Favorite thing you miss

Sunset street, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Winter moon rising, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

These are photographs from yesterday. I'm not sure whether I'm able to produce any today. It was a hectic day, first a long meeting, and then a series of short meetings and some e-mails to get things moving/settled.

The first photograph is interesting because of the lighting - this was the blue moment at sunset, thus the shadows are blue. Also, there was strong artificial lighting which colored the street in a warm hue. The photo was taken handheld with the LX3 (1/10 seconds at ISO 400), and the result is quite good for a compact camera.

The second photograph was taken well after sunset, when the moon had risen. This is a long-exposure photograph from the shore of the lake Lammaslampi. The artificial light generated a "green belt of light", as there seemed to be a kind of haze (perhaps little snow particles) near the other shore.

After this little photography part, perhaps you permit me to discuss a different topic. Namely, a favorite thing I like to do but seldom can. I'll return to photography at the end.

Today noon I made a short five-minute speech, from memory, without having any notes or PowerPoint slides or anything like that to help. And I suddenly realized how much I like making speeches.

Nowadays you typically give more or less routine PowerPoint shows, or you engage in negotiations and discussions, but seldom is there a real opporturnity to speech-making.

Making a speech is exciting because you have to focus on the message, to understand both the overall structure of your message and the little details you use to drive the point home.

I used to be quite shy, and afraid of situations requiring public speaking. This changed when I started to lecture and arrange 1-3 day intensive courses for researchers. The participants were motivated, you knew a lot of the topic in question (I hope so!), and there was a lot of room for developing the presentation as the courses were organized many times in succession.

I have never got over the initial tension before the act of speaking, but I have grown to like it, even relish it. It is like the excitement of riding a bicycle through a difficult strech on the forest path, or when skiing downhill a demanding slope.

And today I realized that this thing is missing. I'm no longer organizing courses or making speeches. Instead, I'm a slave of PowerPoint. Some part of me is becoming malnourished.

What I remember most from the lecturing is the clarity and the calmness. For example, when I was teaching Fortran 90 programming, I had a lot of practice in the basic presentation. When I started to lecture, it seemed that time slowed. I got calmer and extemely patient. When explaining some detail of the language I could look at the participants and monitor how the message got through, whether I needed to explain more or to speed up. There was no hurry, everything was clear, and I had all the time in the world to make things understandable. Questions, comments, additional examples, everything flowed smoothly and effortlessly. I suspect that even my pulse went down during the presentation.

Now all this is missing, and I'm not sure if I could get it back. But the speech today reminded me of this forgotten thing.

But where is the connection to photography? I have a suspicion that photography may be a way of compensating for the loss. It is a way of trying to reach the focus and calmness which I felt when lecturing. Some say that this is "the flow", when your skills come together and you forget about yourself.

I'm not sure whether any of this really is true. Perhaps I was an awful lecturer. But I suspect I was actuallly good at it, and the feedback from that goodness is missing. I don't know. Perhaps I'm able to find something similar in photography within a few years.