Cooling down

Tuesday being Epiphany, and a rather sunny, although cold, winter day, I decided to go for a walk. I armed myself with my film camera and my iPhone, not really thinking about going to shoot something specific, but rather deciding to have them in case something happened to come up.

I walked to the river that flows through the town center and was faced with this.

At this point I was glad that I took my film camera, but obviously, the pictures I took with that are still in the roll of film that needs to be developed. I decided that I wanted to have some coloured pictures, and ones I could immediately show to other people, so I took a few snaps with the phone as well.

The conditions were perfect, the sun shining through the water that was evaporated thanks to the cold. I was ecstatic, and took more pictures with both of the cameras.

But then. DISASTER. Just as I had gotten to the most perfect spot, ready to snap a pic with the phone… A tiny thermometer appeared on the screen. Below it an announcement. The phone was going to shut itself right there and then. The reason? It needed to “cool down”. I mean for Christ’s sake, -20 celsius (that’s -4 F) is pretty cool to me. This really just takes the cake. That’s modern technology for you! :D

Thankfully the good old mechanical film camera worked like a charm.

A dream quote for today: ” Sometimes life is about risking everything for a dream no one can see but you” – Unknown

Shining through

Let this be the year you shine! Excel in your work or studies, start a hobby that makes you feel enlightened or be the spark of hope that your friend or family member needs. Stop being a wallflower and let yourself be seen and heard. If you were waiting for a sign, this is it! C:

Happy new year!

“Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears.” – Richard Wilkins

Birches

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem

Happy holidays!

Just wishing everyone happy holidays, and merry Christmas to everyone who’ll be celebrating it.

I really don’t care a lot about traditions, except when it comes to Christmas. Tomorrow I am going to celebrate with my closest family, and every detail down to the tablecloths will be as it always has been. Although I quickly get bored with routines, it is just so reassuring to know that even if everything else in my life changes, I can always come home for Christmas and everything will be just as I remembered.

One of our traditions is to get a christmas tree, a Serbian spruce (Picea omorika) to be exact, and dress it with all sorts of tiny ornaments. Here’s a picture of one of the decorations: a small glass angel.

I hope you all have a relaxing holiday, weather it be traditional or not!

An adventure in Lapland, the finale

Yestreday I promised I would finish up this Lapland series, so here goes! First off, I couldn’t resist starting with the above picture. It is probably my favorite from the entire trip. It is taken about 11.20 p.m on top of Noitatunturi (lit. witch fell). What an amazing view!

The next stop in our hike was Karhunjuomalampi (lit. Bear’s drinking pond), where we filled our water bottles and ate some camping food. There was a lovely, rather modern lean-to, which we gladly utilized.

After that we started to walk to the top of Noitatunturi (lit. witch feel). The way was easy at first: just a slight incline and a good path. But as we got further to the top, it got steeper and the clear trail started to fade. The views were amazing though.

When we finally made it to the top, it was nearly midnight, and we were all incredibly tired. The view was surreal though. You wouldn’t have guessed it was so late, because the sun was up.

So after we got to the top, we set up our tent and tried to get to morning. The night was rather cold and windy, and it’s fair to say the mood didn’t exactly match the hight of our location. Thus, we quickly packed up our stuff and started to head down. The return route was on the opposite side from the one we had come, but the landscape was pretty similar.

After we got down, we arrived to Oravalampi (lit. Squirrelpond), where we again filled our water bottles and had something to eat in a lean-to.

Soon the trail changed into an easy-to-walk boardwalk again, and soon we emerged from to woods back to civilization.

What a hike, and what a post! Hope you enjoyed C:

 

An adventure in Lapland, part 2

Didn’t read the first part? *clickclickclick* https://mydreamrealities.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/an-adventure-in-lapland-1/

After passing through Isokuru it was time to head on up 411 steps of wooden stairs from the gorge.

We turned around every once in a while to look at the view of Isokuru gorge spreading underneath us, and everything looked so minuscule. Especially the trees on the other side of the gorge reminded me of a train track miniature I had had as a child.

After getting to the top, we continued past Uhrikallio (lit. sacrifice cliff), which was amazingly huge, but sadly not very photogenic as a place; the edge was largely covered by foliage, so it was tough to find a good angle to shoot. Nevertheless the place had a big, sort of mean looking rock formation in the bottom of a huge gorge along with a healthy looking swamp.

After this, we headed forward, even though the official route urged us to stay back. We figured we could make it without going the easy way, there was a trail after all… A good idea? A good place for a cliff hanger (ha, I’m too funny).

Wait and see, more in part 3! AND it rhymed :D

An adventure in Lapland, Part 1

Three weeks ago from now, I was about to take a leap of faith perhaps bigger than ever. I was to face the family of my loved one and survive the lifestyle of an ever-working people. How would his family react to a city girl leading life so far apart from theirs? And how exactly was said girl supposed to cope in a culture perhaps more foreign to her than all the actual foreign places she had ever been to? Well, you know how you can make yourself feel a bit better in an unpleasant situation by thinking “Just remember you survived situation x and that was far worse than this“? This trip will definitely be filed under situation x. 

There were however, better parts (or a part actually). We spent a day hiking in the Pyhä-Luosto national park. It was just me, him, our new dog (sort of) and the majestic Pyhä fells. That part I quite enjoyed, and thus photographed extensively.

After a few issues with the transportations, dust, too-much-men-in-a-cottage situations and fuel for our Trangia (portable camping stove), we started our hike in the national park. First up was Isokuru (lit. “big gorge”, what a nifty name, right?). This was rather striking when you where there, but unfortunately the scale of things can’t really be grasped from photos. What you can see, however is the general landscape: essentially there’s just tons and tons of rock. I am used to seeing a lot of rocks, but the rocks there aren’t like here in the south. The southern rocks have been polished and rounded by the ice cover during the latest ice age, but the rocks in the north haven’t. Thus, the northern rocks have pointy angles and very sharp edges. At Isokuru, the landscape was easy to work with, thanks to the built in wooden path. Later on though, we would end up crossing pretty vast fields of jagged rocks, relying only to our sense of balance and hiking boots. More on the rest of the journey on future posts. In the mean while, here are some pictures of Isokuru.

This sign was at the start of the hike. It shows some of the possible nature targets and the distance to them (km). So from that point, it was 1.5 km to the start of Isokuru.

The scenery on the way to Isokuru wasn’t bad either. We let our dog Nana wonder free. She had a blast :D

Here we are at Isokuru. The rocks and the wooden path are apparent.

This picture helps a bit in determining the scale of Isokuru. My boyfriend and Nana, in rather tiny form, appear in the picture :D

And finally me and Nana somewhere along Isokuru. It’s a shame there isn’t any pictures of the three of us together, but it’s only natural, since there wasn’t anyone there to take a picture.

Part two of the hiking trip coming up soon! ^^

 

Curse these “wonder phones”!

It’s been way toooo long since I’ve posted any photos to this bellowed blog of mine. But there’s a reason: It’s been waaaaaay toooo long since I have actually taken “real” pictures. I know what’s to blame too. I got a new cell phone. For the past two years before the new phone, I had the most basic phone with no extras at all. You couldn’t even use the internet with that fellow. But now, my friends, things have changed. I have a new iPhone 5 and that baby does everything. There’s internet, there’s camera, there’s flashlight, there’s all sorts of games and there’s apps for everything I could possibly need. Upon getting to me, the phone has sneakily managed to sent my camera, computer, music player, wii and flashlight to an early pension. While it’s good to have everything on hand in one thing, this also makes me practically addicted to my phone; a tragic faith I’ve seen happen with many of my friends earlier. Has this ever happened to any of you guys? 

All this then, leads to me leaving everywhere thinking “why carry that heavy old camera, if I see something interesting, I’ll just snap a shot with my phone.” Although the camera in the iPhone may be decent enough, it is by no means a match to a real camera. But still I’m now in the situation where in a period of a few months I have taken hundreds of photos with my cell and none with my real camera. WHAT A SHAMEFUL THING! 

From now on I intend to take my real camera along with me more again. It is way too young for pension!

However just to get you guys some photos, and to highlight my point, here is a random array of cell phone photography. Enjoy… or take it as a lesson! It’s a pretty good recap of the year so far :D

First of, me cutting a chunk of raw reindeer meat with a pocket knife! This is what everybody does in Finland folks :D

Just kidding, it was the first time for me. I was visiting my boyfriends parents and he’s from Lapland. Not exactly a flattering shot either but I’ll live.

 

 

Then, a snap shot from a walk on a foggy day a while back. 

 

 

Next, a pretty unrealistic looking shot from the darkroom I took in the midst of processing some film photos. 

 

 

One nights creative impulse willed to reality: Winnie and hunny -snow sculpture :D

 

 

My Frida Kahlo look for a costume party :D 

 

 

I ran into this guy on a course trip to an organic cow farm. What a happy life he had.

 

 

And finally, a photo from our darkroom collectives little photography exhibition. I only had three photos on show, and I was forced to pic them in a rush from a single 36 frame T-max film I had with me at the time, but it was still cool, because it was the first time my photos have been publicly shown on paper. 

 

 

There you have it! I promised you random shots from my cell phone :D And random they indeed are.

Afternoon activities

Here are few pics of people enjoying a beautiful afternoon a few days ago.

A dream quote for today: “They may become harder to achieve but your dreams can’t stop because you’ve hit a certain age or you’ve had a child.” – Unknown

Coming up:  Some film photography!

Nightmare before christmas (aka a few snaps from here and there)

I know it’s not new year yet, and I am by no means declaring this year finished, but as I’ve been forced to sit inside doing nothing for the past week, thanks to a persistent flu, (that’s the first nightmare of this post) I have gone through my photography files. I noticed that there are a number of files (or occasions as iPhoto likes to rank them) that contain a few photos and that I have completely ignored while posting over the past year. So just for fun (or just because I can’t go out an take any new photos and am immensely bored) here are few random snaps in chronological order.

Oh and the only reason I named this post as a nightmare is the fact that I’m going to have a random slab of photographs that are in no way connected to each other :D

I’ll start of with this rather angry looking selfie from february (this might be part of the nightmare :D). I don’t post a lot of selfies and this is definitely not what I’d call a presentable shot of myself, but I found it fascinating somehow as I normally don’t look so unfriendly and unapproachable. The situation behind this photo was that I was learning the angles of my film camera by taking selfies, which is obviously very hard, as there’s no auto focus and you can’t check the pics straight after taking them. So I took a few photos with the same settings with my digital camera for reference. This is one of them.

Then we have a lone butterfly from march. This is actually not a black and white shot, there really isn’t any other colors present at the situation: the butterfly was black and white and then there’s the gray concrete floor. This was taken in the botanical and butterfly garden Botania in Joensuu, how ever, I only took like five pictures that time, and this was the only one in the bunch I liked, so it ended up not making it to this blog.

Then I took a few photographs for my friend who’s an aspiring stand-up comedian. I rarely take photos of people, partly because people usually don’t want to be photographed and partly because photography has always been something I’ve done to get some “me-time” alone in nature. However, as he asked me to take some photos of him, I thought well, maybe I should try something new for a change, and so I said yes. The reason I haven’t posted any pictures about this earlier is that I really don’t think they were that good, the lighting was really poor and it was my first time at this so what else would one expect. Still, I’m happy I tried.

This picture features the fish we caught with my friend as she was visiting our cottage in the Summer. It’s a fun photo and tells a great story, but is not really aesthetically beautiful or interesting, which is why I didn’t post it at the time. It was a great few days though :D

This nice Autumn photo was captured at a walk with my boyfriend one crisp afternoon. Apart from this and a few not-so-good shots I took goofy pictures of us, so this didn’t make it into the blog. Besides I had a problem with the placing of the Dreamreflector -signature, with which I am not happy now either.

Then a friend of mine, the same fishing pal from Summer, asked me if I could take some pictures of her and her boyfriend to be put on her wall and to be given to said boyfriend as a present. This time I have to say I’m happy with the results, I really think I managed to capture the joy and affection between them quite well, considering that it was just my second real people photography session. She chose this shot and two others.

Then me and my friends went to a student cruise aimed for people studying natural sciences. It was a fun get away, though alcohol filled for some. I spent the evening snapping pictures of others, but I’ll leave them in the archives and settle for this maybe a bit wannabe artsy photo. I know it looks a bit forced but I still like it.

So there you have it, a few random moments from the past year. Hope you enjoyed.

And as a further note, I am considering doing a short revision back to the roots of this blog by posting a few syrupy sweet ooy gooey pictures of me and my boyfriend and some seriously diabetes causing sentences about love and dreams coming true. We’ll have to see now, don’t know if you’d be into the idea :D

A dream quote for today: “We may place blame, give reasons, and even have excuses; but in the end, it is an act of cowardice to not follow your dreams.” – Steve Maraboli