Saturday, March 2, 2013

In mystery the twig is bent

This morning I went to the Luukki forest for a walk, hoping that the snow would carry a person walking. But the snow wasn't dense enough to carry a person, except in places where wet snow had fallen from trees, or when there were tracks from skis or snowshoes. I tested this by trying a shortcut through unbroken snow, and it was really heavy going, snow depth was 70 cm or so and at almost each step I was knee-deep in snow.

But it was sunny, temperature was about -11 °C, and I enjoyed the walk a lot. Later today I went for another walk in Nuuksio, but that is another story (or posting).

(Posting title is from the poem Cold Blooded Creatures by Elinor Wylie.)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You have many wonderful images of the snow/trees/water. I am wondering if you have tried these in monochrome. I am reminded of the Vermont photographer, Fred Picker, who printed similar images in B&W. I think the B&W composition should emphasize the form and text in the images, which are their strongest elements.

Juha Haataja said...

John, thanks for the hint about Fred Picker, he seems to have been quite a dedicated b&w specialist. Some books of his seem to be available at least in second-hand versions, but many seem to be technical guides, which is not my primary interest.

B&w does interest me, but not so much with my own photographs, it is more that I enjoy looking at the work of the masters like Ansel Adams, Pentti Sammallahti etc.

During winter I'm craving color in my photographs, and even a little bit of color helps. This winter has been the darkest in 50 years here in Finland (least amount of sunshine), so the craving for color has been great.

I made in 2010 a photo book titled "Summer in black and white squared", and this taught me how hard b&w work is. Also, this was during summer when I didn't have such a craving for color in my photographs.