Hey everyone!
I am deeply honoured to be choosen as the 2012 European Rolex Scholar for the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society and I am looking forward to a year of great adventures.
In this blog I will try to share my experiences with you as the year progress.
I have dreamt about this scholarship for many years and it´s in the category of things you hope for but never really think you´ll get. Well, if you don´t apply, your chances are slim so I pulled myself together, spilled my heart out on paper, applied, and the result is beyond my wildest dreams.
So the first thing I´ll say here is that if you, like I did, read these blogs and think that you want to be the person who does this next year don’t hesitate, sit down and write that application and don’t wait until the last day (31st December) but start in time. I´ll remind you in a few months when it´s getting closer.
The first thing I did as a soon to be scholar was to visit London International Dive Show in the beginning of April were I got to meet a lot of people from the business as well as some of the people from OWUSS that will (and already has) help me through this.
The second event was the annual meeting in New York City were the scholarship year begins and ends. It´s a weekend were I met a lot of new people and all of them friendly, welcoming me into the family. Really this first month requires a lot of text to describe just a small part of it and I´ve decided that that description will be in my journal on the scholarships homepage so that this blogpost won´t be a whole essay.
Instead I´ll go right ahead and tell you what I did after I got back from New York.
I had barely got in through the door and started to unpack before it was time to prepare for a trip to Norway. I had been invited to Dykkersport dive centre in Oslo for a photo workshop held by Lars Stenholt-Kirkegaard who is the Nordic coordinator of the scholarship. Having just unpacked my new Olympus Pen Lite camera and the housing I was eager to get some help in figuring out how to take nice pictures with it. I arrived at the well organized dive centre located on the quay right by the Oslo fjord and was warmly welcomed by the manager Heidemarie Nordahl, and the staff. The workshop mixed theory and practice with a lot of good tips about how to use proper lighting and angles to create an image. All of us would go out for a morning dive and shoot a lot of pictures that we then sorted through, edited and discussed together with Lars and each other.To see other peoples pictures, for inspiration and to discuss with them, helped me quite a bit. And with an experienced photographer like Lars to guide us and add his comments I feel like everyone learned a lot, now I need more practice.
Heidemarie invited me in to her house and made me feel right at home during my stay, I even got to share in a big feast on king crab one evening, an invasive species in Norway but absolutely delicious.
By the end of the weekend I had a few pictures that I was happy with and a lot of inspiration to work with when documenting my travels. Norway had showed me a very friendly side and I believe I will be back soon to investigate more of the diving in this beautiful country of fjords.
