Photographer Johan Lygrell »

On my last day in Miami I took a random walk for an hour or two with the camera in my hand. Just down at Collins Avenue the 42:nd I guy from across the street shouted for me:

“Hey man, are you a photographer?”

“Yes I am man, what´s up?”

“Yeah cool, come on over and take some pictures of us”

10 minutes later I walked away with a bunch of new entertaining stories, an ever bigger bunch of laughs and story for lifetime. Yeah I know the Americans can be a bit sketchy and shallow, but god damn I just love their outgoing way of treating life. Just love it.

Now I´m back in Sweden again with -10 degrees and introverted people.

Hmmm.

Miami, the hotel and myself in one picture at least saved me about 30 MB of diskspace…

Just a fantastic man I met in a park close to Ocean Drive the other day.

Yep, that´s right, these days Don Johnson is the man who rocks my world. I´m in Miami with a client for 8 days and between our photo sessions I´ve tried to take some quick runs at Miami beach. So far I´ve noticed that this place is hot, colorful and weird, all mixed up in a sparkling coctail. Or something like that… Well, here´s some pics from my beach walk and Lincoln Road crashing yesterday.

So, goodbye to 2009. In many ways it´s been a great year. I have completed a lot of different photo sessions, and meanwhile I also had the joy to meet a great number of new inspiring people. To all of you that in some way – big or small – made my year so fun, I just want to say thank you!

Looking into 2010 makes me eager to get going. Other than a number of weedings during the summer, which I already now are looking forward to a lot, my calender today contains stuff until April. During this time I will photograph a lot of different projects in Sweden, visit Miami USA twice for two quite long photo sessions (in January and April), get my stuff over to Spain for some magazine pics in March and finally, I will also try to photograph a project in New York in the end of April. The rest of the year is still open for surprises, but I hope some sweet stuff will show up during the walk.

To sum 2009 up I`ll post 12 pics, one from each month that has passed. Maybe not the best ones seen from a professional eye, but somehow I still like them a lot.

For 10 days we went to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for some work and a little vacation. Dubai is, like you already know, a craaaaaaazy place and now I got it confirmed. The number of breathtaking bars, buildíngs, clubs, hotels, viewing points, malls etc etc are just to many to be counted. We saw some really magic places and for sure I will go back somewhere in the future. Here are some of the pictures I dig the most.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon assisting photographer Jörgen Reimer (check out his great work at www.reimer.se) with a project. The light were soft and the weather quite good, so after our session I picked up my camera and fired some shots in Tantolunden, Hornstull. I guess the summer is over now….

I remember them from different flavours of Arla-youghurt, and for some reason I´ve always wanted to get one of them on a picture. I´m talking about the old people posing on the packages, happier and in better mental shape than ever.

At Skopelos, in Greece, it suddenly happened. He was sitting there in an ally, chilling with his cane, and seemed to have no worries at all.

“Is it ok if I take a picture?”

“Yes, yes”, he said and nodded with the most kindly face I´ve seen in years.

I shot a few pics and one minute later my hunt for “Yoghurt oldies” was over.

Went to the Greek islands Skiathos and Skopelos for a week to do some travel photos and close a project. Once again I realized that travelling around the world with a camera in my hand is totally the best way to get the most out of life. Just love it.