Japanese gardens - and the role of the photographer in society

Last snow

Shadows

Catkins

Tiles

Buds

Anemone

Joerg Colberg wrote an excellent posting (or rather an essay) on the role of the photographer in modern society. Here is a short quote: "The role of the photographer should be [...] to help or guide or make other people see things differently [...] The moment a photograph has done that to a person it has moved beyond the realm of the illustrative and decorative. That’s when it gets interesting."

This is worth thinking about. Indeed.

Another matter. I am currently reading - very slowly - the book Mirei Shigemori - Modernizing the Japanese Garden (Stone Bridge Press, 2005). The text of the book was written by Christian Tschumi and the photographer was Markuz Wernli Saito. This is an excellent book, as everything works: text, illustrations, photographs. This book feels like a japanese garden: deep, contemplative, rich in context. (I wrote some thoughts about the book in Finnish here.)

And yet another matter... My mobile phone, the Nokia E90, which I have both liked and disliked, but recently grown sort of fond of, finally met is end - just too much trouble to keep it going. (Not to speak of meetings and phone calls missed because of the phone acting up.)

The replacement is a Nokia E7, a touch screen phone with plenty of features. I tried out the camera, and although it is not as awful as on the E90 - where the focus and shutter lag could last randomly up to several seconds - it really isn't much to say about. I took some sample photographs.

What the Nokia E7 camera is good for is taking photographs of notes written on whiteboards or on paper - the same as with the E90. And with 16 GB of built-in memory, there is plenty of space.