Restricted by the darkness

Portrait, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

As it is so dark here in Finland, thanks to the first snow disappearing and most things in nature turning to black or brown, I have felt more and more uninsprired to do photography, or at least to discover anything new. I guess this dark season needs getting used to - it is usually like this of course, but for some reason this year I have more difficulties than usually in adapting to the short days. Last winter was also exceptionally wet, no snow to speak of until end of January of so, if I remember correctly. I do hope we have better luck this year.

In any case, the most light I get is from the computer display nowadays. The shiny and reflective computer display, I should say, referring to the photo here.

At work we have in our coffee room "an artificial sunlight" - a very bright full-spectrum light which is thought to help in adapting to the dark. You need to be very close to it for it to have an effect, they say. The effect is based on simulating the production of melatonin, see also light therapy.

Update: Thinking about this, I noticed an interesting use of words in Finnish. The term "light therapy" ("valohoito") is used in Finnish to refer car repair shops which charge for fixing non-existing problems in cars. But with humans, using light actually works. And I have had some of the typical symptoms of the melatonin deficiency: difficulties in sleeping, eating more that necessary (graving of chocolate) etc.

Blurring

Night shapes, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I'm not sure if there is much point in such night photography where the camera sees more that a human. However, here is a four-second exposure with the LX3 at ISO 400 and f/2.0, handheld. Using a tripod this would have been just another ordinary photo, but the handheld blur creates an interesting texture. As a composition, this leaves much to be desired, but there might be some benefit in trying this with more photographic subjects.

A dark, rainy night

Shadow fog, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

It was a dark, rainy night, and it was the only time I had some time for photography today. Almost all of the snow has now melted away, and the cloud cover was thick.

Here is a long-exposure photo from the flooded lake nearby, with foggy shapes giving a bit of mystery to the scene. There is a photography style titled "light painting", but I guess you can do the same with dark shapes or shadows. This might be something worth investigating.