LAST FRIDAY UPPSALA University held the traditional graduation ceremony of honorary and new doctors in the University Hall. I attended the ceremony with the Leica M Monochrom with the Super-Elmar-M 21 mm, f/3.4 asph lens attatched. The lightning conditions in the building are not so good, so I had the apperture set to 3.4, shutter speed set to 1/30–1/24 sec. and auto-ISO. Focussing with the rangefinder was easy when it came to shots like the above, but was harder when it came to shooting people moving around in the hall before and after the ceremony (c.f. image below). Here I used the tab on the focussing ring as a rough guide to what the correct focussing distance was. Most of the time it worked ok.

More images in the gallery below.

ON SATURDAY AND Sunday I was a participant in a research project on deliberative democracy – a citizen dialogue. The project is conducted by researchers from the Department of Government at Uppsala University, and is funded by The Swedish Research Council, and is a cooperation with Uppsala municipality. During the two days we, selected citizens in Uppsala, have heard local politicians and experts talk on the current matter of romani EU-migrants coming to Sweden to beg on the streets. We have held discussions in smaller groups and have had the possibility to ask questions of the invited experts. The aim of the research project is, as I suppose, to examine how citizens perspectives on a certain societal problem area, can give guidance to local politicians in decision making. We citizenswill meet again in two weeks, when each smaller group will try to formulate a report on how we as citizens in Uppsala think that the City Council should act when it comes to "the beggar problem".

In Sweden, as well as in Europe as a whole, a growing right-wing political wind is blowing, favouring neo-nazi and fascist groups. In Sweden such groups are now acting more ostentatiously, making violent attacks on the beggars. Appart from the general racism, there is an historically specific racism towards romani people ("gypsies"). Hopefully, the citizen dialogue can help our local politicians to take measures to counteract these racist tendencies here in Uppsala.