Like I told you guys in a previous entry, I wrote a little piece for a Wolverhampton based magazine. Well I wasn’t sure if it was any good, like always I’m my hardest crit, but the response from the magazine was very up-lifting!
Can I say thank you so much for a wonderfully written article and some superb photographs. Your article really gives an insight into your ‘changed perspective’. Well done you!
Thank you for contributing to Krash
So obviously it wasn’t all bad, and therefor I might let you guys read what I wrote… Be nice!
Changing Perspective
I used to dislike the place that I am from, finding it too boring for my likings. Everything about it, the nature, the people, my life, nothing seemed to ever happen there, a place where time stood still.
My name is Renate Solhaug and I am a second year photography student at the University of Wolverhamton. The place I am talking about is a tiny, little town in the middle of Norway called Verdal. The place where I’ve spent my first 19 years dreaming about living abroad, preferably in England.
So you could say it was like a dream come true when I last September packed my bags and moved out of my parents yellow wooden house, and over the sea to a white, smaller house surrounded by loads of houses just like it. For the first time in my life I had neighbors living wall to wall, and I was living within a short walking distance to everything I could wish for. The Civic hall, Asda, shopping centers and pubs. Well, and the football stadium and the University as well of course. The differences between my new situation and a boring forest isolating you from what seems to be the rest of the world, were huge. It felt liberating, and it made me feel more alive than I have ever felt before standing on my own two feet, ready to start a new chapter in my life.
I did not once think that I would miss Verdal, being in a place with so many more options for a restless, creative soul as mine. However I found myself being wrong by end November/beginning of December. When the nights were at their coldest in our old, dusty house in Dunstall Road, double glazed windows none-existing, I did miss our warm, cosy house in between the trees a few miles from the town center of Verdal. When the university work seemed to be at it’s hardest, frustrating me I missed my parents comfort and uplifting words to keep me going. So around Christmas time, I felt good about going home again to Norway and everything I once hated. Though it didn’t take long before I then missed Wolverhampton, it was like an evil circle.
My second semester of my first year at the University, went by pretty fast and before I knew it I was no longer a first year photography student. It had been a good year for me, having enjoyed learning much more about photography than what I knew to begin with, making me certain I had chosen the right thing for a bachelor. By this time, early May, I had once again started missing my hometown, so going back for the summer was not something I wasn’t happy about. But it wouldn’t take long before the ball started rolling again, and yes, I was missing my dear Wolverhampton. All the reasons for not liking Verdal came back to me, as I found myself awfully bored and lonely most of the time. In lack of things to do up in the woods, I started going for walks, an activity that had never been much of an interest for me.
It was during these walks I realised just how beautiful the scenery around my childhood home really was in the summer time. Having spent several months in a country where everything is so flat and urbanized, yet exciting and fun, it came to me the thought that maybe I should recognize the worth of such a breath-taking nature, the quiet surroundings and the clear air. Never before had I found anything to photograph around there, no motives that would make it as an interesting photo. I was blinded by my own disliking of the place, but now it was like my eyes had opened to see all the subjects forming in front of me. I have never taken as many photos in such a short amount of time as I have during this summer.
I now appreciate where I am from, feeling proud whenever my friends in England comments my pictures from my summer at home in Norway, telling me how beautiful is it. How lucky I should be having such a great place to hide away. For once in my life I agree.
Maybe it is the change of scenery or maybe it is the eyes which are more trained to see motives and beauty in things now through my time at the University, or most likely it is a combination of the two, that has made me change my perspective.
So now I can finally say, and I quote one of my favorite bands Good Charlotte, “We all live in a beautiful place”.
All images taken in Norway summer 2009, © Renate Solhaug
Excited much?!
