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A whole year of this damn pandemic came and went and sometimes I think that maybe we didn't even have a 2020- we just went straight from March 2020 into March 2021.
The year long month of March.
In my last post I talked about taking up analog photography again, and today I'm here to show a bunch of digital photos taken around the house. I have a new camera (a Nikon Z6) and it's been a lot of fun getting to know it over the past couple of weeks. Since I love vintage things, I've been using old camera lenses, a favorite among them is one that we bought at a flea market in Amsterdam (a Nikkor 35mm f1.4) many years ago. To me that's the perfect combination of mixing the new with the old.
It's strange how I went from taking photos with DSLR cameras every single day- for this blog and my etsy shop and even some photo jobs- to exclusively shooting with my iPhone. Everything changed when we moved to LA (almost 6 years ago now) and it felt like I left so much of my life behind me, and I didn't know how to make it all fit into this new life I was living. I've come to the conclusion that it just had to take some time- it's impossible to force what used to be into what is right now, but maybe it is possible to find new ways into what the core was all along. That's how I feel with photography. I know it's always going to be a big part of my life, I just can't force myself to use it to recreate the past.
So here I am again, taking photos, editing in Lightroom, and uploading them to my blog.
Like before. But not at all like then. Like now.
But you know what? I'm not going to talk more right now. Let's just look at some pretty photos, okay?
Hope these photos felt good in your eyes.


/Lotta
It's been so long I almost feel like I should introduce myself again, but nah, this is my blog and I'm still the same as the last time I was here.
No need for any "what have you done these last few months?" because we all know nothing happens every day is the same and when all this is over blah blah.
Let's skip that.
I wanted to talk about my new hobby. Film photography.
It starts years ago actually, but maybe this is when it takes off for real?
David got me an old Rollop Lipca for my birthday a couple of years ago. I've been wanting to shoot more on film (I took classes in film development when I was in my early twenties and ever since then it's been a dream of sorts).
The Rollop Lipca stood on a shelf for a long time. I didn't understand the manual- it was for a similar camera but not exactly the same- and I worried I would somehow destroy the camera before I even got to use it.
This winter though, I decided to get to know it for real. I took photos around the house and a couple of self portraits.
Last week I had them developed and it was SO exciting receiving the email with a huge zip file with my very first roll of 120mm photos.
Some of them were a bit too shaky, some where just not that great (you have to manually roll the film forward after every shot and it's not completely easy to get it exact, so there was one instant when the top of David's head ended up in the bottom of a photo of my fiddle Leaf Fig). But I did get a few that I actually really like. let's take a look, shall we?
Figuring out how to get the focus sharp for self portraits is definitely something that I have to figure out, but I really love the look of these two self portraits. They feel like great encouragement.
This window is a constant source of inspiration for me. The combination of dark shadows and bright soft light just gets me going.
I love this photo, it came out even better than I expected.
Dramatic backlit monstera, is another one of my things.
This one obviously came out WAY too shaky but I still wanted to share it because this journey is not about being perfect. I'm learning, and the great thing with film photo is that the mistakes can still be charming- I mean it looks warm a cozy as hell, right?!

But now you're saying "The title of this blog post mentions TWO rolls of film, so what's up with that, Lotta?"
Well, I'll tell you in a second, if you'd just CALM DOWN.
Before David and I got married, way back in 2013 we found an old Carena Micro RSD 35mm camera at a flea market in Sweden. We wanted our wedding to be photographed by our friends, with different types of cameras, so we ended up having it documented on a Polaroid, a DSLR, mobile phones of course, and then this little Carena.
The wedding photos turned out great, and I kept using the Carena all through that autumn.
Then in March 2014 I loaded it with a black and white film and brought it along for a weekend in our home town visiting our families.
There was one major thing that happened in March 2014, and that was that our short film Lights Out went viral.
And that happened the exact day as David took this photo of me sitting in my parent's kitchen sofa with sunlight in my eye, completely unknowing of how our lives were about to change.
Dramatic skies over the bridge Munksjöbron in our hometown Jönköping.
This is the gate to the courtyard of the apartment building where my parents and I lived up until I was 9 years old. I must have been feeling nostalgic walking past this place to take a picture.
It's also quite nice to see that my love for photographing places where shadows and light meet has always been there.
I took these three photos in Sund, just outside of Jönköping.
I think this was taken almost exactly a year later, in March 2015, when David's mother, Agnetha, came to visit us in Gothenburg right before we were about to leave to go to LA to make Lights Out- the feature film.

And when we left Sweden I decided to bring the Carena camera with me...
A blurry self portrait of me dancing in the apartment we were finally able to get in LA in 2016 after having to rent airbnb's for a year. We had almost no furniture for the longest time.
And then we bought our house.
And I filled it with plants.
And as usual I fell in love with the light and the shadows.
Somewhere around here I had forgotten about the roll of film and opened up the camera for a quick second before I realized my mistake. So a couple of photos was just white blur, but this one here turned out quite beautiful in all its faded moodiness.
And then we'll end this with another photo of the dramatic monstera- one of my biggest sources of inspiration.

Looking through the photos from this roll of film was quite emotional- our whole journey was in there.
Even though I kept forgetting about the Carena, I always picked it back up again.
Now there is a new roll of film in it and I won't let it sit for years this time.
And as for the Rollop Lipca, our journey together has just started. I feel so inspired, for the first time in a long time.
It makes me wonder, where will we be in 6 years? What moments will I have covered by then?

/Lotta
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We’re getting used to rainy days. I bring my umbrella, because I know I will need it later.
People around me are dressed for the weather in a way I haven’t seen Angelenos before. Prepared.
This morning I opened the bathroom window and saw that our patio had turned into a pool. The rain was pouring down so hard and fast it was almost impossible to see anything through the water.
Five Lyft drivers gave up on their way here, but the sixth one made it. I was just about to give up and call it a rain day, when Alejandro drove up next to our house and took me through the flooded streets of Hollywood trafficked by Angelinos who are learning how to drive in heavy rain.
And believe it or not, right now the sun is shining through thick grey skies and the pool on our patio is more of a puddle.

We had a visit from a mountain lion early yesterday morning. He jumped over the stone wall, ran smoothly across our garden and took the stairs up the hill. Security cameras are great for spotting wildlife and mailmen.
Magnolias and Camellias are in bloom all over town, and it’s so green it surprises me every day.
The other week I was out walking when I suddenly had to stop; it smelled just like Sweden in the summertime. It hit me so hard, in the most wonderful way. I stood there and sniffed the air for a good while, laughing and trying to remember what exactly it was that made it feel like Sweden. Lush green plants, soaked through grounds after heavy rainfalls, a nearby lake, sunshine on wet asphalt, and a whiff of seagrass.

I miss the warmth.
We have a lot to long for right now. It’s going to be a once in a lifetime kind of spring, by the looks of it.
The things I long for the most though comes after, when we have time for Sunday afternoon naps again, entwined just so to fit on the narrow couch, breakfasts in the sun at our favorite cafe, walking to the sushi place for lunch, and hanging around our house together- just being.
The small things, are the important things.

/Lotta
We wake up before the alarm goes off.
We sit down to eat our breakfast before the alarm goes off.
It’s a nice novelty; feeling awake in the mornings.
There are people running around our house fixing stuff, and I don’t know what to do with my body. Where do I place it?
The AC is dismantled due to construction, and LA is currently in the middle of a heat wave, so indoors isn’t any better that outdoors.

But our house is wonderful.
We’ve lived her for a little over a week now and I’ve felt at home from the moment all of our stuff was inside and the movers had gone.
We drive by the old apartment sometimes, and isn’t it strange how it already feels like a life time ago? There’s not a single trace of home left in that building.
The brain moves on so quickly. Sometimes.

We live in the treetops, our kitchen gives off some serious summer cottage vibes- it’s the light, I think, yesterday a bird sat down on the open window ledge just to sing for a little while, my plants thrive, and the afternoon light in our living room is just magical.
It’s more than we could imagine.
Will this ever feel normal?

/Lotta
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