Contrast

For me, my photo archive is sacred. It contains so many memories of the past, that I would be devastated if I lost them. But, I am quite lazy when it comes to backups and making paper copies of my photos. I should learn of the history, a few years ago, when I kept all my photos in the folder "My pictures" and Windows crashed, it took me almost one week to restore my archive. Which, by that moment, only contained about 3 000 pictures. Nowadays the number of photos in my archive comes to almost 60 000 pieces, of which I have a backup for about 50 000 of them.

So, why am I telling this to you? Well, it is because of two complete different reasons. Firstly, one of my new year resolutions will be to take more paper copies and backups of my photos. That isn't so hard to accomplish, I just need to write it down so I will remember it. Secondly, this explanation will be a little bit more diffuse, if I ever lose my pictures, many memories which never ended up in front of the camera also will be lost. You see, when I look at my pictures, I can imagine the past event, all the circumstances around the photo, how it smelled, who was there and parts of what was said. In other words, I can recreate many memories and situations with my photos. I am a person who tend to focus more on the small details rather than the big picture, but with all my memories of the details I can re-experience past memories once again. It is never advisable to live in the past, but by forgetting about your history you never will learn anything or be able to see things in retrospective. If something, or somebody, is forgotten, then they cease to exist.

A couple of days ago I took my camera for a walk in the cold weather. The camera showed a weird behavior during these winter walks, I had a hard time to get the auto focus to work, but I believe that the intense cold temperatures was the reason for this malfunction. I took some photos of the setting sun over Göteborg and Älvsborgsbron. The midwinter solstice was yesterday, so now the days will become longer and brighter, even if it is hard to believe at the moment. Outside my window it is minus seven degrees Celsius and even if the lights from the city does it best to brighten up the sky, it is very dark out there.

Bright and cold

A contrast to this midwinter sun over a frosted sea is the sunsets in the Argentinian jungle. The picture below show the sunset at Rio Parana Guazú in October. It was very beautiful, I just wish I had taken more photos on board.

Rio Parana Guazú

First place

I won...! Thank you all, it means a lot to me! And a special thanks to the person which made it possible by sending in my photos to the contest. Thank you, I hope you know how much it means!

Sister in arms

The last week, my sister came up to Göteborg for a quick visit. Back in the old days she used to be my model when I was shooting pictures with my analogue Minolta XG-1. With that tradition in memory, I arranged a quick photo session with a military theme together with Magdalena.

Close up of sister


Another close up

The picture below wasn't taken yesterday, instead it is one of my archive pictures from this summer. The picture shows the Leopard 121 (in the same series as the no. 122), which is used by several countries' forces and built and designed together by the US army and European forces.

And to complete this blog post, a photo manipulation of my sister. I have added some nice background in Photoshop instead of the boring white walls in my apartment.

I beg you pardon for not writing so much today. I am not in the mood. Instead, feel free to listen to my hart playlist (german hart - hard). Just plain rock, synth and some NDH (Neue Deutsche Härte, which is basically industry metal).

Dead in 3 days

Today, and the last night, I spent most of my time feeling ill and miserable. It is the common winter flu that hunts me, but I feel like I have caught the plague. I needed somehing to kill the time, therefore I ended up in front of the computer constructing my first very own movie poster. Without ever seeing the actual movie "In 3 Tagen bist du tot" (but I have been listening to the soundtrack all the day), I decided to make this poster. Photo and layout by me, phrases and names comes from the official poster.

(The model at the poster is my sweet sis)

Edit 2010-12-10: For the best Spotify Movie Soundtrack playlist, click here. As you know, I am a big fan of movie soundtracks and I tend to listen to the music a lot when I am watching movies. The playlist contain 188 tracks (at the moment, I add music constantly).

Slow

I beg you pardon for not updating my blog frequently this week, I have been out from the city, and in addition, to be completely honest, I haven't had the urge or motivation to photograph this week. However, I have some new pictures for the blog, and one from the archive, so please, enjoy!

Malta, summer 2010

Yes, the picture above illustrates my activity at the blog the past week. I took this photograph while waiting for the bus to Hagar Quim, a ancient temple ruin at Malta, the past summer.

The duchess Tina

My sister has an old cat named Tina, she is mostly friendly but can be both very unreliable and a little bit posh, therefore she also is known as the duchess Tina. I have other names for that cat too, but they are not advisable to mention in this blog.

The picture below shows my sister with the youngest member in my family, my newborn cousin Elsa. She is only a couple of weeks old, and in my eyes so fragile. It was a very long time since I held a baby, I believe it was when I held my baby sister (22 years ago!), therefore I was afraid to hold Elsa in my arms, but it went just fine.

Sister Maggie and Elsa

Today I spent most of the time in the shops, where I found this retro rarity, a Polaroid Land Camera 1000. I bought the camera in a second hand shop, paying 50 SEK (approx. 5 Euro). For thet price I got the camera, one partly burnt out flash, a new flash and a set with SX-70 integral film (witch unfortunately was too old, last date to use the film was august 1979). Hopefully I will find some film that suits the camera online.

Soon I will post Polaroid photos on this blog!