With Canon you can!

No, I haven't become employed at Canon. I do have a good reason to agree with their slogan so far, though: Canon paid for the repair and I got the camera back fixed today, after just two days! Granted, the new camera was tempting, but my old one will do just fine until such time in the future that I can invest in one of the high-range cameras. :-)

And now, let there be light:

I posted this last year, but personally I feel it's worth posting again since there isn't much of it around at this time of the year. Light, that is. Although, this was in November, so maybe there'll be a day like that again this month! Real King Arthur tales, Lady of the Lake stuff it was.

Death of a Camera

 A couple of the more experimental pictures that I was taking lately.

Now it's bye bye camera: my camera broke on friday. It looks likely that it's a shutter problem, and replacing the shutter costs 300-400 euros - if I can't get it done under warranty. The unfortunate thing is that the warranty expired a year ago. Consumer rights leave me a bit of leeway: it might be possible to get the job done under warranty if the shutter has died much sooner than what the manufacturer says should be for this particular camera. At an estimate I have taken about 20 000-25 000 pictures, whereas the manufacturer gives 50 000 or 100 000 (depending on the source) as the life expectancy.

To find out if I have a chance at this, I have sent email to the repair firm asking them to give some estimate (also on how long the repair would take). I have also sent a message to my insurance company to find out how much the own risk amount would be in this case. 

If I can't get the repair under warranty and if the own risk amount is considerable, I need to decide whether to have the repair done all the same or to scrape the money together for a new camera. At this stage of my photography I suppose it would be sensible to upgrade. That would be about a 700 euro investment. I need to do one or the other, as I can't imagine not having a camera. You could actually say that taking photographs is part of who I am.

Dark!

Yes, it gets dark early: the sun sets at 4.30pm. It would be 5.30pm except last week saw the end of Daylight Saving time. Darktime depression, here it comes... No, I don't get it (although many do, apparently). And it's not quite as dark as this in Helsinki. The picture was taken in Suomenlinna where the lighting is not so glaring and blaring. All the firepower that's put into streetlights (not to mention neon signs and everything)... mustn't let the bogeyman in from the dark! 

I would like to think that I'm not afraid of the dark, and logically I'm not. I know that usually (in Helsinki at least) there are no people with evil intentions behind every tree, hiding in the dark. There are no bogeymen, monsters or ghosts. And yet... If I had to walk a longer, unlit stretch, I'd rather not linger. It's just... well, it's just so dark. I wonder if there is anyone in the glaringly lit cities - it's never really dark in the city - who feels truly comfortable in the dark? Were people before the invention of electric light more comfortable with the dark, I wonder? Are the native people in, say, the Amazon region comfortable with the dark? What I'm getting at: did all the technological advancement that pushed back the darkness with bright, bright lights bring the fear of the dark? Or is it some kind of an innate, primal fear that is perhaps biological, as humans do not have a sharp sense of smell or hearing or cat's whiskers to easily navigate in the dark without the help of eyes?

Anyway, it doesn't get any darker than in November, before the snow comes. So far I'm enjoying the new photographic opportunities that the dark (again) brings, but I'm sure I'll be hoping for the snow to come soon.

Quite active I've been: got back to swimming (or rather water running which I prefer); enjoying experimenting with the camera (sort of deconstructive gimmickry). I was going to not do anything work-wise for a while, since I sent off that article recently. But I already got an idea for a new article, so what can I do?

Some supremely enjoyable art experiences too lately.

The museum of contemporary art now has the exhibition of the candidates for the annual Ars Fennica award, and some of the works stunned me. I was particularly blown away by the video/programming work of the Scottish-born, Finland-based artist Charles Sandison, called "Words as the image of the world". This picture from an earlier exhibition gives an idea of it: a room with a mirror floor, with innumerable words (I read that it's the whole of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) flowing in changing streams and formations on the ceiling and the walls, reflected in the floor. It felt like all of the nearly six billion people on this planet had been brought together in one space, all the chaos, all the languages, all the cultures. The immensity of it was almost overwhelming.

Calmer, but equally beautiful: Beethoven's piano sonata no. 3 in C: sparkling, translucent pearls of joy on the piano keys.

There I was...

...inspecting the old tunnels of Suomenlinna, when suddenly...

Like with most old things, there is a ghost story connected to this place. It is about a cadet of the naval cadet school about a hundred years ago. The cadet and an officer's daughter were in love, but their relationship ended tragically in the young man's suicide, and his sorrowful spirit was left to wander along the school corridors. Reportedly, a figure wearing a military uniform of the era has been sighted in one of the class rooms of the cadet school.