I’m working on a local newspaper, actually I’m working on two local newspapers. Most of the assignments are indeed local stuff. Thankfully cool and different assignments show up such as covering a Bryan Adams concert last week. One of the papers I work for happens to be in a city that has a big arena. It’s actually a velodrome (indoor cycling track) but can be used for concerts. So I was assigned to cover one. It was really cool and at the same time my first ever concert shoot.

I know Bryan Adams isn’t exactly the most popular star these days but it’s still cool to cover stuff like this and see 7500 people (the majority was women) go nuts!

Concert photography CAN be tricky. Big amounts of backlight sure is a challenge.

Last Saturday I was sent out on an assignment to shoot some pictures from a dog show. Walking into the show room I was outraged right away. I was baffled by how much the owners of these dogs are into it. I’m on the verge of calling it animal cruelty.
My attitude towards this whole thing is obvious in the photos I took. Despite the article was just focused on the fact that the dog show was held in the city I wanted to display just how insane this whole thing is.

This poodle was sitting on a “preparation table” with the attitude that it looked like a million bucks or something. Poodles are a cocky breed of dogs if you ask me and I would never consider ever owning one myself!

This dog looks to be enjoying whatever is going on. It’s kind of hard to tell but the woman is holding an eyelash brush thing in her hand which she used to fix the hair right above the dogs eyes with …I think they should turn it around and give the most insane dog owner a medal for “most nuts in show”!

A significant amount of the assignments I shoot are portraits of some kind. These assignments are prone to become boring and routine work. The challenge is to make them interesting and tell something about the people. To be honest I hate those arranged and smile type portraits like this one.
You can’t really tell much from this portrait, other than these four girls have won some medals. It’s even hard to see what the background is. My problems when faced with this assignment was mainly lack of light. It’s in a bowling center where the light is focused on the lanes, not the area from where the bowlers “bowl”. I didn’t have a flash at the time of the assignment which limited my options. I worked two weeks on the paper before I was offered a job over the summer, so all portrait shoots I got the people outside where there’s plenty of light. However late fall is coming and you can’t trust the weather to be perfect every day.

Anyway these bowling girls are local bowlers and won plenty of medals during the recent European Bowling Championships. I think the picture turned out decent but really lacks the storytelling part.

I’ve shot 4 soccer games so far. That’s twice as many as I had shot before starting on the newspaper. It’s actually a lot of fun, but a lot of turf to cover. I’m going to get a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM as quickly as possible!

Shooting soccer with a 70-200mm f/2.8L USM with a 1.4x TC is NOT great.

One thing I had never taken pictures of prior to starting on the newspaper, was car accidents. This happened on the first day at the job as well.
I was doing an assignment - an outdoor event - and all of a sudden the sound of sirens broke through the ambient sound of cars driving by. A look down the street revealed fire trucks blocking an entire intersection. Right away I knew something had happened. I finished the assignment I was on and went up to the intersection and was met by a minor chaos. A car had slammed into another car before hitting a third car just about head on.

I gotta be honest here… My adrenaline started pumping for sure! It was kinda surreal to stand there taking photos of other people’s misery.

My first official day at the paper turned out to be a busy one. I ended up doing 8 assignments that day. Now, this is local newspapers I work for which will also be represented in stories and pictures I post. So basically I’m shooting a wide variety of stuff.
It appeared a construction site was making heavy noise from early in the morning and people living close to the construction site had been sending in complaints. So how do you approach that in a picture?Basically I wanted to involve all the elements in the picture. 1) The apartments where people were living and being woken up early in the morning, and 2) what caused the noise.

I like to approach assignments by walking around a bit to see what possibilities there are and how I can use my creativity. Here’s the result.

The apartments are in focus with the excavator creating sort of a frame for the apartments in the middle of the picture.

I’ve always had an interest in photography. Thinking back to when I was a young kid, the photographs in the papers and magazines have always been grabbing my attention.My first camera was a Ricoh KR-10 Super, an SLR that I got from my father when he bought a new camera. I gotta be honest though.. I didn’t shoot many pictures with it. I’ve never had the patience to wait for a roll of film to be developed to see the results.

The introduction of digital cameras changed everything. I got my first digital camera in 2002. It was a Minolta Dimage S404 and along with that my interest for photography grew. About a year later the Canon EOS 300D - or Digital Rebel as it’s known in the US - was introduced and I got it the day it was in the stores. It was actually an amazing camera compared to the Minolta.

New technology around the camera sensors removed quite a bit of camera noise and the introduction of the Canon EOS 20D made it possible to shoot hockey without having to shoot at 1/100 sec, because ISO 800 or 1600 for that matter would destroy the pictures due to an excess of noise. Between the purchase of the 300D and 20D I bought a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens.So the 20D with the 70-200 was a pretty nice combo to start off with.

Along with the 20D I bought the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens so my lineup of gear was acceptable to shoot whatever I wanted (and had access to). In October 2005 I upgraded again. This time to the workhorse of photo journalists - The Canon EOS-1D Mark II N.I’m not saying with the right camera anybody can shoot great pictures. I just want the best gear available, so the camera’s not what’s limiting me. The 8.5 fps sure come in handy when shooting as much sports as I do.

I’ve always had computers around me and for a long time I was sure I would make a living somewhere in the computer industry. While working at a hosting company in a job I wasn’t too happy with I really thought about what I wanted to do. It was easy to just stay where I was. They pay was acceptable and I had an income every month. However. That’s when I decided I wanted to pursue a career in photography.

I’ve always liked photojournalism. Pictures that tell a story! I could never see myself in a studio all day long. I want to see the world. Meet people other than models who’s main concern is that she gained two pounds last year! So right away I knew what kind of photography I wanted to do.I’ve applied to the Danish School of Journalism to study photojournalism, but wasn’t accepted, so I decided to try my luck with the local papers instead to get into the business.I’ve always had the belief that I had to prove to my self that I was good enough for the papers before I would try my luck. I wanted to be ready to face the challenge of having to deliver EVERY time I’m out on assignment. I felt now was the time to do that. I still have a lot to learn but I hope to learn by doing.

These are my stories as a photojournalist working on a local newspaper. I’ll be documenting my experiences and stories from various assignments I’ll be doing, along with what the life on a local newspaper is like.All stories and pictures will be at least a week old. The newspaper comes out every Tuesday. The reason is I don’t want to be handing news to competing papers in case they find this website.