One year in new shoes

Sticks

Ground

Water

Oak

Fallen

Shoe

In March, 2011, I bought new Sievi shoes for hiking in the forests (model SIEVI GT 16 S3). The shoes looked rather fine then, and I thought that it would be nice to take a photograph of them one year later, for comparison.

Well, above you see what has happened to the shoes. They are not so fine any more, but in excellent condition nevertheless.

I have walked about 1200-1500 km with the shoes in one year, in all kinds of weather, from +15 °C to -28 °C. I have gotten them completely wet - Goretex does not help if you step up to your knee in a puddle - very muddy, and abused them in various other ways.

But the shoes seem to be durable. In the instruction leaflet there was the text "if you take prooperly care of the shoes they will last a very long time", and I believe it.

However, I have to say that I have not pushed the shoes to the limit as I described a year ago: "Impact protection for the toes is said to be 200 Joules, and compression 15000 Newtons. Heat resistance of the soles is 300 °C, and the steel midsole has penetration resistance of 1100 Newtons. Energy absorption of the seat region is min. 20 Joules. And then there is Gore-tex for waterproofing."

From segment, fragment, he can reconstruct the whole

Flow

Reflect

Birches

Moon

View

Window

Well, today I finally managed to upload the rest of the photographs from yesterday to Flickr. It must have been a temporary hiccup with FlickrExport for Aperture. All these photographs were taken during a walk just before sunset.

Posting title is from the poem Part for the Whole by Robert Francis. I like this poem, and I think it is rather relevant to photography. Maybe even self-evident... though I suspect there is a deeper meaning to the poem than the first reading shows.

By the way, as someone who occasionally falls into gear obsession (e.g., Canon 5D Mark III, Olympus OM-D E-M5, Nikon D800, ...), the posting "So, here’s a thread from Hammeruser.com" is priceless: "A real carpenter could have done that with rusty wire and a rock. It’s not about the equipment, it’s about the carpenter." (Via George Barr.)

I can feel my eye breaking

Colors

Helsinki

Windows

Up

Birches

Lamp

For some reason I'm having problems in uploading photographs from Aperture. Only a few have appeared at Flickr. Well, not matter, I'll use those in the posting.

(Posting title is from the poem The Window by Robert Creeley.)

Return to Luukki

Field

Melting

Lake

Step

Three

Twigs

Crescent

Roof

It has been a long time since we last visited the Luukki outdoor park in Espoo, but today I went there with the daughters, an hour before sunset. It was calm and reasonably warm, and the children played with the water and ice at the shore. Not many people were at Luukki dispite the excellent weather.

13 h

Morning

Puddle

Twirl

Water

Fence

Car

Length of day is now 13 hours, which is rather nice: sunlight in the morning and quite long daylight time during the evening.

Today I forgot to take a spare battery for the camera, and I couldn't take many photographs while commuting. Typically the battery lasts for about 1200 photographs, but I usually remember to check the charge each day.

Anyway, after work I went for a 1 1/2 hour walk with the daughters, and took some photographs. We have had it warm, and snow is now disappearing fast. The official depth of snow figure at the Vantaa airport is 28 cm, but in many places there is almost no snow on the ground left.

PS. By the way, one of the Finnish weather forecast sites says that the length of day is 13 h, and the other 12 h 59 min. I always wondered why it is the weather forecast sites which show this info, and why there are differences.

But then I read that in fact the length of day is also forecast, namely it depends on how the light bends in the atmosphere, and the air pressure plays a factor there. The daylight time is the time between the moment when the upper edge of the sun crosses the horizon to the moment the upper edge disappears below.

In a bus, reading

Silhouette

View

Street

Melting

Tree

Today I commuted by bus, reading a book halfway through. I did take some photographs as well. There were some rainy spells, but also sun made occasional appearances.

Saving time

Morning

Slide

Ditch

Water

Night

We had a sunny morning, but later we got clouds, and some rain.

I'm having some trouble in adjusting to the so-called summertime, a.k.a. daylight saving time. But apparently I'm not alone in this - there are even conspiracy theories about this, or at least controversy.

Sunny, after snowfall

Cut

Bright

Twigs

Snow

Leaves

Sun

Water

Melting

We got some fresh snow during the night, and it was bright when the sun came out. There was a covering of snow on the trees, but that didn't last long in the warm sunshine. And also the wind dropped snow from the trees. But it was bright and beautiful while the snow lasted.

I went for a walk and took a lot of photographs. As you know, my style is to try not to think while taking photographs. Instead of reasoning, I try to rely on instinct and reflex.

I usually take several photographs at one go, within seconds, and sometimes I do succeed in not thinking, by going with the flow. But often I can't help thinking, and what happens then is that there is nothing surprising in the photographs, they are just routine. But when I manage not to think, there are often surprises, one way or another.

Here is a view of what the catch from today looked like in Aperture right after importing the photographs: