The photographs were taken on December 7th, while traveling to Jyväskylä.
This morning I walked for three hours, starting from Oittaa, going first to lake Sorlampi and then circling back through Hakjärvimossen swamp. It was -9 °C when I started, half an hour before sunrise, and -4 °C when I returned. There is 1/2 cm of snow on the ground, lightening the landscape.
(Posting title is from the poem “Nothing Is Really Hard but to Be Real—” by John Ciardi.)
Here is the last set of photographs from our trip, taken from a window in the Solo hotel in Paviljonki at Jyväskylä, 8th floor. Being so high up isn't probably the best for taking photographs of fireworks, but we had a nice time looking at the display, seeing a lot of fireworks being consumed.
Also, it is interesting how traveling makes you pay attention to things you would normally not note, such as the fact that there was a shooting in Joensuu on New Year's Eve, with one person dead and one injured, and at Jyväskylä a 7-year old boy got hurt when a rocket hit him in the face. And there were a lot of accidents on the roads due to slippery conditions. I guess you normally filter out most of such things, but when they are close to your personal experience, you pay more attention.
(Posting title is from the poem Blue Ridge by Ellen Bryant Voigt.)
Here are some photographs from Jyväskylä, where we spent the last night of our trip, December 31st, 2012. There was some wet snow in the air, temperature hovered around 0 °C, and people were busy preparing for New Year celebrations. We stayed in the Solo hotel at Paviljonki, 8th floor, where we had a view of fireworks, of which I'll post separately some photographs.
(Posting title is from the poem New Year by Bei Dao, translated by David Hinton and Yanbing Chen.)
We returned from Vuokatti - after swimming for three days at Katinkulta spa - via Jyväskylä, where we spent the last night of the trip. The weather turned much worse, temperature going to 0 °C, there was some snowfall and occasional icy rain, and the roads got slippery.
While traveling I was trying to eat vegetarian and drink green tea, but that isn't so easy as most dishes have meat in them, and coffee is what you are expected to drink here in Finland.
So, I took often soup dishes, which were mostly not that bad. I'm not completely dogmatic about vegetarian dishes, but I'm trying to decrease how much meat I consume, and during this Christmas I managed to avoid eating even a single slice of Christmas ham, which hasn't happened ever before.
While traveling, I had to be satisfied with flavored green tea from a teabag which is usually not that good, the flavors hiding the bad quality of the tea. And once I had a cup of coffee when there wasn't any tea available.
But at Jyväskylä, in the Solo hotel at Paviljonki, they offered green tea in a real brewing pot with a filter, and it was almost perfect, except that I would have used a bit lower temperature in the brewing.
The worst vegetarian dish I got was in a road side cafe, where I had "vegetarian pasta", which meant frozen vegetables heated up in a microwave oven put into a plate with cheap pasta and a bit of oil on top, with no spices or anything like a sauce. I still shudder about this.
(Posting title is from the poem He stopped part way across the field to by Michael Palmer.)
Here is the third installment of photographs from traveling with the children. This is already from the return trip, back from Kajaani, towards the city of Jyväskylä where we spent the night.
Speaking of Jyväskylä, during the days of travel at night before going to sleep I was reading a novel about Jyväskylä, written in magical realism style, by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, titled Harjukaupungin salakäytävät (Atena, 2010). This book was rather good (and I wrote a review of it in Finnish, with photographs to go), and even better was to read it on the spot in Jyväskylä. The city seemed to have magical qualities...
(Posting title is from the poem The Reading Club by Patricia Goedicke.)
A few days ago I got a new toy, Celestron 15x70 SkyMaster Binoculars, which are especially designed for astronomical watching, a.k.a. star-gazing. It is said that these binoculars offer "incredible value for money", and I think this is not far off the mark.
Problem is, I don't have a tripod to use with the binoculars. The binoculars weight 1.36 kg, and you really need a support for viewing the sky.
One suggestion is a tripod made of ash wood, namely Berlebach 3042, but I'm not yet convinced this is the one to use. It does have good properties, such as ability to view without too much stooping, and the center column in a rotating base seems to be a workable design. And a wooden tripod is nice to handle when the temperature is below freezing.
However, I would like to get a second opinion on this. I might use the tripod for photography as well, although I'm not too keen on lugging one around on long walks. The Berlebach weights 3.5 kg, and 4.5 kg with a good video head (Manfrotto 128RC).
I wasn't going to make another posting today, but then I discovered some additional images from the four-day trip around Finland. Thus here are three more images.
First, I have an additional image taken today at lake Iso Teerijärvi, which is at Orivesi, near the city of Tampere. It is a nice place, popular for swimming during the summer.
The second image was taken in Jyväskylä, at the center of the town. I like images showing tear and wear, or as in this case, rust and moss. Time is visible.
The last image was taken in Kajaani, a town farther north from Jyväskylä. Kajaani is where I was born, and went to school. The subject of the image is not from that time, it is quite new, hardly showing any signs of being used. But time will conquer even this.
Finally, as the subject of this posting indicates, I have taken 40,207 photographs with the Panasonic LX3 since last September, in a little over half a year. The little camera is still going strong, and I keep learning new things about it.
Nowadays I'm keeping the extension tube attached to the camera, which makes it a big larger, but I have decided to keep on experimenting with the filters I have - UV, CPL, ND4 and ND8. And the camera isn't big even with the tube, it fits nicely in a coat pocket.
Update: Alain Briot has written a deep and rewarding essay on photography practice, titled Finding Inspiration. A great read, makes you think about the priorities in life.
Before leaving the town of Jyväskylä, we had a short walk in the center. It was heavily clouded, but the new snow had almost melted and the streets were drying up. Now we are in Kajaani, a town farther north from Jyväskylä. I have driven the car about 600 km in two days, the same needs to be done going back south. Feeling tired.
Update: I didn't have net connection for the rest of the trip, and my mobile phone had trouble in mailing postings to Light Scrape. And then the battery died and I didn't have a compatible charger for the E90 phone. I had an partial entry hanging here in triplicate for a couple of days. Sorry about that. Will process the 573 images from the trip after recovering a bit from driving the car for 1224 km.
We are traveling north. Today I drove to Jyväskylä, which is a town in central Finland. I know Jyväskylä quite well, having spent some time here when I was a student, and returning for shorter visits every once in a while.
Driving the car is not one of my favorite activities, it makes me tired, so I didn't have much energy for photography. However, here are two images taken in Jyväskylä today, snapshot-type views of the town center. There was a bit of new snow on the ground, but it was already melting away. Tomorrow we'll continue towards north. I hope the weather turns better and we get some sunshine for Easter.
Today I flew to a meeting in Jyväskylä, where there was nice winter weather despite the clouds. The lake was not yet frozen over, bits of ice were floating piled on top of each other. But there was plenty of snow, and the temperature was nicely below freezing so there was no slush. It was a bit of a disappointment to arrive back in Helsinki, where the snow was melting slowly away.
