We have finally set up camp. Not only that, I have committed to start in a new position as the social marketing guy at destinationen. It’s the perfect crime – doing what I love and getting paid for it. What’s more, the product I’m selling is the island I love – Bornholm.

Bornholm has had a tough time ever since the primary industry, fishery, shut down during the 80s. Several other major work places are now gone, tilemaking closed,  agriculture has become machine run. The population peaked at fifty some thousand after WW2, but is now around 43000 and diving.

Tourism accounts for just shy of 9% of the local economy and unemployment fluctuates wildly between winter and summer when most of the temp jobs are available.

Tourism, and its derived effects, is now one of the main job creators. Boosting tourism and attracting visitors is therefore one of the best ways of making the local economy grow organically. I’m proud to be a part of this mission, and I draw huge motivation from it.

What else could be done to boost Bornholm?
Take a look at the swedish island of Gottland. The Swedes have a better understanding of what it takes to sustain the outer rims of their country. Massive subsidies of transportation, mainly ferries, placement of higher education institutions have made it more attractive for businesses to settle and for high school graduates to stay put.

Sure help from parliament would be instrumental, but as they say, change starts from within. I’m going to work on April 4th.

The past months have been consumed by those little adoring monsters who wake us up at 6 am and demand food (oatmeal) pronto. I can’t say that I am completely coherent at that time in the morning, but I do manage to mix some milk and oatmeal a stick it in the microwave oven.

But things are about to change… We’re moving to the island of Bornholm, which is located on the far side of Sweden but nonetheless still belongs to the kingdom of Denmark. Our new home is on the sourthern tip of the island, very close to what I believe are some of the most amazing beaches in the world (bar the Maldives etc..)

Another major change is the fact that the twins are due to start in nursery in january which will free up a lot of creative time for my wife and I. So be prepared for an increase in the frequency of updates here on the blog.

Extra time also means I’ll have more time in the studio which I am planning on building in one of the barns (yes barn! – as in: “we bought a big farm built around a square”) , and expanding to a gallery later this summer. It’s the perfect setup, since I’ll have all of my critical facilities at home and at the same time the ability to showcase the work of myself and others.

Very soon the tiny town of Snogebæk will have it’s own cultural powerhouse, so if you’re visiting the island don’t forget to swing by us and get your daily fix of art.

In the meantime it’s Time to relax…

The Internet is doing to galleries what a bomb would do to the Fields Mall.
Sure, some brick and mortar stores still have relevance – much in the same way real world art shows still make sense. But galleries are doomed to lose their role as gatekeeper for the artist as well as the collector. Artists will find ways to host their own shows as oneoffs with established galleries or in empty storefronts. Paying the rent creates a need for cash upfront, but control and sales income remain with the artist.

As an artist, it more and more looks like a losing deal to surrender 50% of sales in return for hapless marketing and real estate on a physical gallery wall. Smart artists around the globe are now using their tech skills to connect directly with collectors as well as establish a permanent online record of their artistic activities. Instead of leaving a printed resume in a pile of similar ones at the gallery, Blogging is a powerful tool for documenting and communicating the artistic journey.

The balance of power is shifting back towards the artist and the collector. In this relationship the brand of the artist becomes everything as he performs to the dispersed audience of thousands of individuals.

But about the painting above – this is the next one in the lineup from the series “War is Coming Home” featuring scenes of war in our home country. What happens in the aftermath of terror? People stay home… Denmark is increasingly finding itself in the top of the list when terrorists want to make a statement. Maybe it’s time to rethink our foreign policy…
Enjoy!

I did find some time for a new series of paintings based on a piece I did earlier this year.
That painting was of Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, featuring a burnt-out Humvee in front of the parading Royal Lifeguards.

The point of this series is to try to imagine what it would be like if the theatre of war was Denmark rather than some remote country like Afghanistan.
To many people in Denmark, the conflict in Afghanistan is costly, and hard to understand.
It’s remote, and whatever news-stories emerge on the evening news are hard to relate to.

What would happen if every news-story related to a location in Denmark?
The second painting in the series is posted below. It’s titled “Power Disruption” and features Christiansborg – home of the Danish parliament, with a burned-out bus in front. Enjoy!

For a while HDR has been regarded as a sort of artificial or unrealistic school of photography.
It was frowned upon by the photography establishment and until now not seen as a legitimate form in its own right. Many such photographers thought that the extreme dynamic range possible with HDR made the photographs “unrealistic” and not true to reality.

Until HDR emerged, everyone was used to the fact that a taking a photo meant committing to a certain exposure. Anyone who has tried photographing outside from whithin a building knows that the final photo either shows a proper lighting of the interior OR the exterior. That is, either the interior darker details are visible and the outside is a white blur OR the outside bright details, clouds etc are visible and the interior details of the room are a dark blur.

Traditional photography means you have to chose. But in real life we don’t have to chose. The eyes adjust to the proper sensitivity according to where we focus. The combined experience is that we can see BOTH the details in the clouds outside AND the darker details of the interior room. HDR works the same way – you get the best of both worlds, and a photo that is closer to the experience that you actually had when you were there.

Trey is a nice guy with a mission to promote HDR photography. He runs a blog at stuckincustoms.com that has tens of thousands of visitors every day, but decided to help other HDR photographers spread their work and generate traffic to their sites. So he created HDRspotting.com which works as a traffic generation engine. It’s a community by invitation where members can upload and share their work.

I have posted numerous HDR photos to HDRspotting.com, and as a result thousands of people have now seen my photos of the fairy tale castles and landscapes that are so common in Scandinavia it’s almost hard to spot them. Here’s an example of what I mean: the lake pavillion in central Copenhagen. Visible from a unique angle this winter because of the prolonged frost that made walking on the lakes possible.

Enjoy!

Go see for yourself!

The photos were shot on my trusty old Canon APS camera and I haven’t done much but applying some levels and curves in photoshop to try and counter the inherent noise in the original processed negatives.

Not much of a good time to look at, but I had to share these images that still haunt my mind.

As i leaned to lift the cover from the pram my beer spilled unto my pants. I had managed to drink one sip. Again classic. Todays HDR is from another more successful day in the palm house of the botanical gardens. Enjoy!

Mundane issues become problems, questions become accusations, insecurity becomes certainty.
When it works, everything is rosy, when it doesn’t – hell.
Cognition is what separates us from cows. But God, they do look peaceful.

I’m using Rembrandt soft pastels for the new Pillory project. I like the dusty feel when I smear the color unto the canvas. Not like the greasy feel of traditional oil pastels.
Soft pastels create a dry look, almost silky, making it hard to resist touching the canvas.

I can blend the colors very easily by rubbing my fingers.
When I need a glossy area of color I use acrylic paint or an Edding permanent marker.
Coupled with delicate white lines, this creates a perfect shiny effect on the blurry background of soft pastel.

The result is a shallow depth of field – like shooting portraits with a 1,2f aperture: A super sharp and crisp face on a blurry background.