One year 2013. Part two.

I have to make an effort to write this post. After june this year, a lot has happened and I´m not really sure how I will be able to put it down in words. But I will try :)

This is part two of my year. You can read part one here.

My school ended in june. Before the end I got the answer from the School of Photography in Gothenburg that I had applied for for the third time; I didn´t make it. This made me both angry and sad. This was the third time that I had applied, and the second time that I had been on an interview. I had been dreaming of this school for so long. Besides disappointment, I felt like giving up. I decided to stop applying for this school. I decided that I would start up my own business and ignore the fact that, at least in Sweden, you will earn more respect as an artist if you have the right kind of education. I thought a lot about this. Did I only want to attend the school because I knew it was the right thing to do? Or did I want to go there for me, to develop as an artist? Whatever the answer, I decided to ignore this school and move on. I longed for a stress free summer.

However, before my vacation could even start I got an email from a company who wanted me to do photography job. I was very happy to get this request. I was also very nervous, naturally, because I wanted to do my absolute best on this project. I spent a HUGE amount of time on sketching down ideas, preparing, location scouting, editing and so on. All to make the result as good as possible. Unfortunately this didn´t turn out the way I had hoped for. In fact, it turned out the opposite. I don´t want to go into detail, but I can say that this experience hurt me. However, I certainly learned the hard way how extremely important it is to have a good contract that protects you as a photographer, because you will never know who you are dealing with. I learned how the bad side of an industry can look, and as time has passed by I´ve started to appreciate this experience, even though I felt very bad when it happened. Hard times makes us strong people, at least if we can walk through them with our eyes open.

After the summer my doubts started to come. Was this really the right way for me? I felt exhausted. If something that I was doing made me feel so bad, then maybe I should do something else, something totally different? I thought about balance and how I have been so involved with my passion the last years that I have sacrificed things in my life, things that I would maybe need more of in order to be truly happy. I realized that this feeling was an effect of the job that I did during the summer. When things don´t go our way, it´s easy to feel like giving up and choose to do something less risky. Something safe. I didn´t think about quitting photography, but I did think of doing less photography and focus on something else. Something that I wasn´t so involved in as a person, something that I didn´t put my entire soul into. Something that was not my passion. I felt an unusual need for control and that´s why I wanted to get myself a "real" job where I knew for certain that I would get an income. To think about this felt so calming and peaceful.

As I was thinking about my future, I got a call from the School of Photography in Gothenburg that I had applied for earlier this year. Suddenly someone dropped off and left a space for me. I was in chock. They called the same day as my class would start. I hurried into the shower and then off to school. It felt absurd to suddenly be in an environment that I had been trying to get into for so long. Was I really one of them now? It took some time before I dared to believe that this was really happening. The first week I was sure there had been a mistake, and that someone would soon discover that I wasn´t meant to be there.

The last months of this year has been about changing my mind once again. It was if like a door I had closed and walked away from, suddenly opened behind me and asked me to come in. Now I´ve started to get used to the thought of being a student for three years. I´m studying for a Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography.

The minute I got into the school, I got the feeling of loosing my control even more. This year has been about realizing that you can´t control everything, and that sometimes life just takes you to where it wants. I went from something really bad to something really good. And in the meantime I´ve just been feeling confused. But I try to accept the fact that I can´t control my life. I can try my best, but I will never be sure of where life will take me. After my doubts I finally found my strength again. I finally got that feeling back that I´ve had for the past two years: the feeling of not giving up on my dream.

One year 2013. Part one.

In a couple of days, this year will be over. In a couple of days I will wake up and start writing 2014 in my notebook. I will hang a new calendar on my wall, twelve new pages for twelve new months. What will the new year bring?

During a year I often feel that I should do more. I often feel that I´m not doing enough. I should be more active. I should work more. Earn more money. Be more productive, more creative, reach out to more people with my photography. That´s the thing with photography; you can always do more. I have a facebook page, I have a flickr page, I have a blog, and I create photographs. There is so much more that I could do every day. You can never do enough and feel that you´re "done". You will never be finished. And that is something that you need to accept and learn how to work with. You have to do enough, but not more than that.

When I look back at a year, I always feel like I´ve done so much more than I thought I had. This year I´ve had that usual feeling that I´m too slow and that I should push myself more and work more. But when I look back at this year, I realize what I have done and I realize that I´ve been challenged in my photography and that I´ve grown as a person. That´s not very bad!

I never get a special feeling when a year comes to an end. I just feel as always, except that I start thinking about how I want to celebrate new years eve. That´s why I felt like writing this. Because I do believe that it is special with a new year. I want to give it some kind of recognition. And by writing about how I feel for the past year, looking back at both hard times and good times, I think that I maybe can get a picture of what I want for my future year, and what I want to do different.

At the start of 2013, I was living in a small town in Sweden, studying at a school of photography for one year. In the weekends, I took the bus home for two hours to meet my family and friends. Since I moved to another town for this school, it felt important to continue my old life in my hometown by going there as often as I could. I wanted to continue to meet the friends that I usually meet and spending time with my boyfriend, even though this ment that I couldn´t spend very much time with my new class mates. This was a choice that I made, and that I´m happy with. There is a time for everything, and this year was not the year for me to get to know a lot of new people. I love meeting people, and I would have loved to know my class mates better, but you can´t put all your energy in too many places. I to put my energy where I most wanted. I choose to invest in what I already had. But I also got to know a very beautiful person in my class who is now my dear friend and also an amazing photographer: Victoria Söderström. We started liking each other already before the school started, because we found out that we liked the same photographers and had the same artistic style. Getting to know someone through your passion creates a special bond, which is something that I´ve learned this year!

At the beginning of this year I created a book as part of a school project. I named it Clouds and Above and I choose to include my most dreamy, poetic and imaginative pictures in it. Seeing my pictures in a beautiful, printed book for the first time was amazing! If you want to see a preview of the book or order it you can click here.

In april me and Victoria packed a car full of props, wigs and dresses and drove to the countryside for our project "Roots of imagination". We spent five days in my family´s house, photographing as much as we could. Sometimes we assisted each other on the shoot, and sometimes we modeled for each other. These days were so amazing and so inspiring, and it´s definitely something that I want to do again. Being together with another person who is prepared to do almost anything in order for you to get the perfect picture, that´s an amazing feeling! We also did a movie about this project. 

Here´s some behind the scenes photos from the project:

Victoria on her way to a photoshoot with a bag and red fabric.

 Some of the props we brought with us.

 I borrowed Victorias wig for a self portrait!

Victoria with my favorite prop of all time: the bubble!

Victoria shooting on ice up in the forest.

I carried a table out on the fields to shoot this picture.

I created a lot of pictures from this project. Here are some of them:

At the end of spring my class also had an exhibition in Stockholm, as our final exhibition. I printed a 100x100 cm big print of my picture "The void". I framed it in a black wooden frame, and I choose to display the image without glass. I was so happy with the result. This was the first time that I saw any of my images presented this big and beautiful!

After one year my school ended in june. I longed home so I was happy to go back home.

More about this year will come in another blog post!

Shooting something different

Two of the sentences that I often use to describe my work and what I do are these:

"I create images that are dreamlike, imaginative and surrealistic. With the art of photography I want to explore our inner worlds and psychological struggles."  

I´ve decided to mostly focus on creating my own, conceptual work, and I´m working every day towards my goal of being able to support myself from it. However, I once started out with photography by photographing other people and doing different kinds of commissions. This is something that is very fun and I still try to do it sometimes, even if not very much these days. This summer I photographed the musician bangalore, who needed some photographs for his new album release. We both agreed that the feeling should be a bit vintage, natural, authentic. I also knew that I would want to shoot many of the pictures in backlight. Mostly when I shoot these kind of things, I like to have an open mind and be inspired in the moment. I find that the best thing to do is have a good and creative time, always clicking the shutter when you find the great light, composition or environment.

 In the post processing, I adjusted the curves by choosing the blue channel and add blue to the shadows and yellow to the highlights. I also adjusted the light and contrast by lightning up a bit and adding a tiny bit more contrast. Since we wanted the vintage feeling, I added a new layer which I filled with a sepia-toned/orange color. I choose Filter/Noise/Add Noise, which will give the color layer some noise and grain. I changed the mode of that layer to Soft Light, and made it less visible by lessening the opacity. Then I added a photo filter with sepia to get an even more old look to the image. In almost all of the images I made a new curves layer just for the face and removed a bit of blue. It´s easy to make the face and skin too cold otherwise.

I hope you enjoyed to have a look at some of my other work :)

You have to last for a long time

Today I tried to work more effectively than I´m used to. I´m not very good at doing much work in a short time, because I tend to do other stuff in between (checking facebook, mail, flickr and so on!). Usually I feel that I´ve been working for a longer time than I actually have, because I don´t really notice when I´m suddenly not working anymore, and instead checking my instagram. I have a goal to be more strict with the work that I´m doing. I want to set up a schedule and decide when I can work during the day, and when I have time off. The thing with working with your passion is that you always want to work, because you love what you do and you want everything to be as good and perfect as it can be. But sometimes less is more, and that´s a fact even in the creative business! Taking a break is very important. You should take breaks often, at least if you´re working in front of the computer. Breaks can mean that you get more done. Not working too much one day will make you work just as good the other day. It´s all about balance!

My mother is the most amazing person who always have such good advice for me. She has told me to listen to myself. She has made me realize that no success in the whole world is worth it if you´re not feeling well. That´s something that I always carry with me. The importance of feeling happy. To feel content with yourself. I do this for me. I do what I believe will make me happy, and for that I am willing to fight. But if my goal to be good at what I do would turn into a goal of becoming a success and getting other peoples recognition, then I would have to look out for myself so I don´t loose myself in the struggle. Remember that it´s not worth the stress if the stress makes you sick. 

This is why I need to make a schedule for myself. I need balance. I need to work more effectively when I´m working, and I also need to plan for my time off, so that I can feel absolutely relaxed some time during the day.

And my mother says: You have to last for a long time. If you stress too much in the beginning, then you won´t last the whole way.

On forgetting, too much to do

From last weekend when I was out on a walk in the forest. To be in nature fills me with so much energy and makes me feel calm and less stressful.

I just realized that I´m not very good at having several things going on at the same time. In fact, I´m terribly bad at having many things to do! My last month has been very busy. As you may know, I was suddenly accepted at the university to study photography for three years. This hit me by surprise, and it made me slow down everything else that I had going on at the moment. I had to fix the urging things such as student loans, registration, cancelling my other plans (no time for the astronomy course that I had already begun, unfortunately!), working on my job, going to lessons and complete my assignments for school. Today I realized that I´ve actually forgotten about some emails that I´ve received during this period. I´ve had people send me an email asking if it´s okay that they do an interview with me. This is one of the things that I´m extremely flattered by. To think that a person found my work online, finds it interesting and then takes the time to sit down and write me some questions, that just feels amazing! And that´s why it feels terrible to realize that you actually forgot to answer some of these questions. I don´t know when it happened, but somewhere along the never ending list of things to do, some of these mails just fell off that list.

Me with morning coffee, a moment that I always enjoy very much and a moment that makes me happy!

I want to be someone who answers and says thank you when someone gives me a compliment for my work. I want to be someone who shows her gratitude towards the person who takes her time to sit down and write to me. I want people to feel like they are welcome with their questions and views, and I want to be the one who answers them. I think it´s important that the people who follow your work feels a connection with you. I know myself how disappointed I´ve been when I´ve contacted a person whose work I really like, and he or she doesn´t answer me. Nowadays, I´m more experienced and I know that it´s probably just lack of time, but I don´t want that to be an excuse. I never want to seem ignorant or too busy with my own to answer. The problem is that I actually am too busy to answer sometimes. So I try to keep everything on a list, from meeting a friend to answering a short comment in my mail. I know that if I don´t write things down, I will forget them. And that´s not because I don´t think they´re important to keep in mind, it´s just because I can´t keep too much in my mind. It´s the same with answering a text message on the phone, either I have to do it immediately, or I will have to write it down so that I won´t forget it. Sometimes it´s just too much going on!

Writing a blog post in the wonderful house that belongs to my boyfriends parents.

The people who follow my work and are interested in what I do are the most important to me. I can´t even begin to tell you how incredible grateful I am for all of your support, always! And it´s important to me to give something back, to make my gratitude show. There are many things in life that takes time from you that you´d rather spend on something more valuable. To me I would love to spend more time connecting with all the people out there and keeping a never ending dialogue about photography and art.

For now, it´s impossible to be available as much as I would like, but I do think that I can change my strategy now that I´m aware of my unability to tackle too much at the same time. I think that I will try to split things up more, and to make sure I eliminate everything that isn´t important to me, so that I can take more time for what´s really important. I still haven´t got the best strategy when it comes to answering my emails, but I´m working on it. For everything that you learn about yourself, you can improve and make things easier. When you run your own business it´s so valuable to know yourself well, because then you can structure things in a way that fits you the best!