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Photographs from Finland
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Wushu Competition (week 47/08)
On last Saturday, I had opportunity to try sports photography in ‘IV Finnish Wushu Open Championships 2008′ competition. I had already forgotton what kind of seating arrangements, etc. they have in here, but thankfully I was able to arrive well ahead of time and had time to do location scouting.
I had permission to use flashlights, if I can set them somewhere around 2-3m, all good placements were behind me and I only and infrared transmitter with me. After this discovery, I decided to shoot competition without speedlights. I played around with camera, while athletics were warming up and I noticed that light meter in camera was greatly affected by the color of athletics cloths. As a result from this, I went to fully manual and decided that 1/160s, f/4.5 and ISO1250 would be my combination for this day. Based on what I’ve been able to check so far, that was close enough to ideal correct exposure so that I can fix things in post processing.
Week 47 in previous years
Teddy bear (week 46/08)
It was raining in a weeked, so I was forced to find ideas from indoors. I started this search by watching three DVDs from Strobist’s Lightning Seminar. Then it was already so late that I had to start experimenting something so that I would get photo from this week. As a result from these experiments, this week’s photo of a week is photograph about teddy bear, which is named as Mr. Möttönen.
Idea was to shoot flash through the umbrella in camera right and use second flash with blue gel to make background look blue. Positive learnings from this session was that Rosco’s filter examples can be used on top of Canon Speedlight 420EX in such fashion that the hole doesn’t bother you at all. Cons are that it became obvious that I still have to do more experimenting with remote flash, before it is worthwhile to start evaluating whether I should buy Gadget Infinities cheap triggers or go straight for Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers.
Week 46 in previous years
Snowflower (week 45/08)
With this photograph, photo of a week project turns four years old. This week’s options for photo of a week were photographs about Snowflower and bunch of photographs from Hietaniemi cemetary. Since I am far from being done with this project, I felt that cemetary might not be appropiate choice and decided to go with photograph about Snowflower.
Snowflower (Spathiphyllum floribundum) is pretty common plant in Finland (in homes, offices, resteraunts, etc.), but still you can’t find Wikipedia article about it in Finnish. As such, I felt that it would be worthwhile to take at least one nice photograph about it.
Week 45 in previous years
Ruka Ski Resort
This week’s letter in Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday is R. In last round of ABC Wednesday, we had number of examples from Kuusamo (Oulankajoki, Porontimajoki and Quiet in Kuusamo). While, I was thinking about this week’s letter, I felt that it would be good time to return to Kuusamo and also touch another topic called Global Warming with photograph about Ruka ski resort in beginning of June.
Ruka is most southern point in Karhunkierros (”Bear’s Ring”) hiking trail, which is THE most popular hiking trail in Finland, and there are some small operators, who are renting kayaks, organizing rafting trips, and other outdoor activities, but all in all Ruka is more or less closed during summer and all the big events happen in a wintertime. During wintertime, Ruka has facilities for cross-country skiing, ski jumping, downhill, etc. and as a result from all this, it is one of the biggest ski resort in Finland (even if we compare it to ski resorts in Lapland). Time will tell how long they can keep this status, because it takes more and more snow cannon and tricks to get winter season started as early as possible and to keep it running as long as it is possible (and profitable).
Quadruplet
This week’s letter in Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday is Q. I have to admit that I used dictionary to find something that starts with Q and can be found from Finland. At the end I came up with photograph from women’s 4×100m relay in Finland-Sweden athletics international competition. Photograph has quadruplet of athletics presenting two teams, which both had quadruplet of women. In relay both teams run distance which is almost quarter of mile, but since this is relay and each woman only runs only 100m, so its pretty quick race.
Finland-Sweden athletics international competition is curious event, but I am not going too much into details, because there is wonderful Wikipedia article about it. All in all, this is the kind of event, where I would love to be real sports photographer with access to track and field.
Yellow birch leaves (week 44/08)
When I had just started taijiquan, it was so convenient that you only packed trousers, shirt and sneakers and you were all set. Nowdays you need sword, knife, sticks, … and all the extra weight from these makes sure that you miss all spontaneous photo opportunities. Last week, I carried those weapons in five days out of seven (Tue, Thu-Sun), so I had to take everything out of those few opportunities that I had for taking photographs.
This week’s photo of a week was taken in a morning, when I was walking to Itäkeskus. This was first morning, when I noticed ice on a road. During my walk, I also noted three yellow birch leaves that were surrounded by brown leaves and I felt that would be perfect photo opportunity.
Week 44 in previous years
Passerine
This week’s letter in Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday is P. Finland has number of places, which start with P, but I’ve already wrote blog articles about some of those (Pihtsusköngäs and Porontimajoki) and I am looking for better photographs from other places (for example Porvoo). Since I ran out of places, I decided to take a look into nature and finally choose Passerine and used photograph about Blue Tit for “cover”.
A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species
- Wikipedia
To give you little bit more concrete idea about what kind of birds belong to Passeriformes, here is list of birds that I’ve managed to photograph at some point in past.
                  
Vattuniemi (week 43/08)
One of my long term projects has been to take photograph with long exposure rocks in sea shore, while waves come and go. Last week, after two days of windy conditions, I finally did it. After work, I went to Vattuniemi, which is most southern part of Lauttasaari, with camera, ND filter and tripod to check whether or not I would see some waves in there.
Since we were already on second half of October, I didn’t have to wait long for sunset to happen, and before I noticed, shutter speeds were already around 30 seconds and I had to start setting aperture to bigger to compensate, because I didn’t want to go to bulk mode on timing (for someone, I never thought about removal of ND8 filter).
Rest of the photographs are visible in finnish section of matka.kuvat.fi, where I created new album for Lauttasaari. In case you want to see more slow shutter speed exposures, photo of a week 30/08, was taken from rocks in lake in midsummer night.
Week 43 in earlier years
Olhava in Repovesi National Park
This week’s letter in Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday is O. I decided that O is for Olhava, which is one of the most well known rock climbing spots in Southern Finland. Olhava is located into middle of Repovesi National Park. Rock faces are something like 50m high, nearest camping site is right next to climbing routes and since we are talking about national park, there is no fee from camping. When summer turns into winter, climbers will simply switch from rock climbing to ice climbing.
One could ask, how well can climbing and National Park co-exist, but Olhava has long traditions in climbing and Repovesi is relatively new national park and as such it would make no sense to prohibit climbing.
Additional information:
Repovesi National Park in matka.kuvat.fi
P.S. Some might remember my ‘R - Rock climber‘ post from previous round in ABC Wednesday. Photograph in that post was also taken in Olhava.
Rowanberries (week 42/08)
The quote about fox saying “The grapes are sour anyway!” has always been translated to “The rowanberries are sour anyway!”, because grapes are pretty rare up there in north. However the meaning of this fable matches with photo of a week 42, because my original goal for photo of a week was yet another photograph about water skiing. We had planned to take photographs on Sunday, but it was raining in a morning and forecast said that it would keep on doing it for the rest of the day.
Thankfully their was pause on a rain, so I had opportunity to go out and photograph these rowanberries instead.
Week 42 in previous years
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