Wet views from a car (mostly)

Shade, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

View, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Fence, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Fog, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Drops, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Nightfall, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I'm continuing the theme of yesterday, photographs taken from a car, mostly. I think you can guess which two are not taken from a car. The weather has been wet, 1-3 degrees above freezing, so it isn't so pleasant out there.

Yesterday I half-seriously wrote about deleting all photographs at Flickr, and apparently this was what happened to a Flickr user, who lost 4000 photographs because Flickr staff deleted the account by mistake. It seems that Flickr was able to restore the lost photographs, so all ended well.

Views from a car

Drops, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Fog, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Road, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Wet, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

View, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Sven W suggested a theme for photographs, "photos taken from inside the car", so here are five such taken today. This was due to necessity, as today I didn't have time to take photographs except when sitting in a car.

Sven W also referred to Mark Hobson, who - in addtion to bringing up this theme - is doing a great job in classifying his photographs into several series.

But this made me think: is photography becoming a too serious thing for me. The original reason for taking it up was to balance some other things in life, and not get too serious about it. I in fact wrote once, meaning it, that I wouldn't mind if all my photographs would just disappear or be deleted by mistake some day. (Obviously this does not refer to the family photographs.)

Do I feel the same today?

After thinking about this for a while, I believe I feel the same. There are always new photographs to be taken. I even had a thought that I should try this out - delete everything (this blog, the Flickr site, and photographs on the computer) and start from anew. It might be worth doing.

However, there are some things that I would miss, mostly some instructions on using the LX3, on making photobooks, etc., which I might need some day. So, maybe I'll continue for a while. And if it gets too serious, just start anew from scratch.

But if you have an idea for a theme (or two), let me know. It may be something to try out. Of course, not too seriously.

How to select photographs

Helsinki, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Ship, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Step, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Sven W once again provided something to think about, when he suggested that I should think about how to present the photographs: "I'd like to see them organised in some fashion."

Should one use the paradigm of a visual journey, or a selected theme, or something else, that is worth thinking about.

I must say that often there isn't much selection process at all happening, I just pick a random set of photographs and put them up on the blog. Sometimes there is a self-evident theme, such as when going for a longer walk to some special place. Or then something happened that day which provides a key to the selection process.

But usually when I get to the point of making a posting I'm a little bit too tired to think deeply about the selection or presentation. Also, I guess I'm also expecting the viewers to do a little bit of work, by commenting on the photographs or something like that. Sometimes I see some of the photographs having dozens of views on Flickr, and that may be a reason to put it up here also.

In any case, any feedback is welcome, criticism especially.

As to Sven W's question "Do you [mentally] organise your images or do you think of them as stand-alone?", the answer is: either of these, or both. Usually I'm shooting whatever moves me, but there are also occasional interest in a specific theme.

But as this blog is mainly a tool for myself to develop as a photographer, anything goes, as long as it seems to work - or at least provides some learning.