We´ve been so busy working on the website and traveling around meeting people that I am afraid that the blog has slipped over the past couple of days. Tomorrow is a writing day, in order to get caught up with content for the website, and to let Gústi take care of doing some of his photo projects.


We were on the road all day yesterday. We drove to the south to visit a woman (Ester) who owns a farm at Foss, north of Bildudalur, with the intentions of talking to her about the work she does collecting down from the Eider ducks. We did speak to her a little about ducks, but when we arrived she and her daughter (Þora Maria) were busy caring for their sheep who were busy delivering babies (it being spring).  So we spent the afternoon in the barn with the sheep, as they went about their business. We are now putting together a profile of Ester for the people section of the web site but a few things stood out about the experience:...
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The photos posted here are from our road trip yesterday out Ísafjarðardjúp. We spent most of the morning today working on getting everything transferred over to the new domain, and organizing the new look. Whenever you go to the old blog you will be redirected immediately here. The URL is easy to remember: http://focuswestfjords.com. That takes you to the title screen from which you can enter the rest of the site. We are still working on navigation and developing site content, as well as maintaining the blog which we will both be working on from here on out. Right now there is content under the people link to the left, a profile of Sigurjón Samúelsson, the farmer/record collector whom I wrote about yesterday on the blog, and an additional album of photographs from our visit yesterday. By tomorrow there should be more content about the project, the car farm, and our visit today to Netagerð, the fishing net factory in Ísafjörður....
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OK, we are starting to move along here. Gústi and I spent the day yesterday planning and then went out shooting some landscapes and the like over in Bolugarvik in the afternoon, about 20 minutes away. A lot of the stuff we shot has been photographed over and over, so we tried to get some new angles on things. We both were having some difficulty getting in the zone, but a couple of decent ones. Bolungarvik, like Isafjorður, is a fishing village, though considearbly smaller in population. There are several old buildings and factories there that were related to the fishing industry, and which in recent years have not been able to able to maintain. One (or more) quotas are held by boat owners in town, which keeps many of the residents going. A boat load of cod came in when I was around the other day, and it appears (from some of the refuse that we found) that they bring shrimp in here as well. Here is a slide show of some photos (11 in all) from town....
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I am going to try to make this one quick as it is getting on into the evening, and a lot has gone on in the last few days. First, expect a change in appearance and location of this blog and a new website. Ágúst has been working on the Focus Westfjords website and it looks great. We just need some DNS information and we are going to get a site domain. We spent today planning out the next week, and have several interesting projects and interviews to do. Trying now to focus on individuals, around the Westfjords. Tomorrow we head towards Djúp to the east. We have decided that Ágúst and I will speak only Icelandic all day tomorrow. We will either have little to say or I will spend a lot of time with my nose in my orðabók. In any event, here is a slide show from the past two days (10 photos). Click on the photograph below.Just a note about that photo : it is a deliberate attempt to create a photo based on one taken by Ágúst, actually one of my favorites taken at the same spot but looking in a different direction. His is much better, but the way of seeing is compelling....
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It is 1:30 in the morning, and I‘m writing at this time of night/morning for two reasons: first because I have discovered that doing this blogging thing on a regular basis takes a tremendous amount of effort, especially if one doesn‘t want it to turn in to "now I am drinking a cup of cappucino [or Jamesons for that matter]" account, and so I need to put in time when I can; and second because I have several things on my mind....
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