Hi, I am Carina Johansson. I run a small company called MediaStugan. The name comes from the fact that I started working with various media in my little red cottage (the Swedish name for cottage is “stuga”) – the name was given…
I am a naturelover, positive and thorough, a down to earth type with both feet buried deep in the soil of Skåne in the south of Sweden. I like to work creatively – photographing, baking, do handicrafts, drawing and painting. I also read as often as I have the opportunity, preferably historical novels or detective stories. Likes to constantly evolve and learn new things and skills.
A while ago, I started a website about flowers and other greenery – florakonst.se. Much of what I am interested in and work with is gardening and growing, I also create art from flowers in various formats – so to collect this under one roof I started the new site. I also hold workshops in creating flower mandalas and you can also find more information about this on the page.
My photo interest began so slowly during my childhood years on our farm with strawberry cultivation. My first camera was a compact camera of the brand Kodak. But it never really took off when it was expensive to elicit the pictures, I remember my mother’s appalled face when I on a class trip to Bornholm had probably taken ten pictures straight into the sea just because a classmate pointed out that it resembled to the chocolate dajm. I put the photography and camera on the shelf. Then the digital cameras came. Then you could suddenly practice and experiment again and again. If the picture wasn’t good enough, you just deleted it and carried on with the experiments. And when the mobile phone came, you always had the camera with you and nowadays it hardly goes a day without photographing something. What usually stick to my pictures are animals of all kinds (big or small), flowers and other plants or entire nature views. In order to capture my motives, I stay out in nature as much as I can and I enjoy studying small things; “To see the greatness in the smallest of things”. That’s what makes macro photography so interesting. Several times, the neighbors certainly wonder what I am doing when, hour after hour, I crawl around on all four with the camera a few centimeters above the ground. They should just see how the flower crab spider waved annoyedly on its little legs at me when I happened to disturb him in the hunt for a prey. 😉
Have always had a thing for animals and nature. This has led to a great interest in gardening and cultivation. Cultivation, by the way, has been brought along in the genes, since we several generations back cultivated various crops. I even started my career as a nine- or ten-year-old with growing radishes that I sold at the self-picking of strawberries along with my grandfather’s honey.
My first real job was with an cultivator of eternal flowers. There I got to pick the flowers and help sell them in Gunnel’s newly opened shop. Since then I worked with several things. I have worked as a groom in an Arabian stud. Was a riding instructor at the local riding school for one year. Got a job as a “all-arounder” or house-elf on a course and conference center, where I did it all! It was the most varied work you can imagine, one day you cleaned the whole facility and made up all the beds and the next day receive all guests, hand out keys, make coffee, serve food, set the table, wash the dishes, move the conference tables, wash and mangle cloths and bedding etc. I have picked potatoes on an estate in the north-east of Skåne and worked as a bus driver and drove local traffic for seven years. Since I was tired of school after the elementary school and a year at a household school, ten years – eleven if you want to count the year at the play school as well, I did not read any further at the upper secondary school. First in adulthood it again became interesting to study and then I spent a few years in the adult education school (Komvux). There I took a high school degree and two computer programs – Coherent IT education and MultiMedia. After this I have also had several computer courses at the University of Malmö and 30 weeks on a computer education at MacMeckarna with internship at the company Electra. It was after this and a time at the business school that I started up my company MediaStugan.
Over the years, I have made some productions of websites, logos, flyers and brochures, etc. The graphical work is still the warmest thing to my heart, but as you can understand (if you read the full story above), I take the most varied assignments. If you need a helping hand, do not hesitate to contact me at MediaStugan. If I have the opportunity and the knowledge to help you in your specific case, I will do so. I take assignments in both shorter and longer time.
Hope to hear from you.