My third South African assignment in less than 18 months! This time we were shooting dancers at the Taal Monument outside Cape town. The monument represents the different languages spoken in S.A. We spent four days shooting at the monument, each day starting before sunrise. Whilst having breakfast, we could enjoy the first rays of sunlight hitting the upper part of the construction. It is really a beautiful location, it is huge and the angles, bends and corners make the sun rays play interestingly most of the morning and in the late afternoon making it easy to catch a variety of lighting in the photos.

Swedish travel magazine "Escape 360°" selected one of my photos "Travel Photo of the Year 2008".

After last years stormy weather we decided to move to Storulvån, a bit lower below the treeline. This proved to be a wise decision as access to and from the mountain station was a lot easier during bad weather. Being below treeline also made it possible to get good pictures even in flat light conditions. Not to mention a full service bar!

One of the sometimes odd assignments I tend to get. I was asked to take promotion pictures of a new sport called Freebandy, developped from floor-hockey. We decided to do the shoot in a pedestrian tunnel in Stockholm, in a studio, an indoor beach volley ground in Gothenburg and at the base construction of one of Gothenburgs bridges.

Some assignments are just simply nicer than others. But someone has to do them… Together with journalist Cenneth Sparby, I went to Chamonix and Megéve to test the skiing and the restaurants for a couple of magazines and newspapers. Will be published fall 2008.

Last assignment of 2007 was a big event for TetraPak in Miami Beach and Everglades, Florida. My collegue Felix St.Clair-Renard and I covered a conference with 700 TetraPak employees from all parts of the world. After long days of conference and workshops, they were entertained by various artists and excursions. They spent one night in 1-person tents in the Everglades after a great B-B-Q with Bluegrass and Linedancing. Daytime was spent seeing the Glades from airboat, kayak or fishing in the archipelago. The last night in Miami after the banquet, a slide show with our photos from the week was launched before the Grand Finale with Earth Wind and Fire!

In December I went to Cape Town to shoot another campaign for Ericsson. We were doing a film parallell to the stills so there must have been over a houndred people involved in the production, including 40 plus models and a mobile restaurant which was set up daily on the different locations. Fantastic people to work with from catering to stunt drivers to production, grips, best boys and all. And especially to my assistant, Xander Ferreira, who, I am sure of, you will hear more about in the near future. We spent two days shooting in a salt pan belonging to the Kersefontain farm where we also stayed. A farm run by the eight generation Melk, Julian who took great care of us together with his team.

In November 2007 I went to Dubai to shoot an international specialist recruitment campaign for Ericsson. To say that Dubai has a building boom is an understatement, the place is a forest of construction cranes. They say that 25% of all the world´s building cranes are in Dubai! Must be heaven for architects, there are plenty of extreme looking buildings including the world´s highest, today at 600 plus meters but aiming for 818 m. A perfect back ground set for our pictures. Our local production company Bareface helped us find locations, permits, models, camera teams, catering and all. When on the sea, we had great help from Matt Grimley, whose big catamaran Skye-Rose was used as a base for photo and filming. Our international production team included people from more than 15 countries.

September 2007 Annecy is one of the world top spots for paragliding. The lake with its mountainous surroundings is perfect for thermal winds. So when I got the assignment for Ericsson the choice of location was not too difficult. We hooked up with Erik Rehnfelt, ranked #20 in the world and his girlfriend Anna Lindblad, who run La Chavenette, a small B&B in the tiny little village Dingy St. Clair near the lake. With their help we signed a number of top pilots for the project. Among our crew was also cameraman Peter Degerfeldt who happens to be the lucky owner of a Wescam HD which we mounted on a helicopter for the aerial shots. Despite a stormy beginning we got some stunning footage and stills. Have a look.

October 2007 Ericsson runs a world wide project to set up mobile phone base stations in remote and rural areas all over the world. This assignment aimed to document their first solar cell powered base station. Solar cells are eco-friendly, maintenancefree and quiet. A little bit more expensive initially but will pay off after 12-18 months. Together with cameraman Jokum Sommer, I set out for a remote village in the midst of Sumatra. During the trip we passed by a local tile factory, an elephant school and a few villagers.

May 2007. Another assignment for Ericsson. This time we were shooting on Sugarloaf Mountain right on the sea. The cable car was an essential part of the pictures so we had to hire the top and middle stations for the crew and models. We also hired a helicopter for overview photos. Rio de Janeiro is a beautiful city with all the mountains and islands spread out in the bay. Wonderful people to work with and great food, the meat is absolutely fantastic

July 2007 The Swedish Tourist Board produces an annual book. Every year has different themes. Next year´s book will be about parks. High Chaparrall is the oldest theme park in Sweden, started by “Big Bengt” Erlandsson in 1966. “Big Bengt”, who is now 85 years old, has always been fascinated by the Wild West. In the mid-fifties he made a road trip with some friends to the classic historical spots on the North American prairie and some years later he bought a few thousand telephone poles from “Televerket”. They were used to build his first fortress. Today, the park´s annual turnaround is app. 6 million € ! In a three months season, not bad for an old cowboy ! I am proud to have had the honour to talk to him for a few hours and was quite a bit surprised to discover the vast Swedish interest in “the Wild West”.

March 2007 Together with Tina Grimstedt, digital photo teacher, I ran two 5 days workshops at the mountain station Sylarna. Despite very bad weather with snowstorm for almost two weeks the courses were filled with enthusiastic participants who spent most of the days on the mountain performing their daily tasks. Late afternoons and evenings were spent in front of their computers downloading files and doing post production. If you learn how to work in these conditions you can work in any kind of weather.

February 2007 On assignment for RES I went to Malaysia with my writing collegue Cenneth Sparby. Our plan was to spend a few days on the island of Langkawi on the west coast, checking out the beaches and the mangrove areas before going to Borneo to hike through the rain forest and climb Mount Kinabalu at 4095 m and then on to Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre and Turtle Islands to visit the rangers who work for the preservation of the endangered Green Turtle. Putting out baby turtles from the hatchery into the sea was almost like watching babies being born. Malaysia was a bit of a surprise to me. Most people are fairly bilingual with English as a second language, so it was easy getting in contact with people everywhere. Traffic was pretty easy, no crazy driving, and people very friendly like in most Asian countries. Superb food everywhere in all price levels mostly quite inexpensive with Western standards in mind. Most of all, nature was amazing, so astoundingly beautiful, from beaches to rain forest to Mount Kinabalu. I want to go back!

January 2007 My long time client Sportresor asked me to go to Verbier for their annual "Advanced Ski Week", an event with two well known Swedish free riders, Magnus "Slange" Loo and Sara Orrensjö. Snow was sparse and we spent the first three days skiing the pistes in shitty weather conditions. Then it started dumping. So eventually we got a few days of decent skiing.

October and November 2006. I was lucky to get an assignment for Ericsson again. This turned out to be very difficult, probably the most difficult one I have ever had during my career. All in all,during two trips, I spent eight days shooting a Stemme, a super hightech glider from a Cessna and a helicopter. What made it so difficult, was that I had to shoot it in specific angles against very specific backgrounds, which our AD had found on Google Earth. What he didn´t count on, was, that San Diego has five big airports which all have individual restricted airspaces. The first day shooting, I lost a lens from the Cessna at 3300 feet. Luckily it didn´t hit any one and I managed to buy a new one the same day. The biggest problem was communication between the two pilots and myself. Standing on the landing skid of the helicopter I could just forget using the intercom. It was to windy to keep it on my head so I had to use handsigns and shouts to make myself understood to the pilot. It took us a few days to work this out before the shooting went smooth. Working two two-hour shifts a day was real tough and by the end of each shift we were totally wasted. Standing on the skids in speeds of 80 - 100 m/h wears you out quickly.

December 2006 The week before Christmas 2006 I went to South Africa for Ericsson again. We spent five days in Durban shooting skateboarding, inlines and BMX in a huge skatepark. We hired around 15 professional riders, five in each discipline and worked through our story board from early morning until dark in order to finish the job before Christmas. The first two days were spent planning the shoot and doing the casting as a tropical storm outside made it impossible to do anything. Thanks to our local production team from 2Productions and the fantastic models, we were able to work very efficiently during the remaining days.

Croatia was beautiful! Although we had a bit of bad luck with the weather. We took a ferry from Split to Vis where we met up with Shane Braddock from Lifejacket Adventures and some clients of his. Some of us went kayaking with them despite strong winds, while the rest of us drove to Komiza, a cosy little town on the other side of the island. We went for a day trek in the hills while waiting for the others who were supposed to arrive by kayak. Unfortunately strong winds forced them ashore, so we all went for a bike trek next day to Roki´s vineyard. There are worse things in life than spending a few hours tasting wines under a big mulbery tree. Then we went to Hvar island where we kayaked to the Pakleni isles to visit Palmizana, where the Meneghello family were the first to welcome tourists on these islands in 1906. This is only about one hour paddling from Hvar town. There are several little bays and a few nice and priceworthy restaurants, we had lunch at Dionos and a late dinner at Palmizana, run by Dagmar Meneghello and her daughter. For more info about kayaking in Croatia: www.lifejacketadventures.com

Here are some pics from my biking assignment in Provence. The first part of the week we had our basecamp in Isle sur la Sourge, a small city in the heart of the district of Luberon, famous for its superb wines. From there we made day trips to small vilages in the mountains to take biking pictures, lunch picnics and other stuff such as a trip to world famous Château neuf du Pape, where we did some wine testing. Midweek we moved four hours drive west to a high plateau called Les Cevennes where we stayed in the little village of Meyrueis. The area is very beautiful with deep gorges cutting through the plateau. We did some hiking but it was mostly just too hot, 36°C, to do any serious stuff, so we ended up kayaking and having picnics in Gorge du Tarn during the hottest part of the days, to hike only in the late afternoon when temperatures dropped to a more sustainable level. The hilite of the trip was on one of these late afternoon hikes, when we first spotted a huge predator bird which turned out to be a Bearded vulture. After a few minutes we counted to about fifty of them almoste darkening the sky with their wing span of almost three meters.

On May 28 I'm going on a trip to Croatia to check out the archipelago outside Split. We are going kayaking around the island of Vis, visit some vineyards and see the Blue Grotto on the island Bisevo. We will also try to visit the Kornati islands by kayak and finally try to do some climbing and hiking in the Paklenica National Park.

If you want to see more, check this out:
www.nationalgeographic.com

Biking through landscapes lavishly teeming with blooming lavender. Hills with country roads winding through vineyards full of climbing vines with grapes that will eventually be sold as full-bodied French wines.

That will be my goal in July when I will make a bike tour in Provence in France. This is an assignment for a travel agency. Stay tuned for photos.

Ever dreamt that you have your own mountain with your own ski lift just for you and your friends? To test what it's like to get as close as possible to that dream, I went to Blue River in British Columbia, Canada, together with some friends.

Mike Wiegele and Hans G. Moser came from Austria to Canada in the sixties to start a ski school in Lake Louise. After a few years they split up and each started a heliski operation, MW and CMH.

We checked in with MW in Blue River. Our group of 8 were assigned an A-star helicopter and two guides, the chief guide, Manfred Agerer and Chris.

At 8.30 am daily we loaded up for a long day of skiing in the vast Cariboos and Monashees mountain ranges. Blue River lies in a narrow valley dividing the two ranges so we easily had access to both of them. We could literally point to whatever peak we wanted to ski and ask the pilot to set us down there, provided our guides considered it safe from an avalanche point of view. And so we did!

Read more on www.wiegele.com

The ski area of Ski Amad in Salzburgerland in Austria is not only about skiing. The area has also developed a taste of afterski, spa and not the least, surprisingly good local wines.

Our idea was to start in Bad Gastein in STS headquarter Salzburger Hof, test the thermal bath and ski to Grossarl. Ski the area of Grossarl and ski to Flachau, stay two nights and then go on to Flachau, stay two nights and then on to Pichl. We also included a day trip to Ramsau for snow shoeing and to see the view from Dachstein, the glacier on 2 700 m.

We discovered a huge ski area, with numerous ski resorts and an overall ski pass. Most areas offered good intermediate skiing opportunities with a lot of variety and good cross country trails, many cozy "on the mountain restaurants". Most afterski places may at first seem a bit "too much" but after a few beers and shots it feels quite ok.

But what struck me the most, is the number of spa facilities in every little village. From public thermal baths to saunas and pools within the hotel. Add various forms of body treatments such as massage, radium baths and mud masks.

Read more on www.skiamade.com

There is hardly any other place in the world that gives you such a tickling feeling of adventure when you hear the name as Patagonia. It is a big piece of land and this was my third trip there. I was lucky to be hired by Ericsson to take river rafting photos, the river being a metaphor for "IP flow".

We took off from Stockholm in December, flying via Frankfurt, Sao Paolo, Santiago and Puerto Montt in southern Chile. After an overnight we continued south with a small plane to Futaleufu where we were met by Expediciones Chile, who where to be our hosts during five days of filming. We drove for about an hour every morning to the put in place on Futaleufu river. The shooting list was pretty full and we spent long days ticking off one photo at a time. The weather was incredibly good for Patagonia with sunshine and around 20 C every day. The crew helping us was bossed by Jim Coffey, a very experienced Canadian river guide, helping out in absence of Chris Spelios, founder of Expediciones Chile. Apart from minor drawbacks such as a cracked rib and drowned camera equipment (EOS 1Ds and video) we got some fantastic footage and photos. This is one of the most beautiful places I have visited and the pisco sour we had every afternoon was unforgettable.

See more on www.exchile.com

Biking between vineyards in Piemonte, the heart of the "Slow Food" movement in Italy. What means of transport could be better than biking, through Barololand during the truffle season in October?

If you want to survive daily five course dinners with fantastic wines, and grappa to finish them off, during a ten day visit to Piemonte, you need to get some exercise in between. The villages and wine producers are not too long distances apart and you can get a few daily hours of biking in the hilly landscape with fantastic views of the vineyards in autumn colours.

The truffle market in Alba is world famous and people visit from all over the world to inhale the penetrating perfumes of the white truffle. We started out in the town of Bra, having dinner at Osteria Boccondivino, where the Slow Food movement started in 1986 by Carlo Petrini. Then we slowly worked our way around the Barolo district, including an early morning truffle hunt with signore Costa and his truffle dog in Monchiero Alto.

Read more on:
www.slowfood.com
www.hanssonlundvall.se
www.dala-floda.net