PHOTOheadlines is closing shop and merging with my new weblog Arctic Visions. Please delete your links and check out the new site: http://www.arcticvisions.wordpress.com.

Above Water

It’s Saturday and I’m already dreading the arrival of a new week. After spending a month doing photography I had piles of work waiting in the office. To top it all off I was knocked out with the flue this week and my backlog is now overwhelming. Combine that with trying to get prints and framing done for the upcoming holidays… Anyway, I’m not gonna waste more of this Saturday sulking, rather I’ll kick back and relax and listen to some new music.

A fellow Norwegian Arctic countryman, Jørn Skogheim, caught my attention a few years back. After getting his 2007 album Above Water a year ago it has been collecting dust in the rip-to-walkman pile. I’ve been too busy listening to piano music this past year so there hasn’t been much time to listen to anything else. Anyway, this album blew my mind from the get go! It’s hard to describe what genera it belongs to, but I think symphonic melodic jazz is a pretty accurate description. It’s unlike anything I’ve got in my Jazz collection. It’s an interesting and joyful listen from start to finish. This is one of those undiscovered gems that makes you realize that the best music seems destined to go unnoticed.

The album is sadly hard to get outside of Norway but an mp3 version is available through amazon.com: Jørn Skogheim – Above Water The CD can be ordered from Norway here.

My art deals a lot with globalization and how it affects areas once thought of as remote and autonomous in Arctic Norway. Local culture is being replaced with imported culture, especially American culture. Hence I found this home video clip of a hillbilly wedding taking place in Northern Norway quite interesting. What caught my eye in this clip wasn’t the “white people that can’t dance” stumbling down the isle like a flock of elephants, but rather how many of the guests that were more occupied with catching the action with their cameras than actually just being a guest and enjoying the moment. Time’s they are a changin’! The video can be watched here:  http://www.vgtv.no/?id=26451

It’s hard not to be emotionally engaged by this piece by Maisie Crow: http://2009.soulofathens.com/?q=node/48

It makes me wonder why most of us fail to live our lifes like each day was our last. It’s just too darn easy to become comfortably numb – remember  the song by Pink Floyd? I’ll give it a try and seize the afternoon by watching some more of those multimedia flicks…

The merger of photography and multimedia has been a long time coming. The students of Ohio University has made some of their work public, and there are moments of greatness for sure. Let’s just hope some of those talents won’t have to flip burgers for a living – the current state of photography in mind. Check out these small multimedia masterpieces here:

http://2009.soulofathens.com/

BTW, I’ve just gotten Sony Vegas. As a documentary photographer I feel the siren of multimedia calling, wether I like it or not. It will probably mean a lot work for less pay (per hour for sure). Now, if you just could download food free from the Internet…

Thanks to http://www.aphotoeditor.com/ for the Ohio U link!

Welcome to Nowhere

It’s been a busy autumn, but things are finally slowing down. I’ve still got 160 Gigs of images to sort through after my “away from society trip” in September and October. My photoblog is up and running after a long battle learning to tweak some php code. It’s an aimless place where I post a picture every now and then reflecting what I’m working with at that very moment. You can visit it here: www.svein-frode.com/arcticvisions

The days are getting lighter up here in the Arctic, but it’s still just a few hours of dim daylight. On clear days we can see the sun for an hour or two low on the horizon. Great light to photograph in, but I’m stuck in the office… Looking out the window is enough to make an allready mad man go insane! Anyway, I’m working on a few print portfolios and getting online a few galleries of my sold out editions on www.svein-frode.com.

It’s been a while, but business is good and I am an barely able too keep clients satisfied. On top of that, I’ve just added Lightroom 2 and PixelGenius PhotoKit Sharpener to my darkroom arsenal, and old dogs have a hard time learning new tricks as you all know. Both programs are highly recommended, and as soon as Lightroom gets soft proofing, I see little reason to continue using Photoshop. As for blogging, it’s going to be a while. I am heading for the woods and will leave telephones and the Internet behind for a couple of months. Joining me will be my cameras, tent and sleepingbag.

What would the world of television be without the BBC? I lament the thought. As much as a state owned liscendsfunded television company always will be a propaganda machine for the state, the production record of the Scandinavian and British channels are nevertheless outstanding.

Last night for instance I watched the first episode of BBC’s latest natural history series, Life in cold blood, narrated by the narrator above all narrators, sir David Attenbourugh. The viewing left little to be desired and convinced me once again that BBC Bristol is the gold standard of natural history television. Even before they all turned into reality soap opera channels, the Discovery Channel, Nation Geographic Channel and Animal Planet, to name a few, were nowhere near the quality of BBC productions. Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/lifeincoldblood/

© BBC

But the “Beeb” doesn’t just make excellent nature programs, they create other kinds interesting television programs. Last week I got my hands on The Genius of Photography. It’s a documentary series of six one hour episodes highlighting important movements in photography. Familiar names like Martin Parr, Joel Meyerowitz and Alec Soth are featured and interviewed. Excellent and rare TV-entertainment for photographers. Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/

It seems that with spring my rut is finally starting to let go. I’m one of those candles that burn from both sides whenever I am engaged in a project. Sometimes my high lasts for a few hours, sometimes for months, but I always crash and burn at some point. I am very excited about my current projects and hopefully I will get some time off from the day job to finish them properly.

My latest recovery has much to do with me discovering the superb photoblog of Mark Hobson, The Landscapist. Hobson is as good a writer as he is a photographer. Refreshingly frank and heart-warmingly intellectual his words and photos are a breath of fresh air from the over saturated world of online photography conformity. Getting such thought provoking material for free is almost too good to be true, so tune in before Hobson gets tired and waste his efforts elsewhere.

Ku #513 by © Mark Hobson

I’ve been in a rut lately. After four weeks of photographing the most interesting places in the Arctic, I am back in town (read: civilization) and feel empty and directionless. It’s not that I lack ideas, but my day job has been sucking me dry of energy and I am unable to do anything worthwhile. A few hours of importing my digital archive into Lightroom is all I can manage at the moment. I’m working on two articles that I hope will be published this weekend. It’s inspirational stuff, so stay tuned. While I eat my vegetables and catch some sleep, I’ll post a reminder for myself and all of you folks out there: There’s always someone having a worse day than you!