There is sometimes a walk afterward

Dark 1

Dark 2

Dark 3

These photographs were taken in Helsinki on Monday evening, walking by the seaside towards Uspenski Cathedral.

I had a look at the Flickr stats, and since November 1st there have been over 120,000 views of the photographs. I thought the number of views would go down as the interest in the LX100 peters off, but the opposite seems to be the case. Of my top 20 photographs at Flickr, ranked by the all-time view count, 14 were taken with the LX100.

I'm not yet quite used to the look of photographs taken with the LX100. And there are surprises, most of them rather positive. I have tweaked the settings a bit. In the beginning I used the silent mode, but now I'm using the normal shutter, with the sounds turned off and autofocus lamp off. The shutter sound is rather silent, and pleasant to hear. Also, I set the nr to -5 in the film mode, which means that there is a little bit of more noise visible in the high-ISO photographs, but less noise reduction artifacts. I like it better this way.

(Posting title is from the poem Arcade: The Search for a Sufficient Landscape by Bin Ramke.)

Around this Cathedral, there is an order never shaken

Church 1

Church 2

Church 3

This is Uspenski Cathedral in Helsinki.

(Posting title is from the poem Boleros 14 by Jay Wright.)

And earth seems very near the sky

Lines

Road

Church

Twigs

These photographs were taken on Sunday in Kajaani, having a look at the winter scenery there. It was still rather cold, but the temperature was already creeping upwards. Daylight time was short, and the clouded sky made it seem even shorter.

(Posting title is from the poem At Home from Church by Sarah Orne Jewett.)

I disembarked, but knew he would capture me

Fog

Crossing

Bus

Cathedral

Lamp

Structure

A busy day once again. I commuted by bus, and did a little bit of walking when going to a meeting. Not much exercise today.

In the bus I read The Sherlockian by Graham Moore, in a Finnish translation, and finished the novel this evening. Moore tells a rather nice story about detective fiction, and fans of detective fiction, and authors of fictional characters, and there of course is a story about solving crimes, fictional of course. One of the characters in the novel is Bram Stoker; the fog in the above photographs is a fitting coincidence.

(Posting title is from the poem The Flight by Grace Schulman.)

To do

Round

Church

Bike season

Spring

Stream

Ditch

Pair

Today was a day with plenty to do. Laundry day, shopping, attending a concert, making bicycles ready for use. It was quite warm and sunny, and it felt like spring. There is plenty of water still, but sun is drying the streets at least. I guess the first flowers will appear in a week or so, if this continues.

Hurried

Blur, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Construct, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Church, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Two days in a hurry. Not much time to stop, or do much more than you need to do. Here are some photographs from yesterday to today, from Helsinki to Vantaa, from street to church.

Looking for paradise

Side, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Road, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Frost, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Cross, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I have been reading about religion and human mind in the excellent Finnish-language book edited by Kimmo Ketola, Ilkka Pyysiäinen and Tom Sjöblom. (Uskonto ja ihmismieli, Gaudeamus, 2008.) You can have a look at Google Scholar for publications about this.

Maybe related to this book here are two chuch photographs in the above collection; one is a Mormon church and the other is Christian.

But how is this related to photography? Well, there was an extremely interesting article about the concept of paradise in various religions, how it is described and whether there are some common themes.

And it appears that there is. The common environment described seems a lot like savannah: big trees here and there, undulating landscape (but not too severe differences in height), river or some other source of water, access to food, and clear sight all the way to the horizon.

This is the preferred habitat of humans, programmed in our genes by evolution, and when we build pictures of paradise and describe it, we lift elements fitting this prototype picture from our living environment. In desert environments the picture is build around an oasis, when living by the sea we use an island, and so on, but the basic building blocks stay the same.

And maybe this is also apparent in the photographs we take. Programming at the dna level, revealed in the way we construct - or see - photographs. And maybe here is also an explanation why trees are such a fascinating subject for photography. We are programmed that way. So. Perhaps the paradise is - this moment.

Is wet + night = surprise?

Crossing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Reflect, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Church, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

We got a little bit of rain this night, so the snow is melting even faster. Colors were made bright because of the wetness, a nice surprise for a photographer. All the photographs here are straight jpegs from the Panasonic LX3, no post-processing at all. (Speaking of surprises, here are some thoughts on the matter.)

Walk at night

Church, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Night walk, church, colored lights, darkness, snow.

At least it isn't clouded any more

Church, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Steps, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

We have had colder and clearer weather for a few days. No snow, but at least the sun has been visible in daytime. And there is a little bit of frost on the ground, so it is not so dark as it used to be. But nights are long and getting longer.

Darkness makes tired

Graveyard fence, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

For some reason I have felt tired during the last few days. Perhaps it is the darkness which hardly ceases even at noon, thanks to the thick cloud cover which never seems to go away.

Today the nominal length of the day was 6 h 24 min but it seemed much shorter. On the other hand, there are only a couple of weeks until days start to lengthen again.

Good night

Church in night rain, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

This photo was taken on Wednesday, when it was still raining here in Finland. Earlier I posted a differently exposed photo of this subject, which showed only the brightests lights leaving everything else black. That was due to using the iA mode of the LX3, and making that photo was probably the only bright decision the automatical mode did as long as I tried it out. The photo shown here was more what I was trying to get, and after trying for a while finally succeeded.

I'm not sure how much photography I can do next week, but probably very much less than this week. It will be otherwise very busy week.

When there is no light, it is hard to take a photo

Church at night, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

After receiving my Panasonic LX3 today and charging the battery, I went for a walk outside. It was hard to get any photographs because it was so dark outside (and I had left my small tripod home). Here is one shot which wasn't too bad, of a nearby church in night lighting. This was shot in iA mode, that is fully automatic.

I have noticed that there is quite a lot of things to learn from this camera. It is quite nice looking, and it feels even more robust in use than I thought (despite the slim plastic battery compartment cover). The buttons are small but work very well. The overall feeling is that this is a well-made piece of camera technology.

12th wedding anniversary

Clouds over church, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today is our 12th wedding anniversary. We walked with our children past the church where the wedding took place, and I took a photo. The clouds look much more dramatic in the picture than in reality. The other half of the sky was blue with only a few white clouds. There was a wedding in progress as we walked by.