A day of tragedy, Tomas Evjen has passed away

Photo: Lars Antonsen

11th September 2012 Tomas Evjen was found deceased at our place of business in Bodø. The movie director only reached the age of 39 years, and I was shocked to learn the news of his death. It still feels worng to write about it as it just seems like a stupid dream and I am about to wake up.

I only had the chance to know Tomas for the last months, but still I owe him a great deal of gratitude. When I arrived back in Bodø I had little connections in the media industry here, and I had no place to do my photography. Tomas invited me to share a studio with him for the bargain price which was critical for me as I had just finished my studies in London. And he made it very clear that no matter what I lacked in equiptment, it was no problem to lend it from him - free of charge. 

During these months I also had my moments where I disagreed with Tomas, but we quickly understood that we were both ambitious and quickly settled our differences. He gave me the push and help I needed, when I needed it the most. And I have a feeling that almost every successful person within media in Bodø owe him some gratitude - either directly or indirectly. 

Today I decided to take the day off, as I did yesterday. I spent the day just hanging around, spending time with my girlfriend, mingling with friends and traveling to Kjerringøy and stopping to enjoy the nice weather. Because when something tragic like this happends it just reminds me to live in the moment. You never know, the next one could be me our you - it does not matter how old you are.

Tomas lived a lot, and that is somewhat a comfort. I am sure that most people in their 80's have experienced less than Tomas did in this 39 years. Living my life on a daily basis, that will be my way to honor your memory Tomas.

Rest in peace, we will all try to finish the good things you stared.

See beyond your fence

I've been working like a mad man for the past weeks, so my intention to update this blog every week went down the drain. There has been some personal work on location, but due to the moody summer up north I've been forced to do most of my commercial work in studio to be able to plan/book ahead.

Last weekend was spent on the island of Værøy in lovely Lofoten, shooting commercial images for a contractor. Due to the once again moody summer, one out of two days was spent waiting for the rain to clear, the next one was spent setting up everytime the sun came out, and rigging down in panic when the rain came back. But I got the images I needed, I will post them later.

By the way; after some conciderations I will continue to write this blog in english as I am trying to connect with international clients as well, so I hope the norwegians kan bare with me. 

Usually I think the time is best spent promoting yourself when you are trying to start a new business, but I feel like talking about a colleague that deserves a lot of credit, Jens Haugen at Jens Haugen Photography. If there is a new path in norwegian photography, he is very often the first one to travel down it. And most of the time with great success.

You would presume that he then have been a assistant for one of the world leading photographers, have a masters degree in art, is in his 50's and lives part time in London, part time in Oslo. You could not be more wrong.

Jens Haugen have never gone through any formal photographic education, he resides in the small and sleepy town of Hamar near lake Mjøsa and is in his mid 30's. But he has something more important than all the other things; creativity, taste and tenacity. And a lot of it!

When I first saw this picture, I had absolutly no idea who Jens Haugen was. Never heard the name. Never heard about Tim Walker, LaChapelle or Albert Watson either for that matter. This was only 3,5 years ago, and I had just realized that there was actually people out there getting paid to do photography. Myself, I had only been doing the occational sunset picture with my film based Canon.

But when I saw that picture, I thought damn, someday I would sure like to be able to do something like that. I did not know how or when, but I realized that this is actually possible to do with an image. Eye catching creativity, hell yes!

So why do I feel the need to share? Well, I am hoping that Jens Haugen with all his creative commercial work can open your eyes, like he did with mine. You need to see beyond what you know from before to create something new, and this is something Jens Haugen does more often than anyone else I know in Norway.

To my knowledge I am the first and only commercial photographer north of Trondheim, so the potential is humongous. The counterweight is that the trends are stuck in early 90's, so there is a real struggle to dare people to think outside the box, and do creative work that stands out. Basicly, what the local newspapers have been churning out for the last 20 years is concidered the blueprint up north.

Please visit Jens Haugens homepage at www.jenshaugen.no and be inspired. See how creativity can bump you to the next nevel, and how his commercial work is part of what made him "Photographer of the year" three times in a row.

Commercial pictures should give YOU the attention amongst so many other commercials. So when people are opening their newspapers next month, who do you want to be? The one with the ad on the left getting everybodys attention, or the ad on the right that everybody skips past? 

How to be flash - Story of a Saab

If your name is Raymond Engmark and you are an educated photographer, there is a big chance that your mind is somewhat analytical, actually borderline to crazy. I simply beleive that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing it thorough.

After my return from UK my Saab 900 on English plates was just sitting there and I needed the money. The sensible thing to do when you are asking about 300 quid (3000 NOK) is to snap some shots with your phone, and just place a quick ad. Again; not if you are Raymond Engmark.

First of all, I wanted to try to light a car properly, and to edit commercial style once again (this being a used car for sale, I could not retouch it, only adjust light and so on). Second of all, I strongly beleive that there is always someone who will remember you for your worst picture - so keep even your worst pictures good.

I washed the car good since I could not retouch it, and I took a quick drive to find a decent location, and after a while I found a nice spot with good texture and tonality that would work with the car. Most of my equiptment was back in the town, so I did this shot with a Canon 580 EXII (on camera flash), transmitters and a 15 year old plastic tripod that barely can hold my camera (shivers like hell).

The picture is made up from 12 different flash settings, making the "RAW" file 1,7 GB before I started to edit. I have not received my new iMac yet, so all this was done with the cheapest Dell Laptop you could buy 4,5 years ago. I spent about 3 hours shooting an preparing, and roughly 8 hours editing.

Before:

After:

It must have worked, because just a couple of days after the car was gone for 300 quid. But then again, 300 quid for 11 hours of work in this business woun't even pay for the batteries in the camera. But hey, the shoot came out pretty nice, I could renew my skills and if this is my worst picture - it's pretty good.

This blog will have more updates in the future, but the fact is that I am working my ass off these days just to get started with my company. But I will try to get something in here at least once a week even now. Here it is more easy to publish things rather than to evaluate if it should go into my portofolio on my webpage or not.

Fun fact? I am working my ass off, but still it does not feel like a job. I guess it's ment to be.

Slowly becoming a studio

I have been working around the clock just about every day since I returned from London, but I have to admit that I have been very fortunate as well. I have been back in Bodø for just over three weeks now, and it just feels like I've hit the jackpot every day.

News on Request which is a big movie production company took me in to their place and rented me a studio on extremely fair conditions. And if as that wasn't enough, I had a meeting with the bank today, and they decided to finance my studio and my company on the spot.

Having secured the finances was a big relieve. This mean that I don't have to cope with equiptment that will barely do, and even though I am not anywhere near rich, I can get what I need to secure that my customers will get a good experience from working with me. Shooting alongside clients and having something act up is a situation I need to avvoid.

This picture does not lie, the studio needs a lot of tidying up. But I am making progress every day, and I am expecting to be there full time from August 1st. The studio is about 9x5 meters, and the only downside is really the height which is about 270 centimeters. But with the average model I will have bout 90 cm to work with, and that should be enough. I may also have access to a studio with about 5 meters height somewhere else in the building if I need it for a task or two.

Sparebanken Nordnorge (the bank) did treat me so weell today that I really need to mention their name. With the financial backing I got Raymond Engmark will be a corporation rather than a freelance photographer.

The only thing missing now is more jobs. When you are trying to start a business it's not any good that July is a public holiday in Norway. That means a lot of out-of-office replys to mails I need people to read. But I know there is a humongous potential in these areas, it's just a matter of working hard to get a toe inside one door - then the neighbours will follow.

First job : Trygg Luft AS

When you are trying to start a new business it is important to have both good friends and a network that beleives in what you do. Luckly I got both in my friend Aleksander Jakobsen who also just started a new business in Bodø called Trygg Luft AS (English: Safe Air). I wish to thank him for giving me the first assingment to get started in a "new" place.

Trygg Luft deals with the air most people breathe most day; the air inside your house. There are big advantages for both your health (specially asthma and allergy) but also preventing fungus and other humidity problems inside your house. After living in London, it is very easy to understand why you would need it.

The company have been installing a system on a building site in Bodø which benefits everyone in so many ways. It saves space, keeps dust and humidity to a minimum and keeps the whole building warm. When you have a construction site efficiency is important, and they wanted some pictures to show how little their system intrudes with the activity inside the building.

Aleksander first tried to take his own pictures of the installation while rushing between important meetings, and much like driving your car with only your feet; just because you can doesn't make it a good solution. Most of my lecturers have a rule - make every effort to make your next picture your best one yet. You might not acheive it, but it is a matter of professional pride.

I spent a total of 13 hours on nine pictures in total. It was about one hour of driving, just below two hours of planning and shooting, and ten hours processing the images in photoshop. I am sure that Aleksander would have been pleased with just a quick process, so we agreed up front that he would only pay for three hours of work.

I think that is a good system that we both benefited from. He gets better pictures than he paid for, and I get to push myself and know that I milked the last drop out of those pictures. It's all about professional pride.

Nowadays marketing is more important then ever, and it is really about finding that small leveredge that will make you stand out in the crowd. It's about getting your customer to pause at your webpage or ad instead of the one of your competitor. Below you can see the before pictures taken by Aleksander, and below there is the after pictures taken by myself.

If these were ads, which one would you pause at?

Exhibition was a success - moving on

The CASS exhibition was a tremendous success, on the opening night there was over 1600 visitors inside the gallery, which is outstanding! I got to meet new people and I was quite amazed on how many people enjoyed my work. As a purist photographer I was expecting a narrow crowd viewing my work, but instead I got a lot of feedback on my technical skills and the symbolism of the images.

Needless to say, I am very happy with the entire show. It was up from Monday untill Sunday afternoon, and there was a lot of people grabbing my contact details. I had 70 postcard pictures, 50 artist statments and 100+ business cards, and there was only a few cards remaining when I took the work down on Sunday.

For now that brings closure to my London chapter, and Monday morning I started the 3000 km drive to my hometown in northern Norway. Now there is a new chapter and a new set of challenges, my days as a student is finally over which means I need to start attracting new clients to pay the bills.

For me everything pointed in the direction of my hometown Bodø. I got my family, friends, network, access to a lot of different locations and different models. In short any project is possible in the town above the arctic circle. To me that makes more sense rather than moving to a bigger city and knocking on doors that have been knocked on thousand of times before.

Now it is all about pushing myself every day to create stronger images and enhance my portfolio all the time. I wish to work with big international clients somewhere in the future, and I feel the best way to do that is to make every image twice as good as my client expect all the time. Then one day, my dream about traveling around the world shooting fashion and advertising images might come true.

But untill that day you will find me in my office in Bodø from Monday the 25th of June. Feel free to call me on +47 99 000 906 or simply email me at engmark@live.no - and I will bust my ass to delicer twice what you expect.

Exhibition : CASS 2012 (London Metropolitan)

Raymond Engmark

+47 99000906

engmark@live.no 

www.raymondengmark.com

The Consumers

Giclée prints

62 x 93 cm

In a day and age where people have filled their lives with so many layers of meaningless objects that desperately crave their attention, we are in need to take the time to glance into this artists surrealistic window into the apathetic future of mankind. 

By the use of digital photographic instruments we are manipulated into a world where man only exists together with his only true friend; his own complacent image. It depicts how the egotistical average man lives so unaffected by any issues but the ones concerning ones private agenda. 

The artist’s strong roots in northern Norway come to show as he is naturally inspired by the Norwegian romantic nationalism era painters such as Eilert Adelsteen Normann and Hans Gude. And so it may only be appropriate that the artist himself has travelled around Europe to make every digital sketch much like his sources of inspiration did.

With concern to details and the use of light every story is transformed into a realistic digital canvas - and the viewers are transformed into a believable witness of the artist’s surrealistic future.

See pictures at www.raymondengmark.com -> Personal