Hello, I am
Jon ! My art name is ©leftjohn, since I am lefthanded, so my creative hand is
my left and also because I am very proud of my left hand. Sometimes I do nice
surgery with the it, too !
My life as
a photographer started when I was 11, in 1962. I bought a “box camera” for 3
USD= 16 Nkr. I was especially attracted by the nice smell of the leather case.
Very soon I understood that the quality of the pictures would probably not
become good enough neither to satisfy myself, nor to impress
other people.
This “selfportrait" was taken by my brother outside our hut in the “mountains” of Lillehammer with my first camera.
In 1964,
when I was 13, I went with my two brothers 15 and 16 to stay alone for a week
at this hut, burning wood and paraffin and carrying water from a river nearby
after making hole in the ice, in the days skiing in minus 15-20 degrees Celcius.
We
survived also the 7 hours travel to get there with train and bus bringing skis and backpacks
.
After
working for 2 years, every afternoon during the weeks in a bookstore, I had
collected enough money, about 1300 Nkr = 250 USD, to by my firs SLR camera,
Exacta Warex, made in East Germany.
Minolta and
Nikon had been on the market for a while, but there was doubt if the Japanese
products were good enough, yet.
The bird, a
nesting Common Blackbird = Svarttrost = Turdus Merula, was captured by me in a
tree close to the Kings Castle, close to where we lived. It was published on page 3 in the second
biggest newspaper in Norway, Dagbladet.
I was mentioned by name as “a young bird photographer”, and in addition to the
honor received a 6 USD = 35 Nkr paiment.
For many
years I went to schools, studied, became a dermatologist, was married, built
houses, established a private practice and got two fantastic children. During these years I took many family
pictures and so on.
In 2006 I
joined a photo group with Thorbjørn
Tandberg to Kirgistan, where my interest for photographing started to blossom
again. What I learnt from Thorbjørn and my co-travellers has been very
important for my later work as a photographer.
“Doble
Proudness” was taken in July 2006 in the mountains of Djeti-Oguz in Kirgistan.
The former KGB-officer had this eagle as
his “housebird” and hunting partner. It was said to have killed 7 wolfes for the officer (!) . The picture was chosen
as the Photo-Of-The-Month at Foto.no in Oct 2008.
The
revolution in digital photographing the last 10 years has been amazing. During the
last years I have spent more and more time with my camera in the wild nature of
Norway, Svalbard, Kenya and this year Alaska.
But I still work more than full
time as a dermatologist and manager of my own office.
In that way
I am extremely privileged that has an interesting work that I like and still
the freedom to spend a lot of time on my hobby !
Some time I
get the pictures I really want, many times I have to admit that there is still
a long way to go !
