Copenhagen Cultural Exposure

Because of my incredible luck, I got dragged to a concert at Christianshavns Beboerhus on a Tuesday evening after a 12 hour working day. Not the best start, but parts of my family knew this guy who was supposedly a "great" piano player. I was a bit sceptic, but brought the camera since I would at least get a bit of practice shooting in horrible light.
I was spot on with the light - it was 1 lamp in a dark room. Reddish orange bulb directed down towards the sax player making it hard to get a decent shot of anything. Bass player was in the opposite corner and drummer, dressed all in black was in the back.
Boy was I wrong about my musical scepticism ... Jonas Müller Projekt starring Jonas Müller, Jeppe Skovbakke, Morten Carlsen and Stefan Pasborg started out with South African inspired beautiful lively jazz. Its been a while since I have been so positively surprised by music. I can only say that you should definitely hear the first 4 numbers of Jonas new album being released just now. Stefan Pasborg recently got honored with a price for his new album and I am not surprised. He was absolutely inspiring on those drums.
I will update this with a link to their album when it gets released.
Click here for a little taste of the wonderful music.

Jonas Müller - Winter Jazz 2008 - Christianshavns Beboerhus

One of the nice things about Copenhagen is the Jazz Scene that almost explodes every summer at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. A week of great music - jazz of all sorts - playing all around town. Some years back, around 2001 a concept of Winter Jazz all around Denmark (Vinter Jazz) was created, based on Odense Vinter Jazz and concerts within a 10 day timespan all over Denmark, at the end of January started. It goes on all around Denmark, even starting to expand to the Southern part of Sweden. In 2008 about 200 concerts are taking place all around Denmark. A lot of these concerts take place in Copenhagen and I have so far been at two.
My first concert this year was Enrico Pieranunzi with Jonas Johansen and Jesper Lundgaard. A remarkable concert with Enrico's own material mixed with themes and groves from jazz standards many of us love. Some of you might know Enrico's work from his time with Chet Baker, Paul Motian, Charlie Haden ...

Enrico Pieranunzi - Winter Jazz 2008 - Statens Museum for Kunst

There is something really nice about this Friday before Christmas, because it ends a busy work week and gives us a lovely weekend before Christmas Eve. The evening is slow and relaxing. Not too many people out on the town ... Copenhagen is reasonably relaxing for a Friday night, but still alive as it should be.

Copenhagen - Friday before Christmas!

In Copenhagen (Denmark) we have very dark afternoons in December/January. This means that its dark when you leave for work and dark when you leave work again in the afternoon. This is perfect for the traditional Christmas lights, but not always perfect for the people getting a tiny bit depressed in the dark winter times. One of the things you can do to make the time more lively is going out to enjoy some of the entertainment in the Copenhagen nightlife like Det Ny Teater or one of the many other Copenhagen theater scenes.
Det Ny Teater is from 1908 and has room for more than 1000 people in the audience. With 12.000 m2 its one of the biggest theaters in the country. Being located very centrally and with this beautiful arch over the street passing through from Vesterbrogade to Gl. Kongevej. They have done a lot of musicals lately and I hope people have time, if visiting Copenhagen to visit the theater, the theater cafe (with performing waiters) or at least walk past to look at the beautiful arch.

Copenhagen Winter Evening ...

In August my brother got his first kid, which started the baby boom in our side of the family. My wife is now pregnant, my bonus brothers girlfriend is pregnant and my wifes sister is pregnant. Apart from that, 2 of my cousins (sisters) are both set to give birth within 6 months. I am sure this is scaring the hell our of the older generation in our family as well as bring joy to them, to their kids (our parents) and our generation as well. As an amateur photographer, this is heaven
Babies/kids are always voluntary subjects for photographs and I already started shooting my niece quite a bit. Here is one of the examples:

The happy baby chewing away ...

I really like the colors of Autumn and by the looks of all the cameras being carried around in the parks of Copenhagen, I am not the only one. I took this picture outside of work during a small break. It was taken around mid day late August and is right opposite the street from where I work. I will loose my camera early December, so I am starting to feel the abstinence already. Will probably take another month or so before I get my new camera and in that period I will probably be desperate and use anything I can get my hands on during Christmas.
Well ... I can only hope I will get my new camera before Christmas comes, so I have something decent to shoot with while being with my family in the Swedish countryside.

The beautiful Autumn leafs in my little Autumn set

"The falling leaves drift by the window. The autumn leaves of red and gold." The colors of Autumn are amazing. The thought of things fading being something beautiful is something we should remind ourselves more often. On one of our usual weekend walks around Copenhagen I took this picture of a simple leaf fading to past. Its not clear colored or saturated. Its tired and beautiful.

A series of pictures from this Autumn week

Under normal circumstances I would consider myself my own toughest critic in relation to most of what I do. Followed closely by my wife. In matters of photography and especially pictures what the subject is my wife - SHE is DEFINATELY my toughest critic.

I don't think I remember taking a picture of her, that she initially liked. I apparently still have some calibration problems with my screen at home, so most of these pictures are a bit too dark. Well ... she doesn't know I put this up, but I will be ready to take it down if need be.

The tough critic!

Got up "early" Sunday morning to get a few shots of swans taking off and landing through the morning fog in Damhus Søen. Unfortunately my lack of experience didn't help me prepare. I got up to shoot at the lake at 8am, which turned out to be much too late even this close to winter. I had decided to not bring a tele zoom because I thought I could shoot the ones closer to the bank with my 105/2.8. Boy was I mistaken ... Bring at LEAST a 200mm for that kind of job. The swans were relaxing on the lake laughing at my futile attempts.

Most of the morning it was like shooting in a whitebox. No directional light and everything filtered through a layer of clouds. After shooting a bit of test shots I was lucky to get some sun through holes in the clouds. I got some decent shots (by my own standards) of the morning sun shining through the clouds, but never got the shot I had imagined. Funny enough the best shot I got was a test for movement vs. shutter speed, where I waved the camera and tried to hit some birds on the way. You can look at some of the other pictures in the Damhus Søen-set.

Random bird shot waving a camera around.

This was taken at the wedding reception. It is cropped a bit and then dragged through LightRoom to try out of the features for making stuff black&white. After the color/light trip it was passed through a noise filter in Gimp to get the grainy film look.

Walking from the ceremony of my brothers wedding we passed this new building. I couldnt help shooting it from this angle since it had a strange 60s look to it. I desaturated the colours in Lightroom and added some simulated grains in Gimp to give it a high iso film feeling. Not sure if it actually worked as intended, but I am still rather happy with the result.

Today I witnessed my oldest brother getting married. A nice and casual civil wedding where the closest family from both sides were present. I was photographing the event and uploaded about 66 pictures to Flickr, for the people who might want to see.

Taking a walk with my wife around Vesterbro in Copenhagen sometimes gives me surprising sights. On this particular autumn walk, we saw a kid "riding" in the middle of street on a grass patch walked by an adult. This is not something you expect when walking about 3 minutes from the Central Trainstation of Copenhagen.

First of all ... the horse is not an animal by accident, but the shot turning out well was kind of an accident. I was in Dyrehavsbakken shooting my wifes company trip with around 280 people present for picnic and a trip to Cirkusrevyen. Off all the shots this is the one that turned out the best. Kind of ironic considering I came to shoot people.

On the 1st of August my kid brothers wife gave birth to a baby girl. Most of the family had a chance to stop by the hospital during the day and I couldnt help taking a few shots of her and her parents.

Alva and the proud father.