Pop Experiment: Aside from frosk.org, there are a few other websites (My Space, Photo Box) showcasing your work. Is this intentional or accidental?

Natasha: A lot of the times it is absolutely intentional. I love how the Internet links people with similar interests together on the same platform, and I have fallen in love with quite a little handfull with great online communities. Livejournal has been my top favorite for quite a few years now, it has a great friends-list-function where you can watch other people’s journals and it also have awesome privacy settings! I also try to frequent places like flickr, myspace and probably a dozen more, mostly because I have come upon amazing, but quite different people on each individual site, so it is hard to gather all my forces in one place! I try to reply to everybody who sends me a message somewhere, but it might take me a little time before people get their answers!

The photobox site is a bit quirky for me as I know nothing about it! It must have been somebody else featuring my images on there. Even though I am grateful for the publicity, I would normally appreciate if people asked before they pasted my images on a web page I dont have control over though!

Pop Experiment: Do you make a living with your photography? If yes, could you give us a few details on how you work? If not, is there a link between your passion for photography and your day-to-day job?

Natasha: Up until this point I have always been focused on making photography be a part of myself instead of putting it on the side and outside of myself, so most pictures on my website are taken directly from my life and work as a good mood-indicator about my life in the moment the pictures were taken. I should mention that right now I feel I am at a break-through point, because after 5 years I finally feel somewhat finished with documenting ONLY myself and the little bubble around me. So I have new plans now. Greater plans. But they are still kind of secret, and I wont tell you! But keep watching frosk.org this fall, there will be lots of new great things going on!

I have made a living of my photography up until this point, but it is not as glamorous as it sounds. During the latest two years I’ve worked in a modern portrait studio where you take happy family portraits on a white background. The images I’ve taken at work are extremely different from my own pictures, and if you saw one of my images I’ve taken at work you could probably not tell that it was my image. All photographers working at the studio had to produce quite similar, generic pictures to fit into the concept. Working for the portrait studio was quite a stressful job, and you had very little creative freedom. I ended up feeling more like a factory worker than a photographer in the end.

As of this summer I dont work there anymore, and I’ve been lucky enough to get myself a little space in an atelier together with other artists. So this year I can finally become a full time artist as they say! (Haha, I still am not comfortable calling myself an artist and I probably never will!) Now I can finally focus fulltime on my own projects! I almost don’t have words about how much I am looking forward to it!

Pop Experiment: What can you tell us about the region you live in?

Natasha: As I mentioned in the start, for me one of the best things with the Internet is how it binds people together because they have an interest in common, instead of binding people together because of their location. I never had to go public with my various locations before since I haven’t worked outside of the Internet, but now that I’ve gone freelance I might have too! I never meant to hide my location because I wanted to be all mysterious about it, but simply because I liked the idea that people were looking at MY images, but they had to use THEIR mind to find a setting around the images since they knew very little about me and my surroundings. I’ve sometimes had the experience that a few special things are more beautiful when it is untouched and pure. When the image just speaks for itself.

But you have probably figured that I like places with dramatic northern, western, rugged looking nature. My favorite place in the whole wide world would have to be Northern Norway in Scandinavia. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else. With its steep rugged mountains that are reaching directly from the sea directly up into the sky. I felt incredibly in harmony with the rest of the world when I was there. If anybody has the opportunity to travel to Northern Norway they shouldn’t miss out!

Pop Experiment: What can you tell us about your background? Where did you go to school? What did you study? How did you begin? What artists or things have inspired you? Continue to?

Natasha: I bought my first camera at 16 after I made the dreadful discovery that there wasn’t a single image of me from I was 7 or 8 years old and up until the point where I decided to get a camera. I guess the family camera broke at 8, and we never got a new one until I bought myself one. I decided from that point forward that I would try to document as much of my life as possible, and that is how I started to take pictures.

I was pretty blank when I first got the camera, I knew nothing about cameras or their settings, and I just had to try and fail until I got things somewhat right. After I had taken pictures for a couple of years, people started to hire me for freelance work on the side of my drama education. The moment I was done with my drama education I never looked back and haven’t been on a stage since (but that is a whole other story)! I was luckily and very quickly offered a non-glamorous full-time job as a school-photographer, driving around for 13 hours in a car with 80kg of photographic equipment to schools all over the place. But it was a nice stepping stone for me. After working as a school photographer for half a year, I applied for the job at the portrait studio which I got. I probably wouldn’t have gotten it without my experience as a school-photographer, because I am completely autodidact, and don’t have a single hour of formal education in any kind photographic work.

When it comes to inspiring artists, my favorite photographer is Jan Saudek. Even though I look up to him on so many levels, it doesn’t mean I want to create the same type of imagery as him. He manages to turn something that otherwise would seem pornographic into something beautiful. He has always been ahead of his time in so many ways. He is a very unique individual. I was lucky enough to meet him in Prague this summer, and he has an amazing charisma.

Pop Experiment: A question that must be on a lot of your fans and online friends minds, why did you choose the nickname Frosk (the Norwegian word for ‘frog’) and why not using your real name, or a variation there of?

Natasha: When I was creating my web page 5-6 years ago I wanted a short, easy-to-remember-url, and that is why I came up with frosk.org. It is a lot easier to remember than a full name that needs to be spelled right. It was better for the concept I wanted as well - I primarily wanted to create a personal playground, and not a serious portfolio at that time. Now times are slowly changing, but I see no reason to change my url since frosk.org has become more of my trademark and signature than my name.

Pop Experiment: An age old question - what do you think of digital vs. film photography? What are the pros and cons of each type, in your opinion and for your practice?

Natasha: To me the whole film vs. digital debate is a bit outdated, it doesnt really matter as long as YOU find the right tools for yourself that you enjoy working with. I do think it is great that the digital revolution has made it possible for so many more people to explore photography, but it also has lead to the fact that a lot of the people that just bought their digital slr are calling themselves (freelance) photographers without having substantial knowledge to offer their services to the market yet. In my opinion a lot of freelance photographers need to master their cameras and photographic knowledge better both technically and theoretically before they can start offering their services to the public market.

Pop Experiment: On the technical (i.e. pratical) side of things, what basic skills do you think are needed to take interesting photos? More precisely, the type of photos you take (portraits, still life, abstract settings, landscapes)? Digital vs. film camera, brand or model of camera, type of lenses, tripod or not, etc.

Natasha: I like people with cheap small cameras that produce amazing images a whole lot more then I like all of the gadget-girls and techno-boys who have all the right gear, but still only manage to produce mediocre images. It doesn’t matter if you have the best gear in the world if you can’t operate it right or don’t have a good idea behind what you do! There are plenty of decent priced cameras which will do a great job as long as you have a good vision. You don’t need to be rich to take good pictures.

Pop Experiment: What can you tell us about the camera(s) that you use?

Natasha: I actually have a love for retro-digital cameras, like the old Nikon Coolpix series! Of course I also use digital slrs of various brands for work. Privately when it comes to digital cameras Im a Nikon-girl all the way, I could never date Canon-boy! ;)

Pop Experiment: Oh! :) Can you tell us what your “dream” camera would be? On the same subject, what type/kind of camera would you suggest for a beginner?

Natasha: Financial situations aside, I would love to get a digital medium format camera. Medium format has something about it that is almost magical to me, and to be able to practice my medium format skills without worrying about the cost of the film I think would work wonders for me.

For a beginner that would like to get serious about photography I would recommend the new Nikon D80 with a couple of good Nikkor lenses. 2-3 different lenses should cover most beginner’s needs.

Pop Experiment: Now on the theoretical (i.e. not pratical) side, what basic skills do you think are needed to take interesting photos? Again, according to the type of photos you take. Studies, books, etc.

Natasha: Looking at a lot of other people’s images has been very useful for me. I think people should know the basics about how photography works and master their camera. I took a lot better digital pictures after I learned how regular film photography works, both in the camera and in the darkroom. It makes it a whole lot easier for people to take good pictures when they have understood how the shutter, aperture, ISO-setting and the other things work together to create the image. Equally important, I think it is smart to educate oneself about composition, color theory, golden lines, etc. Basically, I think it is important to learn the rules before you break them.

Pop Experiment: You have an obvious love of rich color. What can you tell us about your relationship to/with color in general and specifically in your work? And related to that, what about black and white?

Natasha: I’ve had different obsessions (and a lot of complaints from photo-purists!) as time has gone by to how I post-treat my images, but for me I was never scared of making anything look unreal or less authentic. I think that the digital medium opens up an amazing door to shape images exactly like you want them. Many people have probably been in the situation where they have tried to take a picture of something they find beautiful, and discovered that the photo doesn’t come out the same way as they saw it in their head. The mind has an amazing filter - it purifies what we see. I’ve simply tried to recreate the mental image I’ve had of the situation in my photographs.

Pop Experiment: Your take on still life, wild life and landscape (i.e. photos of nature) is quite interesting. Can you tell us what inspires you, what’s your take, on these photos? How do you proceed in choosing your subject?

Natasha: I think my answer will be quite similar to the previous question, I think most places can be portrayed in a beautiful way if you take the right photograph, and I wanted to remember all the places I had been and all the detailed small fragments from my day to day life. As I mentioned earlier, I finally feel that I have managed to document most of what I wanted and I feel a bit finished with most of my nature images. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like them anymore or that I don’t see a value in them, it just means that I will probably have a new take on what I do from this point forward.

Pop Experiment: So you travel, how do the different locales you’ve visited inspire you? Do you see (or would you like to see) travelling as an opportunity to actively apply your skills, as an opportunity to simply relax and be inspired, or both?

Natasha: I live to travel around, and I try not to stay more than a couple of months in one place. If I stay too long I become extremely restless! This fall I’ll be around Norway, Sweden, Italy and the UK, and after New Years the plan is to go back to California (Probably San Fransisco and LA) for at least a month. Photography has always been an important part of me, and I don’t think I take that much more (or different) images when I am traveling around. But of course I get inspired by new places and people and things I haven’t seen before just like everybody else!

Pop Experiment: I understand that you have a solo show in September. How are things coming along? What do you plan on showing? What is main theme of this exhibition?

Natasha: Yes! I am very excited about my show! This will be my first solo-exhibition in a proper art gallery! I’ve had a few group shows and numerous exhibitions in cafes and shops, but taking the step into solo shows in art galleries is great for me. It is however much more work then what I thought it would be! The name of the exhibit is called “Biography” and it is self portraits and small fragments from my life. There is a grand opening at Sunday the 3rd of September at 17:00 at Galleri F, which is located in Bergen, Norway. Everybody is invited (but it might be a long trip for most people)! More information about opening hours and the address to the gallery can be found at www.gallerif.com.

I will also launch my new book at the exhibition opening. It is a 116 page, perfect bound book in full color print with 100 selected images from 2003-2006. For the (un)lucky readers of popexperiment who can not make it to the gallery to pick up a copy, it is possible to find more information about the book and buy a copy from this URL: www.lulu.com/content/383265. If anybody wants the book signed I am offering to send a signed paper in an envelope with my autograph and a personalized message. If anybody want this offer they can contact me by sending me an email after they have purchased a copy of my book. There will be more information about the book up at frosk.org by September 10th at the latest, I just need to live through my opening before I have time to update properly!

Pop Experiment: I also understand that you are starting your own firm. How are things coming along? What are the objectives of this firm?

Natasha: The firm is coming along great. Very soon I will be available for freelance and commission photography, graphics, illustration, web-work and more! There will come a portfolio-section at my website for people who might want to consider hiring me. I am hoping this will be done by the end of October, so I’ve got quite a busy fall! If a potential client needs work done before I’ve made the new portfolio section they are more than welcome to contact me through the email provided at frosk.org.