Journalist, blogger, eh... media junkie blogging about everything media, interspersed with the odd report on Scandinavia's many idiosyncracies.
As self-employed I work around the clock at times, so posts here will be irregular. This blog is a personal one
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I'd like to say I got loads of writing done, but, truth be told, it was more a case of attending to the eclectic reading the guy pictured here would tolerate inbetween long walks and play time (dog sitting all weekend, and doesn't Duke look every bit as noble as his name implies here?)
I have to disappoint you if you thought this post would give any insights into climbing social ladders or getting ahead in life.
I'm thinking of the the more trivial, yet important matter, of getting from point A to B these days - easier said than done in light of the weather the last few weeks.
I'm currently based at a seaside resort which town centre is so tiny it's normally overkill to use anything but your legs to go somewhere. That's all changed with the truckloads of snow we've had recently: here's why I'm keeping my head in a book this weekend. Okay, my bank accounts are all in the red, but even if that wasn't the case my skiing skills are more than a little bit rusty - and that IS the safest way to get around town at the moment, provided, of course, you don't have one of these handy:
A tad late, I know, but 2008 was a trying year for me - I met some great people, was partly given/partly created some brilliant opportunities, had a few adventures, but was also presented with what at times seemed like unnecessary and unsurmountable challenges - so I needed a bit of a break before summing up the year past and welcoming the new one.
What pulled me through the rough patches was, to a large extent, this blog, or rather the funny, irreverent, insightful, thought-provoking comments and links it spurred - in other words: you guys and gals - and all the great friends I'm blessed with. Now, when I suggested in this post that social media can be of great help in turbulent times Adriana, who kicked me into the blogosphere in the first place by setting up this blog for me as a gift in 2005, pointed out that what I really was saying was that people were of great comfort at such times, not social media.
I still think social media makes a huge difference, though perhaps it would have been more precise to say the ambient intimacy social media offers/facilitates is what makes the difference, to use a term coined by Lisa Reichelt (in short, ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn't usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible).
Anyway, I wish you all much joy and success in the year ahead of us. This is what coming from 2008 to 2009 looks like to me right now. The first photo is from a lovely winter day in the forest at Tranby (more here):
This shot is from Corntin Bay, Stavern, today:
And like Duke, pictured below, I'll definently be scouting for new opportunities in 2009, albeit of a slightly different nature than him (I've also got a few interesting projects up my sleeve which I'll return to shortly):
I had a zillion posts I wanted to blog this Christmas, but soon found I was in more of a contemplative mood once I got through all of the family business.
So, inspired by Lloyd I thought I'd sum up the year, if not month-by-month in pictures, at least with pictures from my favourite reporting trips this year.
Now, those who know me well might notice that I've included almost all my major trips out of town this year - save Skup in Tönsberg (we were travelling with a professional photograper) and London in February (had great talks with Adam, Richard, Per Mikael Jensen, got to work in what is now Alistair Heath's office, saw the insides of Google HQ London, attended a VRM meeting, met Doc Searls - but a spell of flu clouded my judgement and I only uploaded a few pics to the walled garden that is Facebook)- but they will also recognise this is the change addict/adventurer in me speaking (I'd say the only thing that makes living in Norway tolerable is going abroad every so often, and, as it so happens, I've seen precious little of Norway, so this year's opportunities to see more of the country has also been adventures of sorts).
Nordic Media Festival - Bergen
Save from the pictures from the price cermony, which are copyrighted, I came home from this festival with an awful lot of pictures of men in suits.
World Association of Newspapers' (WAN) Congress/ World Editors Forum (WEF) - Gothenburg
Interesting conference, foremostly for the great conversations I had after hours. A few pictures from Timothy Balding's talk on the glorious state of the newspaper industry here, and from the party here (I wrote a blog post from this memorable evening as well). But my favourite photo from the event - not for its technical brilliance, but for its expressiveness - is Reuter's Ilicco Elia explaining how mobile phones may be used for "pocket journalism" (this photo is copyrighted to Journalisten.no):
Kvinesdal Emigration Festival 2008
I took some 200 photos during my exotic weekend in Kvinesdal in July - where I covered the annual emigration festival for Viking Magazine (published by Sons of Norway, US) - and have uploaded some of them to Flickr, including pics of Hanne Krogh, Secret Garden, Bjøro Haaland and Ted Fosberg (more to follow in January).
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) 2008 - Lillehammer
Turned out investigative journalists make pretty decent musicians, or as Jude said: there might even be a correlation between investigative skills and musical talent. You can see the slideshow of my more informal pictures from the event here ( click on the photos for subtitles ).
Reykjavik (December)
A very sombre end to the year in Reykjavik, where I was parachuted off to do a story on how the financial crisis has affected Icelandic media (the Norwegian stories from that trip are here and here). I worked with a very competent photographer for the trip, Haldur Jonasson, formerly of both Nyhedsavisen and Frettabladid + haphazardly snapped a few photos myself (the one here and a few more at Flickr) - though I wish I'd had more time to explore the place with my camera. Everyone I met there were extremly accomodating and helpful, but in terms of the state of the media it was surreal: nobody seemed to know who actually owned the newspapers they worked for, everything was in a state of flux.
Delays, delays and more delays: due to snow and "challenging" weather conditions I spent the whole day travelling. But the delays meant I got to snoop around a bit more in the tax free, and once we got above the fog the weather at least looked wonderful. Click on the images for full size.
My mobile phone camera is much better than I thought it was - too bad it's the only thing that's good about the phone. Here's another shot from the boat harbour in Stavern:
Here's a fabulous picture of Brian's, taken from the roof of Tower42, also known as the NatWest Tower, which incidentally houses my favourite Champagne bar in London: Vertigo 42. I've only had the fortune (and funds) to take someone there once, but the views are certainly worth toasting to.
Korntin Bay yesterday evening (photoshopped version: the original was pretty, but not quite so pink)
Korntin Bay tonight (slightly photoshopped)
The original photo of Korntin tonight: the ambience was eerie, but beautiful.
Why all these landscapes? Leaving for Oslo tomorrow afternoon, so no more walks by the sea for a while. Not that I've spent my time by the seaside thus, just some nice strolls after work...
Glendalough, Ireland (April last year)
I'm imagining this guy wasn't all too happy to have photographers crawling in front of the stage. The shot is from a recent Secret Garden gig during a festival I covered. I'm going through all my photos this weekend, and this is one I won't be using. It hardly satisfies the magazine criteria in terms of quality and smiley, happy people, but it does speak volumes - caption ideas anyone?
The view from my hotel room in Kvinesdal this weekend, where I was covering a big festival. I came back with some 400 photos, but after working from 7am to 11pm for three days in a row, I'm still struggling to convince my body that neither Mondays nor Tuesdays are part of the weekend - with limited success, I might add.
How much the world can change from one day to another: here's what spring equinox looks like in Oslo, from lovely weeks of spring to winter in one night:
I'm not going to stay awake to watch this wonder tonight, nor do I currently have the photo equipment to do it justice if I had, but here's a great composition of the phases of a Total Lunar Eclipse from Fort Ephemara's Flickr-stream (published under a creative commons license):
It reminds me of the total solar eclipse in August 1999. We had descended on Cornwall together with a bunch of crazy Americans and found ourselves surrrounded by a rather eclectic mix of people, some of whom were expecting to see Nostradamus' prophecy that the world would end on that day fulfilled. It didn't of course, neither did we see the actual eclipse. Bad weather, you know, the world just went pitch black and this guy in the photo didn't get those shots he dreamed to get with his 1000mm lense (despite some women nearby doing 'weather work' to remove the clouds with their thoughts). Bizarre but memorable day (picture by Charles Olson):
What on earth am I doing tailing Al Gore and Rajendra K. Pachauri, hmm.... not one of my days. Or maybe I should just have headlined this picture of mine 'caption competition'?
Update 21/12: the answer is that, of course, I wasn't tailing these guys at all. I'd just left Grand Hotel after an interesting interview with the head of the Nobel Peace Prize Comittee, Ole Danbolt Mjös - where he talked about the Committee's dedication to fighting what it sees as 'the root causes' of conflict, such as poverty (last year's peace prize) and environment (this year's price), arguing that this was no more controversial than when the Comittee started focusing on nuclear weapons or human rights violations - when we were shoved aside by policemen and the peace price winners walked past, and into the black car in the picture.
Pictures from Korntin, Stavern
Did I bring an umbrella? Nah, wouldn't have been much use in the wind anyway. A raincoat? Don't own one. Wellingtons? Would've taken up too much of my suitcase...
But Brighton is pretty awesome on rainy days as well: especially when you can sit, safe behind the windows, with your laptop, looking out on the turbulent sea. The storms you get in Brighton are quite unparaIleled my third cousin, who went to a boarding school down here some 30 years ago, often says, but when I lived here, ten years ago, storms were rare, and if it rained it was mostly just a drizzle.
I could go down on the beach, to the Fortune of War, a pub, which' interior gives you the feeling of sitting in a ship, and watch the waves hit the shore (picture below from sunny yesterday, a marvellous day in between two gloomy ones), or make it over to the Grand for some proper afternoon tea.
In the end I opted for the latter: a pleasant walk down memory lane, crap service.
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