After my first commercial assignment some 14 years ago I could not wait to see the image in a magazine. I impatiently waited for 3 months for the ad to be published and on the day it arrived on the magazine stands I bought two of the same issue.
One of the magazines was Home & Garden and I still have a copy of that very issue tucked away somewhere. I don’t hold on to things but for some reason that felt like a milestone and I will probably keep that issue another 14 years…
As with all things new which then becomes familiar the excitement wears off.
It does not go away though and I still feel a great sense of accomplishment when I see my work displayed in public.
There’s quite a few of the campaigns I have been fortunate enough to be a part of that are running at the moment.
Below are the ones spotted..
In London The TV show 24 for SKY Television.
In the same issue of Fast Company 2 ads for Don Julio Tequila and 2 ads done for Dassault Systemes.
Credit Suisse spotted at JFK Airport in New York
American Airlines spotted on buses in New York, Boards in London and Buenos Aires
I often get asked what my favorite place is and “What’s the best place I have visited?”
As every experience is different it is truly hard to answer which one is better…
My answer is often that my favorite place is the one I have not yet been to.
There are a few places though that has touched me in a special way where I, on the day I left, told myself I will come back.
One of these was Namibia.
When in big cities like New York or London I inevitably feel contained. I can’t see further than the next street corner and after a few weeks the buildings start caving in on me. When this happens I know it’s time for me to get some air and go to a place that’s open. Open to see the horizon and the sun rise and set…
A vast open space always gives me a sense of belonging. Of being part of something way bigger than myself.
All small issues, insecurities and ambitions just falls away and are being replaced with a sense of gratitude for all things that is.
Namibia was a place like this.
In the vastness of the desert planes one feel both small and big at the same time. Small and insignificant in the massiveness of the space, and big as in being connected to it all…
It’s been 7 months since I was there. I still think of it…
I have slowly started looking through the massive amounts of images shot while there. Most of it will be it’s separate body of work drawing from the polar and slightly ambiguous feeling described above.
This first personal image from my trip to Namibia is both a success and a failure to me.
Success in it’s beauty and a failure in describing how I felt when there.
It has too much of Erik Almas, the photographer in it. This in the sense of me having to control it. To relate it to me and put the human element in control. I love mountain biking and the feeling it gives me of flying through the landscape. It’s honest in that it relates to me but I didn’t bike when there.
When there I felt free and numb and lost and found at the same time…
So, when finishing the biker and living with it and the other images for a while I realize it’s both a success and a failure.
What I’m grateful for is that in the process I recognize this duality and can let the rest of the images be what they are.
Be what they are and speak to the bigness of Namibia, a place I can’t wait to go back to…
Here’s a behind the scene of the Bike image and my thinking at the time and how the composite came together. Check it out and let me know: Sucess or failure? And can it be both at the same time…
In November last year I shot an assignment for Trondheim Torg, a shopping center at the main square of my hometown. It was for their holiday marketing with the idea of turning the whole scene into a winter fairytale of snow and ice.
As this was my first commercial assignment that was shooting in Norway I went full force in recreating the square in snow and ice, even if it was late fall…
This March the agency, HK Reklame, called again to continue the idea of this first image of winter and do 3 new pictures following the seasons of spring, summer and fall…
This time they extended the idea to the open ended question “What if?”
What if the square was a bit different? Different as if a fairytale was taking place…
Just asking these questions makes visuals surface and I excitedly dived in again.
In addition to the home court advantage these images mixes a lot of the things I thrive on when crafting pictures.
I love a visual challenge, and being able to create rather than take pictures always intrigues me. Then setting the stage of the city square and the idea of “what if?” made for great visuals and almost a mythic storytelling quality to the images we wanted to create…
Telling stories and somehow connecting to them in a personal way has been my mission for years and I’m excited to share our second fairytale from Trondheim in it’s spring incarnation….
In the process of making the images I travelled to Trondheim to shoot the background plates and then off to London to do the studio work. Here’s a behind the scenes film showing the parts on how this came together.
A big thanks to HK Reklame, crew and cast and Chris Bodie on retouch for making this come together.
And till Summer I’ll leave you with the past image from Winter…
As I get older I get more and more intrigued by authenticity and how to achieve this in my images.
What makes an image honest?
What is real about a 2 dimensional representation of what we see?
Now add Photoshop to the equation and what’s authentic becomes even more questionable.
In 1817 the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested that if a writer could infuse a “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative.
He coined this Suspension of Disbelief…
In composite photography, even though the image is not real, one can still create an authentic emotional response to the image. One can craft something that in the execution feels authentic and honest to the eye and on a visceral level feel real.
Disbelief suspended and authenticity achieved?
It’s a big subject that is best solved over a good bottle of vine.
Till then I will explore authenticity in both the simple portrait and the larger composites…
I will leave you with a couple of my recent composites.
One done for Sky promoting the TV show 24 and another for Dassault Systemes.
The background image for 24 was shot over 2 days on Westminister Bridge. We locked our cameras down and shot a few frames every 10 minutes or so till we had captured beautiful weather and light and frames without people for the 24 hour time span we needed. We then had 20 minutes with Kiefer Sutherland. We set up a backdrop next to the stage where they were recording the show so Kiefer could just walk onto our set during a break in filming.
In the below image for Dassault Systemes we shot designer Julien Fournier in Paris.
In this composite the idea was an interactive experience being so close to the real thing one can step right into Julien Fournier’s design studio…
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