The photographs were taken in Helsinki on July 24th.
I'm afraid to check what has happened today with Trump and his minions. To see and hear nazis and other racist cowards walk in the streets makes one puke.
(Posting title is from the song All You Fascists by Woody Guthrie.)
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.
The political discussion about nuclear energy - related to the situation in Japan - is heating up here in Finland. (And also elsewhere.) And no wonder, we have elections coming up.
Last Thursday there was an uncommonly political discussion at work during the lunch hour. A colleague accused Kokoomus (a right-wing party) of no longer supporting nuclear energy, and thus he was going to switch his vote to Perussuomalaiset (a populistic party) who are pro-nuclear. (I guess they are pro-nuclear just because the green party is one of their favorite assault targets.) This resulted in a heated discussion. Have to see what happens next week, whether the topic is even hotter.
I'm a bit ambivalent about nuclear energy. On the other hand, I'm a physicist by training, and I studied in a university where there was a nuclear reactor on the campus. (A small one, used for medical and training purposes.) And I know enough of the details about the theory to know that in principle the reactions can be controlled.
However, I have become more and more sceptic about nuclear reactors recently, and mainly because of one thing: the human factor. It has become more and more apparent that humans, even well-meaning ones, can do extraordinary stupid things. And having a big nuclear reactor in the hands of humans is a spectacle I don't much like to think about.
So, even though Finland has generated quite a lot of welfare for the citizens thanks to the nuclear reactors, I'm in favour of thinking different. Why not go green in an intelligent way? However, here also one has to realize the stupid things even intelligent humans can do. Going green is by no means easy or unproblematic.
This is something one should think about deeply, but I'm quite exhausted, once again, as we did a kind of spring-cleaning exercise at home. But today I managed to go for a short walk and took some photographs, of which here are samples.
I have been following the situation in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. Boston.com may have the most impressive gallery of photographs.
The risk of nuclear meltdown has made people worried even here in Finland. I guess this is part of globalization, you feel that things happen in the neighbourhood although there is no scenario that I can see which would spread any fallout this far. Instead, people should think of how to help those in Japan who are really affected.
Another things is that all kinds of doomsayers are appearing, predicting this and that happening, feasting on the worry of people. As if the position of planets, as an example, could have something to do with things like this.
Coming back to photography, I have been reading the Finnish translation of Michael Freeman's Perfect Exposure: The Professional's Guide to Capturing Perfect Digital Photographs, which is a competent book, although not suitable for beginners. I have Freeman's The Photographer’s Eye, but this one I got from the public library, as well as the Pocket Gardens book I wrote about yesterday.
I must once again praise the reservation system of Finnish libraries (Helmet): you can reserve a book on the net, and the libraries take care of the logistics of delivering the book to the library you specify, and inform you when it is available for picking up. Which reminds me to go and look what else is available there on photography.
One aspect of reading a book on photography is that one becomes more self-conscious when taking photographs, which for me isn't such a good thing, and the results may not be so good either. But in the long run it is good to learn new things.
For example, the behaviour of color when exposing the scene differently was very well described by Freeman, and this may help in taking just the right exposure. Also, Freeman brought up the LightZone program, which I have used occasionally, and explained how it is related to Adams' zone system, something which I hadn't realized before.
Today I was rather busy, and didn't go for a walk. Nevertheless, thanks to various other physical activities, I'm quite exhausted. And it was a gray day.
I have been rather lazy during recent weeks and not commented much on other blogs. I noticed Andreas pondering the lack of comments on his fine b&w photographs - good that he got some responses. Go and have a look at the photographs.
Today there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a terrible thing. It so happened I was reading yesterday the book Pocket Gardens by Michael Freeman and Noriko Sakai, discussing tsubo-niwa, the Japanese tradition of small gardens. This is a fine book. In the garden book by Sam Abell there are some better individual photographs, but as a book on gardens, this one is really, really good: all photographs are clear, illustrative and well thought out.
And the last topic for today is an article at NYT titled The New Humanism, which is a bit soft and vague, but provided something to think about, specifically the discussion on "deeper talents", which are the following:
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