Garbage, snow, orienteering, comics

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Blue anemone

Storm coming

Ditch

Field

Birches

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.

Active shoes and weather

Path

Boards

Trees

Fresh green

Blur

Green

Field

Red barn

I wrote earlier about "active weather", and today we had it: sunshine, clouds, rain, sunshine, rain, clouds, sunshine, ... For a photographer, it was great indeed.

And then about shoes: as I have written a few times, I bought in March new hiking shoes made by Sievi. Now after six weeks and 150-200 km of use, I feel quite good about them.

The Sievi shoes are sturdy, waterproof, and very good on rough terrain. But only when the weather is cool enough, 10 °C or less. I wore them one day when it was wet and +18 °C, and it wasn't so nice then. But today it was cool, only about +8 °C, after the rain.

While walking together with the wife, we saw some things not good at all: someone is using the roadside for dumping their old home electronics. Not nice. (Maybe be this is what the Basic Finns party means when they say that "green is out".)

And one more word about the Nokia E7: I found another use for the device. It is good for taking self-portraits when out in the forest, thanks to the reflective display.