When we left Stockholm on September 21st, thick clouds gathered on the sky. In the evening at sea there was thunder and lightning, but fortunately the wind stayed moderate, so the ship was quite stable. Quite a way to start the way back to Finland.
(Posting title is from the poem Love Me Little, Love Me Long.)
I commuted by bicycle each day this week, so in five days I got 7 1/2 hours of exercise. I keep on being hungry, despite eating a lot. In addition to riding the bicycle, I have been using the standing desk at work, which has put some extra pressure on muscles usually not so much used.
(Posting title is from the poem Enter a Cloud by W. S. Graham.)
We have got rather intense showers of snow and hail recently. On May 2nd I visited Sipoonkorpi, and on the road I run into such a thing. Afterwards, the landscape was highlighted in white.
(Posting title is from the poem Counselors by Robert Fitzgerald.)
Today I was speaking in a seminar on research data, and it was good, nice discussion, new insights. A day well spent.
I commuted by bicycle, and didn't get wet except because of sweating. However, I didn't remember to drink enough, so I was extremely thirsty when I got home.
(Posting title is from the poem Evening by Gail Mazur.)
Today I decided to have a look at the scenery north of the Ring III road at Vantaa. There are construction sites seemingly all over, so I had some difficulty navigating with the bicycle, but after some detours I found a rather nice route.
I didn't take photographs of the fine country landscape, only the places where I stopped to have a look at the map or to drink water. So, you see here rather "concrete" landscape photographs. In all I rode the bicycle for 35 km, first time this week, and it felt good.
To balance this rather austere set of photographs, I thought to link to something maybe not quite as concrete. I'm not quite sure what to think of this kind of photography, life imitating graffiti: You are not Banksy. At least it is rather different.
Posting title is from the poem In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See... by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I was thinking about Paul Maxims excellent posting "Reason, Standing on its Head" when selecting the title for this posting.
Today I rode the bicycle for an hour and a half at noon. Later I went with the daughters for a swim at the Luukki lake. It was cool but sunny, the wind was occasionally strong, which kept the mosquitoes away.
I have been reading quite a lot recently, today I returned ten books to the library and got some replacements. It is nice to have time for reading.
On the other hand, you always have time if you arrange it. Not watching tv at all helps... According to statistics (pdf, in Finnish) from 2011, Finns watch tv on the average 2 h 58 min per day, which means almost 21 hours each week.
If one would read books instead that would mean quite a few books being read. My average is about one book per day, or maybe a bit more.
(Posting title is from the poem A Valediction of the Book by John Donne.)
The second youngest daughter is interested in learning to play the guitar. Today I walked past a shop selling all kinds of music instruments. I'm not sure what kind of acoustic guitar is the best for learning (are there different sizes for children?), but that should clear up when the lessons start in autumn.
We had quite a show of clouds today, but no heavy rain. And tomorrow should be a fine day for commuting by bicycle.
(Posting title is from the poem If I Were Another by Mahmoud Darwish, translated By Fady Joudah.)
We had active weather also today, in an even drastic form: in addition to sushine and rain, we got a little bit of snow as well. And hard wind.
Yesterday I wrote about people throwing garbage on the roadside, but it seems that there are also opposing forces: the Green Earth society will organize a campaign on May 6th to clean up Finland. This sounds good!
I have continued learning the Nokia E7 phone. One of the good points is the map service, which so far has mostly worked all right, although right at the beginning I was quite confused by the user interface. But it works, and it is in fact quite nice to be able to look at where you are when you are out in the forests on a walk.
But even though the satellite map shows some indication where you are, a real orienteering map would be much better in a forest. However, it seems that those are not easily available, at least not in a systematic way.
Coming back to photography, or at least the visual arts, I'm currently reading Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. This is a comic book about comic books as an art form, and McCloud explains the details of how comics work - clearly, deeply, humorously.
And this book also provides something to think about for a photographer, for example the topic of abstract vs. realistic. It is fascinating that as human beings we know ourselves in the abstract whereas we see other people in plenty of realistic detail.
I wasn't satisfied with the photographs from yesterday - it was just too sunny. Today we had clouds, and I felt much better, taking photographs. Rain could have been even better.
Rose bushes are beautiful during autumn, especially when they get red. And when it rains, you get a sparkling combination. This is the goodness of a clouded day.
Here is the second posting from today, photographs taken at about sunset, which however wasn't all that visible because of the cloud cover. Quite a change from the morning.
I had today the Sony NEX-5 in my hand, thanks to a colleague who demonstrated it. Really, really small. But the lens of course makes the camera much bigger. Somehow the body of the camera feels actually too small - some of the buttons are easy to press by mistake. However, these are things which you will learn to avoid when using the camera.
The NEX-5 is quite tempting, I must admit, except for the size of the lenses. I like to have a lens which can take closeup photographs, and with that kind of lens the combo becomes quite large to carry aroung.
Oops... I almost forgot. INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY SPARKS WILD CELEBRATIONS: "OCTOBER 22 IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY - WHEN GRATEFUL INTERNET USERS ACROSS THE PLANET JOIN TOGETHER TO PRAISE THE KING OF THE KEYBOARD, THE CAPS LOCK KEY."
Have a nice weekend!
I'm making two postings today. First, some photographs from this morning, when we had a glorious sunrise, which however lasted only a couple of minutes. In the second posting, you will see the day from the other end.
This week has been a bit of a blur, things happening and piling on top of another. Finally I even managed to misspell e-mail addresses, causing some confusion, which required extra work to clear up.
It was nice to go for a walk with the wife around sunset, to a nearby lake, where the clouds were mirrored from the calm surface.
Here are a couple of familiar yet perhaps a bit untypical views of Helsinki. And yet another change of vehicle, if you want to keep track of such things. This time we have a boat. And as you can see, we had quite a variety of weather today.
We visited today Meri-Rastila in east Helsinki, where there is a nice sea landscape and paths through the forests at seaside. It was cool, 23 °C, and windy, and scattered clouds on the sky. Here are three photographs from the walk by the sea.
Sometimes is is very hard to get the exposure right, but nowadays I'm getting better at it, especially after learning to use properly the live histogram on the LX3. And I believe most cameras today have enough dynamic range to handle most situations, except perhaps low-light situations where noise also starts to raise its ugly head. At least I have found that it is the camera user who is almost always the reason for situations of "not enough dynamic range".
In addition to the seascapes, here is also a photograph of an old and scruffy Mourning Cloak. Pieces of the wings have broken away, and there are signs of wear and tear everywhere, but the butterfly managed to fly expertly nevertheless. Practice makes perfect I guess.
Posts
All Comments
