Saturday, March 7, 2009

How to see in a strange environment


Blue sky and snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

After the three-day visit to Saariselkä (Lapland, Finland), I have had some time to think about the visual impressions. It was very hard for me to see the landscape, somehow I kept on missing what was in front of me.

Lapland is not a strange place for me. I have been there almost every winter for quite a long time, but still, I have never really explored the landscape with a camera.

This time I had a little time for taking photographs, but it was hard going. Only when we were leaving I started to notice some things which would have been interesting to explore with a camera, but at that point we were already on the way to the airport. In any case, here is one more photograph from the visit.

Today I continued the nice hobby of reading the postings of Andreas in order, starting from #1. Well, I may have skipped a few, but there were some to which I returned several times. Today I finally caught up with myself, namely my first comments which I made after starting to read the blog last August. I think posting #673 was the one which made me realize what an exceptional work Andreas was doing in photography.

3 comments:

Andreas said...

I know the problem of being somewhere on vacation, work, etc, for a few days, and how it completely changes my style of photographing. I do mostly documentary shots, much less contemplative, frequently change lenses, respond to my surroundings in a much more shallow way. Can't help it.

Juha Haataja said...

For some reason I find photography in a strange environment a bit stressful - almost the opposite of the normal, which is mostly relaxing and sometimes exciting, but not in a stressful way.

Andreas said...

You photograph just as I do: contemplating over a situation. You relax, you get right into it. That's pretty the opposite of a journalistic, documentary style. The stress of travelling interferes with that.