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That Icelandic Guy
@that.icelandic.guy
Visual creator based in Iceland
Until a few years ago, I dedicated lots of my time to magic. As in being magician. I was working as a semi professional striving to make it a full time job and acting worldwide. In order to promote my work I created a YouTube channel around this passion. Little did I know that a few years later I was more obsessed with cameras, creating online visual content and freelancing whenever fun projects come my way.
"I was based in Iceland back then, my home country, and my career as a magician seemed to go quite well."
When I moved to Sweden though it was hard to make a living out of it as I had no network and there wasn’t much work in entertainment. I was lucky because meanwhile I had been learning a lot about photography and creating videos. I am an obsessive type so when I got the flow, I went all in with visual content creation and I was sharing my work online. Quite randomly I was contacted by a company here in Stockholm that makes watches and a bit after that a pregnant women reached out to me to do a photoshoot; from there I started to focus more and more on this passion. Currently I run a YouTube channel around photography and filmmaking, along with accounts on TikTok and Instagram.
"I also freelance as a photographer and videographer. The good life!"
The advantage of running all these accounts together is that it generates traffic from different directions, helping each account to grow. I share different type of things on the different platforms as each has their own specific benefit and usage. For example, I mostly share tutorials and vlogs on YouTube, while I meet & connect with lots of people on Instagram, where I mainly share photos. My goal is basically to build my online presence as an influencer to the point where I’m able to sustain myself and my family 100%. It’s just so much fun creating videos. I love working for myself and how much I have to immerse myself in creating these videos; the result is all mine. And then I can be sharing my own ideas however and whenever I want; YouTube and other social media platforms enables us creators to do just that.
"I got a studio a few months back and this boosted my creativity, enhanced my productivity and improved my work."
As a freelancer you can easily work from home and that can be super nice, but for me that lasted just for a few weeks. Then it’s getting boring and depressing. Having a place to work that is not my home has been a complete game changer! Here I can work together with other creatives, we learn from each other, share ideas, brainstorm, have fun… That is just priceless. By surrounding yourself with creative people you get more creative. My studio partner is a full time model photographer, seeing his style and learning from him is a real advantage. Whether I follow his work here in the studio or he joins me on an adventure outside, we always teach and motivate each other while having fun.
When I began shooting, and still, I stimulate myself to capture that same street or landscape in as many different ways as possible. After that I really enjoy to select the best shots and especially to edit them; it’s where the magic happens. Basically I just want to create a beautiful piece. Either video or photograph. I like color grading and editing a lot, so with a cup of coffee and some good music I just like to get started and work on my vision. It’s like meditating. Or puzzling while building the puzzle.
"I can create the mood by using colors, sounds, effects, and add my personal touch to it. It’s like painting but using technology."
Places I’ve yet to discover with my camera are northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. I am attracted to nordic countries, they look magical to me. As I am from Iceland, I have been all around the island and maybe that is the reason why I feel so at ease and at home in these kind of nordic environments and climates. Although they are all unique countries, this magical nordic touch can be felt in each of them. Since I still have friends and family in Iceland, I used to make regular return flights between Sweden to Iceland. I love going back, but I wasn’t in peach with one thing: my contribution to the emissions that have a direct negative impact on our Earth.
"The glaciers in Iceland are melting on a record speed, along with a bunch of other disasters I’m sure you’ve all heard of. So last year I decided to reduce my time in the air to a bare minimum because of the negative effect aviation has on our climate."
The two biggest changes an individual can make in combating this, is to change one’s diet to a plant based diet and reducing the time in air. To me it was clear: No more holiday flying back and forth to Iceland. As I still want to visit my family and friends, me and my partner decided last summer to go by sea. It was more than great! Being on the open Atlantic ocean for a few days on a boat and then finally seeing my home country slowly coming closer… That was one of the most epic moments ever.
My brother is learning how to sail now, so next time we want to it by sailboat. It would take about five days, and I am already looking forward to the adventure. We have to do things differently if we want to maintain this Earth, challenge our habits often based on comfort and luxury. I believe that’s the way to save our planet.. It may be different, it may be uncomfortable at first or not our first choice, but let’s see it as a challenging adventure and make it fun. A fun adventure that will only do good to the place we live in and depend on.
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