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My name is Olav Arne Brekke. I am a 38 year old number plate spotter from Norway. When I grew up we were a group of children in our street who wrote car numbers. We would sometimes go to the shop and buy lots of candy, then head for the road and make our notes. In the beginning I even noted Norwegian numbers, but soon only foreign number plates were of interest. My first notes date back to 1976 or 77. As the years went on, the other kids gradually stopped, but I have continued to this very day. In
1992 I was studying in Bergen. At that time I met fellow Norwegian number
plate enthusiast Alf Nybru. Let me explain what I mean by different type. To use Germany as an example there are normal series in both euro style (with or without hyphen) and old style. Seasonal plates, historical plates, official plates (euro and old), green on white tax-free (euro and old), 5-day temporary, trade plates (euro and old), diplomats (euro and old), export plates (with or without hyphen), moped plates and German forces in France. Most of these can be seen in one or two lines. Then there is what makes the task so large: the district codes. German number plates have a 1, 2 or 3-letter district code followed by 1 or 2 serial letters and 1-4 serial numerals. This makes an awful lot of combinations. Similarly for other countries, France and the United Kingdom double up because of different colours on front and rear plates. Switzerland and Italy have different sizes on front and rear plates, and I try to take a photo of each and every one seen in Norway. Thus if I go to Germany and take photos there they don't qualify for my main collection. The United States is of course impossible to get complete, since there are 50 states and I currently see less than 50 American cars each year. With the amount of new license plate types and the fact that most seen in Norway are from California, Florida and Texas you can understand that my USA collection is never going to be anywhere near complete. Among the problems encountered when taking pictures of number plates are people who think you're up to no good. It is usually best if the driver of the car is there, so you can ask for permission. At least nine out of ten don't mind, but there are a few who will not permit you to take a picture. For example I was not allowed to photograph the number plates of Bandidos Luxembourg's Harley-Davidson's (no surprise, really). But they would gladly let me photograph the motorcycles from the front. Others include a man who had trade plates from Monaco on his car. When people don't want me to take pictures, I don't. However, it is fully legal to take pictures of number plates (at least it is in this country), so you don't really need permission. Usually people from far away countries can better understand that I want to take pictures, than people from, say Germany. Light conditions are often a problem. I find it easiest to get good pictures on overcast, but rather bright days. In sunshine it is hard to avoid shades or reflections from the number plate. The worst thing of all is to have to use the flash. Most current number plates are reflective and look very bad when the flash is used. Sometimes, especially on American license plates, they are not possible to read at all, like this one. In the winter number plates are frequently covered with snow or mud. When snow is actually falling it makes white dots on the photograph. Luckily most foreign number plates are seen in the summer.
I've never collected the actual number plates, partly because plates are hard to get in Norway. When a car is scrapped you must hand over the number plates to the authorities. Thus there are no number plates on cars in the wreck yards, and I've not been able to build up a trading stock. So I can state here and now that I am not able to get Norwegian number plates for any of you plate collectors out there. About this site It wasn't until August 2000 that I finally got my Internet connection and could start working on my own web site. While most webmasters crop photos down to just the plate, I've deliberately chosen not to do this to emphasize that mine are "live" photos of number plates on vehicles. This makes the image files larger, but to accommodate those of you with slow connections, there is the possibility to view one picture at a time. I've limited the number of pictures on one page to 20. Quite a few countries have a page with duplicates as well. Those are typically pictures of less photographic quality than the ones on the main pages. Pictures taken with the use of flash are typical examples. They are generally not good, but sometimes cannot be avoided. I'm constantly trying to make new pictures of these kinds of number plate, but in some cases it's too late: the plate type may be obsolete. For the information and decoding of the plates I rely heavily on the two books published by Europlate: Registration Plates of the World (new edition in 2004) and The Interpol Guide to Vehicle Registration Plates. I have actually contributed with pictures to both books. They are available to order from Europlate's web site. I've also used the ALPCA archives, especially for North American plates. For spelling of geographical names, I use the same forms that are used in Flags are taken from Flags of the World and believed to be correct at this time. If you have any comments, not least if you have noticed any errors, don't hesitate to e-mail me.
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Comments? Contact Olavsplates
Visitors since 21.10.2000:
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We were both happy to meet someone
else interested in number plates. He introduced me to
Despite the difficulties, I have managed to
obtain a nice collection of photos. At the
Europlate Convention held in Cambridge
during Easter 2000, I won the Photographic
Trophy. It must be mentioned that most
members displayed actual number plates, so
we weren't that many in the photographic
category. Still I was proud to win the trophy,
which I kept for two years until the next
Convention. At the 2004 Convention in Cardiff
Vic Brumby won the trophy. In Barcelona 2006 I won it
back with my 
