Landscapes photography by Wilfred Wessel Berthelsen

I `m a 48 year old photographer from Norway 50 Km North of Bergen. I started with photography already back in 1987 when I bought my first camera on the Hollywood boulevard of all places.

It was a Minolta 7000. But the photography interest did not really explode until I got my hands on a digital camera back in 2004.The last 5 years, I have photographed virtually every day, when not working offshore witch is my main work. I really like to travel, and have been in China and South Afrika, Italy, Spain and all over Norway. I consider my self a professional photographer, and have been delivering work to private and commercial businesses. Wedding photography, David Beaksted style. I do 3 or 4 jobs a year. I tend to not go into more of that type of photography and also standard photographic work, but I feel it puts me into a routine, and that is not god for my creativity.

My main project is the Antarctic- Arctic work, that I call “Precious ice” witch started in 2009. It is important to have one project or more, it gives me focus when I work. I have visited the Antarctic one time in 2009 and been to the Arctic /Svalbard two times, the latest in 2013. I plan one more trip to Antarctic this November, and that completes the project. Then hopefully it ends up with a solo expedition in 2015.

The images presented are the best from Svalbard and some images from the area where I live. None of the photographs that is shortlisted in the SWPA is here in this presentation. But one that I won the UPI gold in the globalarcticawards is here, and it is called “ towards the sun”. I would like to call me a fine art photographer, I hate routines and repetition. That’s why I will never own a standard photo studio, taking pictures of people as so many other photographers do, that is not me. I love the landscape, the silence and the ability to just look and feel and sometimes not photograph at all.

My main photographic inspiration is Michael Kenna, Ansel Adams and Sebastiao Salgado. Back home here in Norway, Morten Krogvold is my mentor and inspirator. He is one of the best photographers in Norway, no question. When I started to seriously expand my photographic knowledge and technic, I wanted the best and most expensive equipment, no 5 years later I sold some of it ( never used it anyway). So now, I use for the most of the time, my Leica M9 with a fix 50mm f 1,4 lens.

The hard-core wildlife photographers gave me a curious and strange look, when I showed up on the deck on the boat way up north in the Arctic with my little Leica, and the others carried around with their big “canons” and the shutter on “CF and HR” shooting mode. But later when thy saw my pictures, they all agreed, size is not always that important.