Hi all!
When I joined NPN October last year, I did not recognize that there where an introduction section. So, my apologize for not presenting myself earlier!
I am 60 years old, married, and living in Malmö, a city in the southern part of Sweden. Luckily, my wife is also a hobby photographer giving us the opportunity to be out in the nature together, bringing the cameras with us. Working full-time in the Civil Engineering consulting business, the time for being out with my camera is unfortunately rather limited.
Before I became a hobby photographer me and my wife traveled a lot, so I guess that I am the only one in this community that have been at 20+ National Parks in North America, without having even one decent image from these visits! But in the future …
I have been a hobby photographer since September 2018, when I joined a photography inspiration week workshop in Funäsdalen, Sweden held by the excellent local nature photographer Mats Ricklund. My journey as a photographer I have understood is somewhat in reverse order, I started with photographing details, small scenes and intimate landscapes, and are now trying to expand to capture grand landscapes and epic nature (however delayed due to the present situation). The reason to this is that Mats Ricklund is an expert in finding the small scenes in nature and that inspired and influenced me a lot during the workshop (that I also visited 2019 and 2020).
I happen to enjoy all aspects of photography (technical issues, craftmanship, creativity, artistry, post-processing, posting (at NPN), and soon printing), in fact I think that the need to combine all of these topics and skills is why I have fallen in love with photography. Note, “enjoy” is here not the same as “being good at”.
I have never posted or presented any images except for here at NPN, so if you want to check out what I capture with my camera, my NPN portfolio is the only source https://community.naturephotographers.network/u/ola/activity. I have posted approximately 30+ images and 1 haiku. At present time I am taking my first steps exploring black & white photography, so you will probably see this type of images to be posted by me during the upcoming months.
Since this introduction is posted several months after I joined NPN, I take the opportunity to reflect somewhat on this unique community. I find the comments on my posts given by moderators and members very friendly and at the same time honest and therefor very helpful, giving a boost to my development as a photographer. A great thanks to all of you! Also, looking at all the very good images posted by others gives inspiration and new ideas. After a while, I found that giving comments on images posted by other members is very rewarding and almost even better for my learning process than posting. Thank you @David_Kingham for NPN!
The post at the top is an ICM image taken during autumn last year.