Journal

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Business Card

Past years I have had a series of business cards, all featuring my “birdie” logo. The previous versions of my business card have titled me as “visualist”, a general word that refers to my visual work in broader sense, mostly of course web design, 3D graphics and such. It could be even said that “visualist” do video, which I have done, although not quite enough.

However, since I have ran out of my business cards, it’s time to make a new one. I thought I will just go ahead and write “photographer” in it. Honestly, I am somehow a bit ashamed to call myself as photographer since I still feel I’m a total beginner. Even in formal sense, I’m just a photography student at the moment.

But it wouldn’t make much sense to write “student of photography” to the business card, now wouldn’t there?

I solve this dilemma by admitting that I will never be quite finished with my studies, any real photographer would say so about their own career as well; it’s a journey. So I hope you’ll forgive me.

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Police Work

I love Leonard Freed’s comment regarding his contact sheets in Magnum Contact Sheets “Police Work”:

“Contact sheets are mostly a waste of money, I find. 99.9 per cent of the frames on the contact sheet are mistakes one makes while photographing. Because it is a waste of money, I love them. There are things in life we must do just because we find them unprofitable”.

I couldn’t agree more.

 

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Marking the Way

Saito Hisao’s article “Marking the Way” in latest Yokohama Seasider moved me. The people I’ve met in Dark Room Intl. never seize to surprise and humble me. Like Mr. Saito said in his article, some of us beginner photographers are lost, and some don’t even see that they are lost. Myself I know certainly how lost I am, so I think in that sense I’m lucky; I know I’m standing somewhere, but don’t quite know where, and that’s really terrible, huge problem for me.
I certainly, deeply hope that instructors in NYIP are honest and make their best effort to show me my location, like a GPS satellite. I can draw my own roadmap but in order to do that, I need to know my coordinates.

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Plustek Opticfilm 8200i Problems

Scanning issues remain. Will update soon.

— snip —

I’m having strange issue with my Plustek Opticfilm 8200i (with Silverfast 8.0.1r18).

If I scan the image in 2400dpi I get the exact image which looks like the image in Prescan, so all is well, the quality looks great. But should I up the resolution to 3600, the image becomes dark and usually results unusable image. Oddly sometimes 7200dpi is fine.

Whatever I do I can’t get the resulting image that’s written to disk match the image I’m seeing in Pre-scan in 3600dpi.

I wonder if I’m missing some key element here; I’m using NegaFix and 48-24bit setting and nothing fancy. I usually don’t even use Auto CCR. If you have a similar issue, would you let me know?

 

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Visit in Finland

Visiting Finland was in many ways a kind of emotional trip for me. I met my grandma who is approaching her 90’s. Her condition has been up and down lately, and she is now living in a care house in Kiuruvesi. I also visited my birth place, the old house where I was born some 34 years ago, before I was adopted.

I took a lot of photos during my travel and as I get the negatives properly scanned, I will share the photos here and in my Flickr. One of the photos however was above others, it is the only photo that’s in the front page now, the photo of Sanni, my grandma.

I realized, once again how taking photos of something really important is actually kind of self-measuring your level of maturity.

During my visit in Finland I caught this terrible fever which then turned into a nasty tonsil infection that totally knocked me off my feet for the last weeks. I’m however getting better now and getting ready to return back to this world. I will be uploading more photos now that I’m in better health.

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From The Healing Island

Going to Jeju island in June really changed my life. It was one of the most unique places I’ve ever known. Therefore I feel it’s important for myself to portray the photos I took there. (And quite honestly, I don’t have that coherent portfolio..)

A lot has happened in my personal life after this crazy summer. I’ve felt so tired, and sometimes I’ve felt like I’m walking with a bleeding feet or balancing on a tightrope. All this time I’ve felt these burning feelings of self-doubt which must have greatly annoyed you, my friends (thanks for being my friend anyway).

However, I just can’t stop taking photos, no matter what. So here is another exhibition which is my third this year.

My new exhibition “From the Healing Island” will start from November 18th. I hope to see you in the opening party which starts from six a clock in 18th.

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My Kind of Image

You know the word  “utsukushii” 美しい , in Japanese. The word is composed of Chinese letter that has a component of sheep.

I love this word. It’s as lovely and big as music of Vangelis, it’s innocent and pure like a white sheep lying down on green meadow. It is a word I want to use to describe women, the wonderful creatures who live on this planet despite it’s horrors.

I have always believed in feminine aspect of humans, even men are kind of women, you know, kind of like ocean. Like Björk would sing in her song Mutual Core, perhaps the planet itself is feminine, trying to manage the tectonic plates to counteract distance..

Our beautiful, beautiful, feminine planet..

Yes, I think Japan needs more mature imagery of femininity; and I predict that advertising machine in Japan is going to change to reflect the need. I think I’m speaking for everyone if I say; we are crying and dying for something more spiritual. The need is there and it’s huge.

I would like to be there when the change happens.