Bookworm

Because of the fact that my family here in Struer does not have access to internet, I'm spending several hours in front of computer number 8 at the local library.
By the way the number of visitors to our site is rising week by week, and within the next few days we will tell you some good news.
I have to go now, my internet time is over and a little boy is standing impatient behind me. I can't work under these conditions:)

I'm not dead....yet

Only 35 days left on Danish Crown, but I guess you're all pretty tired of me constantly talking about pigs - well so am I:-)
Instead I'm just going to write a little about how grateful we are for all the people who support our tour and believe in the project. Not only because of the fact that this trip is going to play a major part in our lifes. But also because we want the tour to stand out as an example that nothing is impossible and you don't have to follow the most obvious path in life - amen:-)
Once again I have to mention that this project is not planned down to the last detail, so if you got an idea or advice please send us a mail.

Going up, going down...

Some of you might have noticed that our website is unavailable sometimes - Our host seems to be having some trouble which is why we are looking for a new host so everything can be running smoothly. It's not a big problem just some outages lasting a few minutes sometimes, but it's enough to annoy me. So if you know of a great host then please let us know :)

Besides that I have been looking through more than a hundred CMS(Content management) systems to find something which would make it a lot easier and more stable for us to update not only the blog, but also post some of the many articles we plan on posting during the next 12 months. But after reviewing them all, we haven't found a single one which is easy and fast to use, powerful enough to support a few(Actually rather basic) requirements we have. We found many systems which could do what we wanted but they where all overly complex or the usability of the system looked like something from the stoneage.
Since I've been programming for almost two decades now and have been doing it professionally for about a decade, the only solution is to develop one ourselves. So yesterday I started developing our CMS system and things are actually progressing quite nicely, so hopefully in a months time or so we will have a nice system which is fairly powerful but still very easy to use.
I'm thinking about releasing it for the rest of you to use but I'm still thinking about it :)

Anyways, just wanted to give you all a small updated and can also tell you that the images we promised you will be online very soon so you can get a small taste of the work me and Martin are doing.

Martin has left the building...

Martin have moved to Struer as he wrote the other day - That means that for the next couple of months it will primarily be me who will posting and being your faithful host.

I promise I will kick Martin once in a while to get some updates. :)

As Martin wrote he has moved, and actually we have both given notice to our landlords so when we reach September 1st and we have to leave we will both be homeless. That should give you an idea of how serious we are about this project, but I'll post more about what this means, later.

Martin and I have already been talking about some of the next projects which we will be working on once this is finished, and let me just say that it looks to be a VERY interesting and exciting future for the both of us - So strap yourself in for the ride - It's gonna be long and exciting :)

Homeless

In the beginning of this week, I moved all my things from my former apartment in Århus.
So now I'm officially homeless living the life of a tramp:)

My present existence will hopefully only last until Monday where I move in with my family in Struer and begin working for Danish Crown.

Just to leave a comment on the picture below. Nope I'm actually not working, just enjoying a peaceful time in the sun - it's much more plesant than the life in the gutter:)

Open-air office...

Since the weather has been so great for a while now, we finally decided to move the office outside. So we took the laptops and crossed the parkinglot and sat down on the lawn connected to the building I live in.
It was really nice being out in the sun while still being able to work on this project - Even my wireless internet worked at that range which was great - I don't think this will be the last time we do this :)


Martin, trying to look like he's working ;)

What's going on...

I apologize for the lack of updates the last couple of days. The reason is mainly that we have been working hard on applications for sponsors, but also due to the very hot weather which makes it almost unbearable to sit in front of the computer.

Besides working on the sponsor part, we are also in the process of looking for another host and another system for the website and blog - Blogger has been quite unstable lately and frankly it isn't' fun to sit around waiting for a few hours whenever we want to post something.

But have no fear, we are still very much alive and excited about the project. We work on it every single day - A lot of it is just not visible to the outside :)

If you know a great and stable webhost or a great system(CMS) for our website and blog, please let us know.

Slaughterhouse Photo

Last summer I worked for the largest slaughterhouse company in Denmark called Danish Crown, it was hard, stressing, physical work. So guess what, in exactly 11 days I'm going back in hope of earning good money for our tour to the US.

Danish Crown is by the way, the largest pig slaughterhouse in Europe and the company is the world's largest exporter of pork and annually slaughters approx. 22 million pigs.
How clever you all become reading this section:)

I'm really not looking forward for this job, but sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for the matter of a greater cause.
So no more talk about photographers being weak characters or I'm going to cut you all into small little pieces:)

Lastolite is on board..

A while back we mentioned that we had gotten another sponsor, but didn't tell you who.
I can now tell you that the sponsor is Lastolite - the premiere company for lightshaping tools.

What is lightshaping you might ask? Well, lightshaping is when you try to alter the light of whatever lightsource you may use - This can be done in many ways, but a method which is widely used by most photographers is by using reflectors.
Reflectors comes in many shapes and sizes - The most simple being just a plain piece of paper to very large reflector-screens with different surfaces.

One of the things reflectors are used for, are to reflect light from one lightsource into a second area, making it possible to use one light source to light up several surfaces. An example would be if you have one lightsource(Lamp, the sun etc.) from the side and you need some light on the other side as well to soften up the shadows, you could then use a reflector to do that.

Lastolite has very kindly sponsored us with several of their high-end products of reflectors. These reflectors are extremely portable and when pulled out of the case they unfold automatically and then we have a number of different reflector-materials we can cover it with.
This allows us to not only control how much light is being reflected, but also if the reflected light should be warm, cold or neutral - This gives us a great deal of control over the light which is an invaluable tool in photography.
Because they unfold to many times their normal size, they are very portable when you have to travel or store them - But when in use they have huge surfaces to reflect the light.

We are looking forward to working with these tools and will write more about them later on.

The Starbird in Beat City

A few days ago, me and Martin went to see an exhibition called Beat City by Søren Solkær Starbird.

It's a great exhibition and one of the better we have seen in a while. The exhibition is based around pictures of different musicians and bands. Starbird has a very distinct style in his pictures but without getting the feeling that having seen one you have seen them all.
At the exhibition a room had been setup to show two documentaries about Starbird. It was very interesting to see they way he worked and how "down to earth" he was, even though he has been working with a huge list of the most known bands in the world.

I also bought the book with the same title as the exhibition. The book shows the same images, but also includes quite a few more.

All in all, a great exhibition and a great book - We highly recommend that you go see his exhibition if you ever get the chance, or at least buys his book.

How to get our arms down?

As you might be able to tell from the subject of this post, our excitement keeps growing. We are receiving quite a lot of great feedback from people and a lot of the things we are working on, are succeeding.

We have been talking to the largest Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, about featuring articles and pictures from and about our trip, so you could imagine that we jumped around quite a bit when we finally pulled it of.
And as photographers we can't deny the ego-boost of seeing our words and images being published. :)

We are looking forward to this co-operation with Jyllands Posten, and it's gonna be exciting to see where this entire project takes us - so stay tuned :)

Show Me The Pictures

One of the many ideas behind this project is to get our future exhibition displayed in many different locations around Denmark, as well as some places in US and Germany.

Since the beginning of this week a handful of people have shown great interest in displaying our exhibition, so hopefully it will be possible to see our photos in most parts of Denmark in the spring 07.