F*ck the Boxes: Your Photography, Your Art, Your Rules

They never told us the rules would cost us the very thing we loved.
I’m done playing safe.
This is a love letter to the ones still fighting to create like it fucking matters.

I’m not writing this from some mountaintop.
I’m right there with you — still fighting, still figuring it out, still choosing to make art that actually fucking matters.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s a survival story.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped creating and started conforming.
And honestly?
It’s killing the art we fell in love with.

I don’t think I ever truly felt pure freedom with photography.
Even in the beginning — back in 2012, when I started this journey — I was already haunted by the whispers of insecurity.
Already glancing sideways, already wondering if I was good enough, if I belonged here at all.

It wasn’t like it is now.
Wedding photography back then was stiff, traditional, trapped inside boxes with no air.
Full-day documentary work was rare. Instagram hadn’t swallowed the world yet.
The expectations were loud and heavy: this is how you shoot, this is how you edit, this is what people want.

And still — somewhere deep inside me — I knew I didn’t want to live inside those lines.

I got lucky.
In 2014, I found myself at a workshop led by Sean Flanigan / A Fistful of Bolts — someone who, like me, came from the punk scene, shooting weddings like they were front-row at a raw, sweaty basement show.
No rules. No polish. Just feeling.

I sat there, surrounded by strangers, and something inside me cracked wide open.
It felt like breathing for the first time.
It felt like permission — not from them, but from myself.

Maybe I could shoot the way my heart was already aching to.
Maybe I didn’t have to apologize for wanting my work to be cinematic, gritty, real.
Maybe the only "right way" was my way.

But here’s the truth no one tells you:
Even after that moment, even after building a career on doing things differently, I still feel the pull of the f*cking boxes.

I still wonder if people will "buy it" when I want to deliver images in a wild 16:9 cinematic ratio.
I still catch myself hesitating, doubting, shrinking.

And it makes me furious — not just at the industry, but at myself.
Because if I know what sets my soul on fire, why the f*ck would I let fear stop me?
Why would any of us?

Why are we asking for permission from people who don't even matter?
Why are we chasing trends designed to erase what made us fall in love with this in the first place?
Why are we shrinking for algorithms that don’t give a shit about our art?

If you’re feeling this — if you’ve ever looked at your work and thought, "Maybe I’m not enough anymore" — I want you to hear me:

You are.
You always were.

But maybe it’s time to stop looking around so much.
Maybe it’s time to stop studying what everyone else is doing and start studying yourself.
Start chasing the things that make your chest ache in the best way.

Shoot from your f*cking heart.
Edit from your gut.
And if you do look at other work, don’t worship it.
Dissect it. Find what moves you — and let it sharpen, not silence, your voice.

Because your best work?
It’s not sitting in someone else’s feed.
It’s buried in your chest, waiting for you to stop apologizing and start living it out loud.

Success isn’t shooting 50k weddings on some Amalfi cliffside with a drone buzzing overhead.
Success isn’t about polished websites or perfect edits or follower counts.

Success is waking up and still loving what you do.
Success is feeling like you, even when no one’s watching.

You’re not here to blend in.
You’re not here to meet expectations.
You’re here to set fires.

So go on.
Burn the f*cking boxes down.
And build something you actually want to live inside of.

Hugs,
Bjørn

For the hearts still beating—keep creating, keep pushing, keep giving a damn.