A little tourist in Paris
In September 2003 I got a week off work to go assist
Ari photographing some clothes for a German catalogue. We arrived there on Sunday and left the Sunday after that with 4 days reserved for shooting, one for backup. Monday had been planned for location scouting and as such I wasn't necessarily needed for that part. I decided to "do the tourist thing" in Paris and walk around. The weather was amazing, temperatures well above 30 degrees (c), clear skies and absolutely still. Come to think of it, might have been to hot for a polar bear such as me.
I started my walk under Arc D'triumphe at the top of Champs Elyssé. The route I walked can be seen on
this map. Walked down to Place de la Concorde towards to the Tuileries Gardens. Of course I took a few stops for beer :) Onwards to the Louvre museum which I had intended to visit but unfortunately it was closed that day. Would have loved to take a peek inside but I guess I'll have to do so next time. At that point I wasn't sure where I was headed so I decided to follow the path of the river Rhine leading me to the Notradame church. A magnificent building that is. When the historic monuments seemed to be thinning I crossed a bridge over the river and headed towards Champs Elyssé. Not exactly sure of the Eiffel tower's location I walked along the river, practiced my French on some riverside artists with very little success. Finally I caught a glimpse of the tower and walked the narrow streets of district 7 (arrondissements 7ème). Getting lost a little bit, sippin' on a few beers and some window shopping I finally found my way to the Eiffel tower square. It was crowded with people so I practically gave up on actually going up to the viewing spot in the tower. For some reason I got stuck in a queue which I didn't even know where was headed. Lucky me, it was the queue for the tower. I went all the way to the top, shot a few pics and headed back. I got back to Champs Elyssé at 8 or 9 in the evening, tired from the day's walk. Sat down at some street restaurant for an excellent pizza and two beers.
On this "short" walk of Paris I fell in love with the city. Up to this point I've always enjoyed walking around London or Copenhagen - getting lost in the crowds knowing nobody. But Paris was just so much nicer. You could sit down just about anywhere and strike up a chat with the next person. Of course it is filled with tourist but there is also incredibly many Parisians either in no need of a job or always on vacation. Although the weather was this good (with the appropriate amount of short skirts!) I hope to stop by there sometime when the rain is falling to experience the city's somber moments also. Not to mention snowy days - if they ever are. This city will be visited again for sure.
The pictures in this gallery are mostly from this walkabout but unfortunately the camera I had was very primitive. It was just a point'n'shoot with no settings to be made or even a zoom lens. A lot of photos though. Hope you enjoy...
Click
here to open up a new window with the gallery.
as written by Tobbi G. at 1:58 PM 
Went to a soccer match the other day when the team in my home town took on Anneheim Achen or something. I decided to pop the camera with me and borrowed a 70-200 mm lens with a 2x extension. The game was on an evening, forcing me to use a high ISO setting (mostly 1600 I think). As it was the first time I tried to shoot a match catching close ups of the players I had to play around with the shutter settings. Two notable problems; first is too slow shutter speeds which can be easily fixed and second is wrong focus points. Shooting with such a long lens with a fast moving target requires some practice. Another match tomorrow and I'll keep tryin' :) None of the pics have been processed in any way other than being resized. I did boost the contrast and saturation on a few of them to see how it would come out. Definitely looked better. Might post those later on.
Yup, went to Manchester, drank a lot of Boddingtons, slept too little, watched more soccer than I've ever done, talked to a lot of funny speaking English people, saw a cool appartment worth £400.000, got to know a Sony dog, ate a bad McDonalds, watched Beckham play badly, saw Iceland beaten badly, took a lot of photos, wore my uniform too much, played quite a lot of pool, spent more money on beer than anything else, fell asleep over CSI: Miami before 9 on a Saturday evening, made some fun at Liverpool, forgot to see the gay area, met the Thirsty Scollar, spoke to Ed - the biker, listened to too much dance music, tried some new pick up lines, saw a riced Ferrari 360, ate very spicy chicken, bragged about being at the match while my mates weren't, tried to force myself to a VIP club, hit on the bar tender girl, got my camera taken away from me by a 400 pound black door man, got my camera back, hit on the birthday girl, got a few dances with the birthday girl, bowled a bit... and a lot more... I look wasted on a lot of these so I hope you get some laughs out of it. I at least got a lot of free beers out of it. 
Yup, went to a car show today and brought my camera with me. First time seeing the Ferrari Enzo besides in pictures and videos. Man that car is crazy. Every now and then a photographer has a moment of stupidity and today was mine. Instead of shooting the show at ISO100 as I usually do when the lighting is good or I have a flash. Recently I was playing around with ISO setting 1600 and forgot to reverse it. Of course this resulted in all the photos being very grainy. Shame since the cars deserve being sharp as a hairpin. Oh well. Hope you enjoy.
Yup... finally a few photos from this night. Basically the first time I used my new camera and as such, the photos ain't worth much. Still a good night and a lot of fun. We went to my aunt's house for the evening and stayed there until around 1 after midnight. After that I met up with some friends and we all went to some "club" in our home town for a big party. Wound up staying awake well into the morning of the new year - pissed of course ;) 
Went to a short trip with some co-workers at Atlanta on Friday. We drove up to some farm not far away from Borganes had our group split in two for some refreshing games and of course my team won. Very nice dinner included and ... ehm ... a few beers. Hopefully the photos captured the fun :D
Finally, January 20th arrived and we were all on our way home. We departed Jeddah at around 1400 local time scheduled to arrive in London at 1730. A great trip since the huge Boeing 777 was not even half full so I could take up a full row of five seats and sleep the whole way. An excellent way to travel ;) Since it was a flight with Saudia Airlines no alcohol was allowed onboard forcing us to wait "patiently" until London to have "one" sip of beer. Since I slept through the whole damn flight I didn't take any photos on the way to London but I made it up by shooting a few in Heathrow's pub (photos, not beers ;). Leaving Jeddah left me a bit sad but at the same excited to arrive in Iceland. A short period over where I learned so much and meet so many interesting people. Wouldn't mind doing it again - anyday!
Our last day in Saudi Arabia and me, Ketill and Gísli decided to drive up to the mountains to visit a town called Taif. The town is known to Saudis as the vacation town for the hottest part of summer. It is elevated about two thousand meters above see level so most of the year it has a cold breeze and lower temperatures. In order to drive there from Jeddah you have to pass Mekkah and for non-Muslims there is a road passing in a big U past Mekkah as no Westerners or non-Muslims are allowed in the city. This makes the way to Taif about an hour longer. Of course we accidentally drove through Mekkah on our way there. Just another adventure. High in the mountains, close to 
This day I went to the beach with Ketill, Gummi and Gísli to try and get some last minute tan before leaving home two days later. First time at the beach for me and man it was great. Weather was incredible although it was a little windy. Me and Gummi had just gotten off the night shift so we spent most of the day sleeping. I did a bit of snorkeling that day too but the see was uneasy and my mask was leaking so salt got into my eyes. Got 30 minutes out of it or so anyway. I just wish I had gone to the beach more often - so nice it was.
Me, Ketill and Haddi decided, with some planning, to go on a diving trip lasting for a whole day. Since neither me or Haddi had a license to dive we mostly went along for the ride and to do some snorkeling. The boat traveled for about 1.5 hours out to the sea where we came up to the first reef. We had two more reefs to visit during the day stopping for about two hours at each one. The weather was excellent and much of the day we just sunbathed and did some easy snorkeling. The day was great and I do have some photos from underwater but had to take those on a film. Hopefully I'll get those back tomorrow and I'll add them in then.Press 
When coming from Surabaya I got the chance to see the aircraft we came in on and check out all the cargo rooms. We walked around the whole aircraft, went into the aircraft where all the baggage is kept and walked around all the landing gear. I had never seen an aircraft on the outside this close so it was quite fun. I even got to stand in one of the engines. It is quite impressive how big the 747 is and standing next to it you actually feel quite small.
Surabaya was an excellent place as I've already said earlier on this page. As we only stayed there for a day I couldn't get that many photos done even though there were countless photo opportunities there. The people down town were all eager to pose (although for money in most cases). Again, a few times I have a few differently lit photos there entirely on account of my testing. On another note - man, I make that uniform look good.
Almost every single night in Rose Village there is a party to be found. They are of various quality depending on the people at the party as well as the amount of alcohol available. I didn't go to too many parties there and hardly ever brought my camera with me to the gatherings. The few that I went to though were more than fun, they were crazy. Hope the photos say more than a 1000 stupid words from me!.
Rose Village is quite a place. "Millions" of small villas mostly occupied by Air Atlanta staff and they all look the same making it near impossible to find your way around the place. I got lost quite a few times there, especially when coming from a night shift. The photos show a few places around the compound, villas, pool area and the office we worked in. A lovely place and totally blocked from the "Saudi world".
Decided to throw in some photos of the house we stayed in during our time in Jeddah. These photos were taking the morning we left Jeddah so everything is a complete mess. It wasn't always like that! For the first couple of weeks I stayed there with Ketill and Hinni but later on when Hinni left Haddi joined me and Ketill. All in all the place was very nice. The living room was very spacious and my room quite big. Not bad, not bad at all.
While driving around Jeddah I took the camera with me a few times to get some shots of this beautiful city. These photos are very random and unfortunately don't cover even one fourth of the places we saw. Should give people an idea of the place though. Some photos appear two times or even more often - that's me playing around with some settings, pretending to be a photographer.
Although these photos can be found in other galleries I decided to dedicate a section for this. When I've added comments for each photo you'll see why a specific section was needed. I'll also add more photos to this over the next few days. Of course I didn't have the chance to take a picture of all the people I got to know there so my apologies to those that are left out. There is always next year ;)
Here are a few pics from our travel to Jeddah. As I've already written about our wonderful trip through a few airports, in a "lovely" Boeing 737 belonging to Royal Air Maroc I won't go through the details here. It was quite an experience to witness a hajj flight and the rituals performed during the flight. I just wish I had taken more photos during the trip.
A few pics taken in and around my hometown. Just got my camera when I shot this so it was just a test to learn a bit about the camera. Hope you like them. All pics are available in larger resolutions if anybody wants a wallpaper or something like that. Most of these were shot by using a long shutter speed (20-30 sec. minimum) so detail in some of them is very little. It was pitch dark outside though so I'm quite happy with the results. 