Wind, rain and tons of fun!

I barely slept Thursday night because I was way too stoked on the trip to Brokke on Friday. The weather forecast was great, everything was planned and the gear was already packed. The five hours of work that day must have been the longest five hours of my life. But as soon as those five long hours was over I jumped on my bicycle and pedaled like I've never pedaled before! Not long after I got home my fishing buddy Finn Willy picked me up and we were finally on our way to our first real fishing trip. This was gonna be great.

First we stopped by the local fishing store Jakt & Friluft to get a few things as well as a map with all the best locations on it. As we got closer the weather just got better and better, the sky seemed to clear up and it was no doubt this was gonna be the trip of our lives. We found the gas station where we could by our fishing licenses without any difficulties, and was told the way from there. As we started driving up the mountain, dark clouds started surrounding us. After a ten minute drive from the gas station is was pretty damn dark and windy as hell. This was not what we had in mind at all. It was about 9 o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and we had to hurry to be able to find a spot to put up our tent before nightfall. It wasn't easy to find a place when it was this windy, but we finally found a place and was able to get it up right before dark. We slept for about 4 hours that night, and when we woke up it was even more clouds, just as windy and if that wasn't enough it had started raining as well. DAMN! But we had not travelled this far to sit in the tent all day being pissed off, so we went outside, mounted our rods and climbed the highest mountain surrounding the lake to see if we could find anywhere not too windy. We were actually able to find a few spots where we could see a couple trouts feeding on insects on the surface. We went there, took a few shots at them and the wind suddenly turned and it was now hopeless once again. This continued all day, we found a quiet place, went there, and the wind decided to turn not long after. I had one fish taste my fly three times and another one twice, but I never managed to hook it.

Pretty much the same thing happened on Sunday, so we decided to hit the road after waiting for the wind to calm for a few hours.

All in all it was a great trip and a great experience despite the bad weather, and as soon as I was back home all I wanted was to get up there again.

So now I'm trying to find someone to travel with next weekend, and to find a place to go where the weather is a bit more safe.

Fly Fishing Madness

So it all started with a $65 fly fishing rod about three weeks ago. A friend from work bought one on sale, and I figured it was too cheap not to buy one for my self as well. We decided to go to a free casting class run by the local fishing store. "Finally a cheap hobby" I figured, but that was soon to be proven wrong. When we arrived at our first casting lesson the "teacher" taught us the basics, and both my friend and I learned pretty quickly and could move on to some more fun stuff shortly after. At the end of the session he showed us some damn nice Sage rods and reels, and I was like "man, this is gonna cost me so much more than I thought". For two days I couldn't think about anything but that damn rod. I gave in and took the next bus to the fishing store and spent fucking $1 600 on fishing and camping gear. But whatever, I've already spent ten times that on camera gear, so what the hell right. At least it's a healthy hobby compared to just sitting on the Mac Book looking for more TV shows to download, right?

Seriously, my life just got so much better, and I haven't even tried fishing yet! But this weekend the waiting is finally over. I feel so ready to try casting on water instead of grass, and hopefully catch some nice trout instead of flowers!

So now I'm having the time of my life, sitting here listening to Robben Ford on Spotify planning the trip for the weekend. The destination is Brokke - Suleskar in Valle, Norway. The water temperature is perfect up there, almost no wind and the weather is not too bad either!

Tomorrow I'm only gonna work from 07:00-12:00 and leave for Brokke right after. All the gear is already packed, and I'm not gonna be able to sleep for a minute tonight.

The camera will of course join me on this trip, so expect another blog post on Monday ;-

TEASER TIME!

If you have any interest for snowboarding, any at all, check out Next Production's new teaser right here! Seriously. Check it out. It's off the hook. Just do it. Right here. Or here.

May 1st at Hovden

I shot an image collection for Tacky.no at Hovden on May 1st. Check it out right here!

A weekend at Hemsedal

I spent a weekend at the lovely Hemsedal resort in April with Next Production, Ducksjen and Technine/Sound. Check out the image collection from the trip right here!

C1RCA Stairmaster Image Collection

I shot this little skate contest in my home town Arendal for Playboard.no a week ago. Check it out here!

Summer time

Its been a while since I last updated my blog, and a lot has happened since then. First of all the winter is over and the summer is here! I just decided not to go to Folgefonna this year either, so my 2009/2010 is officially over. And I must say it feels good. I'm really looking forward to be shooting something else than snowboarding now, but I know when the fall comes I'm gonna be tripping waiting for that snow to start falling once again.

The best thing that's happened to me since my last post, is that on my 22nd birthday I got accepted to Norsk Fotofagskole (Norwegian School Of Photography), which is the only school I've ever wanted to attend. I applied last year as well, but then I wasn't even among the top 80 that qualified for an interview. This year I scored 100% on the portfolio. So I'm pretty damn stoked! Here's the 20 images I chose for my portfolio in the application.

Have a good weekend all!

Blaze That Shit

Seriously. Just check it out. Right here.

"Say hello to my little friend"

Check out my homeboy Jessi Blackwell tear apart this home made rail! Check it out HERE!

www.next-production.com

Next Production: Videoblog ep. 1

Check out this edit from Mikkel Fykse and Next Production here! Watch out for some tech rail riding by Oeivind Fykse and Jessi Blackwell in this episode. Stay tuned for episode 2!

The Arctic Challenge

So, now The Arctic Challenge 2010 is over. I had a great four days in Oslo during the event shooting for Playboard Magazine. Bluebird, great people and lots of sick riding!

On Thursday it was the official opening followed by a rail jam on Rådhusplassen in downtown Oslo. Sixteen year old Canadian Mark McMorris claimed first, followed by Norwegian ripper Jessi Blackwell in second (Next Production represent!).

On friday it was time for practice in Wyller-løypa (slopestyle), and I had nothing to do, so we just chilled out and had a great dinner at a friends friend place.

On Saturday it was time to kick off the semi-finals, and I was there to get some photos. It was a great day with great weather and the riding was off the hook! Peetu Piroinen qualified first in Heat 1 in front of Seppe Smits in second and Torstein Horgmo in third. Heat 2 was won by Mikkel Bang, followed by Tore Holvik and Eric Willett. Woho! Three Norwegians in the finals!

It's Sunday and time for the finals!

It seemed like everybody had a hard time in the first two runs, but in run three everyone ripped that course apart! It looked like Torstein was gonna take it home for a while with Mikkel Bang following close behind, but in the very end Peetu Piroinen landed his run perfectly and secured first place both at The Arctic Challenge 2010 plus the overall TTR Tour title! That guy knows how to ride a snowboard!

So, check out the pictures! More pictures to be seen at the Playboard website.

Heli at Hovden

From Sunday 21st to Thursday 25th I was at Hovden shooting with the new SB outerwear team, a couple of guys from the Next crew, as well as a few guys from Chaoz Productions.

On Monday we hit the big jump for the first time. I got a lot of great shots, and I know fellow photographers Øystein Kvanneid and Daniel Tengs did as well! Tuesday was the most important day of the trip, with the heli and everything. But of course the weather was terrible until about three in the afternoon, and with no more than about 40 minutes of sunlight left, Martin Grønneberg decided to call up the heli. I think all of us are glad he did, cause the shots turned out pretty damn sick. Bangers! Boyaaa!

Day three, Wednesday, was the day that I got the most shots. We hit this BMX style kinda setup, which looked great on photo. An epic background combined with perfect light and great riders made my day!

So, despite the somewhat hopeless weather the two first days, the trip was nothing less than amazing!

Thanks to everyone for making it happen! Big ups to Emil Fossheim for building jumps no one else could have! Make sure you go ride Hovden Ski Resort as soon as you get the chance!

Second time around

In February we went back to shoot some backcountry on Geilo. That didn't go the way we planned, so we ended up hitting a few street spots instead. backcountry is so much harder than it looks! Anyways, here's a few lifestyle shots!