506 photographs - and an idea for a SoFoBoMo '09 project

Trees and snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Open fire, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Big stones, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Once again, we had a bright spring day, a lot of sunshine, and a blue sky with occasional white clouds. There is plenty of snow still left.

We went for a short excursion to lake Kaitalampi, which looks now quite different than during the summer and autumn. But it is a beautiful place also in winter, perhaps even more beautiful than in summer.

Here are three photographs which I took at Kaitalampi, each of them illustrating some aspect of the day. All in all, I took today 506 photographs, which is a lot for me, but I didn't get too tired from this. Apparently I'm back to normal after the flu - a week ago I was not able to such much outdoor activities as today.

Also, I started to think about Solo Photo Book Month '09 (SoFoBoMo). My original idea for the project was to take photographs by the nearby lake, which combines both natural and man-made environments.

The idea was to explore the relation of humans and nature, especially related to different time scales: days, months, years, decades, centuries. How the landscape is shaped by humans and by natural processes, and how humans leave short-term marks on the lake.

However, currently I feet that this project is becoming a bit too serious for me, a thing which may not be fun any more. So, I decided to invent an easy and fun project, which could be a warm-up exercise for SoFoBoMo, or perhaps the project itself.

I have an strong interest in trees, which manifests especially when I have a camera in my hands. So, my idea is to make a photobook of trees, a sort of family album of trees.

To explore a relaxed type of photography, I'll strive towards a snapshot-type esthetics, shooting fast, on the hip if needed, and thinking later if at all. Also, I'm not aiming for a uniform style in the images, but instead towards a family album type feeling, a photo album of trees consisting of occasional snapshots.

I'm not yet sure whether I'll try to take the photographs during one day in one place, or perhaps combine several different environments and weather conditions.

In any case, I'll try to set up some rules of my own which help to keep up snapshot style shooting. As an example, I might set up the maximum time for shooting one "subject" to 60 seconds, or something of that kind.

I have some further ideas concerning this project, for example taking ideas from one of my favorite (fiction) books, a book which affected me deeply in my teens. It gave a voice to silent people, and I'm trying to do the same to trees. But I'm not going to get too serious about this.