Conelandia

« It's that time again for more pictures than you ever really wanted of something that goes blink in the night: See Pylons in the Night, a.k.a the Valopylväs. »

For those who are about to either stalk Conan O'Brien upon his arrival tomorrow afternoon around 3:30 or loiter downtown in hopes of rubbernecking or getting on the show, I feel compelled remind you that Finnair does fly non-stop to NYC daily (for less than 400 euro even) where you can get free tickets to the show to see him in person without having to freeze your ass off while hoping to bump into him at random. I live in the center and, while I love Conan and am looking forward to seeing the Finland segments on the show, I'm dreading the throng of people who don't have anything better to do than bunge up the city all weekend long. I'd love to see him but I figure that he isn't flying several thousand miles to visit with expat Yankees and I get enough time out in the cold with Otava. But, Conan, if you and your crew are in the neighbourhood on Sunday evening and feel like coffee and a freshly baked seasonal treat, I'll be baking so feel free to drop in as long as you don't mind a little hair and drool from our 75kg canine greeter. :)

Those staying indoors and away from the throng might find this recent article in The Morning News,The Bear in Helsinki, amusing. There's also an interesting photo exhibit starting on the 14th at Laterna Magica, panoramic photos taken 77 years apart of the same scenes by Alfred Nybom and Christian Westerback.

Over the past few months, between all the usual 'hurry up and wait' parts of my job which make it hard to concentrate on any one thing for very long, I've been casually surfing Amazon for a few minutes here and there. I think I must be shopping mostly in the afternoon when I'm hungry as, well, I do seem to have chosen a few cookbooks.

• Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor ϖ Looks promising. I was always interested in flavour chemistry, even if I still can't stand the smell of banana after one too many freshman chem lab experiments put me off of it.
• A Swedish Kitchen: Recipes and Reminiscences ϖ Since so many Finnish dishes seem to have Swedish origins, I thought it might be interesting look into it a bit more.
• The Swedish Table ϖ Excellent cookbook written by a Swedish-born woman who moved to the States since her Father was American. It's aimed, I think, at the snobbier end of the foodie crowd, but the recipes are well done and her narrative is very interesting given that she was a black girl growing up in Northern Sweden.
• The Chocolate Connoisseur ϖ I like chocolate, but thought it might be nice to know more about it in a market that has a lot of overpriced crap.
• The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread ϖ I love baking bread and am rather bored with the pre-made varieties lately.
• How Baking Works: Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science ϖ Informative. I keep thinking that someone should write a book for GKP, Good Kitchen Practice, in the same vein as GLP, Good Laboratory Practice, that research labs have to adhere to.
• The Simple Art of Perfect Baking ϖ Normally I shy away from books that have 'perfect', etc., in the title but I tried a recipe or two and this book is excellent for baking techniques.
• American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza ϖ When faced with a choice of local or Pizza Hut pizza, the tough make it themselves.
• Democracy in America: And Two Essays on America ϖ I need to reread this for the book that follows.
• American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville ϖ Oh, I can hear the right-wingers freaking out over a snobby educated Frenchman commenting on America already. :)
• Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage ϖ And one of these days I might actually use proper punctuation.
• Fanboys and Overdogs: The Language Report ϖ It would appear that OUP is making this report annual.
• Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land (Sloan Technology Series) ϖ I've always wanted to read this as the books from the STS are excellent. I'm not really sure why they stopped the series.
• Company: A Novel ϖ A book making fun of corporate America by the author of the Jennifer Government.
• Johnny and the Dead ϖ More Pratchett.
• Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles ϖ More from the Canongate Myths series.

permalink Ω 11 February 2006, Helsinki

Built to Last

« It's not your father's fortran, it's your grandfather's. :) »

The recent news about the problems plaguing Leica are somewhat disconcerting as it leaves the future of the company in question. It is likely that someone will buy them, probably Nikon or Canon, but ultimately the company and their products will change, possibly not for the better. Erwin Putz offers his observations and some speculation on the future. I appreciate and understand his remarks about the Leica's real purpose in life is to be a tool, rather than an object of desire for collectors and nouveau riche scene whores who find the Hermes MP a fashion accessory only surpassed by earrings from Tiffany. I have been regularly surprised at how many people recognise the camera and either want to fondle it in awe or think I'm crazy for dragging it around town with me everywhere I go. Cameras don't take pictures by themselves; they are meant to be used. I didn't buy it to keep in a box on the shelf. It is, perhaps, this perceived exclusivity of Leica that has created the mystique which protected it from becoming a cheap commodity.

It is, to be sure, an amazing instrument of satisfying heft in a small package which continues to impress me. Desire most often builds up expectations which then lead to disappointment. I was a little reluctant to buy a Leica having experienced this cycle of want and rejection so many times in life, but I saw an auction on eBay where a man who had purchased a Leica only months before had died and his son was dumping it on eBay which made me think that I shouldn't wait as long as his father did. Digital photography has made buying film cameras very affordable as I bid rather low and won the auction. I have not been even remotely disappointed since it arrived. I enjoy the signs of wear and tear as it only makes the camera more beautiful and uniquely mine.

Leica will move more into the digital realm, especially if they decide to sell out to one of the larger camera companies, where the technology just hasn't reached the point of matching the quality or creative flexibility that their analogue cameras with film have had for decades. If you've always wanted a Leica, an M6 or an M7 or an MP, now is the time to surf eBay and used camera shops for a decent deal since it's likely that as scarcity increases [if Leica sells to Canon, et. al] the prices will skyrocket as I've already seen them start to creep up. The new Voigtländer Bessa R2A and R3A are very tempting cameras [I highly recommend the CameraQuest dealer, too], especially the 1:1 finder, and sell at 1/5th the price of a new M7. It's a good time to be interested in film photography since the cameras you've always wanted are much more affordable and often cheaper than the 'prosumer' digital cameras which will be headed for the big magnet in the sky in three years or less. I suspect that my Leica will outlive me. :)

As an amusement for Ignatz who gives us such gems like the magic cone [NSFW] I'm using the magic of digital instant gratification to create the gripping, edge of your seat, journalistic series I have titled, Watching the [Easter] Grass Grow. Even more enthralling than a chia pet. Tune in tomorrow and every day to see if I managed to remember to water the seeds or see if anything has managed to turn any other colour than brown.

And, a couple of local photo sites that I've noticed recently; 365.fi which is a photo-a-day from a group of photojournalism students in Finland [and could someone who knows them encourage them to set-up an RSS feed of some sort?], Seppo's Photoblog is a random and entertaining photoblog and DiDaRoom which offers a nicely done view into the past and present of life in Finland in small vignettes. Ooops, I forgot to add Snapshot Asthetics as my RSS reader doesn't sort by country. :)

permalink Ω 9 March 2005, Helsinki

Death: The Decisive Moment

« Henri Cartier-Bresson behind his Leica. »

I heard the news that Henri Cartier-Bresson died while we were in Prague. His style was distinctive and his aloof intimacy with those he captured on film are a precious record of the passage of life where he happened to chance upon it. Documentary photography has always produced the most interesting photos because they tell a story and he wasn't just a photographer, he was a brilliant storyteller. The Guardian has a story about his life and Magnum has a retrospective in photos. May he rest in peace and his immortality be assured in his photographic stories for generations to come. n.b. Leica has finally posted a tribute to the man who defined their camera., Leicaslacker's Ernest and Henri and a tribute from the Smithsonian.

I'm worn out from 4 days in Prague where it was warm and mobbed by tourists and tourist traps. Note to self: next time, visit in the winter when it will still be warmer than Helsinki and have far fewer tourists. It was good to see the familiar Finnish landscape below the wing as we were landing, but I want to know why Finns seem to have this rather odd habit of applauding the piot upon touchdown since the pilot can't hear them and, well, I'd prefer no encores. Judging by the sea of lost baggage at Vantaa, it's good we didn't return yesterday when there was a baggage handlers 1-day strike. I'll have the photos developed and will write more detail on Prague in a few days.

permalink Ω 5 August 2004, Helsinki

Things that go blink in the night

« Dusk over the Hanasaari coal pile and the Vastavalo light installation. »

I have a love of all things that light up at night, like the Kide sculpture. Last month the Sanomat ran a picture of some glowing green things [which remind me of the luminescent esters we used to make in O-chem] next to the big pile 'o coal in Sörnäinen so I cut it out and made a note to make it up there at some point with my camera to take a photo of it.

We had decent weather on a recent evening so Jarkko carried my tripod, I grabbed the camera gear and we headed off for the glowing rods. While walking there we had to go through Merihaka which could only be described as a post-apocalyptic 1970s concrete and aluminum utopia made even creepier by it being devoid of any people anywhere. At some point a healthy looking young guy jumped out of the shadows asking for help which, from my being from US cities, I wasn't going to pay any attention [who doesn't carry a mobile in Helsinki?] to but Jarkko stopped and offered to call the police. It turned out that a really drunk guy was lying in a pool of blood in front of an entrance to one of the concrete blocks. The ambulance eventually arrived and the guy was ok if a bit hammered in the extreme. I was really happy to get out of there, no offense to the Merihaka residents, but to me it was just a really unsettling place at night. Maybe it's better during the daytime.

I set up my kit and waited for the lights to come on and looked at how pretty a city can become at night. The green lights tended to flicker on and off for an hour after dusk which was likely due to an overly sensitive photocell on the switch. I tried both 50mm and 35mm lenses, a variety of exposures and apertures and a few positions along the nearest point of land to the island. I'll probably go back with the pinhole and the 35mm lens and try a few other shots now that I have a better idea of what I want and will put them into a gallery sometime soon. The photo above was taken with the Leica with a 35mm/2.0 ASPH lens at f16 and a 15 sec exposure. The very small aperture is what causes the starlight effect on the sodium lights which is more attractive than the giant blob of light at f2 and a shorter exposure. The 50mm lens just couldn't take it all in. The Helsinki Energy web pages have an explanation about the installation in Finnish that Jarkko translated.

Hanasaari Art Installation Into Use

Coal Storage as part of the city landscape

The art Installation "Vastavalo" (The word can mean 'backlight' or, in this context, 'opposite light' for the lights opposite from Merihaka.), designed by architect Sakari Tilanterä, was unveiled in a ceremony in front of the power station on Sörnaisten rantatie on Friday, the 11th of June with representatives of the neighboring residences and businesses of the Hanasaari B power station in attendance.

The art installation consists of 56 apple green poles which form a fence circling the Hanasaari coal storage. The poles are lit with LED lights, the light reaches the eye of the viewer indirectly. The installation is lit in the evenings and nights and, during daylight hours, the green poles are visible against the black coal. The installation is implemented with energy saving LED lights representing the most modern lighting technology.

Architect Sakari Tilanterä says that the starting point for the design of the installation was urban landscaping. "I was asked to design an art installation that would enliven the coal storage of the power station in the eyes of the neighbors. The installation has been designed so that it is easily visible from Merihaka and its neighboring areas. This is exactly why a peaceful, natural light has been chosen; the installation must not disturb the night scenery, but instead enliven it in a good way."

The coal storage has inspired artists

The power station manager Hannu Kekkonen said in his dedication speech that the Hanasaari coal storage and art have previously had a lot in common. For example, in 1993 the artists Ritva Harle, Hanna Vainio, and Jukka Kuuranne designed and built an art installation called "Tulivuori" ("Volcano") into the coal storage using stripes of grass.

"Sakari Tilanterä, an architect who has been effecting the Hanasaari area architecture since the seventies has, at our behest, implemented an art installation that, without disturbing the operation of the power station, joins the power station in a new way as a part of the urban landscape and enlivens the coal storage for the enjoyment of our neighbors", said the Hanasaari power station manager Hannu Kekkonen.

permalink Ω 23 July 2004, Helsinki

Fanit

When the olympic flame came through Helsinki, a few of us took it as a good excuse to go up to Linnanmäki to have some fun. In some silly nostalgic sense, I also wanted to see it since it went through St. Louis as this year is the centennial for the 1904 Olympics which were held at the World's Fair. It's a really goofy idea to think there was a shred of connection between me and my home town there but, well, noone ever said emotions had to be rational or non-goofy. I've been away from home so many times and for so long that I'm onto that con job where you think you're homesick, go home and, as soon as you arrive, are ready to leave. I prefer to think of it as missing the familiar since Finland could import all the yankee pop culture it could get its hands on and still be a mostly unfamiliar place.

I took the opportunity to take a few photographs of the stage and the flame cauldron before the crowds arrived and some girls sitting on the benches started shouting at me in Finnish to take their picture, which I didn't pay much attention to. Then the girls started shouting, "Do you speak Finnish?!", in English which I purposefully ignored :) They switched back to Finnish again so, as I was leaving I turned around and took their picture. Apparently, they were all there to see Antti Tuisku, the Finnish Idols champion[?], whom I'm completely unfamiliar with but he looks like pure teenage crush material. :) The t-shirt on the left, the "Antti sä oot niin WOW!" [Antti, you are so WOW!], continues to crack me up. I can't remember if I had any teenage crushboy, but I did have an odd lust for Spock.

I had to crop the photo a bit since I was in too much of a hurry to switch rolls for a paying gig I had and managed to forget to rewind the roll before I tried to reload. The Leica has a sub-optimal spool for this sort of mishap since it has 3 prongs instead of a toothed barrel so this is why there are streaks on the top. I'm not much with photoshop and I rarely do any photoshopping or cropping, but I think this one required it. I gave the girls my email address since they asked if they could have a copy, but maybe they lost it in all the excitment or the laundry so...if anyone recognizes these very cute girls, tell them to come see their photo with my apologies that it's a little wonky.

permalink Ω 16 July 2004, Helsinki

More Mixed Bag

« A typical summer afternoon in Hakaniemi. »

More mixed bag photos from April, May and June to help stave off the boredom of being one of the few people stuck in the office during July.

There is another Leicaphile in Helsinki with a new blog, Mustavalkoista, that looks interesting [atom feed at http://studiox.blogspot.com/atom.xml]. Also, Niklas Sjöblom's Photo of the Month has been blogified and, even though there's no link for it on any of the pages, there is an atom feed [http://taivasalla.net/atom.xml] and a regular rss feed [http://taivasalla.net/index.rdf] available. It's handy since the non-rss-ified pages tend to get visited a lot less frequently than those that are and he has some really nice shots.

permalink Ω 14 July 2004, Helsinki

Mixed Bag

« A late afternoon shadow. »

I've been saving up a lot of random photos over the past few months that don't quite belong in any particular collection. It's a mixed bag of photos, some better than others, but still somewhat interesting. I have enough for 1 or 2 more of these so I hope you enjoy them. :)

permalink Ω 11 July 2004, Helsinki

Honey, you're scaring the kids

« People enjoying Tulireki [fire sled], the new rollercoaster at Linnanmäki. A few photos from Jarkko's birthday at Lintsi »

Jarkko decided that he wanted to spend his birthday at Linnanmäki, so we and two friends helped him try to feel a year younger instead of older for a day. :) They all spent the day getting me onto various rides that I likely wouldn't have tried in my slightly hungover state coupled with a fear of heights. The first one we tried was something called kieputin [the spinner] which rates high on the vomitronic scale. I kept expecting to be drenched either in my own vomit or someone elses, but I was happily disappointed.

Finnish clowns are still as creepy and scary as other clowns around the world. Perhaps there is an EU commission on the scary clown standard along with everything else, since Lintsi the clown should send little kids running. There's also the clownish orange globule known as the plop-plop guy who haunts the park with sinister eyes. I sat on the opposite end of the Viking Ship, another bad hangover ride, from the plop-plop and watched him smirk at me as I was laughing my ass off while trying not to lose my lunch. "Honey, you're scaring the kids.", Jarkko informed me as a group of girls in the row across from us was apparently eyeing me rather cautiously. They weren't facing the plop-plop guy.

Aside from all the spinny, whirly, puke-o-matic rides in the park, there are several roller coasters that are small in scale, but still a lot of fun. We went through the arcade, too, and I won a little Winnie the Pooh doll for Mari. Near the end of the day they finally agreed to ride my first choice which was the carousel. :) It's an antique and rotates slowly, but the slightly naughty designs, wooden animals and classic punch card organ make it a fixture in any carnival. Jarkko agreed to sit on the camel and let me take a picture of him, but a man sitting on small bactrian camel leads to a bit of a pitiful grimace. It was a fabulously fun day of frivolity.

Hopefully, he won't ask for bungee jumping next year. :)

permalink Ω 1 June 2004, Helsinki

Impi

On a random day I happened to pass the Elias Lönnrot statue and noticed that someone had placed a boquet in Impi's hand [Quite a contrast to the statue when covered with snow]. Why is Impi in such a diminutive position on the statue when she is the creator, Väinämöinen is her son and Lönnrot is just a man? I'll guess that the year 1902 and a male sculptor had a lot to do with that.

And, a few links I've been collecting on my post-it pile...

• Helsinki by Bike with pictures and map.
• HS correspondent rebuffs US political party solicitation, hilarity ensues.
• Gen-X Leica Slacker which includes a look at the new Leica-H prototype!
• Photojournalist Michael Hintlian documents the Big Dig with his Leica M's and a lot of chutzpah. The Big Dig also has a photo gallery with hundreds of photos over the duration of the massive project that has screwed up traffic in Boston for over a decade. An interview with Hintlian had one particularly good response:

Q: Did the Central Artery Project present any new technical challenges? Did you use any new techniques for the project?

A: The Artery project is probably the most hostile environment in which I have ever worked; mud, clouds of dust, splashing concrete, an oily mist in the air, subzero temperatures in winter, and summer heat. As far as technique is concerned, I work simply and I changed nothing about the way I approached this project. I normally work with two Leica rangefinder cameras and 3 lenses (one on each body and the third in my pocket). When I shoot I am trying to make the space between the subject and me as simple as possible, and these cameras are perfect for that.  I carry 15 or 20 rolls of film - 10 or 12 rolls of Tri-X and the rest T-Max P3200. And sometimes when I don't think I'll be shooting a lot in the dark I'll bring all Tri-X and rely on a flash to help when needed.

Why black and white?  The Big Dig is a black and white project; there is very little color.  When I shoot color I really want to go for color, I think that's what a photographer is compelled to do...the palette becomes available and, thus, becomes an important consideration.  I tried shooting color of the project and was disappointed.

More important than technique or equipment has been approach, it has not been an easy subject to penetrate.  My access to the sites has been self-granted.  I started shooting the project in 1997. For the first two years I was usually chased out of the sites and told to leave.  To my advantage, the project was so big that I could walk a block or two and enter another totally separate and unconnected site and continue to work.  I got used to it. Then, after several years, supervision got used to me and grew tired of shooing me out.  I made sure I brought 5X7's to pass out on some regular basis, which helped break ice, and after a while I was able to work almost unnoticed.  That was what I worked for and it's made a big difference in the kind of photographs I have been able to make.  Officially I have no status...I don't belong there and never have.  But then, I do, actually.

• The lensbaby, the new fad for those without a Lomo, but even lomo people can get tunnelvision for their Lomo. The effect is a novelty only briefly and quickly replaced with a optical nausea.
• updated Mignon page with translations of 2 informative pages about the Mignon eggs and how they are made.

permalink Ω 20 May 2004, Helsinki

Global Warming Picnic

We had a week or more of summer in the first week of May this year, while last year at this time it was still snowing on occasion. It was weather that begged for a picnic and so a few of us obeyed.

The weather has snapped back to its more normal pattern, but I can't help but be concerned when it's early May and 80+F in Finland and I read articles like Arctic Temperatures Warming Rapidly Polar Explorer, where a polar explorer describes the extreme amount of melting in the polar ice cap. The Arctic ice  has thinned by 40% over the last 20 years so you have to wonder what the dramatic change in the ice over the past year will mean in terms of climate change. The Helsingin Sanomat carried a story yesterday, Finland's climate may become warmer by up to 5°C, coming in the next 50 years, which would make Finland warmer than most of Southern Europe. Not to be forgotten is the Pentagon report: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security. The movie The Day After Tomorrow is being released later next week which will have the effect of making global warming seem like nothing more than an action movie that lasts 2 hours and has the typically happy American ending in spite of the premise for the movie being scary enough to prompt the Pentagon to study worst-case scenarios.

I understand why people don't want to believe in the idea of global warming or dramatic climate change as the consequences are dire, but no amount of optimisim can change the course that nature is on. There has been enough research into past climate changes to support the theory of polar melting initiating a dramatic climate change via gulf stream disruption. It doesn't even need to be dramatic as the very well written, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, describes. So, go enjoy the nice weather while it's here since all the evidence suggests that there may be few years remaining where we can.

permalink Ω 19 May 2004, Helsinki

Drinking and Shooting

The Vappu 2004 pictures are online. Vappu this year had fabulously warm, sunny weather which was a nice change from last year's cold and rain. I was either stupid enough or brave enough to take my camera along for Vappu since photographing people in large crowds with a fully manual camera requires you to know your camera and have the ability to focus quickly. Vappu is a perfect place to practice and I had a great time getting some decent shots of friends and strangers. I'm still amazed that some of the photos I took later in the evening were in focus at all since my vision was already a bit fuzzy. The Portra UC film seems to utterly adore red and sucks up more of it than any other colour. [Those unfamiliar with Vappu might enjoy the International Hessa's explanation of sorts.]

The picnic at Francis' house with the deadly punch and toxic jell-o was very entertaining, especially as the evening wore on and we managed to make it to downtown where the jell-o was proffered to various ladies. Later in the evening, the guys gave the jell-o to a couple of guys who had a table full of empty shot glasses. Amazingly, they seemed game enough to try it. The jell-o was so strong with the homemade Canadian vodka that you could have gotten drunk from the fumes it gave off alone.

We didn't make it to Kaivopuisto last year due to a sahti induced vicious hangover and the rainy weather. Wading into the park on Vappu for the first time was a tremendous sight with a sea of people, young and old, wearing white caps. I felt left out without a hat so maybe next year I'll dig out my mortarboard and hood to wear around the park. With so many people in such a small space, I was rather pleased to see how peaceful everyone was. Perhaps it's because most people are either hungover or still drunk from the night before. :) Entire families and young children, grills, hookahs, discoballs, minstrels, tents, a VW Bus sauna and all the usual mayhem that comes with picnics en masse were to be had in Kaivopuisto. Vappu is a great party for everyone. Now we just have to hope that the weather isn't too hot and dry until Juhannus.

permalink Ω 7 May 2004, Helsinki

Stuffed Animals

A few pictures from a trip to the Helsinki Hall of Taxidermy, a.k.a. the Finnish Museum of Natural History.

Ok, it's true, we were bored while Jarkko was on 2 weeks of holiday that didn't include a trip somewhere and also featured the 4-5 day Easter holiday. What do you do when you've got a few days to kill, no car, no plane tickets and don't want to sit at home answering email or aimlessly surfing the web from the couch? The Finnish Natural History Museum seemed like a good idea one afternoon. We went, we saw, we were impressed by the taxidermic skill and then we went to dinner. If you're into taxidermy and dioramas, head straight for this museum as it has them both in abundance.

permalink Ω 24 April 2004, Helsinki

A Winter Garden in Spring

A few photos from a trip to the Helsinki Winter Garden just before Easter. The garden is enclosed in a Victorian era greenhouse and hosts quite a nice succulent room, palm room and room for various seasonal plants. Easter brings little baby chicks to the Winter Garden that little kids press their faces up to the glass to watch intently as they cheep and hop around. Tulips and daffodils also add a splash of colour to the landscape inside the green canopy. It's free to visit during its rather limited hours of operation and the outdoor garden is beautiful during the summer when the flowers are in bloom. It reminds me a lot of the Jewel Box, an art deco conservatory, and Tower Grove Park, a Victorian walking park, in St. Louis quite a bit since they were all built during a time that building public gardens for all people to enjoy was popular. I still miss living next to Tower Grove Park as it was one of the most beautiful spots in the city.

permalink Ω 18 April 2004, Helsinki

Crazy Daze

Hullut Päivät is the bi-annual sale at Stockmann's Department Store in Helsinki which comes just before Easter in the Spring and and at the end of October in the Autumn. The sale lasts three days and most sane people avoid going near the store until after the madness has subsided. I had the Leica and so I thought I'd try to capture a little bit of the insanity on film by walking around while trying not to be noticed.

Everywhere you look there are yellow banners and menacing looking ghosts. I am guessing that the ghosts are the motif for the sale since the "Huu" sound a ghosts makes rhymes with the first syllable of "Hullut"...but I could be wrong. In the US, parents would probably be suing the store for such scary ghosts being displayed when it's not even Halloween. The mannequins get draped in yellow cloth with eyes taped on to look like a flock of really tall trick-or-treaters. Mylar balloon ghosts, employees in costume, people pawing over tables piled with stuff and announcers saying something into a microphone which sounds like you're at the drive-thru window make the whole scene pretty chaotic. I had fun lurking around with the camera and trying to take photos of the better costumes until one rather irate cashier started yelling at me in English and then switched to Finnish because I must have looked so startled she probably thought I didn't understand English. :)

Lots of people claim that there really aren't any deals or good sales during the 3 days of mayhem but I don't think that's really the purpose of the whole show. Shoppers flock to Stockmann's as a good excuse to head into the city, look at some of the random new items the store buys just for the sale and then go to a movie or the theatre. Some shoppers take the event really seriously though, so when you see yellow ghost Stockmann bags downtown, walk away from the store unless you enjoy watching a piranha feeding frenzy. :)

permalink Ω 12 April 2004, Helsinki

The Zoo in Winter

A few photos of the Korkeasaari Zoo in Winter

I hadn't ever visited the Helsinki Zoo and it seemed like a perfectly good excuse to get out of the house on a recent sunny and [relatively] warm Sunday. The ferry from downtown to the island doesn't run during the winter so we walked from the Kulosaari metro station which made for an enjoyable walk. I really don't like zoos very much as it's much like visiting a prison, but in recent years I have come to realise that zoos are becoming some of the last protected habitat for many of the remaining species of animals on the planet.

Korkeasaari is a small zoo with a good variety of animals without being overdone. Most of the animals seemed contented if a bit bored. Africasia and Amazonia house a number of animals who wouldn't likely choose to live in the cold Finnish climate. After a little while in there it was hard to go back out into the bright, cold afternoon. The island itself has a gorgeous view of downtown Helsinki at sunset, too. During the summertime it is likely too crowded with people, but it was almost deserted on a sunny winter's day.

permalink Ω 17 March 2004, Helsinki

Kide at dusk

I went back at dusk for some better pics of the Kide Sculpture and if you roll your mouse over the photo they'll light up. You can see lettering on the cubes, "O U T I I L O V EU", which I first thought was something about loving the EU given the original purpose of the sculpture and the EU scrawled together on the last cube but Outi is apparently a Finnish woman's name so, wherever you are Outi, someone loves you. :)

permalink Ω 11 March 2004, Helsinki

Glowing Crystals

A few photos of the Kide sculpture.

I'm a regular visitor to Niklas Sjöblom's photoblog as he takes nice pictures from around Helsinki every day and a few weeks ago a picture of the Kide sculpture took me by surprise as I hadn't seen that since August 2000 out behind Kiasma during the day and unlit. I found another photo of them in front of the Tuomiokirkko, too. I thought it would be a great excuse to trudge out in the -15C weather to try out a new tripod and take a few photos. I arrived well after darkness had fallen so the colours were bright, but the sky didn't have any colour to it at all. I went back for a few more shots at sunset and will add those when I have them developed.

The sculpture was to have been put into storage so I was somewhat surprised to see it had found a new home out on a Ruoholahti breakwater. It has seen better days as someone has taken a marker to the cubes, some of the lights are dead and there is moisture in 2 of them. Still, they are an interesting sight in the darkness. The breakwater didn't have a fence around it so I didn't get too bold with various angles since I didn't want to slip on the ice and fall 6 meters onto more ice and into the cold, cold water. You can see Lauttasaari and it's alien spaceship/mushroom water reservoir from the sculpture as well as lots of footprints in the snow across the ice.

Crystals connecting nine Cities of Culture and European Cities of Culture for the Year 2000 [PDF] have a lot more information and background about the sculpture. The quick summary:

The sound and light sculpture Kide (Crystal), made of glass, symbolised the connection between people and cultures. 'Crystal' is the symbol project of the Helsinki City of Culture programme and a salute to the eight other Cities of Culture for 2000. In September 1999, a Crystal was installed in each of the Cities of Culture, providing a visual connection between them through a monitor near the sculpture itself. The Crystals will be returned to Helsinki before the New Year and assembled into an 18-metre tunnel of light on Senate Square; people may pass through this tunnel into the new millennium. The Crystal resembles an ice cube; it is made of laminated and reinforced glass elements. The middle one of the three glass layers is shattered; the broken glass crystals create reflections that shift as the viewer moves. The light source in the Crystal reacts to the touch of a human hand, and the light grows depending on how many people touch it. In the dark, the Crystal is lit. The colour and sound world of each Crystal reflect the city in which it is placed. The Crystal was designed by architects Kari Leppänen and Peter Ch. Butter. The visual design is by Dusan Jovanovic and the sound design by Jyrki Sandell. The glass construction is a patented Finnish invention.

permalink Ω 20 February 2004, Helsinki

Penkkarit

Penkkarit photos

Last year around this time, I was walking home in my post-Finnish class daze when, seemingly out of nowhere, trucks filled with drunken kids throwing candy at people on the sidewalks began whizzing down the Esplanadi. I wondered what in the hell was going on and called Jarkko who didn't remember right away what the mayhem was all about. It's called penkkarit, the day that 18-year old students get to dress up, get drunk, pile into trucks and throw candy at people while driving around the city. People all over the city hoot and wave at them as they go by and even the elderly stoop down to pick up the sweets littering the sidewalks. What a fun thing to do. I was thinking that there would be no way that kids could do this in the US since noone would eat the candy for fear of it being tainted with anthrax or somesuch. It's good to see that there are some places left where kids can still have harmless fun. :)

I had planned to go down to the harbor and take pictures of the kids gathering there, but I was running late and didn't make it in time. Taking photos of rapidly moving objects and people with a manual camera does present a bit of a challenge, especially when the sun keeps popping in and out of the clouds and wrecking your exposure setting. :)

permalink Ω 14 February 2004, Helsinki

Pictures from Madeira

Two photo albums from a week in Madeira: Part 1 and Part 2. Pictures with "madle-" in the name were taken with the Leica, "madlo-" were taken with the Lomo and anything else was taken with the Elph. Since the Leica was new and I hadn't had any pictures developed with it before heading for Madeira, I am impressed with just how good the photos are as it has been a while since I've used a fully manual camera. The Lomo pictures are a bit freaky as expected. A tip for photographers travelling to Madeira is to take plenty of film with you as all they appear to sell on the island is Fuji consumer grade film which made a difference in my pictures when compared to the Kodak and better Fuji colour film I had brought with me. A polarizing filter is essential for the landscapes during the daytime, too. I didn't have one for the Leica so there aren't many pictures of scenery.

Madeira is an island which lies approximately 660km west of Morocco in the Atlantic and is part of Portugal. The word Madeira itself means wooded since it was full of trees when it was discovered. Nowadays, however, it is covered with hotels and tourists. It also has the most moderate climate in the world with very little difference in temperature all year. The airport has one of the shortest runways used by commercial jets which was recently doubled in length by extending it on stilts to 2,781 metres. Jarkko wisely informed me of this fun factoid only after we landed.

Funchal is the main city on Madeira. I was disappointed that no tourist brochures proclaimed, "We put the FUN in FUNCHAL!", but I suppose that's too corny even for the usually silly tourist slogans that abound everywhere. We stayed in a hotel very near downtown which had a casino next to it that looked like the headquarters for Spectre. I suppose we should have gone inside the casino and had a look around but casinos usually only manage to fill me with the urge to run to the nearest exit with all the flashing lights and noise. This may be the result of all those years of late nights spent in dance clubs. It was a lovely hotel with a fine pool in the 1970s concrete school of architecture. Madeira would be absolutely nowhere without concrete since the local volcanic basalt is too hard and difficult to quarry for building stones. The sidewalks are beautiful mosaics with white limestone and black basalt chips arranged in geometric patterns. These do tend to get a bit slippery in the rain though.

The first thing I noticed after we settled into the hotel was the sound of the birds; big, squawking tropical birds filling the air along with little birds singing before sunset. Stray dogs are everywhere as well, but they are obviously fed by the locals as they appear to be well fed and healthy doggies living the good life. Surprisingly, I saw very few stray cats. Exotic flowers such as the bird of paradise grow like weeds all around the city and plants that would normally be tiny, wan, and pitiful things on your windowsill are gargantuan in this sub-tropical paradise. Christmas lights were everywhere and on everything that could be made to hold lights. I don't know if Funchal has the most Christmas lights of any city in the world, but it certainly looked as though it did. It takes Madeirans several months to hang all the lights around the city in trees, on bridges, on light posts, on statues and everywhere else. Funchal is also one of the cleanest cities I've ever been in which may be due to litter bins placed along the streets every 20 metres or an army of people sweeping the streets late into the night. I didn't see so much as a cigarette butt on the streets of Funchal. The streets are filled with lots of older tourists from the UK and the Nordic countries which made us feel too young for Madeira but too old for Ibiza.

Madeira is a very hilly island which the travel books and brochures really don't emphasize enough. If you walk anywhere it is likely that you'll be walking uphill or downhill with some degree of difficulty. Funchal is mostly flat unless you want to walk north of the city to one of the botanical gardens which is a bit of a challenge. We walked to the Botanical Garden which took about an hour and was, in some places, about a 45% grade. The weather is cool enough to make this a pleasant ascent in spite of the exertion. The Botanical Garden suffers from not being terribly well maintained so the reward at the top of the hill isn't equal to the walk but it still had lovely views of the city below. The cable car trip to the Monte Palace Tropical Garden is far easier than walking up the mountain and the garden itself is spectacularly odd and beautiful. I would have spent another day there given the chance. Jarkko somehow convinced me that taking a toboggan ride down the hill was a good idea and it was strangely thrilling in spite of my terror of careening down a mountain on a contraption with no brakes and whizzing around cars. It's a fun thing to do...once. :)

Unless you are a UK tourist looking for excellent curry or chips and egg while on holiday, the food on Madeira is sublime. The grilled swordfish I ordered one evening was nothing short of the best I've ever had. The local limpets fried and coated in garlic butter were fabulous as well. We were told to try the scabbard fish, Espada, with bananas as Madeira is the only place other than Thailand where you can taste this dish. The fish is delicious but it is best tried before you see the very ugly raw, whole fish in the market. It is caught at a surprisingly deep 800m and dies and turns black from decompression on its way to the surface. Giant round gelatinous eyes and vicious teeth also don't do much for the appearance of the scabbard fish. I don't like bananas very much but the local variety is smaller, sweeter and fresher than the ones in the supermarket and I loved a desert of bananas and creme caramel a waiter surprised me with one evening. One restaurant we took a special liking to was Arsénios in the Zona Velha which featured Fado singers, a stray named Bimbo and a chef with flair who knew his way around the grill. Portuguese wines were a special feature. We tried a green wine that is made from green [ not ripe ] grapes which makes the wine a bit tart and it has a lower alcohol content. There were carts all along the seaside that sold local foods like churros and chestnuts at all hours of the day and night. The chestnut cart generated quite a bit of smoke at times but it didn't appear to deter people from wading through the smoke for a bag. The chestnuts are soft, meaty and slightly sweet but should be enjoyed with a beverage close at hand since they will make you thirsty. Surprisingly, the local Madeira wine isn't pushed as much as I had expected. Madeira is a very sweet wine that is best suited to drinking after a meal with dessert. We tried all the varieties from dry to full sweet and I found the full sweet to be much more flavourful than the dry in spite of my dislike of sweet wines. The sunshine was nice in Madeira but the food was nothing short of fabulous.

The geography of the island is beautiful and varied. The mountains rise dramatically into a treeless plateau which is a striking contrast to the eucalyptus forest and agricultural terraces you pass on the way up. The roads are narrow and winding with steep vertical drops. It isn't a paradise for those afraid of heights. :) One of the more popular attractions for tourists are the levada walks; a levada is one of the many channels built to collect and carry the water from the top of the island to lower parts of the island where it is used for agriculture. There are also a number of tours around the island that are safer than hiring a car yourself and driving around the crazy roads. I glimpsed death more than a few times on the 2 tours we took around the island. A snag with the tours is that all of the tour offices are fronts for time share scams and they seem to prey on people from the UK and the Nordic region in particular. If you get caught by one of these grifters just say that you're German since they don't appear to be recruited for these 'opportunities'. Book your tours ahead of time or find a reputable tour operator before you leave. Also, avoid the bridge from the hotel zone into Funchal as I dubbed it 'grifters bridge' where they assail you on every pass. If you want to spend your holiday in the same place for the next 29 years, just buy a house there as it's cheaper and it builds equity.

Overall, Madeira is a lovely place to visit for a relaxing and sunny holiday with plenty of good food and drink to enjoy. We had a good time but if we go back sometime, I think I'd like to stay in a small hotel outside of Funchal and try more of the levada hikes and other trips around the island.

permalink Ω 19 January 2004, Helsinki

Stump respects

I've been wading through and scanning the pictures from Madeira and found a few of the stump of Old Man Willow who was blown down a few weeks ago. I've put them up in a small Old Man Willow gallery.

permalink Ω 16 January 2004, Helsinki