”I tore off the logo since I don’t like logos.”
Thank you! Really appreciate it.
http://japancamerahunter.com/2013/02/in-your-bag-no-413-jaakko-saari/
From 2012, Island Mother
Two photos from my Island Mother photo series in 2012 were added to the gallery.
Losing Interest
These days I’m losing interest in cameras. Maybe it’s similar to a farmer who loses interest in his pitchfork?
Sure we got to know how the basics of using agricultural tools if we happen to be farmers. But farmer doesn’t wake up in the morning thinking of his shiny new pitchfork and spend his time polishing it, right?
Like the farmer dreams of the good harvest, photographer dreams of the perfect picture. The creation itself is simply the thing. It should be.
Indeed I feel sick about the capitalism that exists in the world of photography. Camera is nothing but a light-proof box. So use whatever you have!
Sketchpad
I have recently realised how important taking down notes is for me. I jot down notes all the time to my non-ruled sketchpad from Muji, and use Drafts (great app!) in my iPhone and iPad. I also speak to myself and my Zoom recorder.
I also make thumbnail sized prints of my photos and paste them to my sketchbook and carry it with me always, it’s great way to arrange images into a sequence and then return to this thought pattern.. This little trick I learned from great Eric Kim’s Youtube Channel.
Happy New Year 2013!
Remember friend, life is not infinite. But you are.
Happy 2013!
Autumn Leaves
Oh, it’s December already.
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.
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.
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.
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.