About
My name is Mikael Lindgren. I live in Stockholm, I trained as an engineer, and I do not work in media in any form. This is where I put the photographs and the notes that would otherwise sit on a hard drive until the hard drive died.
The day job is unglamorous and I like it that way. I spend my working hours on things that are measured, documented and signed off, which is probably why I enjoy an afternoon where the only plan is a ferry timetable and a vague hope that the light improves. Nobody signs off on the light.
The journal started more or less by accident. In the autumn of 2022 a friend asked me to send her a few pictures from a week on the west coast. I sent thirty, with captions, and she replied that the captions were better than the pictures. That was not entirely a compliment, but it did make me think there was something worth keeping. I put the first entries online mostly so I would stop emailing people large attachments.
Why it goes quiet
I update rarely, and I have stopped apologising for it. A trip takes a few days. Getting the film developed takes a couple of weeks, longer if I forget the roll in a coat pocket, which happens more often than I would like to admit. Then the writing sits half-finished until a wet Sunday arrives and I feel like finishing it. Four or five entries a year is a good year.
There is also the simple fact that I do not travel constantly. Most of my life happens within a few kilometres of my flat: the same bakery, the same bad coffee at the office, the same walk along the water when I need to think. The journal covers the exceptions, which makes it a very misleading portrait of how I actually spend my time.
What this is not
It is not a guide. I have no idea whether the place I liked in the Balkans is still open, and I would be annoyed if someone drove four hours on my word alone. It is not a source of tips: I miss trains, I book the wrong night, I once spent a whole day in northern Finland waiting for a bus that had been cancelled since the previous season. I am not qualified to advise anyone.
It is not a review site either. I do not rate hotels, I am not sent anything, and nobody pays for a mention. If I name a café it is because someone in it said something I wanted to remember, not because I think you should go there. There are no affiliate links and there never will be, largely because I cannot be bothered.
What it is: a record. Where I went, what the weather did, what I ate, who I talked to, and which photographs survived the edit. If you want the pictures without the words, the gallery is the shorter route. If you want the words, start with Gotland in July or work backwards from the journal index.
On equipment, briefly, because people ask. One film camera, bought second-hand years ago and repaired twice. One digital body, chosen because it fit the bag I already owned. Two lenses between them. I am not loyal to any manufacturer and I find the arguments about it exhausting.
None of it matters much. The photographs I keep are the ones where I stood in the right place long enough, and no amount of glass has ever fixed being in the wrong place in a hurry.
If you have a question, or you recognise a stretch of coast and want to tell me I have got the name wrong, the contact page explains how to reach me. I answer slowly, in the same spirit as everything else here.
Mikael