Time to sum up this weekend in numbers:

• Number of pictures taken: 366
• Number of kilometers driven: 1415 (879 miles)
• Number of liters of fuel consumed: 118,81 (31 US gallons) includes one tank of ethanol
• Number of hours slept: 16,5

So, this shows that you need 0,32 liters of fuel and 3 minutes of sleep per picture whilst having travelled 3,9 kilometers. If you decide that you should go to Gothenburg and do it, that is.

Found this post which most definitely is going to help me next time I have to debug slow running or seemingly dead processes/threads. If I have to I’ll get a dump of the process and analyze it, but to be honest I wouldn’t mind not having to . =)

This is what it looks like:

This day consisted of some street photography, city landscapes from a high position, industrial areas and another car product photoshoot. And during this day my arms have been hurting all the time because of the digging last night. No need for bodypump classes this week.

Time for 8 hours (or so) of sleep and then it’s more photography tomorrow before heading homewards.

This weekend I’m travelling to Gothenburg with a friend to work on some photography. An idea we had for my friends portfolio was to take some product photos of the rental car we had (a Volvo S40). We thought that taking the pictures on the beach by the water with the sun setting over the water in the background would be a nice idea.

Said and done – the car was backed out on the beach and the cameras and flashes were all rigged. Pictures were taken (hopefully I’ll be able to show some of then on this blog later on) and different composures were thought about. At about a quarter past nine we gave up due to the temperature dropping rapidly and the light vanishing quickly. After we had packed all the gear in the car we got in and drove off the beach.

Or atleast, so we had imagined the end of this particular photoshoot. It turns out that the car was terribly unable to get itself off the beach. All it did was dig itself a deeper hole in the sand. I tried reversing. I tried starting in second gear (which is a known trick for slippery conditions). I tried rocking the car back and forth. No go. We were seriously stuck on a pitch black beach with absolutely no one around to help us. Did I mention that it was cold?

Sometimes in life you need a break. We found a left over piece of an old jetty lying around in the edge of the water which we figured we could use as skidmat for putting under atleast one of the front wheels (for those of you who don’t know – the S40 is a front-wheel-drive car). So now it was our turn to dig in order to get the skidmat placed infront of one of the wheels at a proper level – basically trying to undo all the digging that the car had done. I have to tell you that I have a completely newfound respect for people who compete in a Paris – Dakar rally. What we see of that rally on TV is the action, the speed and the thrill. Not the endless amounts of hours they must spend on digging out their cars from gigantic sand dunes.

In the end we had to dig and roll/push the car onto the skidmat (rinse & repeat) for well over an hour before we finally had solid ground under the wheels. And we were exhausted! Partially from the frantic diggig, but I was also worked up by the fact that I, for a while, seriously doubted that we’d get the car out of there at all without getting towed by a tractor. And that wouldn’t be happening until the next day. I can’t describe the joy of finally getting the car back on a real road!

So, what does this tell us?

• A photoshoot needs a certain amount of bodily pain and mental agony – it makes the pictures look better in the end.
• If you’re gonna take pictures of a car on a beach – make sure that you bloody well can get it off the beach as easy as you got it on the beach!
• If you are gonna to the proverbial “extra mile” for a photoshoot (Stockholm to Gothenburg in this case) – be prepared for having huge troubles with the last extra centimeter. You might need a shovel. =)
• Getting a car off a beach without a helicopter or someone to tow you out from there is gonna make your clutch smell funny. A slight resemblance to burnt condom is the best way to describe it.

Time to go to sleep now and dream unpleasant dreams about sand. With some luck I might be able to publish pictures of the ripped up beach tomorrow or sometime after that.

Update:
Last night I processed some of the pictures taken and published them. Go have a look! Some of the pictures are linked directly from the text above as well.

Seen in this mornings edition of Metro in Stockholm:

The cat actually looks like a Russian Blue, same race as our cat Zim.

This morning I did have to laugh. Weston is the son of Nicholas Cage. We all know Nicholas, so I won’t go into detail about him. Weston, however, made me laugh…. spontaneously. It turns out that Weston looks more or less like the crossbreed between Cousin Itt and Ozzy Osbourne. Seeing them both side by side was quite the surprise! I mean, look at the face of Nicholas – doesn’t he look proud? =) Of course he’s proud. Turns out that they both acted in the movie ‘Lord of War‘ (which I have seen) and Weston is right now busy filming a new movie called ‘Raven’ (planned for 2009 according to IMDB).

In case you need help grasping SOA this is an excellent place to start at: http://www.soafacts.com/

Wohooo! Our apartment has finally been sold. Now I can focus on actually moving to our new apartment – the joy! =)

I just had the opportunity to edit the remaining pictures from Tinitus 2009. The following just got done:

The Klinik: