2021-12-08 The pandemic disease is by no means over yet wich means that we are still heavily restricted when it comes to travelling like the most of us. Still I have participated in two workshops arranged by Wild Nature Photoadventures located quite near our home so I could go there in my car by myself. Both were focusing (no pun intended) on bird photography with the special aim to work with differnt light situations and capturing motion. The first lokation was Hjälstaviken wich is a wellknown place for bird watchers and photographers and lies some 60 km northwest of Stockholm in a part of lake Mälaren. You can stay at Ekolsunds castle, a favorite place for king Gustav III of Sweden in the 18:th century. The workshop was held in october 2020. In may 2021 the location was Råstasjön wich lies in a suburb close to Stockholm. It is a popular place for people who live in the surroundings where you can have a walk all around the lake. This means that 1) Birds are used to people and that many feed them, 2) Some birds expect to be fed regardless of if you lie down on the ground with a camera in your hand, wich sometimes can be somewhat disturbing especially if the bird happens to be a big swan that gets annoyed if you don't instantly give it what it demands. Still, we had a lot of fun during both weekends and tried different approaches, some of wich can be seen under under their tags.
2020-08-15 Partly due to the pandemic spread of covid-19 we have not been able to participate in any photographic excursions abroad for some time. Therefore I have had to rely on home grounds for objects. Inspired by my visit to Bence Mate in Hungare 2018 I have built my own photographic hide in a corner of our lot where I have taken some photos of very common birds, the kind that won't raise any eyebrows on people from the northern half of Europe, but that's what is offered at the moment. We have also been blessed with a fox's nest at the border of our lot and three or four cubs that I managed to get som pictures of one early morning. One very late evening I spotted a blackbird singing from the top of an a giant birch and I was naturally reminded of Paul McCartney's beautiful song as I grabbed my camera. You may object that it doesn't look like it's night time, but mind you, the nights round about midsummer are very light where we live. You will find these pictures under the tag: "Backyard animals".
2018-09-19 my wife Lena and I travelled to Zimanga in South Africa. It is a private game reserve where the only hunting allowed is with a camera. The trip was in every way perfectly organized by Wild Nature Photoadventures. Once again I had the pleasure to meet Brutus Östling, this time together with Lena, and of course his equally nice collague Henrik Karlsson. We also were lucky to have Roan Ravenhill as our guide the entire stay. He took us to the different hides were we stayed a couple of hours daytime and on four occasions the entire night. He also took us around in his off-road car and managed to localize all sorts of different animals. We managed to check four out of the Five Big. The only one we missed was the leopard but instead we had a lovely close encounter with a female cheetah which was the only one where we were allowed to get out of the car to get some real close photos.
2018-07-26 In may I went to Hungary on a workshop led by the famous Swedish bird-photographer Brutus Östling. The destination was the "Farm" owned by the equally famous bird photograper Bence Mate who has built 22 different hides near the village of Pusztaszer, some 100km south-east of Budapest. The hides vary from quite simple, but efficient, to extraordinary in comfort and equipment - the names "Cinema" and "Theatre" really says it all. You can find some interresting reading here: https://bencemateshides.com/ Some birds were, to me at least, very exciting to see, like the Roller, Coracias garrulus,which you could find in Sweden up to the mid 60's but regretably not anymore. A truly colorful bird like the Bee-eater, Merops apiaster. Yet another bird not to be seen in Sweden is the Hoopoe, Upupa epops. I have gathered them all under the Bee-eater's tag. You wil find some photos of a small animal that doesn't leave the ground but rather lives in cavities in the ground, the Gopher. A whole bunch of them were rescued from extermination where they lived at the Budapest international airport. The Gophers attracted all kinds of birds of pray and those together with airliners are not a very good combo. So now the Gophers live happily in Bence's farm and today there are more than just a bunch of them!
2017-11-24 In the second half of October my wife Lena and I went, for the fourth time, back to Soma Bay at the Red Sea in Egypt to dive again. This was the first time for both of us, not counting some training in our clubs pool in Stockholm, since our accidents a year ago. We were both very excited to come back to the Orca Dive Center where we have had so many pleasant experiences before and as we are fairly familiar with the different divesites we felt at home. We were very happy to meet with Mahmoud again and once again have him as our private guide and we felt absolutely safe in his presence now that we picked up diving again. You will find some pictures under the tab "Soma Bay 2017".
2017-06-05 For the third time we, my wife Lena and I, were back to visit Håkan and Eva Vargas in Hälsingland in order to try and take photos of the Swedish brown bear. We hadn't been terribly lucky earlier but this time we were blessed with three encounters; twice in the evening with clearly two different bears and one in the morning. If the last one was yet another, or one of those we saw in the evening before, we don't know. It had been raining and there was still an overcast wich produced a nice light and numerous pictures were taken. As usual we were very well taken care of and in the (rather unlikely) event that there are no bears to be photographed, there is alwas plenty of good food and laughter to cheer you up!
2017-04-10 In the second half of february I went to Japan, a trip organized by Patrik Lindqvist and Max Gennel from "Mästerfoto" (Masterphoto), and Roberth Graham. The planning of the trip started a year ago and when lightning struck me in October I was quite convinced that I could not possibly go. In mid december Patrik phoned me and I informed him of the fact that I was still very week in my right leg and partly needing crutches. The mere thought of carrying some 15kg of photografic equipment was just not done. "No problem" Patrik said "I'll carry it for you" (!) I raised another half a dozen objections but he convinced me that I'd be all right with them - And so I was!
Our first goal was to take pictures of the snowmonkeys and just getting there was somewhat adventurous. We walked a good 1½ km mostly upphill on a path just wide enough for two people to meet on some places. Once in the monkey park we experienced rough weather with hard wind and snowing. If I had been at home I wouldn't have put my feet outside my front door but now it was monkey time and I'm pleased I did it. An extra tuch of adventure was changing lens without immediate filling up the camera body with snow!
For the rest of the stay we travelled by car. We aimed for the red crowned crane, which is one of the biggest cranes in the world. It is a rare bird where most of them breed in Siberia, northeast China and Mongolia and migrate to central parts of China during winter. In Hokkaido there is a resident population that we could take pictures of.
The lake Kussharo is particular in that there is hot water that springs out nere the edge of the lake and in winter, when the rest of the lake is frozen, there is an icefree zone a couple of meters wide along the shore where masses of swans come to be fed.
There is a small fishing town called Rausu where you find the biggest eagle in the world, the Steller's eagle. Their wingspan can reach 2,5 meter. They are impressive to watch soaring in the sky but also surprizingly fast and agile at times. Boats take tourists out to the pick-ice wintertime where the eagles gather waiting to be fed with frozen fish. We also found eagles fed on an icy lake in the Notsuke peninsula where we saw a quite dramatic scene with a fox stealing a fish and then being attacked by several eagles. We were happy to see the fox doing al right in the fight althoug it lost it's pray. On the Notsuke peninsula we also found the Sika deer, previously found from the nothern Vietnam in the south to the Russian far east in the north. Nowadays you only find them in Japan where they on the other hand are numerous.
2017-01-13 Due to a sudden onset of bleeding, of unknown origin, round my spinal cord in mid October, I found myself with a complete paralysis of the lower half of my body. Thanks to an acute operation, where the bleeding was evacuated and four weeks of hospital rehabilitation, I am now back on my feet albeit with a very week right leg and some other malfunctions. I perform daily rehabilitation training but I can't walk very far and therefore photography outside is at the moment being pushed into the background by work inside. So I have played around with water in various ways and the result can be found behind the title "Liquids".
2016-09-24 The first 10 days of september my wife Lena and I had our second session with Magnus Lundgren (www.exposureexpeditions.com, www.wild-wonders.com, and more) together with another eight amateur photographers, diving around the Azores mainly to take photographs of the Blue Shark. We arrived at about the same time as the hurricane "Gaston" that had just been downgraded to tropical storm (thank you very much) so the wether was quite rough the first couple of days. Due to this and other factors beond our control we didn't get as many pictures as we initially had hoped for. We were all extremely well taken care of by Nadia at the CW Azores Diving Center and our two divemasters Chris from England and Caspar from Holland who did heroic achievements together with Magnus for wich we shall be forever grateful.
2016-05-10 New pictures added in the UW-section from a week diving off Cap Verde. My wife Lena and I were very well looked after by Sandra and Neil Parsons at the Orca Dive Center, not to mention our guides White and Ben! We experienced a new fauna compared to our previous diving sites which was quite exciting, especially the close encounter with the Tiger Shark in a deep cave. I had my 60mm macro lens mounted on the camera and when the shark came up to me to investigate what kind of creature I was he/she was so close that the camera couldn't find any spot to focus on, thus I couldn't fire a shot. I got one eventually which is also published in my facebook.
2016-02-22 My latest exhibition is at the moment running all by itself so I took my camera out for a walk the other day when the february sun showed itself from its nicest side. I found some ducks in the sea where there was no ice forming a pool. A female kept bathing frantically as if she hadn't experienced water in ages. I tried to capture the scenario and noticed a male duck looking in amazement on her. These pictures are added to the birds section among a few others and some older pictures have been replaced. There is also another picture with a slighly different shape in the eagles section.
2015-11-17 The first week of september I spent in Blekinge, in the south of Sweden, with one of my oldest and best friends to photograph birds but we found that most of them seemed to have gone south. Two pictures of a small falcon in the "Birds" section. The week after that I visited another good friend, this time in Skåne, also in the south of Sweden, hoping to get some shots of gaming stags but it seemed I was too late again and there was nothing but peace in the nature. Two pictures in the "Big and small" section. Then in the middle of october my wife and I went for the 7:th time to the Red Sea to take more UW-photos. She is not only my life-buddy but also my diving-buddy and takes photographs as well wich she publishes on Facebook. Due to the increasing number of UW-photos I have rearranged the UW-section somewhat and you will find photos grouped into years when they were taken.
2015-09-31 Exhibition of underwater photos comming up! Look in separate folder.
2015-09-12 Went back to Vargas "bearmountain" 4 weeks after our first visit. Partly to get that shot of Teddy, partly to meet Håkan and Eva again! This time Teddy came by just after 9 o'clock in the evening. Enough light to get a decent shot. He lingered there for 3½ minutes and then he dashed off. Probably scared by the scent from another male. Only one picture :-( But it was worth it. In august I visited Ole Martin Dahle in Norway. Got som nice pictures of the white-tailed eagle that you will find in that very section. Also some pictures of small birds in the "Bird"-section and squirrel int the "Big and small"-section.
2015-07-16 Site slightly modified. "Portfolios" is added and hosts all picture groups. The birds in the "Nature" section are moved to a page of its own, namely "Birds" and a few new pictures are added here. The intention was to take pictures of bears and while waiting for them to come by I took some pictures of birds. Thats why the picturesite is "Bearmountain". Teddy didn't show up untill 1 a.m. and then there was no light to take pictures of him. At least I got some birds on my memorycard.
2014-07-12 Site is published |
