I grew up in and outside a small town in middle west of Sweden called Lidköping. Life was mostly about education and sports in my youth. Anything including wheels, grass, water, snow, ice or a ball or puck was interesting and when I had to choose the choice fell on football. I was a hard working,  hard shooting, technical midfielder who delivered passes for lazy forwards to score easy goals on :) just kidding. I never got bored of training as hard as I could. Likeminded people recognize the wonderful feeling of pushing yourself over the top and the sensation of being strong and fit and capable of anything!

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I enjoyed pushing my limits and on August third 1983 I pushed it a bit too far on a family vacation to the beautiful island of Öland on the east coast. We had just arrived and I and my little brother wanted to try the water. Growing up close to Sweden’s biggest lake Vänern we were used to diving in shallow waters so the ‘do not dive’ sign wasn’t intimidating enough. Some very cute girls sunbathing might have kludged my judgement too.

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A very impressive dive in not so deep water crushed my fourth and fifth neck vertebrae and caused instant paralysis from neck down. Luckily my brother managed to lift my head above the water line just as I couldn’t hold my breath another second. “You’re not messing with me?’ was his first words but I guess it became obvious this was for real by my weak reply because of my difficulty to breath. As I lay on my side on the pier watching my brother fetching my parents I cursed myself for ruining the vacation and wondered if I would be fit for college a week later?

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A long slow and painful ambulance ride with an escorting police car trying to keep track of any bumps in the road that could worsen the injury took me to Kalmar emergency care were I spent a week mostly answering what was my name and social number to keep me awake and out of respirator. They fixated my neck with a metallic ring attached with four screws into the skull and a wire with weights to keep it stretched and steady. I’ll never forget the pressuring sensation as the screws where tightened with a screwdriver several times the first week.

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A week later I was transferred to Skövde hospital dressed in a Halo west. The ambulance crew had an equally obsessive interest in my name and social number btw. Skövde hospital had very little experience in quadriplegics and though the staff did their best and the closeness to my hometown felt comforting and made visits from my family, friends and teammates easier it was a good thing I was transferred to Sahlgrenska hospital in Gothenburg three weeks later where the first spinal cord special ward in Scandinavia just had its first anniversary and was packed with mostly young men who had also tried their limits in some way. And a friendly and welcoming staff making the most traumatic time in our lives endurable. Well most of them anyway. Some you fell in love with and some you loathed. For different reasons.

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I spent the first three months mostly in bed, hoping the paralysis would vanish and trying to get some rest inspite of incredible cramps and pain that tried to throw me out of bed as soon as someone touched the door handle or on rare occasions came all the way to the bed before my body took notice of  their presence and did a crazy explosive outburst of incredible power knocking out atleast one unfortunate young and very kind girl with a vicious knee to the head. Not bad for a paralyzed boy I guess but I would have picked another victim if I had any control over my body,

 

I shared the room with two crazy paraplegic roommates. We had many good laughs and talks and pranks on each other and on the staff. Luckily we shared the taste of heavy metal music too and sometimes drove the staff mad. One of them even was a Brynäs fan like me, Swedens best icehockey team in my mind and always will be.

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Some four months after my accident I visited home for the first time travelling with my fathers truck which made the displacement in and out kind of interesting. Luckily my father was used to heavy lifting and I weighted close to nothing without my muscles that vanished in a chocking rate considering all years of hard training to build them! Luckily the family dog Stella recognized me anyway and was ecstatic to finally see me again and so was I . TO BE CONTINUED...

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It was a few years after I had my diving accident that I discovered the fascinating world of photography. Because of my disabled finger functionality I needed a camera that could be triggered by wired remote stuck in my mouth. My choice fell on the Minolta Dynax 7000i and since then I was hooked :)

 

There's been many upgrades since then and I've been faithful and thankful to the Minolta legacy through Konica and then Sony who keeps producing wonderful photographic tools. My current DSLR is the excellent Sony A99m2 and some of my favorite glasses are the Tamron 24-70 F/2.8, Minolta 80-200 F/2.8 HS APO, Sony 85 F/2.8, Sony 50 F/1.4, Tamron 150-600 & a few more..

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If you browse through my gallery you'll soon discover that I find many different things interesting to capture and I try to bring the camera with me most places just in case. I'm most pleased when I'm shooting wildlife, nature, landscape, sports, street, portrait or whatever.

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Most of the images were captured with a Sony A99ii camera with a 42Mp sensor which offers extremely high resolution and very high image quality sufficient for very large prints if you use good lenses and get your objects in focus.

 

I've been shooting photos for many years and always used equipment on a tight budget but a MRI xray confirmed my suspicions that I'm living on borrowed time because of the vicious and damaging return of the same desease, syringomyeli, that did quite an impressive attempt at ending my life in the early 90's, made me decide to spare no expenses on the things I love to do and that is why I took my photography to the next level by going full sensor on both camera body and a selected number of lenses to match its size and my interests.

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 The syringomyeli found the perfect spot to cause the maximum damage and pain. It wouldn't be enough of a challenge to this stubborn and competitive s.o.b otherwise ;) I've had to experience too many times exactely how much the human body can withstand and I've been on the other side atleast five times and I'm on a touch and go a little to often nowadays when  the pain and lack of sleep takes its toll. If I were a dog I'd been put to sleep years ago  but I'm not in the mood for the afterlife quite yet ;)

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