Next week I depart the warm summer of Western Australia for my eighteenth (wow, is it really) visit to Norway. Mesna is my first stop and here I’ll be photographing the annual outdoor play and extravaganza that is Birkebeinerspelet. For those of you that are unaware of this magical event, have a look at my previous posts here. My time at Mesna this year is going to be interspersed with a new adventure to an exciting place with a very proud moment taking place whilst I am there. After time with all of my friends at Birkebeinerspelet I will be making a two day trip to Svalbard. For those that are geographically embarrassed about this part of the world, Svalbard is north, way north of Norway and is half way between the mainland of Norway and the North Pole. I knew it was a long way north but it wasn’t until I looked at my flights that I realised how long way north it was – as in a three hour flight from Oslo to Svalbard. Svalbard is 1300km above the Arctic Circle and has polar bears, the northern lights and the Global Seed Vault. It’s another vault here that […]
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Living in a world of social media and instant sharing, the travel guide is perceived by many to be a thing of the past. A dinosaur that has been replaced by the instant consumer review and obligatory selfie, denoting both a “this is where we are and this is what we thought” moment for the poster and all their friends. Unfortunately these type of posts and reviews often have no basis of fact or knowledge and can have a detrimental effect as the post spirals out into the cyberspace. However, technology has also delivered a new medium for the travel guide that allows tourism organisations to provide an authoritative platform that showcases a country, a county, a town or an attraction, with consumer interaction and social integration for the reader and user. The modern e-book has a number of benefits. It allows us to merge the content and the purpose of a traditional guide book with new technologies, new narrative concepts and dynamic, interactive content through handheld devices such as iPad, iPhone and HTML5. It provides a platform that immerses the user and reader into stories, histories, landscape and places by using moving images, animation, sound, photos, live interviews, samples […]
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On Wednesday I return to Norway for the tenth time in five years. It's my second home.
Ever since I was a child I dreamed of visiting this country, the landscape and the mythology always played in the back of my mind. It just seemed to be a place I needed to go.
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I am delighted that one of my images has been chosen to be used as a background on the cover of a new novel by Andrew Gross, the New York Times bestselling author of The Best Man.
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