I don’t live in a metropol, so night time can be a rather silent experience, especially this time of the year. I had a walk the other night, we had ‘warm’ weather for the first time in months , it had been raining all the day. Great. I can’t remember when I welcomed rain the last time…. Probably never happened, this isn’t really the most desert-like place on earth. Anyway, it appeared as I made a bunch of photographs of different places where there  are restaurants, or were in one case. Well, one of them can’t hardly be called a restaurant, but you get the pattern. I must have been hungry.

These images are from the outskirts of East Lund, where I live, along the route I have started to take when running. The area is not new to me, but definitely unexplored, and usually, when running, I always spot images that I would like to make but can’t because I wear no camera… This time I decided to make a walk along the same route and bring my camera with me. It was cold and windy, and the latter made the snow on the fields smooth as if it had been sanded with a fine grained sandpaper. My black and white heart just melted.

I caught this view the other day,  but I have passed it many times and every time with the wrong lens mounted. This time I had the right lens, so I was happy to be able to photograph the view with this amount of detail. What on earth is going on behind those windows…? Makes me think of the Moomin characters, which almost none but Scandinavians knows who they are… I’m thinking of hattifnattar, to be specific, which makes even fewer understand now, since that’s what they are called in Swedish. Well well, for all you not fancying Finnish stories, the image per se shows lots of details from a typical house in the centre of Lund.

Ögonlock som tyngs
Tårar och snöblandat regn
En vit regnbåge

Most are having days off now, running around, desperately seeking gifts. I have also been down to the town centre, not that much for shopping, just for a few errands. But, I have been photographing between those, as much as I could. Well, that and working, mostly the latter in fact… But soon I’m off too, yay for that.

Some images from yesterday and today (my darker ones went into Flickr, to keep the blog a bit warmer and more cosy ):

This was taken yesterday, on a Saturday, but yet, the feel was like being out on a wonderful Sunday walk. It was a marvellous day, far from the usual dark, cold and wet blanket that have been pulled over us for a while now.

I was out shooting for a few hours and that was bloody marvellous too, like balm for the soul. The afterwork in the evening, with Photoshop and a glass of wine couldn’t have felt much better. There were several pictures that made it into my Flickr photostream, but I think I liked this one best. I used my Lensbaby lens all day and tried to just enjoy the lovely light and colours. The Lensbaby can be really awkward sometimes, drawing the light like you were travelling in warp speed heading for another solar system. You have to be gentle on your hand and not turn the lens too much, sidewise. I placed the sweet spot for focus at the white building, which by the way is the University main building. The woman walking her dog just got that unfocused that I dream about to get it but ever so often just would see disappear in the backsweeps after a Warp speed ride.

I just love my painterly Lensbaby, and I just loved this Saturday.

This year has been a sad tree year, because of the many really old trees that have fallen. Some fell by their own, some by man. There has been a fungus that spread from tree to tree, which makes them rotten from the inside. You really don’t notice anything is wrong until it’s too late.

This week, I finally got my self out for one of those combined lunch and photography breaks I used to make. On my way to the centre of the town, I passed several trees that were about to get cut. The town gardeners seemed to have mobilized all cranes in the area for the task. The three grand trees on the pictures below belong to those who have become part of the town’s silhouette. Standing on a non-developed lot, they have been able to grow as they want; and it seems they wanted to have a view on what goes on outside the lot, lending heavily over the street.

A non-developed lot! How extraordinary that sounds, considering this is one of the prime locations, right beside the cathedral, which you see in the background on the lower picture. I believe they are about to project something for that spot and that’s why they cut the trees. But, you should know the lot has looked like this as long as I have been living here in Lund, and that’s a mere 20 years. About time. I’m sorry for the trees, though.

A looong crane was needed to reach the branches from the backside of the lot

These are the same trees, but seen from the street

It’s amazing how much greyer and darker it became since the last time I was outside with my eyes wide open. It’s still rather warm, at good days some 10° C, which is warm for November. But the rain, it feels like everything else than a warm summer shower. Oh well, I was happy to get out with my camera yesterday, even if I had this feeling of missing something. The autumn must have been short, I remember that the summer continued a good way into September. The photo above is taken outside a restaurant in Lund where there are outdoor tables during the warmer half of the year. The gas heaters still stand along the wall, and I wonder if they really can withstand this weather… We don’t.

Btw, I tried to order that book again, “Photography and the Art of Seeing” by Freeman Patterson, and this time I really got my hands on it. Yay! Will be good to read now when the available light hits the bottom levels and you’d better dream of photography than trying to practise it.

While I have been away from the blog and the Internet, my small but real world have been refurnished a bit. My family has moved to a new house, and I had to build a new bathroom + a few other necessities. Photography had to be set aside. To say the least; life had to be set aside is more descriptive… You could say that I’m slowly discovering the world again. Sitting here in my sofa and resting, I can still feel all my limbs are there. That’s a good sign. Having just opened the laptop, I hardly know what to do with it. Amazing how fast you forget what used to be. And, where on earth did I put my camera. In the first place, I thought I would have time and energy to document the work I went through, but I hadn’t. It was too exhaustive.

So what’s it with the image I posted? While I was renovating the house, this house was deconstructed. It is the community youth centre in the area where I live. My kids used to go there after school, and stayed there until the evening, when I came home from work. It was closed down last year due to severe mould problems. You could tell if some one had been there, on the slight scent on their cloth…

So, it was with ambiguous feelings I saw that they finally decided to tear it down. The room that now stands wide-open were the biggest, where you could play basketball and where the kids often built a stage and had music and theatre performances. I’m thinking of all this, and the people who worked there with my and all other’s kids. Deconstruction of houses are always sad. So much life has passed by behind those walls. But, this time, it was inevitable, I guess… Life goes on, with or without us and our artefacts.

This might appear as motor porn, but I am actually not a bit interested in aircraft technology. This engine, though, is in my opinion a beautiful piece of art. It’s amazing what detail some smiths could craft these days. Okay, this was 1918, but anyway. I wouldn’t say that motor technology has evolved much since then, you recognize every single piece if you know how an engine looks like today. The little beauty was made by a Swedish manufacturer, Thulins Aeroplanfabrik, long gone since.

I just wanted to share these pictures with you. Once in a while I pass by this engine at the IDEON science park where it stands in corner, hardly visible for all of us that rush by, paying more attention to the clock than the times.