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!

TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday)

I am pleased with the result, the colors are rich and deep, the paper soft like velvet.
Holding the print I am filled with a sense of joy and pride. I’m guessing many authors and artists have felt the same way when holding the first copy of their work. Somehow it get’s more real when I see it in real life. – I made this.

The print series will be limited, all signed and numbered. Stay tuned in the coming days to get the details on availability and pricing.

It’s located in the Meat Packing district of Copenhagen. Some of the district is now inhabited by artists, and I have my studio in a shared space called “Slagtehus 40” (Slaughterhouse 40) which opened only last summer.
As a former slaughtery it’s a rough space – walls covered with tiles, floors with epoxy to make it easy to clean off the blood from the cattle and swine being butchered here..
The place still smells like an animal. Partly from the traces of blood, partly from the catering firm housed downstairs. I have no idea what they’re making, but it doesn’t seem mouth watering.

My space is in the corner of a larger shared room, edges marked by tape on the floor.
It’s not huge, but I have enough room to work and store some of my previous pieces.
In the corner I have my desk on which I draw, sketch, blog and communicate using my mac.
My windows face the courtyard where in the summerevenings the hip young crowds gather in front of the bars “Karriere” and ” Jolene”.
The floor and walls is where I paint my acrylic works.

I like it here. It’s my space.

This shot is of the Palace cinema multiplex in Copenhagen. Home of many great movie experiences..ahhh.

Enjoy!

From Photography by Carl Frederik Waage Beck

A similar case occurred in 1992 when a number of palestinian refugees sheltered in Blågaards church which resides in the same church district as Brorson. This dragged on for several months, and resulted in politicians creating a special law granting them the right to stay in Denmark.

Traditionally Danish churches have chosen not to evict sheltering people.
The decision will be made tonight by the church board of which I became a member and vice chair only 6 months ago.

I see several conflicting issues in this case:

• First of all I feel deeply with the sheltering families which are now fearing a return to a failed state that shows no promise of safety and comfort in the foreseeable future.
• The decisions made by the Danish Parliament must be respected, or democracy disintegrates into lawlessness and anarchy.
• Being responsible for Brorsons church I feel hijacked into a conflict that I do not wish to be a part of, even though I sympathize with the sheltering Iraqis and believe that the Danish state has failed in its handling of foreigh refugees.
• In keeping with what I believe to be the duty of the church I will vote against evicting the Iraqis tonight.

I hope this situation can be resolved quickly to the benefit of everyone involved, and wish that the Iraqi refugees can have their case reevaluated on a more thorough investigation.

more on the news here:

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/05/16/72955.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090513/wl_mideast_afp/denmarkiraqunrestrefugees

Best regards, Carl