You must be familiar with characters such as Herra Hakkarainen or Lowly Worm who are somewhat irrelevant to the plot, but who keep on appearing in certain author’s productions. And the kids love spotting him.

If my photography was to have such a character it’d be this guy, Kalle.

Periodically Kalle takes me out to some strange location, was it a maintenance deck under a bridge or an abandoned train cart, and we proceed to show some irresponsible behavior. We’ve been doing this since we we’re little kids and amazingly little has changed over the years (this sounds bad but trust me, it’s worse). Taking photos came in later but I feel that in a way it’s an excuse for us to regress on kids’ state once more. And once more after that.

Furthermore I feel that I’m in the roots of my photography while we’re doing our stunts. This particular photoshoot revived me from the photographic hangover I was suffering after the summer and once again I’m excited to grab my camera.

Kalle is a particularly good model: not only is he one photogenic bastard, but also his Thanatos-levels are off the roof. Or what else can you call the child-like joy a grown-up man gets from destroying stuff? I don’t know either..

Posted by Konsta
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Each summer Kierikki stone age center in Yli-Ii hosts an ancient market -event, where the public can watch and partake in authentic stone age activities, such as pit sauna, wrestling, archery and so on.

I hesitated since I had been there before: two years a go I was writing a story of the same event and interviewed the folks that run the show and are highly specialized in the manners of our forefathers in the stone ages. I messed the story up big time, got confused with every imaginable detail and apparently made them look bad. I made a promise to myself, that I’d make up those blunders this year with my photos.

Taking photos at such colorful event is a joy. There’s some visual stimulus everywhere you look, it’s almost overpowering.

By the way, I love my 50mm f/1,4.

Posted by Konsta
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Few portraits of Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra’s first violin player Dennis Kim as he was just starting his new job. Quite many times I try to previsualize the situation and this time it turned out to be pretty much what I had expected. I had this idea of doing classical black&white portraits with some dramatic lighting. Yeah, nothing new but I still like the results. The setup was simple, a transmitter, one speedlight and a semi-large reflector.

Posted by Jarkko
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What a ride. I had change to make trip to Visa Pour l’image in Perpignan with a group of finnish press photographers. And as you might know from earlier posts Tatu was there too. It is hard to explain but I feel that during that week something changed when it comes to my photography. Hopefully that feeling stays with me for a while. And I also made a promise to work a little bit harder. There has been too much lolling around. Let’s see how it goes.

I had my D700 and two primes, 50/1.4 and 24/1.8 with me. But while dragging my Nikon around I was again dreaming about some smaller camera. The thing is that when doing street photography people tend to pay more attention to you when you start pointing them with that big beast.

Posted by Jarkko
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Aikido, or The Way of a Harmonious Spirit, is Japanese martial art known for it’s philosophical and spiritual ideologies.

Sami Posti – the man in the most of the photos – is the head of Kemi’s aikido club and a 3 dan aikidoka, which ranks pretty high up for all I understand. Last week he was sent among 3 other finnish aikidokas to Bejing, where the world’s best fighters gathered for martial arts olympics, Combat Games 2010.

This was the first and only black&white set I made during summer. At first I hesitated to even suggest something so unconventional: A sheet full of b&w shots.. in a newspaper? However, I had a special change to discuss this (and many other matters) with a true old school professional photographer Veikko Aitomurto, who encouraged me to push further any crazy ideas. Struck by his fresh and progressive views on photography and photojournalism, I went ahead and did it.

And now looking back at the set: I think the serenity of black&white embodies the atmosphere of aikido quite well.

Posted by Konsta
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Four images, all taken from a window of a passenger airplane traveling between Amsterdam and Helsinki as one tired photographer meets some Dutch beaches and Danish clouds. Converted to monochrome, added a lot of contrast and some sharpening. Shot with 16-35mm wide angle zoom at 35mm, some airplane coffee with aperture values around f11 and ISO 400.

Posted by Tatu
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Visa pour l’Image is an international photojournalism festival held annually in Perpignan, France. All the biggest photo agencies and hundreds of photographers gather to a small mediterranean town and there are tens of exhibitions, portfolio reviews, screenings and stuff. I was lucky to be chosen to a group of Finnish press photographers and I have to say the festival is very inspiring. When I saw how amazing projects my colleagues from around the globe had made, I got some very mixed feelings. It’s great to be a part of this world of creativity, but on the other hand it’s scary how talented people there are =) I really have to push harder and get better every day because they are. These three shots were taken in a train from Barcelona, Spain, to Perpignan. Jarkko and Maija are Finnish photographers and my friends. Oh, yeah, you already knew Jarkko.

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EDIT: After returning home it’s time for some thoughts on the photos. First of all, it’s nice to have photogenic friends on your left side and old, catholic churches on your right. Then it’s all about the light. Maybe you already noticed it, but I very rarely use flash. It’s sometimes challenging to find a good light when on a daily news assignment, but I don’t think it’s too hard when you have time to look, maybe walk a little and then look again. Here I wasn’t able to walk that much, but instead the perfect light just hit the train window. It illuminated Jarkko’s face and created that sharp reflection and then gave that beautiful backlight to for me to take Maija’s photo as well. That’s why I love available light, reflections, backlight, the sun and the shade. There’s just so much to observe and when you see  moments like this, it just clicks. Waiting for the right light also teaches me patience and that is always a good thing to learn. Camera data: 50mm f1.4 wide open (i.e. at its maximum aperture value 1.4), aperture priority, Canon raw files converted to jpeg and contrast added in post-processing.

Posted by Tatu
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