666 - The number of the beast

Welcome to my logbook

The workaholic Being in charge Just meat please What do you think you see? 666 - The number of the beast We are all going to die! At any given time the whole building could fall apart! Dark waters In the end
The workaholic Colloquially, a workaholic is a person who is addicted to work. This phrase does not always imply that the person actually enjoys their work, but rather simply feels compelled to do it. There is no generally accepted medical definition of such a condition, although some forms of stress, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can be work-related. Although the term "workaholic" usually has a negative connotation, it is sometimes used by people wishing to express their devotion to one's career in positive terms. The "work" in question is usually associated with a paying job, but it may also refer to independent pursuits such as sports, music, art, or blogging. A "workaholic" in the negative sense is popularly characterized by a neglect of family and other social relations. The term has no clinical definition, however. The name itself is a play on "alcoholic". The first year it has been found in print is 1968. It was first popularized in 1971 by Wayne Oates in his book, Confessions of a Workaholic. It gained more widespread use in the 1990s, as the result of a wave of the self-help movement that centered on addiction, forming an analogy between harmful social behaviors such as over-work and drug addiction, including addiction to alcohol. Although "workaholic" is not an official medical or psychological term, it remains in widespread usage to refer to those whose expenditure of time on work and work-related issues leads to the detriment of their bodily health, social lives, family and domestic life, or leisure time.
Being in charge This text is only a part of a longer text written by the Swedish journalist Maria Carlings (SvD) and roughly translated by me. Do you have children and a decent education? Do you work hard, are ambitious and on top of this you are a little bit stressed? Are you prepared to do everything to make sure that your child has a comfortable life situation? The risk is pretty big that you are a curling parent. The term curling parent was invented by the Danish psychologist Bent Hougaard who in anger wrote the book Curling-forældre og Service-børn. Sine this book was launched the whole population of Denmark (and now also Sweden) knows about this new type of parent. A curling parent is a mom or a dad who wants their child's absolute best in all situations and is prepared to work very hard to make this happen. Funny activities, pedagogical kindergarten, the best school, stimulating friends, developing free time activities and so on. Nothing must stop their child's progress and if a problem occurs the curling parent runs out with the broom sweeping the problem away. This cleaning actions can be done in the kindergarten or amongst friends, in the sports club or ells where. If a curling parent can't solve a problem they simply move their child to a, in their eyes, a better environment. The problem, Hougaard says, is that this type of parent has a problem to see that the child is a part of a community in the kindergarten, the school or amongst their friends. Maybe the curling parent is mostly common amongst the population born in the sixties. The people born in the sixties are often very influenced of the eighties “commit in your self” campaign. It is a sure thing that a full blood individual will totally commit in their offspring as well. After a long days work all you want to do is being a good parent making joy able things with your child. To make more time for playing the cooking and dishing are taken care of as fast as possible, the curling parent never ask their child to take part in the daily routines. The child is put up to minimal resistance says Hougard and warns about the fact that we are raising lacy, egoistic people that harbour small respect for their surroundings. Yes, I totally agree in what is said in this text! *"Oscar, dad is coming soon helping you with your shoes!"* Ok dear reader, I must go. /Tomas
Just meat please I read an article from Life Technology on the web, and then I decided to eat more meat... From Life Technology... When you think of farm animals, you might picture cattle munching grass on rolling pastures, chickens pecking on the ground outside of picturesque red barns, and pigs gobbling down food at the trough. Over the last 50 years, the way food animals are raised and fed has changed dramatically to the detriment of both animals and humans. Many people are surprised to find that most of the food animals in for example the US are no longer raised at farms at all. Instead they come from crowded animal factories, also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Just like other factories, animal factories are constantly searching for ways to shave their costs. To save money, they've redefined what constitutes animal feed, with little consideration of what is best for the animals or for human health. As a result, many of the ingredients used in feed these days are not the kind of food the animals are designed by nature to eat. Just take a look at what's being fed to the animals you eat: Same species meat Diseased animals Feathers, hair, skin, hooves and blood Manure and other animal waste Plastics Drugs and chemicals Unhealthy amounts of grains Are these ingredients legal? Unfortunately, yes. Nevertheless, some raise human health concerns. Others just indicate the low standards for animal feeds. But all are symptoms of a system that has lost sight of the appropriate way to raise food animals. Ok, some burgers over here please... /Tomas
What do you think you see? Photography is a magical form of art, it leaves so much space for the man or woman behind the tools to be creative. I guess that when you look at the photo above you maybe see a tranquil, abstract and mainly calm environment. Will you believe me if I say it was storm winds, the temperature was 8 degrees below cero and my fingertips where getting blue because of thin glows? It is a great feeling to be able to present an environment in a certain outcome by using a camera, a tripod and the right filters. To me it is pure freedom and I hope I never will loose that feeling. I call my self a fine art landscape photographer, not because I try to put my self in a better league or any such thing, never. But what I like is the words art and landscape. Landscape, waterscape, nature – there you have my elements I just love being out in the wild to smell, feel and see mother earth from her best side. The word art has a big meaning because it lets me introduce my finished photos to you in the way I want. Thank you for reading /Tomas
666 – The number of the beast The eighties was a fabulous time! I had a jacket that was short and white, my trousers was even shorter (and sometimes white), my hair was long (and thin) and I had loafers with “tufts” all year long. During this decade of good taste I developed my big interest for music, and music to me is rock. The first band that really hit me hard was Iron Maiden, their album The number of the beast opened the door to a new world and my journey to build up a huge collection of records had started. I was 12 years old when The number of the beast was published (Mars 1982) and I could not understand how a group of five individuals could create something as great as this album. I was in love big time! During my teenage period I bought hundreds of albums and all of them were in the genre of hard rock, heavy metal, speed metal, trash metal, death metal or power metal (wow). There could be nothing ells entering my collections, you may call it conservative but that was the deal! I also went to a great deal of concerts and I have seen all the great bands from that time (even Helix, hmmm). Today I am very open minded in my taste when it comes to music, I listen to pop, jazz, soul and you name it but still hard rock has a special place in my heart. Therefore I was thrilled when my friend Albin Bogren showed me a photo form an old asphalt factory in Forsbacka. He had spotted a badly worn gas pump in this area and he thought that might be interesting, he looked at the pump, made adjustments to the numbers and took the photo. I ordered a huge print right away and it is sitting behind me in my office to be viewed every day. But I had to visit this place and in this case I had to do my version of this gas pump. Albin who is a kind soul had no problems with this and I made a slightly different composition but a pretty big change in the post processing. My version is the one you can see above and to me this is a photo telling more than a 1000 words. FAQ Q: What is hugely played on your cd player right now? A: Masters of Reality and the album Give us Barabbas, the song Voice and the Vision is played 500 times so far :).
We are all going to die! Yes, that is a plain fact! The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer puts things in his own perspective (roughly translated): “In the middle of life it happens that death comes and measures man. The visit is forgotten and life continues. But the suit is made, quietly.” The man in the picture above came walking from the graves on the left side of the cemetery. I raised my camera and took the picture. Then I said “I just took your picture, is that ok?” The man answered “Yes, but what a waste having me in a good photo”. No, I replied, you just made my photo. I have looked at this image so many times after it was taken and it is not the best photo I have done but still it has a special meaning to me. Why? It is very simple, it makes me think. I think of the man and his situation, was he visiting the grave of his wife, a sister, a brother or a friend? Is he like so many other older citizens of Sweden alone when younger family members and relatives are totally committed to make their dreams come true? “Sorry old man but I have to put every effort to reach my 15 minutes of shame so I can't visit you this year either”. I am also reflecting on my own life. A friend who is just a couple of years older than me (41) visited the local health care because he was worried about a “bump” on his neck. The nurse said “Well, you have reached the age from which cancer occurs more frequently”. Alright, that was what he needed to hear and he was totally calm all the time until the answers from the tests came back (NOT). Thank god it was nothing serious but still the words she said made me think, “You have reached the age from which cancer occurs more frequently!” Both my friend and I are probably (or one might say hopefully) in the middle of our lives and it has been a pretty fast journey so far. Things tell me time will not slow down during the other half and this makes me think about what I have achieved so far. But mainly I think of my two children, Agnes and Oscar, they are so young and I must be there for them until they are grown individuals. I can not get run over by a car or drown, it is not a good idea to get cancer either or visit buildings that is almost falling apart (yes, an extremely interesting story told further down this page). But is it not the height of self-absorption to worry about ones mortality? Yes, probably! Being 37 and putting time into the thoughts of death seems depressing. But still, the photo makes me think and it makes me humble about life and also grateful to the big and small people, things and happenings surrounding me.
At any given time the whole building could fall apart! Yes! I admit I am in love with the remains of old factories. There is so much history in the walls of an old factory and my hometown Gävle and the nearby surroundings is the home of the working class hero, therefore there is a lot of these buildings around. The one pictured above is from the village of Forsbacka. As far as I know this factory was used to do parts to tractors. It is a restricted area because at any given time the whole building could fall apart. When I took the photo bricks, glass and concrete fell from the roof and walls constantly. Stupidity one might think! Yes, and being the father of two small children adds more fuel to that thought. But curiosity killed the cat (or something like that) and I just had to see how this building looked like on the inside. The part in the photo is the smaller building of two, the other one is huge and I probably will return to immortalize that one as well. The story says the local home defence forces used to have their exercises in these buildings and that must be a perfectly dangerous place for them to play in. I could not see any remains of the home defence but one thing is sure, the local kids have their playground right here. Wow, that was some interesting storyTomas, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Dark waters
Please click on the thumbs to view a larger image.

One might wonder why a grown man stands near the edge to a waterfall looking into the cold and dark water doing the same procedure over and over again…

The sun and light has gone elsewhere several hours ago when I unpack my gear from the booth of my car. I am in the central parts of my hometown Gävle (Sweden) and my goal for the evening is to immortalize the small waterfall in front of the concert hall.

The small stream floating outside the concert hall is called Gavleån, it is such beautiful thing to have streaming water in the middle of a town and it gives great photographical opportunities.

I know the place I am going to use for my shooting, it is a small spot on higher ground where I will be able to view the difference of the waters structure in a good way. I start with mounting the camera on the tripod, the only filter used is a UV filter and I use it for protection. Then I roughly points my camera and lens to the desired point (where the action is). And now comes the tricky part, how does one make a composition when it is dark, or almost dark? I can give you some alternatives where the ground rule is to use the histogram or even better measure the light with an external light meter (it is all roughly described):

1.	Do it when it is still some light. Make the composition and then add filters (ND) and stack them until you get the desired times for the exposure.
2.	Do it in the dark and put the camera to the manual mode, the eternity setting and a small aperture (f16, f22). Then hope for some part of the image to be sharp.
3.	Be on location when the sun still is shining and make all needed settings in the good light. Then wait for the light to fade or disappear and then take your photo.
4.	Go to the local hardware store, buy a heavy duty flash light This gives you the possibility to make a composition even if it is dark.

Which one do I use? It depends on the situation and the goal for the final photo, what I can say is that I will not use number 2 :).

When I feel satisfied with my "field work" I will continue to the post processing stage but that is another story.

Thank you for reading

/Tomas