“I was left to my (often wild) thoughts bobbing in the middle of the fjord“

This photo comes with a special story. For years now, I’ve been trying to find orcas to swim with them. I’ve seen them in the distance, I know they are in this ocean; my approach to the matter has been to go as much to the sea as possible – as I know the chances of finding them on land are rather slim. I haven’t been lucky but I haven’t given up. On this specific day, my skills had been hired by the Ålesund Museum to produce branding photos of their traditional fishing ship, the Storeggen. In the brief, it had been defined that I would try to shoot one image that would capture the essence of sailing – there are many in the photographic series, but I feel that this one does the job. We decided to do it in Ellingsøyfjorden, with the outer Sunnmøre Alps and the island of Godøy as backdrop. I was to jump in the water, and the captain of the Storeggen, Lars Leine, was to tack to and fro, passing as close to me as feasible without hitting me. The Storeggen is a hard handle even for a seasoned sailor, so the times between passes were immense, and I was left to my (often wild) thoughts bobbing in the middle of the fjord. In the end of the shoot, when I came back on the deck, Lars told me, with half a smile “the captain of that ship there”, pointing at a cargo ship that was slowly moving out to the ocean “called me saying that there was a family of orcas swimming right ahead of you”.