Room where I exist and look at things and eat them

Lights

The photograph was taken on December 25th.

(Posting title is from the poem And when I say poem by Rebecca Wolff.)

Matters in the end. Or so I thought.

Lights 1

Lights 2

The photographs were taken on December 29th, 2017.

This morning I walked for almost two hours, starting well before sunrise. Because of snow it wasn't dark, and the cold weather (-13 °C) had frozen the paths. It seems that we will have cold and dry weather for a while, for a week at least. That is good.

(Posting title is from the poem Water Island by Howard Moss.)

Love your curves and all your edges

Lights 1

Lights 2

February 3rd and March 2nd, same place, different mood.

The new iMac is now in use, and I must resist the temptation for further finetuning. I partitioned the external storage into a single big partition to make room for the Time Machine backup, as the new machine has a much bigger hard disk. Currently there is 2.4 TB of disk free on the iMac, which seems a lot, but in a few years I suspect disk space will once again be scarce.

(Posting title is from the song All Of Me by John Legend.)

But now shine on, and what care I

Dark 1

Dark 2

The days are getting longer once again, which is of course not yet to be seen, but at least one can imagine moving towards longer days.

I have done some shopping with the children today, and a walk is in the program this afternoon, after sunset. We are getting some more snow, and that is good.

I bought a new desk lamp, and a LED light bulb for it, 2700 K and 7 W. The LED light is rather nice, giving pleasant illumination, and no need to wait for the light to brighten. The price of the light bulb was half of the desk lamp. I'm not yet quite used to the price of LED, even though I do realize how much more I would have been paying for the electricity needed for an ordinary lamp.

(Posting title is from the poem I have led her Home, my love, my only friend by Lord Tennyson.)

The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still

Dark 1

Dark 2

Dark 3

Dark 4

Today was a wet day. We got so much rain that in some place the streets were flooded. These photographs were taken on November 29th, in the darkness of the night.

(Posting title is from the poem Darkness by Lord Byron.)

Forgiving evening light

Pond

Catkins

Reflect

Shore

Day before yesterday I complained about the harsh spring light. Well, we returned today to the same place, late in the day, and it was quite different, much more forgiving for a photographer.

Harsh light

Water

Ice

Duck

Catkins

Bush

The sunlight was harsh today, partly because there is still snow left, and the reflected sunlight hits the eyes hard. We went for a little excursion on bicycles, and I didn't take many photographs. What you see here were all taken at the same place.

I guess I would prefer, for taking photographs, clouded or foggy weather - but plenty of sunshine is not bad either, even though it is hard to get photographs succeed.

Daylight saving

Ceiling

Forest

Skier

Thanks to it being "summertime" (aka daylight saving time), there is good natural light quite late in the evenings, up to half past eight. So, one can go shopping and still manage to take a walk without it yet being dark. This is good.

Light

Side, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lighted, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Birch, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

"It is all about the light", some say. Here are three photographs in which I explored the evening light today. A pleasure.

Catkins and sunset skiing

Picking catkins, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Ski tracks, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Tracks and lights, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

There are Easter traditions in Finland involving catkins. Children go around with decorated twigs and ask for candy in exchange.

Later today it got colder, below freezing, and thus conditions for skiing were excellent. And there was a nice sunset as well.

How to manage different light sources?

Moon, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are two photographs of the same landscape. In the first, I deliberately included three very different light sources: two artificial ones and one natural (moonlight). I feel the result is not good, the colors clash with each other. Here I used the automatic white balance on the LX3. Of course, there is the possibility of tweaking it to get a better balance, but I don't think you can do it well.

In the second image, there is one prevalent light source, and here I could have tweaked the image so that the color balance would match. However, I chose not to, to think a bit whether the image would work as it is now.

Skiing - great exercise

Skiing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lights, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Treeline and moon, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

This winter is great for cross-country skiing here in Finland. I have already done more skiing than during last winter. (Which isn't much, though...)

Our youngest daughter is especially keen in learning to ski, and she is starting to be quite skilled already. In fact, she surprised us with her skills today. Small hills - up and down - are no longer problems for her, and she knows several ways of proceeding on flat terrain. And there is (I hope) a lot of winter ahead. Who knows how much she will learn.

It is a pity we seldom have such winters. In fact, many adults (30+ year age group) are this winter eagerly attending courses on cross-country skiing, according to newspapers.

A study of snow and light

Waiting for spring, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Bus blues, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Roadside lights, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are three photographs taken today night, when the street lamps of various types are the prevalent light source. Today we had low-hanging clouds and a little bit of fog, which generated an interesting mixture of colored light from above.

In the last photograph you see clearly the differences of the different lights, and the image doesn't work so well, although it does have some interesting properties. (This is continuation to an earlier posting.)

What was interesting to see was how fast the eye adapted to the light source. If you looked at the "colored" shadows, after a while they we no longer colored but a shade of gray. And when you looked away and back, the colors returned for a small moment but there sort of "slithered away", almost like living things trying to avoid not being seen.

One reason for this behavior might be the low overall level of light, thus the eye is working in a mixture of day and night vision modes. You might want to do your own "seeing" experiments during the long winter evenings and nights to find out whether your vision works in a similar manner.

Update: I forgot to mention another kind of study of light. Finnish scientist have invented a new kind of cure for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder): put led lights into the ears, and this cures the depression in four weeks for almost all patients. Apparently the bones are so thin in the ear canals that the light reaches the brain (or certain key areas of the brain), starting the production of hormones. But I'm not yet quite convinced of the reality of this invention.