow above is master chef Fabian Montecinos. Born in Chile, Fabian lives in Göteborg and is currently working on a couple of food shows for Swedish and Chilian television. Loved shooting him and then devouring the dishes he created for my birthday dinner.

July 21, 2019
Tyko
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I usually write something about Tyko on the 21st of July. Today would of been the 52nd birthday of our brother. Still, after 16 years, it’s difficult to accept that I’ll never see him or hear his laugh again. What I miss the most was our talks about shared childhood experiences and how though much of it capsized us emotionally and spiritually, at least we sat together in the same lifeboat.

An atheist at heart, I suppose a time will come when it becomes easier for me to accept his death through the hope of seeing him again in the afterlife. A lot of folks seem to get religious as they age. Perhaps not in a traditional way, though. Faith probably becomes a custom-made construct, to better fit one’s personal narrative and stave off fears of what happens once the very last breath is exhaled. Projecting an afterlife where you get to reunite with family and friends that have passed before you, might just make that moment’s inevitability easier to bear. Or, not. What if all you meet are the folks that torrmented you during life. The horror.

Tyko committed suicide on or around January 8, 2003. I don’t think an autopsy was ever performed on his corpse, so I don’t know exactly when he killed himself. But what’s really sad is that to this day, I honestly don’t know why he did it. Tyko left a lengthy suicide note, saying his good-byes and trying his best to explain the pain. But I’ve always felt there were more untold reasons or reasonings to his drastic decision.

I’ve never experienced depression, nor have I ever lost so much belief in life that I would or could end it prematurely. Not being able to understand why Tyko took his life, despite our closeness, is a big part why it’s still so hard to accept that he’s gone. It’s also why I’m sceptical about doctors prescribing anti-depression pharmaceuticals to patients with mental health issues. Tyko had been on an off of some kind of medication for several years before he died. And from what I’ve read about these pills, they can all magnify an ongoing state of depression before reversing it. Which is about as counter intuitive as it gets. That’s like handing a jug of vodka to a raging alcoholic and saying, no, no, it’ll get better once you’ve gone through half the bottle. But what the hell do I know?

For the first ten years I got a lot of email about Tyko. Mostly from long-lost friends that had just heard of his death and wanted to know what had happened and so on. These days, no one ever asks about Tyko. Not my immediate family, our siblings or any of his old friends. He’s a vague memory from one of life’s fading tragedies. But he’s still more than that to me. And so, I’ll keep his memory alive. And even if I can’t recall the sound of his laughter anymore, I will never forget how contagious it was. Today I celebrate Tyko, my brother and a man with the widest of smiles and kindest of hearts.

July 20, 2019
Yoga Silhouettes
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I created this collage from collection of photos I took of model Tora Rosenkjaer a couple of years ago. I’ve been weirdly fascinated with silhouettes and have had the backgrounds of hundreds of my studio photos removed to create them. Not unlike traffic signs, I suppose it’s the straightforwardness of silhouettes that’s so appealing to me. In an alternative version of this collage, I’ve added my favorite yoga quote; “Bend, So You Don’t Break.

July 20, 2019
Goagraphy
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I made a fruit salad for me and Elle this morning after our swim in the sea. The salad made me think of Goa. And for some reason, it turns out that I had completly forgotten to add Goa to the travel section here. After three visits to the former Portuguese colony, Goa has become a recent favorite – especially thanks to the focus on yoga, which is mostly found along the southend of the coast. Goa is in India, but still far from it.

Most of the images are from around the beach village of Agonda, not far from the highly recommendable tiny resort Simrose where I stayed during my most recent visit in April. I often catch myself romanticizing about certain places, filtering out negative stuff and cherry-picking blissful memories. But I just can’t seem to remember anything bad about Goa. Surf was good, food was great, my bungalow had everything I needed in addition to a superb location with a seaview and locals were as friendly as can be. Oh, and the nature experience, both in Agonda and out in the sticks, was daunting. I’d be surprised if I don’t return to Agonda within an a year.

Here’s my collection of Goagraphy

July 17, 2019
Sunny Summer Malmö Mornings
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Sunny summer mornings in Malmö are spectacular. Got up at 06:00 am this morning, took a peek out the window and discovered that there was hardly any wind at all. Got dressed, hopped on my bike and rode out to Lilla Torg (Little Square) to photograph a bird’s eye view of the city with the early sun shining with its most flattering light. Among other projects, I’m collecting unique perspectives for a September photo exhibit themed on Malmö.

About a half an hour later, I returned home, spent an hour on the yoga mat after which I got undressed, put on my trunks, bathrobe, summer hat and walked down the promenade for a refreshing dip in the sea. That, my friends, is what I consider a fantastic way to kickstart a Wednesday in July.

July 14, 2019
Yoga by the Sea
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“Yoga by the Sea” is an idea I’d thought about for a few years, probably when I started getting serious about yoga as a complimentary way to stay in decent shape. As it turned out, the concept of a yoga class on the giant wooden deck by Scaniabadet here in Malmö came to fruition when I introduced friends (and clients) Joanna and Rickard, the owners of the beachfront restaurant Vibes and my all-time favorite yoga instructor (my yoga modell and friend), Louise Hedberg.

The above collage is from this morning’s yoga class. Temperature was just perfect and there was very little wind. We were quite a few male participants today. And not just in my age group, either. Several young guys that’ve identified how beneficial yoga can be, despite not being nearly as explosive as a crossfit workout or physically demanding as a long run. I miss my jogs and hope to one day once again be able to go for shorter runs – if for no other reason than for the nature experience. But I am so thankful that I discovered the combination of Qigong and Yoga. Together with a weekly weight-lifting workout at our local gym had been nothing less than a blessing for my chronically aching limbs, joints and muscles. Shot the images above with my iPhone X Max S, which, if you know what you’re doing, offers reasonably good quality – at least for web publication. Hope Apple will introduce a native RAW format someday…

July 10, 2019
Remembering Alfred and Georgia
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Yesterday, a friend from somewhere outside of San Francisco sent me a link to an old New Yorker interview with the painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Here’s the link.

I’ve been a fan of O’Keeffe’s work ever since studying at art college back in 1990. She had such a free-flowing, boundless relationship to her art and a completely uninhibited approach to composition. Georgia was once married to Alfred Stieglitz, the pioneering photographer based in Manhattan and whom practically invented the concept of “fine art photography” and also founded what was one of the first ever photo galleries. I remember being somewhat obsessed by the couple and how two such incredibly talented beings didn’t just fall in love with each other, but also, at least to a degree, found common ground to collaborate. Which up to that point in my life, I’d never remotely experienced in a relationship.

Though I have visited Santa Fe a couple of times and seen O’keeffe’s work exhibited at a local museum, I never visited her studio at Ghost Ranch up in the high desert. During my first visit in 1994 or 1995, I did however go hiking in the hills near Los Alamos – a small town about an hour northwest of Santa Fe near Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where, during World War II, Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists created the world’s first atomic bomb.

My primary goal with that hike was to check out the caves at Bandelier National Monument – which count in the thousands – and were used by ancestral Pueblo people as dwellings. The area was also said to be a spiritual destination for many Native Americans.

In a couple of weeks, I’m heading to a completely different kind of spiritual destination, on a continent far, far away from both Malmö and Los Alamos. And when I return, I hope to spend some time back in the peaceful sanctuary of Vejbystrand, where I met the gentle horse above.

July 9, 2019
The Tourist Conundrum
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I think a lot about tourism and how it has unavoidably impacted our planet. Especially in this day and age. Because we travel so much for work, it’s certainly become a guilty pleasure. But even if it’s arguably crucial to our small company’s very existence, our travels are needless to say not as important as if we were working for UNICEF, WHO or a humanitarian NGO.

Every day of the week, several big-ass tour buses full of Chinese passengers park just a few hundred feet away from my studio. Once the driver opens the bus doors, they all eagerly file out and start taking selfies with the Turning Torso in the background. The visitors from China are likely on a short tour of Scandinavia and have flown in from Asia to Copenhagen’s Kastrup International Airport. Malmö is probably just a side trip, an excursion among many during the group’s visit to northern Europe.

When I moved to Sweden in 1978, I was amazed at how big an impact American “culture” had here. From television shows (Dallas, How the West was Won, Happy Days) and fashion (Wrangler/Levis/Lee jeans), to food (burgers, pizza, chips) and music (Toto, The Jacksons, EWF).

Not at all that I assume visitors from China make a similar reflection. But I do wonder if they are aware of how their country’s massive manufacturing industry has impacted culture here in Sweden and elsewhere.

The video above shows a compressed version of the creative process for my latest piece, The Tourist Conundrum. All of the images used (about 30) were shot during our visit to Spain a few weeks ago, starting with a young Chinese tourist I saw standing outside a small hotel as we were walking towards an unauthorized museum exhibit of street art by Banksy.

July 6, 2019
Bye Now Cow
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Soon time to leave Vejbystrand after a couple of relaxing weeks under unsteady skies. What started out as a heatwave a la 2018, ended in torrential rainfall and bone-chilling wind a la October. Which has actually been just fine with us. As most small business owners know, there’s always something to work on – and it certainly feel a lot easier to sit in front of a warm, glowing screen when the weather is shitty.

As usual, there’s been plenty of social activities during the fortnight – with dinners and lunches at home and away – and several visits to our new favorite seaside restaurant, Strandhugget.

No horses on the meadow this year, but plenty of cows to add to my massive archive. Charlotte’s returning soon for an exciting family reunion, but I won’t be back until August. Hope to enjoy drier, sunnier and warmer weather then.

June 30, 2019
Safari: Masai Mara
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Speaking of Africa, I’ve finally got around to sifting through and collecting my favorite captures from my most recent safari. The black and white images are from a total of 5 game drives around the Masai Mara National Rserve, which you get to after roughly an hour’s bumpy ride in a bush plane from Nairobi Wilson Airport.

Though different from the previous safari in the Okavango Delta in the Kalahari, the Mara is equally diverse, abundant with wildlife and nothing less than spectacularly beautiful. 

We stayed at Governor’s Camp, one of the oldest permanent safari sites in Kenya and thoroughly enjoyed the food and hospitality.

Most of the photos in the collection were shot with a 100-400mm lens (if you’re a serious photographer, a 400mm lens is a minimum focal length) mounted on a 50 megapixel Canon 5Ds. While certainly not the fastest camera in Canon’s lineup, having so many extra pixels in each frame allows for a generous amount of additional “zooming” during post.

Here’s the collection from Masai Mara.

June 29, 2019
Sheepily
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There’s something eerie about sheep. At least I find it a little creepy when they stare you down. I’d give a pretty penny to know what’s going through their feeble minds when they stiffen up like the fella above that I met last night at about 09:00pm. 

Are they instinctively freezing to hopefully go unnoticed until the potentially dangerous stranger leaves their proximity? Or, are they transfixed by a creature so different in sight and smell that their brain just freezes, much like a deer on a road with a car’s headlights beaming into its eyes.

I enjoy photographing animals and I really don’t have any preferences. But I do find that most wild animals analyze my trajectory and if it’s clearly different from their location or path, they’ll be cool and just chill. Which can often give me an opportunity to get in a few shots.

So my tactic for some years now, particularly after a bush walk in Botswana with a 70-year old Ranger a few years ago, is not to approach a subject in the wild straight on, but instead to walk parallell with it and make sure it feels relatively “safe” about my intentions.

June 28, 2019
Hovering Like A Horsefly
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Shot this yesterday on the meadow in front of the summer house. No horses this year, but plentiful of perpetually munching cows. As I suspected, the drone was not going to scare or stress them out. In their universe, it was merely a unusually large and persistent horsefly hovering somewhere above.

June 27, 2019
Strandhugget in Vejby Baby
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Back in Vejbystrand for the first time since… February? Not sure. In any case summer’s in full bloom here now. Charlotte and I ate dinner at the village’s only real restaurant, Strandhugget (which literally translates to ashore). There are a couple of pizzerias here, even one down by the harbor next to Strandhugget. But non are driven with any palpable passion.

We both ate the kitchen’s fish casserole which is composed of salmon, cod and shrimp and served with side of creamy aioli with a noticeable bite to it. For dessert we shared a generous portion of rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream.

It’s the first week of a 4 or 5 week long vacation for many Swedes, so despite it being a Wednesday, the restaurant was more or less jam-packed.

This seaside venue has been around for decades, well before I first visited Vejbystrand back in 1997. But this is the first time since then that I’ve been impressed with the food. The new owner(s) are clearly interested in the art of cooking and providing patrons with a pleasant dining experience. We’ll definitely be back.