Another bullshit blogger?!

OK, so I just have to try write my blog in the english language. I thought about it a few times over a while ago before I started my norwegian language blog, and thought I wanted to write in my own language. That was a big hit! Not even one reader for many months. OK, I have not been advertising the blog around, so that might be one of the explanations. Well, one reason for anyone to use time to write a blog would be to have one or two followers or readers, so I'll try again with a small adjustment in language. 

Being a teenage father I have heard a few stories about blog writers the last couple of years, and how they according to my teenage daughters, earn a lot of money by writing empty words about makeup and commercial stuff. Then, after some time, they start to write about how selfish the norwegian government behaves when it starts hunting for tax money from the same bloggers... Yes, just like they hunt for tax money from everyone else who earns money. Luckily I'm old enough now to know all about that shit, and also am I old enough to not give a damn about all the tax I pay. I just hope my money comes in handy at some point, for someone.

I am also both old enough, and hopefully wise enough, to realize that I never will earn anything on any text I write or any photography I take. I might sell one or two every now and then, but it will forever be a project on the negative side when it comes to money. So I fear nothing! And I couldn't care less either.I can, however, always hope that a few of the words and some of my photos might find their place somewhere they belong. 

The Big Blue... the ocean! In it's simple form a dull and boring landscape, but no matter how you look at it still in a constant state of change. One moment like a mirror, the next it's a mix of salt spray and roaring inferno. My office is set up the wrong way. I got my back towards the sea, facing a boring wall and a computer screen that has seen better days. Every time I turn around, I see something different. The light might have changed, a ship on the horizon, an oil rig, or maybe even whales or other cool stuff. The moment I wrote this article, my office was at a location some 120 nautical miles west of Shetland in the North Atlantic Ocean. Other times my office is elsewhere.White waves. Is the weather turning worse? Or maybe better? Weather equals wave-height out here. That's the only thing that really matters. Low waves means work can be done, high waves means no work and just waiting. Wave-height matters big time.

The photography, either a quick snapshot or a more thought through photo, as a way to tell a story and to express a feeling or a meaning is just fantastic. A great picture makes time stand still, for me. As for my own pictures... well, time seems to go remarkably quick when I look at most of them. I both love and hate my photos. Sometimes I really like one, but after a couple of weeks I end up hating the same shot. A few times the opposite happens, and these are the ones that seems to be the best one over time. Strange. A few works, most of them sucks! I will most likely post both pictures I love and hate. I will probably not tell which is which, but I will really like to hear comments on them, either they are good or bad. 

Strange thing a photo! As soon as the shutter has been operated, with a bit of luck a tiny bit of history has been captured. Hence, when I some day see the result, the finished photo, I am watching history. Never future, always history! What's the deal in this human wish, or even demand, to want to watch history all the time? A bit strange if you just look at it in that way, but that's just the way it is. I know, because I got pictures from way back in the 70's. Pictures work in a way that they seem to get better if you stick them away in a whole lot of years, and then dig them out. I should do that more often. Take my pictures, develop the films, and just hide them away for say 30 years before I do anything with them. That way maybe more of my pictures would look better to me?

The photography is one of the real big inventions the last few hundred years. Big and important. Cool thing is that inside any camera the same thing happens today that happened in the early days of photography. OK, the world has gone digital and the equipment has been refined a whole lot... but we still only got a lens with an aperture, and a shutter in some form that let the light through to hit something sensible to light. Today it's most often a digital sensor, a few years ago it was film. We capture light and shadow in a big or small box. Just as we did in the earlier days. We save it inside the box for a short or longer period of time, before we transform the information into... a piece of history. And life is worth living. Why are we still doing this? Why is this of any interest today, when everything that is considered important always seem to contain the words "live streaming", "broadband" and God knows what. Why does photography, an ancient technique, still have such an impact on our lives? At least for quite a few of us? We have never shot still photos at a larger scale than we do now. I read something about this a few days ago, and it was mentioned that we have shot more still photos the last five years than we did in all the years before that, combined, since the technique was invented. That's quite a few photos! Sad thing is that only a very, very few of those shots will be for anyone to see in a few years time. It's estimated that only one of thousand shots survive the first year of living. Strange thing for someone grown up in a time when you never even thought about loosing a negative?!

Bloody hell...! What about all these kids around that will grow up without having seen a printed photo of their granddad? Well... that's probably a story for a post on it's own!

Everyone seems to consider themselves as photographers these days. There is all this great equipment around, and there is a lot of knowledge on how to make a dull photo look great on a screen, but that does not automatically make someone a great photographer? Or does it? I think many more of us would benefit a lot if we took the effort to pull our finger out of our ass and found some ground to stick it into, instead. Everyone with an expensive camera seems to have their own photo page on Facebook these days. A few of them are great, some are good, but most of them simply looks crap to me. No, I am not a photographer and will never be, but I still post photos on my Facebook profile from time to time. Some are good, and some are just shit. I can easily live with that. I am just a hobby photographer, but I still probably post to much. I should find some ground to stick my finger into, when I get ashore, some day.

Right now, in the afternoon, the sea and the sky almost blend into one tone. The sky is totally without contrast, and is around one aperture value lighter than the ocean. You will find out if you should start playing around with a light meter to find the truth. I don't care, because I know the facts, and I usually see the light in exposure values... around one aperture value, EV, or one zone in late Ansel Adams zone system. Just where you should find the horizon, the sky is creeping down into the ocean making the two elements melt together in some kind of weird way. 

I am no photographer! The majority of us is not a photographer, no matter how much we want to be one. A few of us might call ourselves bloggers. I guess there is no such thing as a blogger education, is it? Just as little as most of us can call ourselves rocket scientists, we are not photographers. To many of us is going to use a lifetime trying to become one, but still not be able to reach any of the great old guys even to their knees. We take pictures! A lot of pictures to be honest. Probably to many. You don't have to be a Micke Berg, Ansel Adams, Ingrid Budge, Dorothea Lange or Henri Carier-Bresson to take pictures. Not even to take great pictures, and thank God for that! It happens that I get struck by luck, and find myself having taken a great photo. Later, when I look at it, I always seem to wonder what I did, and I ask myself how on earth did this happen. Often the answer has something to do with some kind of feeling, something I can't put my finger on, which of course just make everything even more confusing. The explanation is never anything physical like aperture or shutter time. Those are maths, and something I definitely can put my finger on, and something I know a few things about. No, most often it's all about feeling. I think I need to start feel more...Micke Berg probably feels all the time. At least it seems like he does, because of his pictures. 

Breton lived to be almost 100. I might still have half a lifetime to learn...