LIFE + FILM PHOTOGRAPHY WITH OLAV

GUSTO35 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

WRITTEN BY: ALEC WELSH

The most interesting humans can sprout from the most unusual places. And in Rykkinn, a small commuter town in Eastern Norway, a once tiny Olav was making the most out of his modest environment.

"It's all about who you chose to surround yourself with".

Trouble was never hard to find, but Olav managed to find some real ones that are still by his side today.

His first shooter - dad's Canon. "I still have it somewhere. I would just need to find it". His first rolls -

"I shot snowboarding. Everything I started off with started around action sports."

At first he shot a lot more on digital because he could learn quicker. "When I got to borrow the camera of my Homies´s dad, that was a step up. That one was even better." By the time Olav was thirteen, he had saved enough money to buy himself the camera that he wanted: a Canon 350D.

"I was so into photography at that time. I skipped the standard lens and got something out of the box". Shortly after, he entered a reader's contest and was published for the first time. The prize - the entire last page in a magazine.

"I pushed my photos out and they got out there - I just kept on doing that until I broke down more boundaries".

From that moment on, his photos were clear, but his life became a blur. He was shooting everything, bringing life to the world around him. Eventually gaining early internet notoriety for his precariously epic pictures of...cheeseburgers around the world.

"Everything was dope."

Olav didn't shoot film again until much later.

"You have to dig deep to figure out shit and develop your own style. Listen to your thoughts, they may be burried in others opinions"

That's important in the media saturated world we live in today. Yet he still isn't quite sure if he prefers digital or film. He stumbles like a parent picking between two children. It's impossible for him to choose.

He'd rather focus on the passion that got him here. "It's a very interesting and exciting time for film right now. It's given me so much over the past year especially, I'm excited to see where I can take it".

Olav's advice for anyone looking to purchase a film camera without getting ripped off: "Us that shoot analog. We have a certain amount of responsibility. These are cameras that will probably never be produced again and there's only that many that are out there. If we keep breaking these cameras and not fixing them, they will go extinct. So, broken camera? Try to fix it. It's for the greater good".