The City theater of Kemi got it’s auditorium renewed. Fancy, new and shiny seats for everyone and even couple of extra seats for couple of extra people.

I was nervous: if I have one mantra I keep telling myself while on assignments, it’s “Konsta, do something different”. Sometimes it works out fine or near-fine or at least OK, but almost every time it leads me to  one very essential question about photojournalism that was first planted in my head by an Alma-photographer Joel Maisalmi who’s talent and attitude I highly admire. It goes “Do I take this photo for my portfolio, to show other photographers, or do I take it for the readers who want to learn something about the subject?” In my case something different often means technical stuff, like strange angles or unpredictable framing etc. Too seldom in my photos the difference derives from the subject and the contents of the photo.

We’ve all seen millions of similar shots, where the subject (in this case the director of city theater Juha Vuorinen) is set somewhere in the auditorium, photographer climbs few rows back and shoots. Even I’ve done it before. I was tempted to start my monkey business again, but came to my senses and for once took the shot I was expected to.

However, maybe the karma gave me a present for my sacrifice: as we were leaving, we walked past the old chairs piled on one wall… with that walker for elderly people parked right in front of them. What the heck was it doing there? Did the old chairs come there with it?

Universe, you’ve done it again.

Posted by Konsta
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