Sometimes it just sucks to be a pet lover. Today we had to take our magnificent hamster Smock (aka Destroyer of Worlds) to the vet. She quickly became very ill yesterday and since you can't do much surgery on a hamster we had to put her to sleep :-( Way too early.

She spent her last minutes happily munching away on the lettuce we brought in the little transport cage. At that moment it was hard to see how ill she really was and it felt bloody unfair that we had to do this to her. When the vet came to give her the shot her cheek pouches were stuffed full and you could even see some green leaves sticking out of her mouth as her life was fading away. At least she died doing what she loved the most - eating.

Now two of our three hamsters have passed away in less than a week. It sucks and we miss them :((( We'll probably get another one once the festival season is over but we'll never find a hamster as big and bold as Smock. She really was something special and we regret that we didn't have babies from her.

Bye Smock and thanks.

/d & e.

Wheeee!




Thinking about giving myself an expensive b-day gift since I got a tax refund yesterday but I can't make up my mind about it. I should probably save the money, but where's the fun in that?!

/d.

Believe it or not, but I've actually photographed something that ISN'T music related. A WEDDING! A proper wedding! The bride in a white dress, the groom in a dark suit. In a church and everything!

Oh. Erh. I guess that was a small modification of the truth, because this wedding IS very much still related to music and my metal photography. The groom, Kalle, plays the guitar in a band called Slug. I first met him back in 2006 and I've been a supporter of them ever since. They played a gig in Gothenburg about six months ago and after the concert Kalle told me that he was getting married to his girlfriend Anna and asked me if I wanted to be their wedding photographer. I was quite surprised since I really don't have any experience with weddings and they tend to be QUITE important to the couple. It's ok to screw up a concert, but not a wedding. However, Kalle convinced me that I was the right guy for the job so in the end I accepted.

Anna is also a musician, she sings in a great punk band called Körsbärsfettera. I photographed them back in april, the photos can be seen here.

On the day of the wedding I felt like crap. I had baaaad cold with a high fever but no way I was going to bail on them on their wedding day just because of that. I had some "Max strength flu capsules" that I bought in London last year (banned in Sweden, heh) that helped me through the day by keeping my focused and the fever down.

Before the wedding we took some shots in the garden of Annas parents house, then after the cermony we spent another 20 minutes outside the church before the party started. I used my Canon Speedlites, one 580EX II and one 430EX, with shoot-through white umbrellas and my Elinchrome Skyports to trig them wireless. It was very bright and sunny outside that day so I was struggling to balance the light between the flashes and the sun but I think they came out pretty well in the end.

And since they're both metal/punk musicians I couldn't help but to sneak in photos with a bit more attitude than you might normally see from weddings :)

I had a great time and I think they had too.

Anna and Kalle:

Should I do this more often? Comments and critique is welcome.

/d.

Back from a BLOODY cold Sweden Rock Festival. I was freezing my ass off and it rained way too much :( The festival in it self was nice but I had a much better time last year when the sun was shining. Haven't had the time to go through the photos I took yet but I felt that I should at least update the blog with something and realized that I never posted the promo shots that I took for Engel last month.

I was invited to the video shoot for their new single, "Sense the Fire" and documented the whole process for the band. I'll post the photos from that day once the video is released (any day now I think), but as a small teaser I'll show you some of the photos I took of the line-up.

Engel summer 2009:

Will post more Engel-photos later on. And about their upcoming album, great stuff. Sounds much better than the debut album and more like the older demos. I think that most of you will be pleasantly surprised.


On a more sad note, when we came home from Sweden Rock Festival I noticed that our little dwarf hamster, Ninja, hardly had touched her food while we were away. She had been ill for some time and I feared the worst and well, she had passed on to hamster heaven :(

I'll never forget the day we bought her. We went to a pet store to look at dwarf hamsters and saw a whole cluster of black & white little hamsters in one cage. When the shop keeper opened it all of them ran in to the corners, except for one who instead stood up on the hind legs, waved her little cute paws and hissed at us. VERY scary... like a miniature Godzilla :) We immediately said "THAT'S OUR HAMSTER!" to the puzzled salesgirl who probably thought that it was insane to buy the wildest of the bunch... but Ninja was a super sweet little hamster. She quickly became of of the tamest hamsters that we've had and also one of the cutest.



Bye 'ninni, you'll be missed.

xoxoxo.

/d.