Suburban traffic jam

Finnish version of suburban traffic jam

This week's theme in WDYL is Street.
My choice for this theme is finnish version of suburban traffic jam. When I see this sceneary, I am always amused by the fact how one bus can take such a long queue of cars behind itself. The reason itself is pretty obvious, if you have get a chance to follow it for few minutes. In finnish suburban, roads have usually been built on such a tight spot, that there isn't any extra room for building bus stops, where buses would fit. So whenever bus stops to pick up people or to leave some people off, cars usually stop behind it and as we go along the queue gets longer and longer until the bus lane goes across the freeway or other places, where traffic gets split into various directions.

Related phtography:
Photographs from Roihuvuori

Pikku lapsi ilman tuttia

Pihla (viikko 12/09)

Valokuvatorstain 137. haasteen aiheena oli katso kuvaa ja jatka tarinaa. Kuvassa näkyvä tutti kiinnitti minun huomioni siinä määrin, että päätin kaivella viimeisen vuoden aikana otettuja kuvia ja arpoa sieltä tilanteeseen sopivan kuvat.
Minulla ei ole mitään käsitystä siitä, että mikä on se tyypillinen ikähaarukka, jonka aikana lapset käyttävät tuttia, mutta ajattelin että tämä kuvaushetkellä hiukan yli vuoden ikäinen lapsi voisi sopia siihen ikähaarukkaan.

Muita kuvia:
Henkilökuvia (vaatimaton kokoelma, mutta ...)

Rocks in a lake

Rocks in a lake

This week's theme in Photo theme for Thursday is "TRANQUIL" (Quiet, Peaceful, Still, Calm, Serene, Garden, Forest, Beach,...). When I see words like tranquil and calm, I always feel that long exposure photograph about water is always a safe bet and as such, I decided to take this one. It was taken in summer 2008 from a lake called Suininki.

Related photographs:
Kuusamo in a summertime

Ferrari in Monaco

Ferrari in Monaco

This week's letter in ABC Wednesday is F.
While I normally prefer to use photographs from Finland, I am going to make exception this time and show you photograph about Ferrari in front of Hôtel de Paris Monté Carlo in Monte Carlo. Photograph was taken in year 1999 and as such it is from my first roll of film that got scanned into PhotoCD and later transformed into JPEG.

Related photographs:
Week in Nice, France

Pattern in water

This week's topic in Two 4 Tuesday is 'White - Black'
First idea that came to mind from this week's topic was Michael Jackson's song Black or White. Since I don't have any photographs about Michael Jackson, I decided to think about photograph with really strong contrast between two colors.
Photograph was taken from still water part of Kiutaköngäs rapids in Oulanka National Park (Kuusamo, Finland). When I saw that pattern in water, I immediately knew that it is something that I want to photograph.

Related material:
Kiutaköngäs rapids in Hiking in Finland

European Pied Flycatcher

European Pied Flycatcher

This week's letter in ABC Wednesday is E.
Since there are so many birds, which name starts with European or Eurasian, I decided to pick one of those for this round of alphabets. European Pied Flycatcher is relatively common bird during summertime in Finland. During wintertime (actually Sep-May) it migrates to West Africa.

More photographs:
Photographs about European Pied Flycatcher

Changing Tire in Serengeti

Changing tire in Serengeti

This week's topic in Two 4 Tuesday is Hard - Soft.
I decided that car tires are good example about something that can be both. If you have enough air pressure inside them, they will keep your car off from ground and give you smooth ride. However, if air finds its way out from even one of them, like it did few times in our park drives in Serengeti, you will have to change spare tire in. Since all jeeps in our group had two spare tires on their backboard, we weren't too concerned if one or two tires had to be changed on park drive.

More photographs:
Vacation in Tanzania

Dandelion (Taraxacum offinale)

Dandelion (Taraxacum offinale)

This weeks letter in 5th round of ABC Wednesday is D.
As you can see from above, my choive is Dandelion, which is one of the real survivors in nature. They adapt to all kind of conditions as they spread around and once they get their roots into ground, it is pretty hard to get rid of it.

More photographs:
Dandelion and other plants in Asterales order

Snow cannons in action

Snow cannon in action

This week's topic in Photo theme for Thursday is "ARTIFICIAL" (Plastic, Fake, Imitation, Flowers, Trees, Not Natural,...).
Photograph was taken in Christmas 2006 in Vuokatti (eastern parts of Finland), where they make snow with snow cannons for downhill skiing slopes. These snow cannons are standard item in all ski resorts, because you can never be certain if you can get new powder snow when you need it (especially on beginning and end of season).

More snow cannons:

Ruka in summer

Another photograph from Sotkamo

Kuvatoimistokuvia II

Punainen gerbera

Kuten edellisessä kuvatoimistokuvia viestissä tuli todettua, niin kuvien lähetys vastavaloon jatkui mykerökukkaismaisten kuvien muodossa. Uusin erä oli seuraavanlainen:


Jatkoa pohtiessa tuli havaittua, että vastavalolla on 469 kuvaa, joiden tiedoissa mainitaan voikukka. Tuosta massasta voi olla vaikea erottua, vaikka olisi kuinka erinomainen kuva kyseisestä kukasta.

Clock in Hietalahti Market

Clock in Hietalahti Market Hall

This week's letter in ABC Wednesday is C.
Last week, I was showing you metal balls from Hietalahti and we'll stay in this area for one more week. This week's subject is clock on top of Hielahti Market Hall.
Photograph about clock was taken in mid-July on my first Photowalk event, when we made fifteen minutes stop in Hietalahti Flea Market. Funny thing is that there are lot of people in the market, but I ended up photographing cobblestones, clock, House Sparrow, ... and everything else except people and products on sale.

More information:
Ruoholahti, Hietalahti and Hietaniemi city districts

Ngorongoro crater

Cattle Egrets and lonely elephant in Ngorongoro crater

This week's topic in Two 4 Tuesday is Rare - Common.
All "new" continents used to have large numbers of animals herding in nature, before Europeans came and conquered the land. At the time, it probably looked like sensible thing to do, so that farmers were able to transform lands into fields that produced food, but at the same time sceneries like these have become less and less common in such a scale that you could call them rare.

Related photographs:
Tarangire, Lake Manayara, Ngorongoro and Serengeti in 8 days

Update:
It seems that this article was among highest rated entries on Rare - Common theme. My thanks to those readers, who gave thumbs up for this entry.

Kuvatoimistokuvia

Torx ruuvipäät

Yhdessä vaiheessa kuvittelin, että kuvatoimistojen sijasta minun kannattaisi panostaa omiin blogeihin ja hakea tuottoa niiden yhteyteen laitetuista mainoksista. Vaikka Google AdSense tuottaakin ihan hyvin siihen nähden, mitä aikaisemmin olen netonnut kuvatoimistojen puolelta, niin se ei kuitenkaan tarkoitua etteikö kuvatoimistoihin kannattaisi myös panostaa.
Tähän liittyen tulin pitkästä aikaa taas aktivoituneeksi Vastavalo kuvatoimiston suhteen ja lähetin sinne heinäkuun lopussa muutamia tiedostoja. Tässä lyhyt tiivistelmä vastavaloon lähettämistäni kuvista:




Elokuun osalta tavoite on lähettää loput mykerökukkaismaiset kasvikuvat ja kokonaisuutena ainakin tuplata heinäkuussa vastavaloon lähetettyjen kuvien määrä.