Back to photography - a second SoFoBoMo 2011 photo book

Net

I'll come back to my comparison between the Panasonic LX3 and LX5 in a day or two. But first some photographs, in a book.

The best way to learn to use a camera is to use it. This I have done after I got the LX5 on Monday. In fact, it turned out that there were enough photographs to make a SoFoBoMo 2011 book. After the first round of deletion I had 281 photographs, of which 68 were included in the book.

In 2010 I made a photo book using black-and-white photographs in 1:1 aspect ratio (square format). The title of that book was Summer in black and white squared. This year I though it would be good to be a bit less dogmatic: use color, and allow other aspect ratios.

The new book is titled From Pukaro to Valkmusa, and it is available in the PDF format (12.7 MB file).

This photo book illustrates summer in Finland: marsh, forest and lake views as well as garden, grill and sauna activities. The title refers to two places: Pukaron Paroni, a shopping center for travellers on the road 6, and Valkmusa National Park, where you can explore more than 30 different swamp types.

I benefited greatly from the instructions on making photo books which I updated earlier this summer when I made the first SoFoBoMo 2011 book, Treasure Pond. This time I made some improvements to the earlier efforts, fine-tuning the workflow. Tomorrow I'll try to make the Blurb version of the book to get a printed copy.

All in all, I have found the LX5 to be an excellent tool for photography. There were some minor problems, but nothing major. I'll come back to this later.

Valkmusa national park

Valkmusa marsh, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Dry, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Red, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Plant, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Butterfly, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

We visited on Saturday Valkmusa national park. We did so also last year. This time, it was a cool and windy day, only 16 °C, and the butterflies stayed mostly hidden. But it was a nice walk anyway.

On Sunday the temperature rose by 13 units to 29 °C, returning back to the normal level. Having one cool day in between was a welcome change.

Here is a little square photograph story from Valkmusa.

Valkmusa national park - 90% swamp

Valkmusa marsh, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Cranberry, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lycaenidae, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Valkmusa view, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Valkmusa view, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here is a little story in photographs about Valkmusa National Park, which is situated between the cities Kotka and Kouvola near the coast in eastern Finland. It is a great place for looking at different swamp types (30 different). A lot of butterflies and other fauna and flora is found there.

This was our first visit to the area, and what a nice day it turned out to be. Lots of butterflies, and they were not afraid to sit on humans, so you could study them in leisure while they were sitting on your hand. And there was a lot of other colorful stuff to be seen as well.

The photographs are both in color and in b&w. I'm making a lot of experiments in b&w photography, but some things are starting to click in place.

An interesting aspect of b&w photography is that the LX3 battery seems to last longer when not shooting in color - I'm getting well over 600 photographs with one charge, when I used to get something between 500-600 images.