Rune Kolvik / Blog

It was time for my first trip to the capital of England. Maybe even Great Britain – The United kingdom. Maybe even Europe. I had wanted to visit this city for a long time and now was my chance. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion and guide in this large city. Isabelle Uller had lived there for a number of years, and gave me an introduction that suited me well.

I had said before we went there that I had little to no interest for seeing the usual tourist sites, like The Big ben, Westminster abbey, The London eye, and so on. I wanted to experience the city as best I could in the 3 days we had there.

The trip was paid for by Studio G, as a reward for a pleasant result the prior year. And if it was not for this fact, London would still be on my list of places to visit. It is now transferred to the list of places to revisit – accompanied by Paris.

My first impression of London overwhelmed me a bit. At first i thought it was the size of everything, but i later realized it was more the number of small things. The quantity of the city. I think i was overwhelmed by a need to take everything in. It was only after realizing this and accepting the impossibility of the task that i could relax and enjoy what I was experiencing.

The first day we walked along Oxford street and browsed some very large stores. We passed through Regent Street on our way to Soho. I liked Soho for it’s smaller size. I liked the narrow streets. Later we gave a visit to The National portrait gallery. A lot of large old paintings of old royalties. Not exactly our cup of tea, so we found our way to the basement and saw a small exhibition of photographs by Mary McCarthy. I had bought her book some time ago, so I really enjoyed seeing her prints on the walls of The National portrait gallery. Following the visit to the gallery we had a few pints of lager at a pub, before we went to our reservation at a Chinese restaurant in Soho, Plum Valley. This restaurant gave us what was to be the best meal, by far, of the trip. For starters de ate a very delicious duck, chicken and prawn dumplings, fried squid, and some vegetarian dishes i sadly have forgotten. For the main course I ate Mongolian beef with fried noodles and some rice. I think this even qualifies as my best meal EVER.    

The second day we did some more shopping in Oxford street, and checked out Covent Garden. Boy do they have shoe stores in Covent Garden. I don’t think two hands have enough fingers to count them all. A bit later we met up with the rest of the gang to have dinner at a restaurant I have sadly forgotten the name of. Or maybe the restaurant is glad, because I didn’t like the food there. It was ok. I ate it all. But I had expected more from a restaurant with such a fancy menu. Oh well. They can’t all have the best food I guess. Isabelle and I ate quickly, because we had other plans. We were going to a metal pub in Soho, to meet some old friends of her. On our way there Isabelle assured me that she knew where it was. After walking up and down the street two or tree times, we tried the next street, and there it was. Bröderna Olssons Garlic and Shots. What a lovely little place. Judging by the name i would have thought the smell of garlic would be more prominent. But I couldn’t really smell any garlic. Luckily we didn’t make use of the elaborate shot menu. 101 different shots can very quickly spell disaster. And what a colourful pallet of friends. A writer, a rock/metal photographer, a touring band merchandise salesperson, a brain surgeon. We talked for a few hours and had a few beers then we took the tube back to the hotel.

Third and final day Isabelle and I travelled to Camden to shop a little at the markets. She found a lovely dress and a handbag, and i found a leather jacket. We also gave a visit to the fascinating store Cyberdog. Blacklight and raving music. I guess we were in a raver’s heaven. Back to the hotel to grab our luggage and off to the airport.

There is a very funny story to be told about the long drive to the airport, but out of respect for a certain person, I will keep it to myself.   …for now.      

A short post just to let you know about an inspirational interview with the talented swede Jessica Silversaga over at Moderskeppet. (Interview in Swedish)

http://www.moderskeppet.se/live/arkiv/2011/i-blickfanget-jessica-silversaga/

Some might say I spend far too much money on photography. I actually feel that I don’t really spend that much. I mean, what amount is too much for your biggest interest? How much do you spend on your biggest interest/hobby? I am guessing other people tell you that you spend far to much.

So today is my birthday. I spent it roaming some of my favorite shops, and of course I had to spend some money. It is my birthday after all. First store was Fretex Unika. From time to time I visit this store in the hopes of finding an old camera. And today I was lucky. On a shelf on the other side of the store I saw something that looked like an old Vivitar flashgun. Turned out it was a very old Canon flash. However right next to it was something far more interesting. A very nice Minolta AL-F in mint condition. It even had a protective UV filter mounted. I just had to buy it, and here it is.

Next store I just had to visit was my favorite bookstore; Norli, Nordre gate. They have the best selection of photography books in Trondheim, hands down. I bought a book that I have been looking at for a while. David LaChapelle’s Heaven to hell. Being a minimalist photographer that loves Black and white photography, David is far from my favorite photographer with his not very minimalistic and colorful style. But this particular book is one of those books every collector of photobooks have to have in their shelves. So I bought it.

Lastly I’d like to show off a lens I acquired yesterday. A 28mm F3.5 Nikkor lens for my Nikon analogue camera. I have only had a 50mm for this camera, and always felt I needed more. In addition to being minimalist and like b&w, I love wide angle. Even 50mm is borderline to much tele for my taste. I guess I like 50 for portraits where I don’t want to much background. But then again I love including background to tell more of a story about the subject. But that, I guess, would be for another post.

This year will hopefully give me several high points. The first being the trip to London. But the best high point i know of will be on the 4th to the 6th of May. This year’s festival promises to be even better than last year. Not only are some of my favourite photographers going to exhibit, they also going to give talks. The ones I am most looking forward to is; Albert Watson and Erwin Olaf. I had the pleasure of seeing Albert giving a talk when i attended Norrlandsdagarna in Sundsvall/Sweden back in January 2007, and it was very inspiring. I am hoping that will be the case this time around as well.

In addition to these photographers, I am looking forward to seeing the talk that Vee Speers will give, as well as all the exhibitions. With a total of just over 50 different exhibitions, I am not sure there will be enough time to see them all, let alone enjoy them, so I will have to filter some of them away.

This year I am so lucky that I am going with two of my favourite photographer friends. Cecilie Sørgård and Lena Katrin Bye Mikkola decided to come and be inspired. And i am sure they will be.

Last year I made plans to write a summary of each day, and i failed miserably. (Day before, Day 2 (in Norwegian)) I just wrote a way too long post about day one. So this year I’ll try not to write too much for each day, and to write about all the days. I will also try to take lots of pictures both with my G10 for the blog and my camera-phone for twitter.  

Last year was a good year for the lab where i work, and as a reward i have been invited to go to London right after the Easter holiday. I am really looking forward to the trip. Hopefully i will take a lot of nice pictures over there. Maybe it will be enough to make a slideshow i can show here on the blog. Hopefully I will get to se some lovely galleries, and I am looking forward to see Isabelle again. She lived in London when she studied photography there, and I hope she has lots of nice stuff to show me/us.

I’ll write about the trip when i return from London in late April.

tk  

I have finally taken matters into my own hands and done some changes i felt was needed to the layout of the blog. There are some kinks here and there still that i need to fix, but nothing critical. I have decided to make my blog international with the use of English, so my non Scandinavian visitors can enjoy(?) my content as well. But the biggest change is that i have made more room for imagery. I am a photographer, and i want to show off my work, and work by others, in a better way than before.

I am planning to write some articles about some subjects that many photographers forget, or just don’t talk about. I might also write some tutorials on both photographic technique and post production.

The old content will remain as is. I could go over some of it an fix the image sizes and translate the text, but i opted out of it. I want to create new material in stead. Maybe i will rewrite some of the old ones at a later time.

Hope the changes work well, and that they will be appreciated.

So. I finally have some concrete plans for the design for my site. Atleast in broad strokes. The details will be worked out as we get closer to completion. I am stoked to get it underways.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

For litt siden hadde jeg besøk av en god venn. Vi snakka om mangt og meget som vanlig, og i samtalen ble det snakk om blogg og tilstedeværelse på nett. I tiden etter dette har jeg tenkt en del på nettsiden min. Den kunne trengt seg en ansiktsløftning. Jeg har satt I gang tankeprosessen, så vi får se etterhvert hva som kommer ut av det.

De siste dagene har jeg også sett litt på hva slags mennesker det er som besøker nettsiden min. Det er jo ikke uventet I hovedsak nordmenn og litt fra de øvrige skandinaviske land. Men det er også ganske mange ikkenorske innom. Tanken blir derfor; burde jeg skrive på engelsk?

Oversetter jeg hele siden til engelsk, og skriver innlegg på engelsk, så åpner jeg for større publikum. Men kan jeg miste noe av det norske publikum? Ikke det at det er så voldsomt stort publikum akkurat nå, men man vet jo aldri. Alternativt kan jeg fortsette å skrive på norsk, men ha ett lite engelsk sammendrag I slutten av innleggene mine.

Jeg har lyst til, for første gang, å be dere lesere om deres meninger. Legg tilbake en kommentar om du synes jeg skal fortsette på norsk og drite I det internasjonale publikum. Skrive norsk med engelsk sammendrag. Eller kjøre engelskspråklig.

Takk

Er det ikke typisk? Ok, jeg skal forklare. I gamle dager var det ingenting som het USB. Den gangen ble mus og tastatur koblet til datamaskiner med PS2 porter. Så kom USB, men det var ingen tastatur som hadde USB kabel. Så begynte tastaturene omsider å ha USB kabel, men man fikk ikke brukt dem før man var godt inn i operativsystemet. Så kom det hovedkort som hadde innebygd støtte for USB tastatur i bootinga.

Så tilbake til frustrasjonen.

En stund har jeg planlagt at når jeg endelig får fast nettlinje her hjemme, så skal min stasjonære maskin freshes opp og benyttes til kreativt arbeide. Når jeg vil “jobbe” så skal jeg sette meg ved “jobb” maskinen.

I dag var dagen jeg skulle gjøre oppussinga. Stakk innom sjappa og kjøpte skjøteledning. Dro hjem å smekka WindowsDVD plata i spillern. Reboota maskina og venta på “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD”. Jeg trykte og venta.. ingenting skjedde..  FAEN. USB tastatur funker ikke i booten på maskina mi. Så jeg måtte utsette hele jobben til jeg får tak i ett PS2 tastatur. Spørs om jobben skal få låne meg ett i helga. 

Jeg er god på å utsette ting jeg har lyst til å gjøre. – Ja du leste riktig; ting jeg har lyst til å gjøre. Jeg har i hele sommer blitt inspirert nesten på daglig basis med tanker om innlegg jeg kan skrive her på bloggen min. Jeg har vært inne på tanken om en ukentlig serie med innlegg. Ja til og med daglige innlegg. Men hvor blir de av? – I bakhodet mitt.

Jeg har, som veldig mange andre, vrangforestillinger om at mine skriveferdigheter ikke er som Tolstoys eller Kafkas eller Loes. Så det er ikke noe påeng å skrive. Noen få øyeblikk imellom alle disse med vrangforestillingene blir jeg rammet av fornuft. Fornuft som forteller meg at man må da ikke være en av disse tre for å skrive ned sine tanker og funderinger. Jeg har åpenbart ett av de øyeblikkene i kveld. Om så ikke var tilfelle hadde jeg ikke sittet her nå å skrevet dette innlegget.

Det skal også nevnes at de hemmende tankene ikke utelukkende kommer innenfra. Flere ganger har jeg hørt kommentarer om at jeg må skrive kortere og mere allment interessante innlegg på bloggen min . Jeg må også fokusere mer på bilder. Da og kun da vil det komme lesere til bloggen min. Og jeg har hørt på dem. Men hva oppnår jeg med det? Jeg tiltrekker meg lesere som liker å lese ting jeg ikke liker å skrive. At det burde være flere bilder her er jeg helt enig i. Men de må komme når det er naturlig for meg å legge dem ut.

Når det er sagt, så håper jeg at jeg i tiden fremover rammes av mange flere av disse øyeblikkene hvor jeg ikke har mindreverdighetskomplekser, og tar meg selv i nakkeskinnet å setter i gang. Det er jo bare det som stopper meg. Latskap og mindreverdighetskomplekser.