On Andrea and Andrea, some photos and things

There's quite a few great pinhole photographers walking around making art as they are on the move. Andrea Taurisano is one of them. I really like the way his photos are presented, and the way his way of expressing himself somehow makes me want to run out and do similar stuff. Not that I'll ever be able to, but the wish and the desire is certainly there. 

I actually bought a tiny small piece of photo kit from this guy not to long ago. Had a short discussion with him on facebook and all. He more or less gave the thing away if you compare the price to anything sold anywhere else. You know, as soon something got Leica stamped on it, it seems to be worth an arm and a leg. This man gave me the stuff for just a few pounds, shilling and pence.

He's from Italy, living in Norway, and his daily work is very different from being a photographer. Nevertheless he is doing both jobs brilliantly as far as I can see.

Go have a look at his blog here! 

He has just set up a nice little gallery in the town where I was born. Trondheim, Norway. There you can borrow any camera he might have at hand, play with odd film, have a good look at, or better actually buy, some of his photos. You may even hire the entire gallery for a week or three for a small sum of money. I call it generousity.

I got this small Voigtländer Vito B (first version with f/3.5 Color Skopar lens) from the mid 50's handed down from my father a while ago. Not that I think he wanted me to have it, but let's say I borrowed it on long term conditions. Anyway, all is fine with the camera up to a point where you reach an invisible limit on the shuttertimes. Suddenly it will only open, and not shut until you physically adjust the shuttertimes to a faster setting. Then that lovely little leaf shutter closes as nothing has ever happened. It's cool to play with anyway though, and can more or less accidentally give a few nice ones at times. As this one, of my daughter.

I have been a bit busy the last few days. Work and such, you see. Soon completed my handover for my back to back, who will be here friday if everything goes my way. Which it does, I truly hope.

Then I'm home before you are able to spell "delayed airplanes", and hopefully in the process of developing a few rolls of film and have them scanned soon as. 

Next thing will be to set up some darkroom stuff in the bathroom and have a go at a few negatives I have revisited lately. 

I'll keep you updated as I proceed. 

Projectvise I got a darkroom to build, and quite a lot of other stuff to sort out down there in the basement of the house. New windows to be fitted, a small workshop to be arranged and what have you all. I will definately not be able to get it all done this trip back home, but if I can get something started it will be great anyway. 

Going Home; as seen from inside a small Beechcraft turboprop airplane just leaving Kirkwall airport heading for Norway. Old german M3 camera on some film I once had.

Pit stop. 

Four to five hours waiting is not uncommon in this crowded airport of Bergen, as we head for home. No wonder the second engineer looks a tiny wee bit bored of it all. 

Well, I think I'll just leave you to it for tonight then.

Personally I got a few more posts of Andrea Taurisano's blog to go over and have a further look at. He has done the Trans Siberian Railroad trip a couple of years back, and the snaps are like sent from heaven.

Strange, in fact, that two photographers I am truly fond of got the same name... The other Andrea, over at Boxes and Bellows got something of the same when it comes to ways of expression. I really like them both.

I was thinking about this coctail...

Not the stuff some people drink, mind you. In that world I prefere something simple and would go for a good beer or some Islay whisky. No, this time it was about music. Music and photography, to be more precise. 

I was listening to Tom Waits just a few moments ago, from some of his darkest moments. And believe me, those are dark! For those of you not familiar, go listen... carefully. This man has been to places I would never ever dream of going if I could avoid it. And he sure knows how to get a story out of what he has experienced.

Then I started to think about dark photography, and suddenly vaguely remembered parts of a name from a few years back. Someone I more or less stumbled over by coincidence. I remember thinking about the same thing back then as I thought this evening. Google at hand I soon found the right man.

If there is anyone out there who has to be the Tom Waits of photography, it's got to be Anders Petersen from Sweden. 

Please, have a look here (this link is troublesome on my computer here at sea, but you might get something out of it...) and here, and see for yourselves. You don't have to like it, but if you like street, documentary and intimate personal photography on speed, this is as good as it ever gets. For some article around him you may also go this way to read some more background. This man has been around for lots of years, and I hope he will still be for many to come.

His work seems to be balancing on some kind of invisible edge, and I feel he may fall down on the wrong side at any moment. Extremely close, extreme situations and situations produced by some extreme people at times. His style is raw, unmasked, occationally inflammatory, and just brilliant I have to say. 

Just like Tom Waits.

We took off to Wales one day!

Sure! You know the place where they pronounce things a wee bit different than most of us. Where you pass a road sign and don't have a clue what to look out for? The place with the "ddraig goch yn eu baner" and all of that sort, you know. Not only that, but they also got a village called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, and the natives are able to speak it out in a remarkably short nick of time, and I kid you not!
And there are castles! In plenty!

At one of our pit stops to "water the horse". An old mill I guess. Nice place it was for sure. Mamiya RZ67.

Anyway, it's an interresting small piece of land in many ways, and it pleases me a very lot to inform you that there's nothing to be reluctant about, going to Wales and such. The people are just fantastic, as I have started to get used to here on these Isles after some travelling around the area, and the weather is exactly as they say it is. More or less the same weather we have back home, which suits me fine. No big chance of getting over heated or severed burned by the sun and all of that plague! Bring some wool and waterproofs, and you are ready to have a great time for sure!

Here's one. That's a castle up there on the hill, you see.

We bought a flight directly from my local airport over to London, Gatwick. Decided to rent a car at the airport, as it's the easiest way to do things when you come flying in from Norway. I've done it before, so I knew where to go to get the best service. Last time I rented a car here I had one booked in advance, but was (very easily) persuaded by the lady behind the desk to take something a bit less boring. You see, that trip was only for myself and my step daughter on a road trip up a bit northwards to have three days at the Download festival, with great music and lots of fun. So we had to have a nice ride as well, as you might understand? Two seats, loads of horse power, red color, chrome and what have you all. Only backdraw was the fact that the car was from france, but what the heck... as we did not have the cash to buy some fancy vintage old english sports car, this one would have to do.

This was back like three years ago or something like that. The next year, as we were going to Wales, me and my wife as you know, it all went a bit different at that car rental shoppy thing. What is there with wifes and the total lack of interrest in cars... and so on? Well, obviously it's a question about a lot of things, and the way it all went on I have to say that the only thing I might should have considered was to rent an old Land Rover instead. No sports car, no Vauxallsomethingtinyweeverysmall... just a plain Land Rover Defender type of thing. That's what I should have done.
But, I didn't, or we didn't. We blindly decided to go for the smallest ride in the shop, and off we went. To see Wales! And note to self: Don't always listen to people telling you that a 1,1 litre engine (or whatever was loosely fastened inside that boring blue wheelbarrow) is plenty enough to take you around most of the british isles in a comfy way. It's all simply a bag of nonsense! A Land Rover would probably not be very comfy either, but at least it would have managed the trip a bit better, I would think.

Wales is a beautiful piece of land, by all standards. Hills and good croftsland all over the shop, and beautiful beaches, cliffs and sea views. And did I mention castles?! 
The people of Wales must have carried a lot of stone over the years it seems. There are walls built all over the country, and if they had a few stones in spare, they seem to simply have built a castle or ten, just because they could. Not wee tiny small things mind you! Huge fortresses more or less evenly spread all around the country. And they worked. At least by the standards of the days back then. 
Fantastic buildings they are, and adds to the landscape they do for sure. 

Conwy Castle. A mastodont made of stone!

Mamiya RZ67

Don't know if you can see anything at all... but there actually is some information on that negative somewhere inside all that fog. Need to try a print of a crop of this me think. One day, when I got that darkroom up and running. Nikon FM2 on Fomapan film.

And then there's fog. Loads of it at times. I'm quite used to it from back home, but I prefere to see a few meters ahead when I go to visit somewhere new to me. But the fog somehow adds to the landscape as well I must admit. I remember one day we were at Angelsay out to see the lighthouse at South Stack. Stopped at the parking lot, went out and could not see a thing. Not that we were surprised, because we could not even see our car having walked five meters away from it... It was great though, both not to see the car for a few and also to hear the foghorn just down below us, and the sea poundering towards the cliffs down there somewhere. We stood there, paralyzed for a while. Just listening. And it was all just good. No snaps though, as you might already have figured out...

South Stack Lighthouse as it appears when you finally has climbed down all those stairs. A nice walk down the cliffside it is, and highly recomended.

And there are small tiny wee lovely hills spread around, and you're in this small car with that small engine using the gear shifter like an idiot trying to keep the thing alive long enough to reach the hilltop, and sometimes you succeed, and sometimes not so. And then there's the downhill on the other side, if you get that far, and the breaks materialize themselves as to be built just as tiny and small as you might would think if you gave it a second thought before you went away from down there just south of London a few days ago. What a thrill, that ride through Wales! 

We drove up north. Came in from the east with the sun in our eyes. Drove up to Angelsay the first day, moved around a bit, managed to get a good view of the lighthouse at South Stack the day after the foggy one, and drove south on the coastline. We came in through Snowdonia in the night time, but we can see the mountains some other time. We are a lot more interrested to see the sea views, as it happens, and we had a lot of that taken on board. And it was all good.
We went for long walks on some fantastic beaches, and had a great week together. Out there in the rural areas, just me and my wife. You see, we prefere to travel a bit outside season, as we like to see how places looks without most of the tourist stuff that usually happens to create some noise during summertime wherever you go. 

Nope! I simply have no clue folks! She came in from howhere there at the left and refused to move at any high speed. I could have looked like some pro standing on the other side of the road trying to get a decent snap of the "Saddlers Arms" pub, but I still can't figure out why she suddenly slowed down to a point where I just had to take the picture and then do something else... Nikon FM2, Fomapan.

Then we went home, and I sloshed a few films around in smelly rodinal I guess... and managed to save a few somewhat OK frames.
The car...? Oh, it kind of like made it all the way somehow. The eyes of the guy who checked it after our trip rolled a bit around in his skull when he checked the meter reading and stuff like that... mumbling something of overdue, oil change... things like that. None of my concerns to be honest. I care about my engines at work and at home, and he will have to take care of his own business. 

We will be back some day, Wales!

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 :)