The weather is warm, the days are long and the colors are plentiful. Early summer is here after a long and cold spring where we’ve all been waiting for the slow return to normalcy. For me personally it feels a lot better to be able to be out and about taking photos of things when there’s long afternoons to make use of, and even better that I’ve been able to get the first vaccine dose at long last, with the second planned for early July. There’s light at the end of the tunnel…and it’s not likely to be an oncoming train!

The images from the month of May are more or less all related to the explosion of color that the warmer weather has brought on. Flowers have burst forth as well as the canopies of leaves on trees and bushes, making for a very technicolor scene around here. For a photographer who has shot a lot of black and white street photography in the last few years it is quite a change…but probably one that I needed, especially this year!

The cover image is from the Slottsparken gardens in Malmö, Sweden where they were having a tulip festival and I had the privilege of seeing these particular tulips (with lots of other colors and varieties). You might think I’ve exaggerated the colors in this image but they really were vibrant like this. I am not a flowers kind of guy, but it was quite uplifting and enjoyable to see all the pretty flowers on display that day.

*Day 123 - May 3: Everybody jump for the camera!*

This is one of those situations where you might go “what the heck is going on” and I wouldn’t blame you! I was up on the roof area of the Emporia shopping mall in Malmö during a photo club photowalk and I spotted this group of people about to do some group exercise (outdoors like most stuff these days) and all of a sudden this person in a bee costume and his/her handler (the woman in the pink jacket) wanted to take photos with the exercise group. Someone suggested they’d do a group jump and I guess that idea appealed to them. At least some were able to sync it well enough with the mascot!

*Day 126 - May 6: In search for good wood*

I’ve included this image not because of its photographic qualities (I am not sure it has that many) but because of how much of May was dominated by this renovation project my dad and I busied ourselves with. We were tasked by my mother to build an enclosure to hide the new recycling bins provided by the town and I can’t say I blame her, because they are quite the eye sore. In the end we managed to build something that amazingly turned out pretty much exactly the way we had imagined it. And we didn’t poke any new holes in ourselves with various sharp tools! I’d call that a success!

I think I’ve taken a version of this image every year for as long as I’ve been shooting with digital cameras; there’s just something about seeing these little white harbingers of spring that makes me want to take a photo of them! They are wood anemones and for a few weeks they blanket the forest floors in many areas around here, catching that brief time period before the trees’ leaves cover them and block the sunlight from shining down upon the flowers. This particular image was taken at the Knivsåsen Nature Preserve outside Lund, Sweden.

This image is one of those moment when I am a bit sad that all my images for this project are in the square format, because in reality this rainbow covered the whole sky, making an almost 180 degree arc across the sky. I could only fit in about a third of it with my phone’s camera, but even that bit is pretty nice-looking I think. It was taken on a very early morning in Staffanstorp, Sweden.

Seeing family is one thing that’s been lacking during this year of distancing, so whenever it’s possible to do so in a safe manner it’s been a delight to do it. The little dog in this picture belongs to my brother and the safe hands she is enjoying belong to his father-in-law. That little lap warmer is a Bichon Havenese dog and she was definitely enjoying the company of the extended family during the celebration of my nephew’s birthday. She’d spent a long time on my father’s lap, then on mine and then more time like this on Rolf’s lap! Family time is sweet and clearly that dog made the most of it!