I have this book out!

I made this book a while ago. Just a test to see what the paper was like, and how the film stuff was rendered on it. They are all snaps I have earlier posted on instagram, so that's the only link between the pictures. 
The book don't look to bad, to be honest, even though it was printed on what should be their simplest paper and all. Have a look... it's all there for free :) 

Instashots by Roy Karlsvik | Make Your Own Book

I'm OK now... calm and everything!

After yesterdays rant thrown all around the world I'll try to keep a bit more on the calm side today. It does not help anyone if I behave like some kind of grumpy idiot all the time. Some times maybe, but not all the time.

To throw it all into a completely different direction I'll take some time and tell you about easy floating stuff. I got this boat. Yes, I know I'm a sailor by profession, but I also like to go to sea during my time off. In addition I like to live close to the sea, and to just sit by it and look at it. The sea, that is.

My boat. With a white hull, numerous sticks pointing all possible ways and everything. It's a Colin Archer boat, but it's not even close to as old as it might look. I like her though, and she's got a nice but heavy rig. Gaff rig, that is. Quite easy to operate, but takes some strength at times. 

The sea calms me down and makes me think good thoughts. Give me some good old sea spray, a few good looking clouds with some rain in them, good wind, a camera and some time off, and I'll be there to pick such things up any day. I will also try my very best to make some good use of it all.

En route towards my home town, Ålesund. No sailing this day, obviously... 

It's a good boat both under sail and engine though, 

and she's got plenty of room and loads of charme. 

And when the day is over, the sea spray in your face has come to a hault and the wind has calmed, it's time to get the anchor out or tie up alongside somewhere, sit down outside on deck and talk about it all without shouting. More whispery like. Light up those oil lamps, open a bottle of wine or whatever, and talk to each other for a few hours. Get a few friends on board if anyone care, and if not it's OK anyway. Then later go downstairs and find that fantastic simple but nice bed, open the wooden hatch above my head if the weather is not to bad, and let the tickling of the sea carry me into deep sleep. That's the proper way to end a perfect day, with no thoughts in your head but good and calm ones. 

At the end of a perfect day. A good time had by all on board.

We are again facing winter. In just a few weeks there will be snow on the mountain tops around us, and before we can say "sleet" we'll be having it all the way up to our arm pits if I know it's ways, like I do. Not the best time to take the boat out for some proper sailing, as I would probably freeze to death in no time sharp. That does not sound too good to me, so I'll have her nice and tidily tied up down at the pier. It's actually a pier that's afloat, which will keep the boat from being hammered into pieces during the storms that will come in during the winter. Then, when spring comes, I have to get her lifted out for a proper wash before she's off to sea again. 

I'm looking very much forward to it all, and hope for a much warmer summer next year. That would do me some good, and give me reasons for loads of deep dreams on board. 

It never rains around here...

...it just comes pouring down.
Old words from a piece of music from the eighties for sure, but they are still stuck in my mind. Strange how things seems to linger in your head just to suddenly pop up from nowhere like.
Another thing is that the words fit remarkably well just today. Not only today, of course, but more or less each and every day either I'm home in the western or north western part of Norway or if I'm at work somewhere Way Out West of there, which is right here where I am right now. There's a lot of rain, believe me! 
Anyway, that's what we got where I seem to like to stay. You may wonder why... I "blame" the people around me. Rain, wind and overall unpleasant conditions seem to do something good with people in general me thinks. 

A rainy day... but I like to take a snap when the sky got a bit more interresting look than just the bright and blue. This film was killed during processing, but sometimes that's just adding to the feel.  Boring snap with totally wrong composition, I know, but it sort of fitted the weather I thought.

More rain coming in. As it should... 

Any person would probably find that I'm a bit more than average interrested when it comes to photography. Not that I know a huge ammount about it, but I'm quite curious and want to learn more and you know all the bits. 

Then I get these downtimes. I don't know what it is, but it has something to do with the way I do things. Or the way I have decided to do things, to be more precise. The way I have decided to do my thing as opposed to how the average person next to me do his or her things.

I happen to like pictures where some manual work is evident in the final result. That's not mainstream these days, even though a lot of people will happily disagree and start a big discussion around this statement. I am talking about manual work as in getting your hands smelly and all. Manual work as in playing with cameras with a dodgy light meter, maybe some paper negative inside, or a pinhole camera thrown together in the basement just for testing... You know the story! That's what I like today, just as I did 40 years ago, and the reason why I got into this at all. 

A million opportunities to get a good snap, but also a million people around killing creativity...

I went to this fantastic park in Oslo this summer. Have been here before, and just needed to get back with some film to see if there was any good reasons to waste some of it. 

I more or less ended up watching tourists instead. They were all over the place all the time, and managed effectively to kill whatever spirit I had to go in there and do what I wanted to do. OK, I should have known better than go here in the middle of summer, so I can take that on board, but I must say that there's a few things I observed that made me think a bit further. 

Please do something drastic to me if I ever come to a point where I go to a foreign country far, far away with a few things on my list to see, before ending up with maybe one minute in front of the sight just to take the necessary photos on any phone, smile at the camera while holding the hand of any famous statue or whatever it may be I fancy to see, and then run away to the next thing on my list. 

Me and my wife just got totally knocked out by this, and found ourselves watching from outside ourselves for a while. The people we watched did this as a routine, on autopilot like. They knew exactly what they wanted to see, and what they wanted their picture to look like. When it was done, they just ran away to the bus to take them elsewhere. Not only two or three of them, but hundreds. 

Not one of them seemed to stop for a few seconds to take it all in, have a proper look, observe and take their time to have some kind of adventure or experience. 

People seem to travel more, and experience less these days. It's as they observe everything through some sort of screen, not being able to be there, breath the air. Stop for a few seconds and do some thinking.

I don't know what it's called, but it's beautiful work for sure

This park contains a total of 214 statues mostly made of granite, but also some bronze and other materials. Some of them quite big, a few is rather small. It's all a kind of a one-mans work of Gustav Vigeland. Even though he had workers to do the stone work itself, it was Gustav who modelled all the statues. According to Wikipedia the installations contains around 600 figures of people in total. The "Monolite" alone is 17 meters tall, and contain 121 figures of people. All the installations is spread across a quite big area.

The Monolite

One of many figures sitting around the "Monolite".

  

There's this bridge, in this park, just after passing the entrance. There's a lot of statues on the sides of the bridge, and one of them has become rather famous. It pictures a rather upset small boy, very angry dude for sure. This is the one these tourists want to see. They come in, walk straight to it, holds the hand of this furious little kid, smile and have their snap taken. Then they put away their smile and go to the bus and leave. That's their entire memory of it all... The left hand of this little boy is shiny bronze from all those tourists having touched it. Everything else made of bronze in this park is just greenish not polished typical bronze statues. I snapped a few snaps of these people, then sat down and had a deep discussion with myself and partly with my wife. 

No... it's not going to help melady! He's going to be just as furious next year... and the next!

No wonder the boy is angry?! It's probably just like this, all year around.

What was I actually thinking when I started to talk about this...? Well, it was the fact that I was thinking about different ways to take and process photographs and so on. A few do this, lots do it differently. And the people that does the different thing always ends up with the best shots. OK, it depends a bit what has been snapped, and how, but in general they seem to do. At least the different thing is what people seem to want today. Not questioning the fact that there's no manual work involved to get there. And can I blame them? Nope! Can I do anything about it? Nope, not much anyway. Do I care? Yes, and no. 

Most of the time I could not care less, then I have these moments... like today, when I started to think that 99% of the people this day in this park probably got home and had a quick look at their zillion snaps, and was very happy with maybe 95% of them. I got home, had duly snapped a couple of rolls, maybe around 70 pictures. Then the rolls lingered in my bag for a couple of weeks before I processed them, like I do, then carefully hang them to dry before I had a look through the scanner. Excitement... Then nothing much to jump in joy about, to be honest. Something killed something inside me on this beautiful day, and I blame it on the behaviour of a few people. 

I could also to some extent blame the new ways of doing photography, where some electronics are doing all the calculations and flickering the switches without anyone even notice it. All you have to do is aim roughly, and press a button. Then you got it... the moment frozen in time if everything goes well the next few centuries. And a good and proper snap it is as well. Most likely.

And I could blame the feeling of being put into a large group of all kinds of people with me in the middle, doing just the same as they do. Snapping away this way and that, all at the same things all in the same way. The only difference is what's inside our cameras, but that's not obvious to anyone in a place like that. 

Huge loads of people looking through their screens pointed in every imaginable direction but nowhere in particular, and there you are in the middle trying to think. Sometimes you got to think, at least I do, and to think I need some peace. 

This day all I could think of was the question "Who am I going to tell this story to...?" and I got no answer at all. It felt like they were all there, and that all of them did a way better job than myself as they ran around with their things snapping. 

It feels like the curse of photography, at times. They are all there, at the same time, and they all do their stuff a lot better than I can ever dream of.

I have been intrigued by this statue ever since I saw it the first time many years ago. Look at the joy in the face of the children, where everything else in the scene seems to me to be quite humiliating. There's a lot of faces and expressions around this place that suggests you stop and have a proper look at it all instead of just quickly look at one thing and fly away.

I know who's fault it all was, and I know who's head will need some adjustment. It's my own, and I have to do something about my weird ways of thinking. Or I probably should stop thinking about things I can do nothing about in situations like this one. 

But still something killed something inside me on this beautiful day, and I have decided to blame it on the behaviour of a few people.

The weather is probably too shiny and bright, and dry, wherever they come from...

A day in the life...

So. No begging for more gear talk, hence yesterdays post, so I will leave it for a while then. Which is just as well, I would say. After all it's the snapping, developing and printing and all that makes the great fun, not necessarily all the stuff needed to get the photos snapped. 

Not my ship at all folks! This is the norwegian coast liner, The Hurtigruten. Come try it some day for a shorter or longish trip. It travels all the way from Bergen in south to Kirkenes in the far, far north. 

Hey, that's up there next to the russians and such...!

So, that's another day done at sea for me then, or another day in paradise as we usually say out here. In quite a sarcastic tone, I have to pop in, just so anyone don't get the totally wrong idea and all. Not that it's a bad place to be, mind you, but got to say that it's going to be great to get back home soon. Do things I like to do, spend time with my family and friends, try to start some work on that darkroom and all. 
Anyway, a job is a job is a place you have to stay for some time during life, and that's just how it is. Some work more or less where they live, others have to travel a bit to get there, and then stay away for some time before they can get home. It's called life... at least for a sailor that's life.

The captain on the bridge telling some true story from real life... or probably not, to be fair. Anyway, it most likely was a good one. It usually is, I have to admit. I think this was snapped with one of those M's at some point quite a while ago. He looks the same today since you ask.

The weather starts to get worse out here now. It's been a great "summer" workvise, as there has not been many days we have been knocked out of work because of the weather. Not that I think it's been a nice summer at home! It's been very cold and one would hesitate to call it a summer at all, to be honest, but looking at the calendar we should have passed that time of year all the same. No good, if you ask me, which you do of course. 


I was out there, in fresh air on deck yesterday. It does not happen every day anymore, which means you have to do the best possible out of it when it happens. The reason for the walk was the two-weekly OMT safety walk, but nothing will be said here about any findings... if any was found, that is. 
I brought a camera though. So will be nice to see if I get any good ones from the short round of the vessel. We were in the engine room and everywhere you see. Long shuttertimes needed down there when bringing my oldest german rangefinder with FP4 film inside. I got a few ones from a similar walk some time ago as well. You better have a look at them in the meantime, as the new ones will not see the light of day in some time yet. I'm a bit short on darkroom facilities on board the ship, you see.

Looking for bad stuff, found some! I don't really know what the hassle and fuzz was all about, but something there was for sure. The client has his own ways of seing things, you see. Very rare eyes that man. True story!

Findings found! Let's put them into our notebooks, both of us! These walks are great fun you can probably imagine?! No wonder I look so much forward to them. Well, at least you get some fresh air out of them.

Meanwhile in the engine control room...

Now you may think that it's all just fun and fortune and glory on board! No way! We sometimes have to do work as well. Real greasy and dirty engineer work that is. I post nothing of that today though. There may be someone not able to cope with such for some reason. Anyway, I don't think I got any snaps of such character either to be honest. Need to get some done at some point maybe. 

I'm here if there's something you feel you have to ask questions about. Just let me know down below :)

Those big, chuncky boxes...

Medium format cameras.

I have always wanted one, and as I was in my youth I had a period that I actually saved money to try get my hands on one at some point. On my wish list was a good second hand Mamiya RB67 or even the more expensive and proper RZ67 system. I never got there though. They were way out of range, and my saved money were put into something else. Probably nothing important either.

I like to carry a Mamiya RZ around town when I got the chance to do so. It's a different thing than those tiny 35mm film cameras. No, it's not exactly the thing to do if you don't want to attract some attention, but then again I feel that it's not as bad as you should think. People seem to not realize what you point at them until it's to late anyway. 

As I later in life started to understand the two facts of modern photography, that d*gi*al was taking over the mass market but film can still be bought, I started to play with that old dream again. A quick search on the net gave me what I hoped for, and I was soon the owner of a very good looking Mamiya RZ67 with the standard 110mm normal lens and a bunch of extra stuff. Not cheap as chips, but not exactly expencive either. I knew what these were good for, and spent the next few days testing it. In the evenings I developed the films, and I was kind of lost into the world of those nice, big 6x7 cm film frames I got out of it. 

Looking down the street towards the big tree in Kirkwall. Mamiya RZ67 seen through a 50mm lens.

I used this camera more or less all the time over the next couple of years, and also bought a couple of more lenses for it. There was a man in my home town who had this huge RZ collection that he was never using anymore, and he was quite eager to get rid of it. So I bought the two lenses and some other small bits and parts from him for next to nothing, and was happy with that for another year or so. 

This is a cropped version of a late night shot I did with one of my Mamiya RZ67 cameras in Stromness, Orkney, a few years back. Supported it partly on some bollard on the quay, adjusted it to a quite long shuttertime and fired off. Came out quite close to what I had hoped, to be honest. 

Then this same chap called me one day and told me some very bad news about his health, and to make the story short I ended up with all the RZ equipment he had lying around. Which again means I'm probably the owner of one of the biggest Mamiya RZ collections, at least in Norway, today. Not that I know, but I suspect I am.
Three cameras, and 10 or 11 lenses, require some space I can tell you! My wife will certainly fully agree. No need to ask the question though... 
I got the full range of glass, from the widest 37mm fisheye to the big chuncky heavy as the mountains 500mm tele. And more or less every thing in between, of course. Not the cheepo versions either. APO, ULD and what have you. The only one I don't have, but sometimes feel I could have put into some use would be the 65mm. It's quite easy to get hold of if I really feel that I need it some day, so I don't think to much about it to be honest. I can easily live without it as well. 

This is the closest I've ever been to Ireland I would think. Looking down on South Stack Lighthouse on Anglesay in Wales a couple of years ago. On a really nice day, whenever that would happen, you could probably see a bit further over the Minch than we could this day. Mamiya RZ67 again.

Anyway. I should probably put in a few words about using this system for photography as well. After all, that's what all this was built for, and why we're all here, right?
First of all, it's a heavy system. Sometimes if I just run out for some random snapping I will bring one camera and one or two lenses. That's enough out there on the streets, to be honest. Then again, there are times I load the car to the limit, and bring most of the stuff. But only if I got a lot of time but no clue about where I'm going and what I'm about to be snapping, that is. 

Working with the Mamiya RZ67 system is like a dream, to be honest. It works great, got that huge and quite bright viewfinder, has an easy way to change between film backs, does not suffer of any big major flaws I know of, and is a lot lighter to haul around than it actually looks. Just don't mount that 500mm and try to carry that monster around for the whole day. 

Of all this equipment I got for this system, there's only one small part that has failed for me through these years, and that's one single small film back. It started to do things it's own ways, not being to willingly when the winder was operated to get to the next frame. A very quick job inside the old bugger, and all was well again. 

Having all these lenses, cameras, film backs, winders and what do I know... without any major hickups?! It should mean that the equipment is built to last. Not even a light leak in all those years. Amazing I would say.

Back home again. There's some huge boulders lying around this area. At some point back in time they obviously have been let loose down the mountain side. I bet there was some shaky ground and good noise made as they tumbled down... 

Shutter times on this beast is in the range between 8sec. down to 1/400'th of a sec. Full steps on the older version, half steps in the Pro II version. Focusing is very accurate, and works like a dream. The bellow seems to be made in a quite strong material, but exactly how strong I have yet to find out...

I got a prism finder for this system, but I almost never use it. The camera is heavy enough as is, at a weight of around 2,5 kg's, and the prism finder just adds to it bigtime. Not that the weight is the biggest problem though, but as soon as you connect that finder you have to look through the camera by lifting it to the eye. Then it soon becomes a considerable weight, and I kid you not.

As long as I use the waist level finder, the funny funnel you know, it's absolutely no problem at all to take good snaps with this camera. You can even keep it steady for a quite sharp shot at fairly long shuttertimes if that's what you fancy. Mind the mirror though, because that's a quite big source of movement in this camera, if sharpness is something important to you. I usually don't care too much, and tend to press the shutter anyway just to get it done with. You get what you get, me thinks. Sometimes it's great, other times not.

A cool car in Conway, Wales. 

That's about it, I would say. Oh, and it's got this very fancy and easy way to turn the film back 90 degrees so you will be able to get a portrait oriented snap as well, should you wish one. 

Back home this is. The view from our cottage at Sulesund, straight over the "Storfjorden" fjord. This mountain formation is called "Masdalsklova", and I got a few couple of pics of it. Some good, quite a few not that great. 

Any questions? Don't hesitate to throw them at me!

Next blog post will definately not be a gear related one! Don't know why I even started this "project" to be honest. As I told you, there are more than enough people doing this all the time anyway. Think I might just simply stop right here and now, and rather talk about something useful instead. Unless you are begging me for more, of course :)

Photographic gear, a few tales of my Nikon's

Gear.

I have been a bit dubious around the question if I should talk about it all that much. Seems like quite a few is doing this at seriously large scale these days, and I guess everything that has to be said about any gear you may imagine is already out there for anyone to pick up as long as you're able to look into a puter and find google somewhere inside of it. 

I might have a bit different approach and view to it all compared to a few of these people, to be quite frank, so I decided to give it a go anyway. 

Don't even ask! It's not only my cameras that gets a good battering. My films as well, at times. This one has obviously gone through some hard times both before, during and after development. I kind of like it anyway though, and it prints in a cool way. It's a result from a Nikon FM2 a while ago, pointed towards the island Foula west of Shetland.

I sometimes look at any camera as a help for me to capture something else, or in a different way, even though I know all my cameras still do exactly the same thing at the end of the day. Well, that's not absolutely true, but as a rule of thumb I would say all my 35mm cameras will be able to take more or less the same snap if pointed in the same direction, loaded with the same film, adjusted in more or less the same way, and triggered. So will any of my medium format big blocks as well.

Still, they behave and feel kind of different in my hands. Sometimes I think I could even manage to know which of them I'm holding without looking. Blind test kind of thing. 

I will stay away from using words like soul and heart and such... honestly, but the least I can say is that they all play different tricks on me. All of them. More or less all the time.

I got an ever growing series of snaps from the Engine Control Room of my ship. It's all about faces and how they tend to look completely unrecognizable to me as their owners do stuff as I'm snapping away using fairly longish shuttertimes. There's more to come. This was made inside the Nikon FE2.

As an example, I got three Nikon FM2 cameras. You may throw your eyes in their direction (if I can ever find all three of them and line them up at the same time and place, that is...) and they look more or less all the same at first glance if you are able to source away the cosmetic stuff in which there are lots. They still don't feel the same when you pick them up though, and if you shine some old  light through their viewfinders and have a look inside, you will definitively see some major differences. 

I really like these cameras. These all manual and none battery addicted Nikon's. I'll pick them up and bring them along any day. But one of them seem to always manage to stay back home. See I got this FM2 which looks and feels and sounds like it never has been used, and I just can't get myself to really like that one. The other two looks like they have been through a war zone and all, but I still find them a lot more user friendly, to put it that way. Their shutters are a little bit out of timing, and the controls a wee bit loose in their joints after years of use and abuse, but I know them very well now and they feel like a part of me in some kind of weird way. I got my first FM2 back in the early 90's, and it's still with me. I have also owned that "new" one for a few years, but have yet only winded one roll of film through it. Disgraceful, I know. Still it's the truth, and probably a reflection of my feeling for that very camera. It probably has something to do with me anyway. The camera is really good, believe me. It just lacks some serious oomph, and/or mojo. And no, that's not the same as heart and soul, mind you!

Could be early monday morning for all I know. 

Nikon F3P and 50mm Nikkor lens. Fomapan film.

Then there's this couple of Nikon F3's I got lying around. Not much to be said about them actually. Great "user friendly" cameras, both duly battered and hammered and good to go on any street, any time. Both of them have had an earlier long and hard life as the daily working tools of two different reporters in two of the biggest newspapers in Norway, and they look exactly like that as well. One of them a bit more than the other. One of them is the "P" version, with that huge motor/winder/batterypack-thing underneath, adding remarkably to the weight, and I won't even start mentioning sound, to wrap that statement in with some care. I could easily kill something with it, or give people chronical tinnitus. I think I might got that one as a back cover for a huge beast of an f/1.4 85mm Nikkor lens mentioned a bit further down. Or maybe I got the lens as a cover for the F3 house. Don't remember exactly. They both looks like something I got for free anyway, which I almost did.

Could be any day, as this just seems to be his usual ways... but it's definitively after ten o'clock as he finally seems to be ready to do some work.

Nikon FM2 and 35mm Nikkor lens. And yes, relatively long shuttertime and all.

Then there's this one more Nikon I just have to say a bit more than a few words about, my FE2. 

I found myself buying three or four second (or most likely third or forth) hand lenses from this guy a while ago. Nothing fancy, of course, and I payed almost nothing for them (either... ). I was more than politely asking for front and back covers to come with them, but the chap was a bit in lack of back covers so he put that FE2 into the shipment instead... Any camera is a good enough performing lens back cover to me, so I dusted it off and ran a roll through it. Worked very well it did, and it has now somehow grown to become my "grab and run" camera, if you know what I mean? Not that I'm running too much, and my body is hardly known to be built for speed these days, but I know how to grab a camera and I certainly know how to drop them, knock them, bang them into walls, handrails, stairs and elsewhere all over the shop. 

Couple of months ago I left this FE2 on top of my car, then for some reason I suddenly decided to quickly drive away... 

It simply seems to take every beat I manage to give it, up until last month that was. On holliday and everything as I suddenly decided to turn and walk into a shop to buy some tiny stupid hardcase thing for my new phone. Dropped the bloody thing (no, not the phone of course) with my heaviest lens attached (that battered, lovely 85mm f/1.4) from my armpit down to the street/floor as I just was aproaching the door of the shop. Not the big bang you would expect, mind you, and being used to the thing falling from everywhere I just checked the lens. All good with that, and the camera looked not that much worse than usual. A little later, when I sat down at a bench and tried to wind it up to take a picture, I noticed that the thing was beaten to death. The winderthing would not like to find a new frame of film, and I had to pick up one of the FM2's instead. 

I never thought I would do this with such a cheap and not exactly top of the notch camera, but I have used a few hours of my spare time on board the ship and fixed the poor thing. I just could not bear to put it in the bin or to make it into a parts camera or something like that. I know every scratch and dent of this workhorse, and I know how 70% of them got there, so I decided to give it a go on the bench armed with tiny screwdrivers and my glasses on. It payed off, and it's now working again. It seems immortal kind of, even though I know it's days are numbered in my hands. 

The "Old Man", used to be our motorman. He retired some moons ago, and I really miss him. You can't find them like this any more, even though we were lucky to get a great replacement :) He was probably shouting some kind of insults my way as I were fumbling around with a camera and pointed it his way. 

OK! Way too many words used, I know, but I got carried away you see! At least this is my blog, where I can do as I please. Which I do. 

If you would like to have a more "in depth" review of some kind of any of the above mentioned things and stuff, please don't hesitate to light my fire in the comment box below. There's a couple of myriades of lenses as well I could mention. Just didn't feel like it today...

At least I can say something about how much beating things can take. I am not exactly known to be careful, I know, but I have always thought that most of my equipment cost me such a small amount of moony anyway, that I don't exactly have to carry it around like gold. This somehow changed a bit the day that FE2 temporarily lost it's life. But as my brain does not seem to act the way it used to these days, I seem to carry on as before anyway. A minor incident like that one will not stop me, so there will probably be further reading to be done around the same matters some other day.

An almost proper shot of the head of department and everything. Your's truly snapped on one of the first films that ran through my Rolleiflex. We were sitting here waiting for a couple of days as we were going to work, and all airports in europe seemed to be closed. So I went to town and bought this lovely box to kill some time. More about that one another day...

Next batch out will probably be my medium format arsenal... or maybe the tiny and silent german things... or maybe something else. We'll see what I come up with, and when it's going to happen.

Stuck...

Just a snap I snapped a few years back sitting in the airplane soon to start converting fuel to noise and get me home to where I live. I was just off the boat, and had arrived Bergen airport.

I just learned a new english word... from one of my Orkney friends, a great artist doing photography work on the isles, Ingrid Budge. She is working on a new exhibition these days, and is obviously getting disturbed as she goes along. Procrastination... is the word, and made me just think about all the things that throws you off line these days. Most of the time it's something computer related that make me take any sort of detour. When working it's usually e-mails that will disturb me, in my time off I try to do this or that, but I constantly find myself down some other track. Either it's facebook or something else that drags me away from what I really intended to do.

I really love this one! Obviously from my old Minolta Hi-matic G, at the very end of one of the early films from that camera some time in the mid 70's. It's my mother to the left, yours truly in the middle wearing proper headgear for whatever could happen... and my uncle to the right. My father was probably the photographer in this case.

Then, on the other side, I learn things... or get inspiration from others, or I think of new ways to do old things and it can really make my day every now and then.
Like yesterday after posting a simple old shot on facebook (the above pic) from the mid 70's. Taken with my first camera, the old Minolta Hi-matic G I still got on top of my drawers among a bunch of other photo related stuff. 
You see, my uncle, who's pictured in this very snap, has been doing genealogy for years. Many years that is. He even wrote a 150 or so pages book a couple of years ago, and being an old reporter he sure knows how to get that done. A book with the story of my lineage that is. 
Now he has reached a bit further back from where the book ended, so he has to write a new chapter or two soon. He was, however, happy to finally release the news that he now was sure to be correct. And he did so by throwing in a comment on this very picture, yesterday.

Me and my wife like to drive around the British Isles and have a good proper look at all it's things to see. When you are able to see anything, of course. A bit unlike this day at Anglesay in the northern bits of Wales. We liked it, though...

I have always had a special feel for and wish to go see the western parts of Scotland, and especially Skye and the Outer Hebrides. Turns out that I kind of originated from that bits of the world... or my ancestors did, anyway. They flippin' used to own most of Skye and all of Harris and Lewis actually. Folks, it finally looks like I simply have to have a kilt made for me :)) 
Anyway... that could explain some of my interrest of the area, and also some of the reason why I always feel the way I do when I'm travelling the british isles... and especially the small and remote parts of them. Or it might be just plain coinsidence... who knows.
I would like that kilt, anyway!

Not the usual proper tourist snap from the Brough of Birsay, but I like it anyway. It's playing with my mind, somehow... and that could be good and bad. Orkney, you see!

Then I have some blogs to sweep through. That takes some time as well, but seems to be well worth it. I have been through the entire work of Andrea lately, and have now started or is halfway through actually, Michael's blog. He is doing film as well, and does it the proper way. I really like their work, even though they do things very differently. And very different to what I do, of course. And that's just the way it is. We all got our ways, and all. I really look forward to follow these blogs further, as it gives me a lot. It's not just about looking at a few random pics, but there's these whole stories around them even though not many words are written. And yes, I realize that both of them are located out there at those bits of the world I would really like to stay...! Could also be just coincidence. 

The street's propped up for christmas... Kirkwall, Orkney new year 2014/15.

I actually started this post having something to say, but it all went away as soon as I started the writing. I was probably carried away and distracted from whatever story I had to tell. I guess I have to try again some other day. 

At least you will be glad to hear that the captain has not sent me one single e-mail as long as I've been sitting here writing! 

I need to get a life, but then again this is life good enough while I'm here in this kind of prison way out at sea. I can't get anywhere in four weeks, which means that I just have to do what I like to do when I get some time off. If that means I'm doing some proper procrastination, so be it that way! I still got a week to serve...

Part of Stromness, Orkney mainland. I like this street. It's telling a million stories.

Well, as I've fallen totally off, I'll leave you to it. 
See you around some other time :)