First you figure out what each one means by itself

Abstract 1

Abstract 2

Lines

Here are some more abstract compositions, photographs taken on February 18th in Vaakkoi.

Today I commuted by bicycle, after a pause of two weeks, and it felt good. In fact, it felt really good. I was using studded winter tires, but they are unnecessary, as there was no ice on the road at all. I need to install the ordinary tires, and then it will be even better, because then the commute time is 10 minutes shorter than when using the winter tires.

(Posting title is from the poem Breakage by Mary Oliver.)

Of light dashing the gusty surfaces

Glass 1

Glass 2

Glass 3

It will take some time to go through the photographs taken during the six days of travel to Kainuu and back. As a sample, here are some abstract photographs taken on December 27th.

On new years eve I didn't go out to take photographs of fireworks. I was just too tired after traveling, and there were a lot of chores to do when we came back home.

I drove the car for 1520 kilometers, and the average speed was probably 75 km/h, which means that I spent twenty hours inside the car with the children. We didn't get to be angry birds with each other.

(Posting title is from the poem Mathematics Considered as a Vice by Anthony Hecht.)

Semi-abstract landscapes - exploring the wet

Fern

Floating

Leaves

Amanita

Glow

Wet

Sven W used the term "semi-abstract" landscapes for some of my recent photographs. I started to think about this, and the term seems to fit.

I have been feeling a kind of aversion to "big" landscapes recently, and often I have gravitated towards subject which much smaller scale, though not all the way to macro photography. Terms like "intermediate scale landscape" have been grossing my mind.

But I think the term semi-abstract landscape fits better what I have been searching for: a sort of middle place between the big and the small, the concrete and the abstract, the beautiful and the ugly.

Sometimes I have a feeling that naming a thing may destroy it in the end, by fixing it in place, by not allowing it to change any more. But maybe this term is vague enough to have plenty of space for exploration.

In any case, today was a wet day, good for taking photographs, though a bit dark for the photographer.

Eating reindeer and enjoying abstractions

Patterns, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Tall, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Window, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I brought some cold smoked reindeer meat from Lapland. It was good. A bit salty, but tasty nevertheless. Why the talk about food? I feel hungry, which is probably partly due to the cross-country skiing I did yesterday, but also because of a long walk outside with the family today.

Because of the illness, it has been two weeks since going for such a walk, and it felt great to be out walking once again. We took it slow, but managed to spend well over two hours outside during the afternoon.

I took about 200 photographs with the LX3, returning to the usual amount of photographs I have been taking daily during the last months. For some reason I have become very interested in abstract subjects, with geometrical components. Perhaps it is a search for order in an otherwise chaotic reality. Here are three such photographs from today.

Busy

Dance on tiles, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Patterns, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today wasn't a great day, but at least I managed to get a lot of things done. When you have been ill for a week, you fell behind on a lot of stuff, and there is a multitude of items to take care of. But I managed, more or less. Here are two photographs from today, more abstract than I typically like to take, but now it seems that abstract it the thing I like to try out in photography.

Spending the day in a shopping mall

Steps, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today we spent most of the day in a shopping mall. It was tiring, but sometimes you need to do things like this. I would have preferred going for a walk outside, but on the other hand today was a clouded day, so at least there was no sunshine wasted.

I took a couple of photographs at the mall, both abstract (trying to get nice compositions of the architecture and decorations) and street photography. Not much success with this, I'm afraid, but at least there was a bit of photography exercise even today.

Update: I started to answer a comment by Markus Spring on "political" photographs, and this got me thinking a bit further on the topic. What is the difference between "political" photography and photographs that express opinions?

For example, I have strong opinions about certain subjects (such as science), but they are not popular topics, so it is probable that these opinions wouldn't be "political" in the sense of interesting a great many people (and thus, they wouldn't interest politicians). And trying to express these opinions in photographs doesn't seem a worthwhile cause. (Even if I had the skill.)

On the other hand, there certainly are subjects which are popular but not necessarily political. For example things which provide enjoyment - beauty - for the viewers.

But perhaps there is a politial viewpoint here as well. Presenting (or trying to present) beauty may be a conservative viewpoint: being satisfied with things, enjoying the world as it is, not promoting a change.

Update: I continued the reading spree today, starting and finishing Joseph Wambaugh's "The Golden Orange", a film noir style novel about an alcoholic ex-detective with lots of twists and humor in the dark plot. It was good, but I felt it could have been better, as some of the characters were just caricatures, entertainment for the masses. But the good parts (with real human feelings) were really good. Now I'm reading "Thicker than Blood" by M. A. Newhall, a novel written online using Creative Commons licensing. I'm not yet sure how good the book is, but the first two dozen pages are not bad at all.

Update 2: Well, I finished the book "Thinker than Blood" and it was ... juvenile. After a somewhat promising beginning it deteriorated into a shamble: holes in the plot, badly motivated characters, stereotypic science fiction elements, and plain bad writing. But there was some promise as well - it is as if a bunch of well-meaning teenagers had tried to write a novel together, but nobody was in charge of the big picture.

Update 3: Andreas has been active in commenting my postings, and has reminded me of what I was thinking a few weeks ago. At that point, I was reading the book "On Being a Photographer". Finally I was much disappointed with it. However, the book "The Life of a Photograph" by Sam Abell was revelatory, telling (and mostly showing) of how to "make" photographs instead of "taking" them. I'm not sure if you could say Abell has a style - but he does have a way of combining rough reality with beauty, human beings with landscape, snapshot aesthetics with well-developed documentary thinking. In this light, the discussion in the book "On Being a Photographer" seems almost trivial.

Exhausted by a short walk

Gate, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I managed a short walk outside today, but even that was quite exhausting. This week hasn't been too good - especially as I'm on vacation and there were plans for traveling etc.

I took today a couple of photographs, but it was not inspiring at all. Here is one of the images, signs of decay perhaps? I tried to make an abstract photo of a very concrete subject, but I feel this doesn't work out too well. Being very abstract and concrete at the same time, that is an interesting thing to explore, but there should be some visual beauty as well, and here is very little of that.