Help to identify a flower?

Mystery flower, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

We found this flower in Helsinki, on the Malminkartano hill, and have no idea what it is. Anyone have ideas? Maybe it has escaped from a nearby garden.

Preparations for SoFoBoMo (making a photobook in one month)

Rowan, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I have continued to think about a SoFoBoMo project, shooting square. But I need to find something else than just the 1:1 aspect ratio to provide a unifying theme.

I have currently 206 square format photographs, taken between June 5th and 14th, so there is plenty of material for a SoFoBoMo book. But I'm not yet sure whether this material provides a basis for a book of photographs. It may be enough.

I have been reading Milan Kundera's essay collection L'Art du Roman, which discusses the art of writing novels. This little book contained some thoughts which seem to apply also to photography, at least in an indirect manner. This crossing of disciplines may not be so surprising as Kundera was a composer before turning to writing. Perhaps I may even be able to use in the SoFoBoMo book some of Kundera's number-based principles of composing. Have to see.

In any case, it is now much easier to do such a book than last year. Then I didn't have any experience of using Pages as a typesetting tool, and there were all kinds of problems in post-processing to get the right kind of PDF output (small file, good quality). I even managed to make a printed Blurb book out of the project with relatively little extra work, which is useful to know in advance in case the book turns out ok (or turns out at all).

Well, this may be of use to someone else as well, so here is a collection of links to various hints on making photobooks:

• Making good-quality PDF files from Pages using Ghostscript
  
• Publishing with Blurb and Issuu, using full-bleed layout and the 25 x 20 cm book size
  
• Generate separate jpg files of the pages, useful for making Blurb books (use 300 dpi instead of 150 as the output resolution)
  
• Some final notes on SoFoBoMo last year (too light paper in Blurb, have to remember to fix this year if making a printed copy)

Walking at Tremanskärr marsh

Ferns, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Geranium, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today was a wet day once again, and a cold one, but we went for a walk anyway, to the Tremanskärr marsh area nearby. Here are two photographs taken there, showing both the lack of bright light, and the deep colors due to the wetness. There were a lot of mosquitoes, and thanks to the wetness, we will probably get even more of them.

Update: Dpreview has made their evaluation of the Sony NEX-5, recommended reading. My previous doubts about the camera seems to be confirmed: "... its small, sleek, well built body contains one of the strangest interfaces we've encountered in a long time. The images are up with the best in its class but the user experience is disappointing."

On the other hand, Luminous Landscape gives the Samsung EX1 (TL500) a quite positive review. (They misspell the name as EX-1 occasionally, though.) It seems that this is a camera worth checking out. Maybe not an LX3 killer, however.