On The Road with Thorsten Overgaard · May 2013

By: Thorsten Overgaard

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This is the ongoing journal of my travels, photography, experience with people, places and equipment.

Robin did three weeks of workshops

Istanbul, Turkey, May 4, 2013: 

For three weeks my youngest daughter Robin Isabella von Overgaard traveled with us to Hamburg, Paris, Istanbul, Solms and Berlin before she finally returned to school. Because of a lock-out in Denmark of the school teachers, the schools were not teaching, so I thought, "Why not come with dad to work?". So she did.

In Paris she had her personal "manny", Felix from Münich take care of her, and in Istanbul where I did two workshops, one of them for BMW/Aston Martin, she enjoyed her life as a diva being chauffered from place to place by the driver provided to us.

Robin and her Barbie doll in the backseat of the limo in Istanbul, Turkey.

Robin Isabella is one of my three Super Power Children and did really good being part of all activities in the workshops for three weeks. In Istanbul part of the story is that she lost one Barbie by the pool and one inside an Aston Martin. Instead she had the joy of living in the same hotel as Justin Bieber who was giving a concert in Istanbul and took some days off in Istanbul. Robin met a lot of cool people, quite a lot of them had Leica cameras, and she got to expand her portfolio and now carries the many new photos on her iPad.

It is amazing how easy kids can fit into activities that you would normal not bring them to. But they love to see what adults do for a living, go to dinners and be part of model shoots and street photography.

Robin Isabella in Paris on May 6th 2013 for a one-day model shoot we did by the Eiffel Tower on the way from Istanbul to Solms in Germany.

My mother is doing well

Aarhus, Denmark, May 15, 2013: 

My mother, Jytte von Overgaard, had a stroke some weeks ago while I was in Australia. It wasn't as dramatic as it first sounded. She had woken up with pain, and after some hours visited her doctor who didn't think much of it. But they sent her from there to the local hospital where they performed an operation immediately when she came in the door. Only four hospitals in Denmark can perform this, an expansion of a main heart artery by inserting a ballon.

There was still more they wanted to do on May 15th after she had had time to rest from the first one. I changed my schedule for May and June so I could be home and drive her to the hospital where they planned on spending three days examining and deciding if she should have another balloon operation, a bypass or a peacemaker.

We tersley waited for the final answer.

After only one day of examination, they decided she was not ill enough for more operations. There was no need, and she returned home to us in great spirits and vibrant health.

My mother and Joy in the garden the day after she came home from the hospital. Leica M Type 240 with Leica 35-70mm Vario-Elmarit-R ASPH f/2.8

That was a pleasant surprise! She even immediately wanted to go play golf in Germany the next week. (which she then did)!

My mother is one of a kind. A fighter, a hardworking lady and she never takes a no for an answer.

A race against time

Aarhus, Denmark, May 18, 2013: 

It strikes me as amazing how few Danish (and European) films are available with English subtitles. Very few movies are released with other than Danish, Swedish and Norwegian subtitles. Making it impossible for Joy and I to watch a Danish movie together. And, that is what I'm thinking, a big lost market in Germany, and English-speaking countries. It would be so easy to add English subtitles to a movie and make the market international (via iTunes for example).

So when the new Dan Brown book, Inferno, came out, and it was available in the local bookstore in both English and Danish, well we bought one of each and started our race about who could get it read first. All 467 pages of it.

Reading Dan Brown I suddenly got an urge to pull out the Turkish Coffee set I got as a gift in Turkey from two of my Russian friends (and students in Istanbul). Without saying too much about the plot, I can say that I visited two of the three locations in the book within the last months.

It is a long time ago I read a fiction book. I love to do so, and buying Brown's Inferno I was reminded I have three or four books lying around I am in the midst of. We had just spoken about some weeks before that we never have time to hang around and read a book. And then suddenly we actually had a few days that allowed us to just bask in the sunlit garden... and read. What a luxury, and how inspiring to do something like that! As a bonus we learned that we could in fact take time out to study other things, do projects and perhaps build in spaces in the schedule when traveling to do other projects.

It is my experience that I don't work well with planning to do half an hour a day of this and two hours of that  and 35 minutes of another thing once a week. I work best doing something for days or weeks, and just that. My philosophy is that things have to be part of my workflow and life style, else they don't fit in.

But one way of arranging a life style is also to put in spaces for other things, like reading a book or study of a subject, so as to get energy and stay inspired.

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– Thorsten Overgaard