Photo of the Day #60: Don't Leaf Me

Continuing on the theme of details, today's photo was shot in September 2009 on my parents' terrace. A single autumn leaf had wedged itself between the planks and was both illuminated from behind and gave a distinct shadow on the weathered wood.

Photo of the Day #59:Swerving Cycles

In July 2009 I was concentrating a bit more on abstract forms rather than nature, sometimes with better success than others. These cycle tracks with paw marks surrounding it came probably from a single cyclist with an excited dog on a leash, making their ride a bit less than straightforward.

P.S. Again this is Tuesday's photo, with today coming soon.

Photo of the Day #58: I Seen a Lupin

I have seen many a Lupin, but never an Arsène Lupin. I couldn't come up with a better title for a basic shot of a common flower. Lupins are a wonderfully shaped and intensely colorful flower, whose reputation probably suffers a bit for just being so ubiquitous. I managed to grab this photo in Jämsä, during Midsummer 2009.

P.S. This is finally actual today's photo, unlike the two before ;)

Photo of the Day #57: Identifiable Floating Orb

A captured this Identifiable Floating Orb of a cloud on a Saariselkä seminar in 2009. Unlike most other seminars in Saariselkä, we were there in January, which meant that there was almost no daylight for us. It was already over a month after winter solstice. The sun had set the fourth of December and rose on the eighth of January and the day was already nearly five hours long at this point.

At just before 1 pm the sun was setting and I managed to grab some sunset shots of the very peculiar looking clouds hovering over snow covered birch trees. Although there wasn't too much time for photography the pictures turned out OK.

P.S. This is Sunday's photo

Photo of the Day #56: The Connemara Way

On the same trip to Ireland as in Photo of the day #39, we also chose to visit the Connemara National Park, most famous for the Connemara ponies.

We chose to take a hike up the Diamond Hill (if my memory is correct). The ground was so boggy that they had helpfully built long and wide wooden paths (very close to Finnish pitkospuut), so that our feet stayed dry.

As for the spectacular sight from the top, this is about as much as was visible, as the whole peak was shrouded in clouds. But then again sometimes you learn to appreciate the little things, when the bigger picture is blocked.

P.S. This is officially Saturday's photo

Photo of the Day #56: Nightly Amusement

The Finnish summer is short, but light. The time that the amusement parks are open is very short, due to the weather getting cold very early in the autumn. The Särkänniemi amusement park in Tampere is already closed in September, even though the days are still quite long.

One early September Sunday evening in 2009 I was walking my camera along the shores of the Näsijärvi lake. The sun was setting at half past eight and the sky was being painted in vivid red. The amusement park looked like it should have been packed with happy children enjoying the rides, but the summer vacation was long past and the park would be shut for the next eight months.

There was something eerie, but calm about the place.

Photo of the Day #55: The Holy Lake

This is a companion piece for yesterday's photo, which I only published today.

This is Pyhäjärvi, in Tampere, near the tree garden Arboretum. I took and edited this picture in September 2008, when I wasn't as familiar with HDR photography.

For me the idea of HDR is the high dynamic resolution, obtained by multiple exposures, which enables truer representations of what you see in the photograph. This photo went a bit over the top. However I like the surreal nature of the photo. Thus the apt translation of Pyhäjärvi: the Holy Lake fit this image. There's just something out of this world here.

Photo of the Day #54: The Mild Mountain

This is yesterday's photo, so I'll post one after this one as well :)

The title of the picture is a bit tongue in the cheek, as it is actually taken in a place, called Lauhanvuori i.e. the Mild Mountain. The place can only be called a mountain by the standards of Pohjanmaa, the flattest region of Finland. At 231 m, the peak of Lauhavuori is one of the highest places in Pohjanmaa, which says a lot..

Photo of the Day #53: The Holy Boat

Whilst living in England I had the chance to see all sorts of places that I wouldn't find myself were I just visiting there for a short holiday. A nice example is the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

The island has a special importance to the people in England, and especially to those who live in Northumberland, as it was the place where the Viking invasion of England began.

In this picture I chose to put the Lindisfarne Castle into the background and rather focus on an upturned boat. That's the whole idea -when your visiting a famous site, rather shoot everything else than the major attraction.

Photo of the Day #52: The Black (& White) Forest

After the hot air balloon incident that broke my Canon 5D, I went back to using my old Canon 400D camera until I got the 5D repaired. Well as bad luck doesn't come alone, the LCD of my 400D broke, so I was forced to shoot "film style" -i.e. I only saw what I shot after downloading the photos onto my computer.

On most occasions it was surprisingly easy to adapt to the old way, but there were some surprising results. One of them was a trip to a castle near Pau, on the foothills of the Pyrenees. We located the castle on tourist maps and inserted the coordinates to our GPS. Knowing how things work in France, we weren't too surprised that the navigator lead us to a tiny dirt track in the middle of nowhere, with very little in ways of directions to tourists.

Finally just a bit before the castle started looming ahead, the signs for the castle started showing: very convenient for the travelers without navigators. The castle itself had been under disrepair for a long time, until helpful locals had started an organization to renovate the place and start historical reenactments and such. The French state apparently doesn't care about rural castles -they seem to have way too many to bother about all of them.

The castle has a very tall tower and the view were spectacular. I got some really nice shots from all over the surrounding countryside and the mountains. It was only when we got back home I realized that the camera had been set to black & white mode at some point. All of the pictures with splendid colors were now in monochrome.

Well when live gives you lemonades, better lemonade out of them...

Photo of the Day #51: Balls in Bilbao

We were in the north of Spain for our Honeymoon in August 2011. One of the main destinations for us was Bilbao and especially the Guggenheim museum. At the moment the Guggenheim foundation would like to build a museum in Helsinki as well, so an analysis of the museum from that perspective is rather interesting.

Bilbao used to be the rather poorly known main city (not the capital) of the Spanish Basque Country, with roughly the same population of the Helsinki Metropolitan area (1 million), with the people speaking the non-Indo-European basque language. Through the construction of the Guggenheim museum the city has become somewhat of a tourist attraction, with people also visiting historical attractions and eating the delicious basque cuisine.

From my personal perspective, the museum itself is very beautiful and fits the mood of the city perfectly. As the art exhibits in the museum are mainly modern installation pieces, I wasn't very impressed with the insides, but just the experience of walking in the huge titanium ship pays off the price of the ticket.

As is my habit, I decided not to try to replicate the iconic images with the ship-shaped museum glinting in the evening sun, with the mountains in the background, partially just because I didn't have the correct light or the vantage point for such a picture. So I decided to capture the essence of the building with a little something else, by focusing on the balls in the pond in front of the museum.

Photo of the Day #50: The Last Days of Summer

I was in Crete, Greece, in October 2005. The trip was a graduation present from my parents, with the added bonus of them coming along there with me. Although the warm summer weather that draws most people to Crete was slowly changing to the autumn weather, that's still plenty warm by Finnish standards.

Our plan was to experience as much and as varied a plate of Crete as was convenient in the time we were there. We saw the old ruins of Knossos, hiked in the mountains, toured the shores and beaches and visited the towns of Chania and Iraklion. After an eventful week the last day of the trip was just spent going for a lunch outside the town and then going to the beach in the afternoon.

The sea was already quite cold, so very few people were swimming anymore, especially as the sun was setting and the temperature was dropping. However there was at least one boy enjoying the moments in the waves, before the sun set. He seemed to be having a good time.

Photo of the Day #49: Waves of Light

I was walking along the Vanajavesi, in Hämeenlinna, in late November 2004. The lake had just started freezing over and there was an undulation of clear and snowy patches on the dark ice. Just by accident there was a streak of cirrus clouds on top of the city center, illuminated by the city lights. The Häme Castle seemed to be aglow from the spotlight directed at it and the rows of trees on the waterfront were tinted green from the fluorescent street lights. The dome of the Hämeenlinna Church being the only other building higher than the treetops.

I paused, set up my camera and waited for the ten seconds it took to form the picture. Everything had just fallen exactly in place. I was happy.

Photo of the Day #48: An Icy Dip

Today's photo is another photo from Rauhaniemi, with it's imposing granite rocks making it at first glance a less than obvious place for a dip in the lake. There is also a sandy beach, but these are the steps for those avanto swimmers, who brave the icy waters in the winter and dip into the near-frozen water kept open for anyone willing to take the plunge.

Now that I think of it I do recall using the Rauhaniemi sauna and I have definitely swam in Näsijärvi, but perhaps I haven't swam in this particular spot during the hole-in-the-ice (avanto) season of circa December to April. Otherwise I guess I take an icy plunge approximately once a year, although there has been a bit of a pause lately...

P.S. The exposure is ten seconds (and the previous Rauhaniemi Photo was six seconds, not minutes).

Photo of the Day #47: A Moment of Calm

I can't call today's photo Peerless Pier, or Aulanko at Dawn, as I've used both phrases already, so I have more freedom to express the emotions this photo brings up.

It was my habit, especially when I was a bit younger and more energetic, to wake up before sunrise and walk or cycle to places of interest and catch photographs in the warm morning light, in blissful solitude.

On one such morning in August 2004 I was walking in Aulanko and looking at all of the places that belonged to my childhood summers, such as the Aulanko beach. The beach is a rather short stretch of sand in an otherwise boggy shoreline, that draws to people around it to swim in the usually quite chilly waters.

That morning, much before most people had risen up, let alone thought of going out, the beach was entirely empty and the water of lake was perfectly still. The cold dawn air was drawing moisture from the warmed lake, creating a thin layer of haze on the surface. The sky was clear but for a few strands of clouds in the distance.

I had plenty of time to marvel at the sight and set up the picture so that all of the elements would be in place. The small speck of the Aulanko Tower rising above the treeline makes is a clear marker: this is Aulanko. I was happy to be there.

Photo of the Day #46: Pining for Summer

We rented a summer cottage in Kirkkonummi for the whole summer of 2012. With our budget we couldn't obtain much of a cottage, but the location was lovely.

There was no running water, but the well water came by pump, so we were quite comfortable. As for the washing up, we had the sauna on every night, as the Finnish summer isn't that warm. We had a rowing boat at a lake nearby, and we managed to go rowing every now and then.

But the best part was the garden. We lived in an apartment block at the time, so we didn't have a garden and the idea of spending summer nights either trapped inside, or always thinking of where to go didn't sound appealing.

The garden was a veritable jungle, with huge boulders, shrubs, trees, berry bushes, flowers and several small buildings, functioning as lavatories, sheds, and even as a guest house (we never used it). Even though the cottage was up a small hill, it was so shadowed by large spruce and pine, that the light was mostly diffuse, while being bad for some photography, suited rather well for close-ups and details.

Thus I snapped quite a few photos of details, such as this branched pine tree with a colony of both lichen and moss.

Photo of the Day #45: Castles with Tassels

Following on the French theme today I'm posting a photo closer to my old home. Pau was the hometown of the French king Henri IV, apparently one of the best loved kings of the country. As befits a king, the Pau castle is much more glamorous and in much better condition than most other castles in the area, of which there are quite a few.

I could have posted a couple of hundred photos of paintings and sculptures of Henri quatrieme, but even though many of the paintings were quite exquisitely done, their reproduction wouldn't have shown much creativity regarding photography.

So I decided to post a photo of a curtain tassel from the castle. I guess i became a bit obsessed with tassels in France, as there was such an abundance of them, and they were often such high quality. They bring a considerable amount of elegance to curtains, especially if the curtain are of equal quality. We ended up buying tassels for our own curtains to our otherwise quite drab rental apartment, with very little in the form of refinement.

Photo of the Day #44: On Top of the World

Today I'm continuing with yesterday's adventure. While the vultures were observing us closely, we were slightly preoccupied with the Pyrenees opening up on us in every direction. The village of Gourette could be seen as small dot to our right and the foothills opened up to our left.

Gradually the slope we were trodding on got steeper and we actually needed some feats of climbing to progress further up. All the while the view grew increasingly spectacular.

The air was very thin and dry, so there was very little haze blocking the view to the closest peaks. The sun was at a perfect angle, accentuating the sharp edges of the rocks and illuminating the few shrubs growing on the hills with golden light. It truly was a perfect day.

We reached the summit and enjoyed a well-earned meal and rested our eyes on the beauty of the creation. After a short pause we continued on to see what lay in waiting after the summit, but we soon realized that the path stopped abruptly and there was a chasm between us and the next peak.

I took a plethora of pictures, with and without Milka, and consider them one of the best pictures I've taken. It was incredibly hard to choose just one to show the beauty of the place. I hope you enjoy my choice for the day.