The Quiet Picture

Although it might not always seem like that, I’m actually quite shy. It seems like I’m always shy at the wrong place at the wrong time… but anyway, with regard to photography, the shyness rears its ugly head when I see something really nice in someone’s garden or even outside it. Say for example, I’m driving along and notice some beautiful flowers growing in the roadside ditch in front of someone’s fence. Technically, the ditch is not their property so I could easily stop there and photograph the flowers. But naayy… the thought of the people in the house, seeing me muck around with a camera in front of their garden, scares me off. I could of course just walk to their door, knock and ask politely if I could photograph outside their garden. They would probably think I’m silly even to ask such a thing… what can I say?
So with this in mind, I got into a very embarrassing situation today. I had read in the local newspaper about a lonely small homestead just a few clicks from where I live. I have been thinking about going there for ages, but never got around to it until the article reminded me. It also said in the article that there are no permanent residents in the house, even if the place was well kept which hinted to occasional use. But this was perfect for me, no people! I wish… I had only managed to get out of my car when another car drove to the garden. My brain fevereshly calculating my options, I concluded that it’s better if I speak with them rather than just drive off without a word, so I asked if they lived in the place. Nope, but his uncle just bought the homestead. Aha, I thought, it was not his house but his uncle’s… so would you mind if I looked around a bit? Not at all, please go ahead, he said. Situation thus cleared, I took my camera and set off to photograph a beautiful rowan against a blue sky. Then I heard another car, and thought it best to check the situation again. I walked back and was greeted by a friendly dog. with an older man behind him assuring me that the dog was not hostile. Well I wasn’t worried about the dog, but the man - he was quite obviously the aforementioned uncle! This was too much for me - I got into my car and drove off without saying another word. Just couldn’t force myself to stay there to explore the place when the owner was present. I mean, what were the odds that they would throw me out? Nil. There wouldn’t have been any problems at all, had it not been for my inability to communicate with people in surprising situations! Hmm… better make that “communicate with people”, full stop.

Suffice it to say that I’m no social animal!

One of my all time favourite songs is Tänään tahdon laulaa by Kaija Kärkinen & Ile Kallio. For those of you who don’t speak any Finnish, the literal translation is “Today I want to sing”. Now, I can’t actually sing to save my life. I might occasionally hum quietly when the music is playing so loud that even I can’t hear myself. I only get a bit louder when I’m walking alone in a forest, the croaking seems to scare off bears. But, back to the song. It has a symbolic meaning to me - Kaija is singing about singing to help her get through the depressing news shouted out from every media. I use photography for the same purpose. I know I got a bit extreme in my earlier blog entry. I have no intentions of throwing myself off a cliff - for one thing, it will not save the world, and for the other, it won’t do any favours for me personally either. There are just times that all the bad news get too overwhelming and you seriously start to wonder what is going on. Those are the times when I need to take the camera and go out and take a deep breath and concentrate on what is good in this world and what is worth saving - and ultimately, what is worth worrying about and worth doing whatever little you can to be part of the solution.Plant apple trees, not problems.

…jos uutiskuvaa kaiken kertovaa
en muuttaa voi, en siihen kiinni jäädä saavarjojen vankilaa
en enää itselleni tahdo rakentaa
valheita tai tositarinaa
jaksan kyllä kunhan tänään laulaa saa

tänään tahdon laulaa, laulaa vaan
tänään täytyy valoa saada
tähän vankilaan
omenapuita maailmalle
vielä istutan
tänään tahdon laulaa, laulaa vaan…

…if I can’t change the news
I can’t let the sorrows break me

prison of shadows
I don’t want to build
lies or the truth
I will listen to, just let me sing

I want to sing, sing today
I need some light
in this prison
apple trees around the world
I will plant
I want to sing, sing today…

Finnish lyrics by Ile Kallio & Kaija Kärkinen. I haven’t asked for their permission to reproduce the lyrics or make a poor translation of them, so my sincere apologies for that. If you would like to have more information about the duo or let them know that I’ve ripped them off, please surf to Dex Viihde Oy. Be warned - it’s all in Finnish.

I just thought of a nifty word to describe my close-up photos: quiet.

Hey, it beats boring!

I am normally a very un-analytical person. Things just are the way they are, analysing them always makes me depressed because there’s so much I can’t change and I don’t need the headache.Put this in a small scale and I think I have figured out why I want to take the kind of photographs I take. I have a nasty streak of control freak in me, so it’s natural that I try to control everything I can, and equally natural that I dislike everything that I have no control over. It was none too early that I learned to live with that instead of getting stressed about the world around me. Photography by default gives me a chance to control - I can choose what I shoot, when I shoot, how I shoot. In a chaotic world I have a need to bring order, I do this by compositionally eliminating everything in the image until all that remains is just the one thing I wanted to show. Maybe the result is boring… and I’m not all too happy to say this, but maybe that is an accurate reflection of me. It is entirely possible that I am a boring person.

Hello, my name is Minna and I am boring.

There, admitting the problem is the first step to recover from it. Although I’m not sure if this is the kind of problem I want to fix. I like my pictures - boring is my style. Maybe in time as I develop as a photographer, my pictures will get a bit more exciting. But this is where I am right now.

Ask any budding nature photographer why they like photography, and sooner or later they will say that they want to show things to other people, such things that people don’t normally think about. Pick a detail, show it to someone and hear them gasp, “wow I never saw that”! I was like that, until I noticed that every photographer said the same thing. That cut me down to size… so much for my unique ability. In fact, every day I see images from other photogs which make me go “wow I never saw that”! I’m not discouraged however, in the end it’s not the reactions that keep me going on, it’s what photography gives me - the opportunity to control. I go so far as to isolate my subjects by excluding all distractions (for many others they seem to be essential elements though) but the result I get is why I wanted to take the picture in the first place. If other people don’t like it, I just have to live with it, even if deep down it eats me a little to know that the picture is a reflection of me and by rejecting the picture, they are rejecting a part of me. That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? For any artist, any form of art… the creation is always a part of you, you just need to grow elephant skin to face the rejection with a smile, and build a self confidence equivalent of Mount Everest to believe that what you are doing is the right thing to do, to hell with anyone who doesn’t agree!

Peace.

On my first trip to New York, many years ago, I visited the NBC gift shop. I bought a Third Rock from the Sun t-shirt, I love the series. At the back of the shirt there is a small picture of our planet with the text “Just visiting”. Somehow that phrase has stayed with me ever since. I have had to move frequently, not just between flats but between countries as well. Just visiting, it seems.But then again, aren’t we all just visiting? We only have our brief time on this planet, and we seem to do our best to destroy it. There’s a lot of talk about leaving a “better world” for our children, but as a whole, we really are doing a rotten job of supposedly taking care of the planet. I think it would be very different if we lived a thousands years. Then we would have to face the consequences of our actions ourselves, but unfortunately the human life is so short that our waste will be someone else’s problem, so it’s easy to go on wasting. Not that I would want to live a thousand years. Heck, I’m worried what the planet will look like 5 years from now.

I do my bit to recycle, I believe that if you can carry the food to the picnic site then you can carry the wrappers back to the nearest waste bin, I take pictures of nature in conviction that it will not be there in a few years’ time so this my way of preserving it, I shudder inside every time I read about the destruction of yet another precious ecosystem, I feel like crying at the thought that polar bears will starve to extinction in two decades because the polar ice will melt away.

But still, I go about with my wasteful ways as well. Every morning I get into my car and drive to work; I drive the car to my photography spots as well. I buy foodstuffs in plastic wrappers. I use electricity for heating, lights, computer, and whatnot. I’m sure my even my beloved camera isn’t 100% recycleable. Who am I to complain about the destruction of the environment and the extinction of species when I am contributing towards those myself? The way I have figured it, the only way to stop damaging the environment is to stop being. Humans are the single greatest threat this planet has ever seen… a plague that far outreaches biblical proportions. Nature can recover from the swarms of locusts, but swarms of humans are a permanent affliction.

Is it any wonder that I like sitcoms? The world is just simply too depressing for me. I need my entertainment, forget the gloom and doom and console myself with the mis-adventures of Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally when they explore the human behaviour. Their version of it is funny.

Yesterday when I came from work, I found out that I have a new neighbour. Or sub-tenant. A garden spider had woven its web across my porch, I noticed the web just when my legs were already touching it. I was able to back out without breaking it, so I climbed in from the side, fetched my camera and took pictures.This morning the spider was gone. Maybe it didn’t like the neighbourhood.

P.S. “Queen of Arachnia” - from Bride of Chaotica, a classic episode of Star Trek: Voyager

The dark brown background is my front door

The other day on my favourite photo critique forum a photographer posted an image which to me seemed like some improvements could be made. Someone else had the same thoughts as I did and beat me to it, but the photog was not happy - he had taken an image in the spirit of an artist he admires and the image was exactly the way he likes it. I congratulated him, gently reminded him that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and then chimed in on the first comment. The photographer responded by announcing that we are only conforming to one ideal and he will take his photography where it’s appreciated and cancelled his registration.This got me thinking that the root of the problem is that photography is a form of art. Our insulted photographer had created a work of art (for better or for worse) and he thought it was great, others didn’t. That is surely not so uncommon with art at all. Not even Mozart or Dali have pieces which are universally admired - there is bound to be someone who doesn’t like them, granted not many, but someone anyway.

Now, curious as it may seem considering that I am a photographer, I always laugh when I should think myself as an artist. Art as a term is widely open to definition - and opinion. I don’t like things that I need to interpret. I don’t like things where there is no right and wrong - everyone’s opinion is valid when art is concerned, it doesn’t matter what the opinion is. I prefer things which can be clearly defined, so I use my pictures to chop the chaotic world around me into manageable chunks and what remains after the treatment I give to my subjects has very little room for interpretation. And I guess that somewhere there lies my problem… often when I post my images to the forums, I don’t get many responses. I have come to the conclusion that it’s better to get 10 comments which point out a mistake in my photo, than no comments at all. No comments to me means that there is no obvious mistake in the photo (great!) but it also means I must have done something wrong because the photo doesn’t evoke any reaction at all (not so great). The problem is, when no one tells you where it went wrong, then you can’t fix it either. At least the offended photog from the forum got some comments - they just weren’t what he wanted to hear.

If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen - exactly what he did.

It’s art, man… Get over it!

I moved to the countryside (well, a small village) last winter. It means more commuting, but I don’t really mind it - the road was one of my favourites already before I moved and I love watching the seasons change in the bogs and small forest lakes along the way. I’m having the time of my life here, the only question is why I didn’t move a long time ago! I live on top of a hill and the view is great, sometimes downright gorgeous like for example when a rain front passes by and a rainbow is visible right from my kitchen. Grab the camera, get out and shoot. From my doorstep.

One of the most important lessons I learned in the early stages of my photography is that you should try remove distracting elements from your image. Just simply keep changing the composition to remove elements that do not contribute to your motif until all that remains is exactly what you want to show with the photo. For this reason, wideangle lenses are difficult to use for beginners because wideangles tend to include too much. That, in turn, is the reason why many beginners want to use wideangles because they want to cram their image as full of stuff as possible… but I digress.Since I work mostly with closeups, my challenge always lies with what to do with the background. A proper closeup image has a smooth background which does not contain any elements that would steal attention from your subject. The operative part of this is “steal attention”, quite simply, it doesn’t really matter what your background looks like as long as it’s not a distraction. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have a completely out-of-focus background and this is what I’ve been striving at. In my eye, the only recognisable element in the image should be the subject, subject and nothing else but the subject.

My favourite lens used to be the 100mm f2.8 macro. Achieving completely blurred background was a bit of a challenge for me but I succeeded on occasion. Then I got the 300mm f4L and problem was instantly solved. Now I could really get those backgrounds I’ve always dreamed about, just see my previous blog entries and you’ll see it’s my favourite topic. But then, a funny thing happened. The images I thought were the pinnacle of my achievement left other people stone cold. Shock horror, “technical perfection” doesn’t equal to “perfect photo”? In my quest to eliminate distractions I had ended up eliminating any appeal the photo might have as well. There is an in-between I had overlooked. It is possible to hint of the background or foreground without diminishing the subject. It is possible to fill up the empty space of the OOF BG without distractions. Instead of the close-up nirvana I thought I had achieved with the new lens, I am now facing a challenge which cannot be solved with cash. I’ve seen other people solve this dilemma, now it’s my turn. Now we’ll see if I’m really a photographer, or just a geek with shiny new gear.

Or I could just show my true colours and not give a damn. If I like my OOF backgrounds, then what’s it to me if no one else does? I wish. Unfortunately, I seem to be compelled to produce an image that other people like. Just look at the “In search of style” entry below. It also seems, in search of a clue!