I do believe that Norway is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The light is special. I am writing this from Provincetown – known for its gorgeous and spectacular light that Joel Meyerowitz so beautifully articulated in his book Cape Light. Norway’s light has a similar luminosity, and a clarity that makes me blink a lot. Being there a week before the summer solstice and therefor the “midnight sun” gave me almost 24 hours a day to enjoy it.
It was a long flight with many magical moments, and a stopover in Oslo gave us time to go to the Munch museum – one of my long time heroes. Here is an inspiring thought from him:
On to Inderoy and the lovely Nord Photography Workshops. The most spectacular part of the trip was not the light, fjords, and breathtaking landscapes – it was the people. For the second year I taught a workshop at Nord Photography in Inderoy and had, for the second year in a row, a group of wonderful students with a lovely combination of fun and seriousness.I thought shooting in water on our first day would be too much so Elisabeth, who can do anything, get anything etc, found us an empty pool!
We did advance to a pool with water for the last two days. Not just a pool, an infinity pool overlooking a fjord. Breathtaking view and breathtaking freezing cold water and air. But Norwegians are hardy stock as they express their pride in their Viking heritage.
Wearing a bag of rocks to keep her from floating, the intrepid Sheila Alnes pushes her vision!
Our goal was to learn to use the camera as a tool to discover new ways of looking at and interpreting the human form. The subject the human form, the nude, is the most popular subject throughout the history of art. I encourage an intuitive visual approach in photographing the body. This may sound simple but is extremely hard to do but each of my students embraced this notion. While everyone worked extremely hard, they managed to take a playful attitude towards their visual growth and development, photographing as a means to explore and enlighten.
I could not be more proud of the work my students did in this workshop!