photography
Flower portraits
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After investing on some high-quality new lenses last year, I didn’t for a long time touch my old MF 50mm F/1.7 lens. There was just something seductively easy about the smooth autofocus and wide angle of the Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8, and also about the zooming power of the 55-300mm F/5.6. But few weeks ago the trusty old fifty came out of the drawer, and has been in use a lot. In fact, I don’t know why I put it aside for so long – there’s a clean, smooth finesse to it that nothing can replicate, its sharpness as soft as it is brilliant. It does bokeh like no one’s business. The shallowness of its field of depth is magical – just look how this flower floats in the air, disconnected from its background (of shiny rose leaves) and even from its own stem, and how only the petals in the front are in focus, the rest of the flower simply rendering into shape and colour.
Cow-parsley meadow
All photos were taken with my old 50mm MF lens, with all but the bottom one with f/2.0. I love the dreamy textures the extremely shallow field of depth creates (demonstrated beautifully by the photo third from the bottom). Being manual focus, it’s somewhat stiff to use, and occasionally it’s difficult to see how well in focus the pictures are, but the end result almost invariably is worth the effort.
Coldest day of the year
Here is a second set of winter photos from Finland. After the New Year, the temperatures plummeted to blood-curdling -28°C – with the biting wind so cold that I got frostbite on my face. But I finally deemed the ice strong enough to walk on! Not many people around, just harsh, unforgiving beauty.
All photos were taken with Tamron 17-50mm wide angle lens, and scaled to 25% with a batch editing software, which has caused some sharpness to be lost. Click to view in full size.
Proper winter at last
On the days after Christmas, it snowed here. A lot. What had been a bit dreary, a bit dark, landscape suddenly turned into a winter wonderland, just like the one we used know, so to speak. Bright skies, few degrees below zero, perfection. The low-hanging sun lit the birches with fiery red glow, and the snow covering the sea sparkled. I was still too much of a wimp to go on the ice (despite the fact that an attempt to swim last year proved the waters very shallow indeed). And unfortunately this is the only boat picture to be had – even if the snow wasn’t too deep, this one had been moved, filled with debris, and blocking the way, the scenery changing again. Next week is set to be cold; stand by for more pictures of winter.
Butterfly in the library 