Your Full Name
Amanda Berglund
Tell us about you
I’m a 20-year old visualist who make my visions come to life by illustrating and using my camera. I love all sorts of cameras, lomo, slr, compact, polaroid as long as it helps me to implement my ideas. I’m dreaming of that one day I’ll work with this as my profession, but if I don’t succeed I hope that I’ll be able to continue to do creative stuff.
Besides photography I’m a music and teaholic (I guess that I wouldn’t have survived all these long, cold and dark winters without a warm cup of tea and a good record to enjoy). My interest in music gets an outlet through a collective music blog where I and some friends (but mostly my friends) review and publish interesting and good music! You can take a look at it if you like: http://www.thegoodbyelook.se/
In your opinion, what would be the secret ingredients to become a great photographer?
Curiosity, eagerness and a little bit of talent. Let it boil for 2-3 years of constant work and voila, you have become a great photographer!
Where are you located?
I’m located in the middle part of Sweden, in an almost insignificant city called Orsa. It’s located in the middle of the forest. It has a population of less then 7000 inhabitants so it’s really REALLY small.
What would be your most rewarding experience becoming a photographer so far?
Well, although I’ve been a photographer, or at least using photography as a tool to express and and show my visual ideas, for just two years I’m still quite “unrewarded”.
The most rewarding experience so far was when I was on the front page of your local newspaper, which was really exciting! And in a couple of weeks I’ll have a small exhibition in Uppsala(the 5′th biggest city in Sweden), which is really encouraging!
But apart from the “physical” rewards I think that just the thought of people getting inspired by just looking at my work has to be the most rewarding experience so far. I know, at least for me, how important it is to be inspired to get new ideas and to get that little “push” which makes you want to continue with your work.
Where do you get inspirations from?
I’m one of these tragic people who spends way to much time by the computer, always searching for new sources of inspiration. So obvious all kinds of homepages, blogs or communities which publish “art”. Then I get a lot of inspirations from movies I’ve seen. For example, last week I saw the first movie in Kryztof Kieslowski’s “Tricolor” which had beautiful contrasts and a very certain atmosphere, it really inspired me to get a get a zenit-b camera and take a lot of analogue photos.
How do you promote/ sell/ showcase your work?
Mostly on different websites on the internet.
What types of assignment/ project are you attracted the most? Why so?
Assignments which have a little “twist”(when the theme of the project takes an unexpected turn or when the concept is a little bit surreal). It’s so interesting to create this kind of stuff, though it’s more of a challenge than just taking plain photos, and just the thought of someone trying to find out what I meant or the meaning of the picture really thrills me.
But most of the time I prefer colourful, conceptual photos and illustration for the simple reason that looking at these pictures makes me happy.
Who is a photographer that you look up to? Why so?
One of my all time favorite photographer is Gordon Mybryde, also known as “p0rg” at deviantart. He has incredible ideas, tremendous colour settings, awesome technique with his camera, lovely compositions(I’m obsessed with making triangles and different symmetric compositions in photos and he makes them all the time!) and lives in one of the most beautiful places I’ve every seen. I love that every piece of his work feels absolutely 100% thoroughly though. It’s like there’s not a single photo that was just made by an accident, and if that’s the case maybe it still feels as if it was planed.
Describe a difficult work/ project situation and how would you overcome it?
One difficult work situation that I sometimes have to deal with is when I get to stressed and the result of this is that I get stuck and can’t come up with any good ideas or even worse, I can’t start the work at all. To overcome this, it helps to just go to bed and sleep for a couple of hours, or a whole night. Most of the times it actually works.
What do you think about the Internet and how it is affecting the visual communication business?
I think that the Internet is a perfect place for people and artists to meet and exchange information and pictures between each other though there’s so much information circulating that you actually have a good chance to catch up with interesting people and good pieces of work. Some of my favorite collaborations has been between people I’ve met on the net. I think that Internet has a huge and important part in the visual communication business though, as I previously said, it’s a global meeting place and this is the place where most of the development in art and visual communication takes place. There’s a constant transformation in art and caused by the quick switch of information, the internet increases the speed of this transformation.
If you could turn back time, how would you do things differently?
To be honest I wouldn’t like to change a thing because every experience, even the bad ones, had led me to something good and helped to develop myself as a person and my work. For example. a couple of years ago I only used to paint and I was really jealous at one my friends who received so much more attention of his work then I did. Normally I’m not a jealous person at all, but this really started to tear me apart because I couldn’t compete with him. So instead of stopping doing creative stuff, I forced my creativity to take an other form and I started to do photography. I felt so relived that I finally had found something that I actually liked and suddenly I felt like home!
How does the global economic recession affecting the industry, or the least affecting your business/ work?
At the moment, not at all. I’ve just heard that lots of people losing their jobs, but mostly in the industrial kind of careers, and I don’t know anyone who’s profession belongs in that kind of area, so it hasn’t affected me personal, yet. Of course it’s sad that so many people have lost their jobs, but it’s really hard to engage yourself into something when you’re not personally involved. The only thing you can do is to feel empathy and hope that this recession will stop soon.
Name 3 of your favorite (art) books/ magazines.
Well I don’t know so many art books and magazine yet, but I’ve some favorite book at least:
- “Factotum” by Charles Bukowski
- “Incredibly high and extremely loud” by Jonathan Safarn Foer
- “The New York Triology” by Paul Auster
What is your life motto?
“I was created to create”.
What does “photography” mean to you?
Besides from the basic interpretation(photography=”using a camera to take pictures”) photography means a lot of me because it’s my way to communicate with the world. I guess I would feel lost, and be a lot more bored, if I didn’t had my camera or the possibility to take photographs. It has become more than just a way to entertain myself and spend time, and it’s presence has become such an important part of my everyday life that if I would stop, it would feel like I’d lost one of my best friends (and I’m not exaggerating).
What do you like the sound of? Why so?
There’s one specific sound that I like above all other sounds, and that’s the sound of an airport terminal. The mixture of chatting people, rolling suitcases against the floor and the staff calling out the departures gives me a warm feeling of longing and hope.
If you have online portfolio, what is the URL?
My blog: http://limeamanda.blogg.se/
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42217315@N07/
My dA: http://citrusfrukt.deviantart.com/
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