Quick and dirty in Helsinki

Helsinki harbour view, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Helsinki harbour, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Dirty snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today was a day of meetings and proposals. Namely, the deadline for several calls of the Academy of Finland is tomorrow, and I have been discussing about a dozen different proposals. And then there are other things happening which don't care about that deadline but instead obey their own rules.

During the morning I was in a meeting in the center of Helsinki, and being a bit late I decided to skip lunch, and survived the day on two sandwiches and coffee. Instead of lunch, I took a couple of hasty photos from the parking lot. When returning to work, I noticed the dirty snow on the street. This reminded me of a photo of snow in Beijing, China - the snow there was completely black thanks to pollution. We don't have it so bad, fortunately.

Yesterday I was quite stressed out, and even had some negative thoughts about photography, particularly the obligation to your audience. In fact, thinking about the audience - the 100 or so daily visitors - makes me feel good, as there seems to be something I'm able to provide to the world with my writing and photography, even though I'm doing this mainly for myself.

But I also recognize in myself a certain weakness for situations when I'm being helpful towards others. The need of being needed is a fundamental part of me, and I guess most human beings, so when there is something which seems to help others, I sometimes get too involved in it and forget other things which may be not so rewarding in the "I am needed" department. So, I need to be careful here, not to get too much carried over in this feedback cycle of providing something to the world and fulfilling the personal need of being needed (or at least recognized) in the process.

But even though I currently have very little time for photography, it is still great fun.

However, I'm a bit worried about my LX3, though. It is giving memory card errors almost daily (with several different cards, so far fixed by inserting the card again into the camera), and I'm imagining there are other signs of wear as well: the zoom is no longer functioning as smoothly as previously, and the casing of the camera is flexing a bit. I have so far taken about 27,500 photos with it, so perhaps some wear and tear is expected, but I hope the camera will survive a lot longer than this.