XC Skiing

Cross-country skiing

This week's letter in ABC Wednesday has once again reached difficult X letter.
Thankfully X has become more and more popular part of anything that used to have cross or Christ as part of the name. Cross country skiing, which is nowadays often called XC skiing is good example about it.
Cross country skiing used to be most common form of sports in Finland for quite long time. In those days, you were guaranteed to have at least couple months with enough snow on a ground for cross country skiing on frozen sea, lakes, fields, etc. Nowadays you are lucky if you have more than week or two with enough snow for skiing. This phenomenon along with doping scandals, better living standards, better equipment on ski resorts, etc. have made downhill skiing to be more and more popular. I would bet that all in all these trends are making cross country skiers (people who are doing cross country skiing at least once or twice each year) average age to grow in rapid speed.

Related photographs:
Kuusamo in wintertime
Levi in wintertime

Sunset in Serengeti

Sunset in Serengeti

This week's theme in Two 4 Tuesday is 'Natural - Artifical'.
My take on this challenge is photograph about sunset from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Seronera Wildlife Lodge used to be good place to take a beer or some other refreshment, while watching the sun go down, but couple years ago some of the terrace space was sacrificed for swimming pool. One can wonder, why in the heck do we need swimming pool in the area, which already has problems with water supplies, but I guess from business point of view it might bring them another star into hotel ranking and makes them look better when people have checklists on what they want from hotel, but personally, I would have preferred to have it without swimming pool.
What comes to actual challenge, sunset in a background is all natural, but the couple on a left is lit by flash. I believe this was one of those rare situations on my vacation trips, where I've used off camera flash. Based on light and memories, I would say that I had flash on a ground on camera left. If I could do this again with models, I would probably raise flash higher to make models heads more visible against dark background.

Related photographs:
8 days in safari

Hippopotamus

Hippopotamus

This week's theme in WDYL has been Zoo.
My take on this challenge is Hippopotamus. I think its good example about photograph that could have been taken on zoo, but is actually been take "out in wild nature" (Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to be more precise).
With all the possibilities that we nowadays have with various tools, its very hard to distinguish for real, whether you are watching something that photographer took in local zoo or whether he had to travel long distances to capture your photograph.
Irony in all this is that sometimes zoo can offer you viewpoint that is not possible in nature (like submerged Hippopotamus or wresting polar bears in San Diego Zoo). I guess real nature photographers best bet is to go from tight crops into wider scenic shots like Cattle Egrets and Elephant in Ngorongoro crater, which tries to give you sense of the place in addition to being photograph about animals, plants, etc.

Related photographs:
8 days in Tanzania
One week in San Diego, CA

Midsummer in Helsinki

Midsummer on water

This weeks topic in Photo Theme for Thursday is "SUMMER" (Vacation, Gardening, Flowers, Hot Weather, Picnic, BBQ, Sunny Weather,...)"
Midsummer is probably biggest outdoor celebration in Finland (at least in summertime). Everyone gets day off from work and lot of people head towards their cottages etc.
Those of us, who stay in town can enjoy from silence or participate some of the events. One such event is Midsummer party in Seurasaari. In addition to celebration in Seurasaari, there are usually lots of boats near Seurasaari waiting for them to set their biggest bonfires on fire around 22:00.
This was first midsummer, where I had opportunity to watch those bonfires from boat. It was strange experience to be in middle of all those other boats.

Related photographs:
Helsinki

Käsivarsi Wilderness Area

Saivaara in Käsivarsi Wilderness Area

This week's letter in ABC Wednesday is W.
My choice for this challenge is photograph about Saivaara in Käsivarsi Wilderness Area. Käsivarsi Wilderness Area is North-West corner of Finland (way up in Lapland). Some of its best known sightseeing locations are Halti, Saana, Malla Strict Nature Reserve, Pihtsusköngäs Falls and Saivaara. There is only one marked trail, but it is such open landscape that it is relatively easy to navigate on your own.

Articles about Käsivarsi Wilderness Area:
Hiking in Lapland
Pihtsusköngäs Falls
Halti's Old Wilderness Cabin (in finnish)

More photographs:
Week in Käsivarsi Wilderness Area

Hiking in Lapland

Vuomakasjärvi

This week's theme in Two 4 Tuesday is 'Historical - Futuristic'.
In old times people did hiking trips out of need, because you had to go where the food and/or work was. Nowadays it seems that hiking and outdoor activities are becoming more and more popular and manufacturers are still making progress on getting lighter tents with better water resistance, etc., so it seemed as a good idea to pick photograph from last year, when I did hiking trip with my wife to Halti in Käsivarsi Wilderness Area (which is NW corner of Lapland(we visited Pihtsusköngäs on a same trip).

Related photographs:
Hike to Halti and back

My runner-up on this week's challenge would be photograph from Notre Dame Bell Tower, but that was already used in finnish photo challenge for 'Old and New'.

Related photographs:
Long weekend in France

Linja numero 14

Numero neljätoista

YyKaaKoo4 valokuvahaasteen numerona oli tällä kertaa numero 14.
Kaivelin arkistoista tähän haasteeseen sopivan kuvan HKL:n sinisestä linja-autosta linjalta numero 14. Linja 14 lähtee Eirasta, kulkee Kampin kauppakeskuksen ja metro-aseman välistä matkalla Pajamäkeen. Lisätietoja reitistä löytyy YTV:n reittioppaasta

Kuvia linja-auton reitiltä:
Kampim kauppakeskus

French Toast

EXIF and large version of French Toast

This week's topic in Photo Theme for Thursday is "SWEET" (Candies, Cookies, Cakes, Pies, Honey, Nice-Sounding, Beloved, Charming,...).
My take on this topic is French Toast with some strawberry jelly and lactose-free ice-cream. Another option that I had in mind was to take photographs which simply would have had strawberries and ice-cream, but its now yet season for those lovely berries, so I decided to leave it for some future use.

Valtavaara Hill in Kuusamo

EXIF and larger version of View from Valtavaara Hill

This week's letter in 4th round of ABC Wednesday is V.
My choice for V is View from Valtavaara Hill, which according to outdoors.fi is highest point in Kuusamo. It is short walking distance from Ruka Ski Resort, but it is also part of Karhunkierros hiking trail (direct ranslation would be Bear's Ring).
Photograph shows view from top of Valtavaara to Ruka. If you want to see more interesting view to other direction from same place, check my older entry for Quiet in Kuusamo.

In one of the earlier rounds, I used Viapori for V.

Related photographs:
Hike from Ruka to Sallatunturi
Best photographs from Karhunkierros hiking trail

Itäväylä by night

EXIF and larger version of Itäväylä

This week's theme in WDYL is road.
It was suprisingly hard to find good photographs about road in my photo archives, since I didn't want to take photographs about streets, hiking trails or something else like that instead of real road, but I finally remembered that I have this photograph about Itäväylä by night.
Photograph was taken in Herttoniemi, Helsinki (Oct 2006). It is 25s exposure. Lights on top right corner belongs to subway.

Related photographs:
Eastern parts of Helsinki

Cheetah, the fastest land animal

Cheetah in Serengeti

I've been little bit slow in last couple weeks, because we bought new apartment and we've been doing renovation in there, but ...

This week's topic in Two 4 Tuesday is 'Fast - slow'.
My choice for this topic is Cheetah. As most cat animals, they can be awfully "slow", when they are just laying on a ground and watching life go around them. However, when they are hunting, they turn out to be fastest land animal on this planet.

Related topics:
Cheetah and other animals from Tanzania

Update:
It seems that this article scored highest rates on Fast - Slow theme. My thanks to those readers, who gave thumbs up for this entry.

Jesuit Church

Larger version about Jesuit Church

This week's topic in Two 4 Tuesday is 'Good - Evil'.
Normally I would avoid religion in blogs at all cost, but this weeks topic is simply too tempting to pass. So at the end, I chose details from Jesuit Church in Cusco, Peru.
"End justifies the means" is quote, which is often associated into Jesuits. Assuming it is true, ir has probably forced many Jesuits to ponder about Good and Evil in their decisions along the history. Life is much simpler if you have clear set of rules according to which you know what you are allowed to do and what is denied from you.

Related topics:
Two weeks in Peru