A few years back, 4 years or so, a baritone singer here in Iceland, Michael John Clarke, asked me if I’d be interested in doing a photographical journey of Schubert’s Winterreise; the tone poem by Schubert and Müller, about the Winter Journey of a young man, to pair it with his musical expression with the accompaniment of the pianist Richard Simm.

To me, it sounded as a very challenging project; challenging for me as a photographer and as a musician. I had only been an amateur photographer for a short time.

From birth I’ve been brought up as a musician, I’ve been taught to listen to music, to read it, to be able to feel and see it’s nuances in a manuscript, to play it, to breathe it.

Born and raised as one, I work as a professional musician, I have been a music teacher for over 20 years today. And I’ve loved ever single minute.

Photography only came as a hobby to me a couple of years ago; the chance to do something different, something for myself, something to enhance what I would ” see” or “hear” in all the music in the world.

A few months into my fling with photography; the singer Mr. Clarke contacted me, after seeing my work online, I had been getting a good exposure on Flickr for a few months then. All throughout my time of photographing, I’ve done it the same way I am doing music, or the same way I was taught doing music. With a passion.

-Put everything inside you into it, and then some.

This project , of the Winterreise, proved to be a big challenge to me;

to let the music and its chords and lines, it’s feeling and sounds take the same level as the text;

for me to see if I could project both the music and words into one image per song, taking into account both the musical and poetic elements.

At first the thought of it was easy; but, thinking further and the more I read of the lyrics to the song cycle, the more I dove into the music itself and tried to link the two; the more I saw of images.

This would prove to be a very difficult task, to take the words by Müller and mix it up with Schubert’s music and come out with one photographic image representing the one song.

-I read the lyrics over and over. I started dreaming the lyrics.

Over and over, I listened to the music, I read the music manuscripts.

I even drove to the shop with Der Leiermann sounding from the speakers, I whistled Gute Nacht on the way to work in the morning, I recited a line from Das Wirtshaus, as a mantra for a day.

I fell in love with the music.

I fell in love with the words.

I wanted to get this right.

I saw a thousand of images for those songs, I wanted to find just the one that would be right, but would tell you all that was said in the words, all that was said - even in the finest nuances of the music. It was so hard to come up with the one line of poetry that would represent the whole verse out of the 24, and then combining it with music.

You could say, I was walking around as the young person on the Winterjourney for the time I was studying and finding ways to convey the feelings of each poem, finding what to display- how the main character felt in his long journey, on his way during loneliness, despair and unhappiness. Treading each and every insecure step in the world as an adult, with all it’s complicated feelings and emotions.

How he finally finds his place in the end.

I thought so much about the end of this man who traveled through the land of cold, frost, loneliness and despair.

This project, that in the beginning looked as if it would be an ambitious project for a small crowd has now been on show in Iceland, Canada and France -and now this beginning of 2010; in the Sydney Arts Festival, has made me learn so much about Schubert, more than I did learn as a musician by trade during my studies, more than I needed to learn as a lover of music, and more than enough as a person, to enjoy Schubert’s and Muller’s  emotionally complicated Song Cycle of the Winterreise.

My photographs from this series of songs have been sold in limited edition prints, as well as for commercial use for recordings and publications on the Winterreise, as well  as exhibits during a concert performance of the piece around the world with various talented musicians.

I was also asked to do a file on my photographic work of the Winterreise for the Schubert Society in USA, to have on file all art related material, related to Schubert´s work.

I am grateful that the Schubert Society does archive all material related to the composer.

The Winterreise taught me so many things, technically, disciplinary and artistically; as a musician and as a photographer.

To be able to listen to Schubert’s music and link what  you see/hear/feel,  to what the composer is conveying to you through the centuries;

-it can not be seen or felt physically.

Only your heart can agree or disagree.

This summer I did two days of shooting with Joris Rademaker. He is a visual artist from the Netherlands, living in Akureyri. He also curates his own gallery (Gallery +). Our assignment was to make digital copies of Joris’ work for a catalouge published this fall by the Akureyri Art Museum. Joris will then exhibit his work dating from the 1980’s to newly made pieces.

We photographed almost two hundred different paintings and sculptures amongst dozens of drawings.

Joris’ work was sometimes quite challenging to represent properly, especially the very suddle tones of some of his painings, the crazy colours of others and the feeling of the three dimensional art. I think we managed ok though, and we really had a good time working togeather.

I show you guys some of my favorites from the two days. The art is done by Joris Rademaker.

More information on Joris:

http://joris.blog.is/blog/joris/
http://www.hallsson.de/projects/kunstraum_wohnraum/Joris_Rademaker/joris_rademaker.html
http://www.snerpa.is/slunkariki/joris.htm
http://poptrem.blogspot.com/2009/03/joris-rademaker-14-15-mars.html

Summer is here and we have headed for the roads once more.

We spent last weekend in the East of Iceland, going to Borgarfjörður Eystri and exploring the area, finding out there still was too much snow to be able to hike up to the mountains to photograph.

But it made us promise to head out there again later this summer.

In Borgarfjörður Eystri there is an area down by the sea where you can go and observe seabirds, noteably puffins which have turned the hills into swiss cheese style of landscape; full of holes.

It provides people with a good opportunity to observe the puffin without having to

crawl over the ground and hide; the birds are used to people and will sit quietly a few feet away from you while some take the plunge into the blue seas to bring in the catch of the day.

But we werent there to photograph puffins, but to have fun and relax, to scout out places to go when we’d be there again later for photographing.

The following texts are taken from the official webpage of Borgarfjörður Eystri.

Formerly, the church Bakkagerðiskirkja stood at Desjarmýri, the present building being consecrated in 1901.

The church boasts an exceedingly remarkable altarpiece, painted by Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval in 1914.

Christ is depicted during the Sermon on the Mount, standing atop Álfaborg with the Dyr Mountains in the background.

This piece is one of Kjarval’s most famous works, with most tourists visiting Borgarfjörður coming to look at it.

The Cross in Njarðvík Scree.

Varying sources recount the origin of this cross. In short, according to the story of Naddi in the folk tales of Jón Árnason, a farmer from Borgarfjörður had to go to Njarðvík and on his way ended up fighting with Naddi, who was “an evil spirit in the shape of an animal above waist, but of a man below.” He was called Naddi because of the gnawing (nadda in Icelandic) sound he made while moving. Naddi and the farmer wrestled for a long time, but after having solemnly sworn to raise “a monument to honor the Lord’s protection,” the farmer managed to heave Naddi into the sea. From then on there’s been a cross beside the road, renovated at the middle of this century.

On the cross there’s an inscription in Latin reading as follows:

Thou that walks by, please kneel and revere this reminder of Christ. Anno 1306

-We made it safely

One of them here from a 1/1 page advert in Morgunblaðið newspaper.

Those blue hues rock!

…..Well, some of our works at least, a selected few.

The photo-gallery Fótógrafí opened on the 19th of May 2007 and is the first of it‘s kind in Iceland. In the front room is a shop where pictures from over 20 photographers are for sale and also posters, books, postcards and more.

Fótógrafí’s Homepage

Photo© Anton Eðvarð Kristensen (click for a visit to his Flickr Page)

]]> http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?feed=rss2&p=233 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=228 http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=228#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:40:59 +0000 hkvam http://www.stuckinphotos.com/?p=228 Helga’s photo from Hellnar in Snæfellsnes is the cover of The Environmentalist for February 2009,

a magazine published by IEMA, Institute of Environmental Management and Assesment in the UK.

A short story on that photo:

Earlier that day, Helga bought herself a billabong hat, to keep the head warm while on a shoot in Snæfellsnes.

Bending down low while framing the shot, on the beach with feet immersed in the cold sea, the hat went flying off Helga’s head and sailed away while the shutter was open.

So- the hat is there somewhere in the photo, but due to the long exposure it can not be seen.

Those tides in Hellnar are damn fast!

April 13 1945 - Dec 5th 2008

A shot that took “a bit” of an effort; Hvítserkur or White Cowl, seen here on the MP Bank webpage.

The text accompanying the photo at the time it got posted on Flickr:

Hvítserkur, or White Cowl, a column of rock eroded by the sea, at Vatnsnes in NW-Iceland.

Some people say it looks like a Rhino drinking from the sea,
others say it looks like a Dinosaur.

The above link states: please be careful on your way up and down.

Was I?
-Yes…totally

Was it enough?
……..No
-lets call it the excursion of a photographer in need of a rope….

I ended up falling 10-15 scary feet like a ragdoll attached to expensive camera gear, before managing to stop myself, by “grabbing” a rock with my elbow (?!….can be done…honest)….
Holding the camera high in the air as I came to a halt……
-makes me wonder a bit about my priorities *lol*
At least I can say I risked life and limb for a photo….

And if not for the photo, but for drinking in the magnificent view - it was worth every tumble, every bruise.
Just standing there on a black sand in the middle of a quiet summer’s night, watching the seabirds travel back and forth from their nests in that cliff, listening to the waves come in quietly.

There are very few things worth more than listening to the subtle silence of nature while giving thanks for being alive and well.

Helga did a photoshoot for Akureyri’s Theater, the Christmas show of “Lápur og Skrápur og jólaskapið”; a story of two “trolls” who set out to find the holiday spirit.