Alternate Festival for the last time (?)
On September 4 and 5, 2026 it was once again time for the festival at the street called Norra Grängesbergsgatan, where a whole lot of workshops, fast food places, grocery stores and other businesses become temporary concert venues, along with temporary stages set up along the street that gets blocked off to regular traffic to let people explore the area on foot.
Another festival for me
My last blogpost was related to the Malmö Festival, which is put on by the City of Malmö for a whole week with lots of food trucks, many performances and other culture events, including big artists playing in front of tens of thousands of spectators. This blogpost is about another festival in Malmö. Same city, but VERY different! The NGBG festival is put on by volunteers and the participating artists and culture workers, many of them independent artists, and it’s held along a rather worn down street called Norra Grängesbergsgatan, filled with car washes, workshops and second hand stores. Over a weekend in early September there were at least 400 different events at well over 20 stages, housed inside the workshops and stores where normally cars are serviced, as well as on temporary stages along the street that was blocked of with a huge cargo container at each end of the street.
Festival Days are here again!
For the last almost 40 years (minus the Covid years) there’s been a city festival in Malmö, Sweden during the first half of August, and this year was not an exception. For a week (Friday to Friday) the city is full of concerts, food trucks, cultural events and lots and lots of market stalls selling all kinds of (mostly unnecessary) things. So of course I had to take a bus into the center of the city to photograph at this event.
It's Festival time again!
It’s August and the kids are returning to school, according to ancient traditions, and according to traditions, but not quite ancient ones yet, it was time for the Malmö Festival to happen. From Friday to Friday the center of town is full of market stalls, food trucks, carnival rides and various performances on several stages. Previous years I’ve done multiple visits to the festival and photographed performances in several locations. This year though I settled with a walk in the city, shooting some street photography among the many visitors to the festival.
Nerds on Parade!
Once again it was time for the local Science Fiction book store to put on their Nerd Parade through the streets of Malmö, an event put on to celebrate Towel Day (May 25th), to honor the legacy of Douglas Adams, the author of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. For practical reasons the parade was moved to Saturday May 27th and the gathering point was outside the City Library, where nerds of all ages and interests began to gather.
Streets of Malmö...revisited
Having recently come home from a three week epic road-trip in the US I have A TON of pictures to go through and edit it might seem counter intuitive to go out and shoot more pictures, giving myself more work at the computer. However, when there’s potential for cool street photography at a local festival, as well as some very needed social interaction with other photographers I decided it was worth a short break in my editing of America photos.
Festival at the Harbor
For the past three years the number of public events have been somewhat limited (for obvious reasons) so seeing more and more festivals, concerts and other public events take place is a good sign for sure! That’s why I suggested to my dad we go to the recently re-kindled Harbor Festival in Limhamn (a part of the city of Malmö in Sweden), an event we’d gone to a few times before the plague descended upon the world.
...and it's time for a Street Festival again
Lately I’ve posted a lot of festival and event pictures…I guess I’ve gone to a few of those here at the tail end of summer. It’s fun to shoot at these events, and for a street photographer it’s “easy pickings” when people come to these events in (hopefully) large crowds. You have so many potential images walk right by you that it’s hard not to shoot A LOT. Of course that will come back to bite you in the rear end sometimes (case in point: my 700 raw images from the Landskrona Carnival a few weeks ago), so a happy medium point between frugal shooting and “spray and pray” is definitely desirable!
Festival days, part II
Last blog post I showed some of my digital images from the recently finished Malmö Festival, the annual event held in Malmö, Sweden (for the last 35 years). I took analog shots too during my visits to the event, but I had yet to develop them at the time. I’ve done that now and scanned them as well, so this week’s entry in this blog is all about the analog shots I took, both with my 135 camera (a Canon 650) as well as my 120 camera (a Kiev 60).
Festival days are here again!
There are certain things that happen annually that with time become markers of where in the year we are (other than for instance Midsummer, which funnily enough is in the middle of…yep…summer). One of these is the Malmö Festival which happens in August, just before the kids go back to school for the fall semester. So in a way it marks the end of summer for us here in the southernmost part of Sweden. It certainly feels that way today as I write this, with rain outside the window and temperatures that barely reach 20 degrees Celsius!
Dance like everyone's watching!
There are photographic outings that are planned far in advance (such as the outing to the Viking markets last weekend), and then there are those that happen very fast and with next to no planning. That was the case this weekend when my dear mother told me at lunch there was a Latino festival in Malmö that day and I thought “cool, that’d be interesting to photograph” and off I went. There’d be a carnival parade too, but given that I had heard about it late I figured I would miss that part (turns out I did), but that was okay. It just felt nice to be out and about with my cameras in the summer sun!
Viking Summer 2018
For a few years a while back I went to every annual summer Viking market at Foteviken just south of Malmö to take pictures, because as a history nerd I thought it was so cool to see people in (at least somewhat period accurate) Viking costumes, re-enacting the time period. Then I felt I had photographed that to the best of both my abilities as well as my interest (mostly the latter), but in 2018 I thought 'I haven't shot the event with analog equipment, so that might be a new challenge!'
Sakura photos with issues...a lot of issues!
One of the frustrating things with analog photography (and actually one of the redeeming qualities too when it works) is that you can't check the back of the screen to see if your exposure is spot on. I find that a good thing often because that makes me focus on the picture taking and being careful with the exposure to begin with, because I can't check it after each image.
It's Festival time again!
For the umpteenth time the city of Malmö has had its weeklong festival (a.k.a. Malmöfestivalen) and once again the streets and squares in the center of the city have been full of music, food and people...lots and lots of people!
Medieval times...in technicolor!
There are many medieval markets and fairs during the summer months in Sweden, but this weekend was the first time I've attended the one in Lund, Sweden. It was a rather low-key affair compared to some of the larger hooplas I've seen, but I liked that. It gave the visitors space to actually move around and look at the wares and things on sale, as well as the various "medieval" activities you could try out, like axe throwing, archery or even shooting with a siege engine (yep...a real ballista...even if it was rather small).