Thirty Days of Photographs: The Rejects

I bet you thought this would be over by now. If you did, you’d be 100 percent right. Yesterday was my first day as a free woman in a month, and boy did it feel good. This project has been a lot of fun for me, and it’s really helped me look at the world differently, from an artist’s point of view. I’ve taken some really good pictures, some really bad pictures, some really strange pictures, and a whole lot of really mediocre pictures. But it was also very challenging to try to keep up with the pace of one picture every day, and some days I cut it extremely close to the deadline.

Anyway, I'd like to thank you, Michael, for agreeing to share this project with me, and for kicking my ass every day with your fantastic photos, making me want to become a better photographer. Let me know when you feel like going for round two. And thank you, my dear readers, for not groaning out loud when you realized this thing would go on for thirty freaking days. Well, thirty-one, as it turns out. Because today I’m going to post some of the pictures that I took this past month and that didn’t make the cut the first time around.

These were the last ones, I promise. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: The Rejects

Thirty Days of Photographs: God

God. Allah. Yahweh. El Shaddai. Deus. Gandalf. God has about as many names as P. Diddy, and is known in one form or other by literally dozens of people. When I was little I was sure that God was an old man with a long white beard, living in the clouds. And even though I'd like to think I know better now, I can't help but wonder if this is where God takes his vacation. It looks like a pretty laid back cloud, after all. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: God

Thirty Days of Photographs: Night

I live within spitting distance of the polar circle. This means that our summer nights last for about 30 seconds and never really get dark. But the sun does set, and sometimes you’re lucky enough to catch a sunset that sets the sky on fire.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Night

Thirty Days of Photographs: Weather

I’ve spent the last couple of days hoping for some extreme weather for this shot, but we’ve had a suspicious lack of weather lately. 70 degrees and cloudy. Every day. Yesterday we were supposed to get some rain and thunder, but it was 70 degrees and overcast, and not even a pretty kind of overcast, just boring overcast.

This picture is from a few weeks ago when the weather gods actually delivered on their promises and gave us rain and thunder. Muschu and I were sitting on the beach, I was taking her picture when the wind suddenly picked up and we heard thunder. In the far distance we could see the rain, and I forgot all about taking Muschu’s picture and instead tried to capture the ominous-looking cloud on film.

Edited 7:15 pm: 15 minutes after posting this, it's now raining. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Weather

Thirty Days of Photographs: Two

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Two

Thirty Days of Photographs: Chocolate

If there’s one thing I like almost as much as I like Pepsi Max, it’s chocolate. Show me a person who doesn't like chocolate and I'll show you a person who's lying. I realize of course that someone will read this now and feel the need to be original and say that they don't like chocolate at all, just to contradict me and to stand out. But it's no use. I know you like chocolate, you big fat liar. You can't fool me. Chocolate is like cheese; everyone likes it. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Chocolate

Thirty Days of Photographs: Dinner

Today M exhibited an extraordinary lack of judgement when he left for Helsinki for three days and left me in charge of the apartment, the cat, and most importantly, feeding myself. And with M gone, I did the only thing I could do. I enlisted the help of my two favorite men, Ben and Jerry. Dinner is served! *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Dinner

Thirty Days of Photographs: Wet

When I hear the word “wet,” I automatically think about sex water. Water makes things wet, right? I like water, in every form. I love the steam in a good sauna, I enjoy to swim in it and skate on it. I think snow and frost is beautiful, and I even like to drink water straight from the tap. Yes, I’m really that hardcore. But my favorite form of water is, and always will be, rain.

This picture is of raindrops on the windshield in M’s car. We were on our way to see friends, it was raining, and I was smiling.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Wet

Thirty Days of Photographs: Summer

Summer in Finland is like a short but intense love affair. We make everything we can of it, because we know another long and cold winter is waiting just around the corner. This summer has been hot. Very hot, by Finnish standards. We’ve gone to bed sweaty, woke up sweaty, gone to work sweaty. My skin has felt constantly sticky, my coloring deepened by the sun.

Summer in Finland is making the most of what’s given to us. Eating typical summer foods, swimming in the sea, lying in the sun, even when it’s too hot to really enjoy. It’s endless summer nights, spent watching the sunset, then the sunrise a couple hours later. It’s bare legs and mosquito bites. Picking wild strawberries and threading them onto a strand of wild grass, like a string of rubies. Eating them, one by one, savoring the taste. It’s blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, eaten with milk and sugar. Barbeques with friends, a sauna by the lake. Summer in Finland is all these things, and more.

It’s stupid socialist 5-week vacations, 20 hours of light a day. It’s thunderstorms, rain and hail. It’s camping and road trips and days on the beach. It’s ice cream and rowboats and sea gulls and hedgehogs. It’s silly romance novels and laundry drying in the sun outside. It’s drinks with ice, live music and dance. It’s love and romance and time with your family. And it's hardly any snow.

The last weeks in July, newspapers in Finland announced that we were experiencing the hottest summer in 23 years. But a couple of days ago, when July turned to August, autumn came knocking. As if someone had flicked a switch, the warm summer mornings that left you longing for a cold drink turned cool. Suddenly, I found myself wanting to go back in to get a sweater. The days are still warm, summery, even, but the nights are quietly telling you that fall will soon color the leaves red. Red like the wild strawberries on that blade of grass.

I’m looking forward to fall. To the beautiful colors and the crisp air. I love fall mornings when you can taste the cold on the air. I love fall nights when the wind is howling and the rain keeps everyone inside. I love leaving work to an already dark afternoon, and lighting candles at home.

We still have a little summer left, though, and in Finland, we enjoy every last moment of warmth and light. We drink it in, so that when the winter is at its coldest, we can already tell by the lightening skies that summer will soon be here again.

This picture is from the home M grew up in, where the gooseberries are ripe, and the sun still warms the grass under your feet. But you can tell it’ll soon be over.

  *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Summer

Thirty Days of Photographs: Self-portrait

For 22 days now, I have been dreading this day. Dreading this picture. There is nothing I hate more than photos of myself, videos of myself the only possible exception. If I can, I avoid being caught on film, and even when I can’t, I turn away. There are a disproportionate number of pictures out there featuring the back of my head.

This means that I’ve spent the past three weeks trying to figure out how to cheat on this picture, and I think I finally have an answer.

Behold, Ziva:

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Self-portrait

Thirty Days of Photographs: When I Was Young

When I was young, my grandfather was still alive.

My grandfather was a beautiful man. I saw pictures of him as a young man when he had thick black hair, and a smile that could charm the pants off any woman. He always had a mischievous look in his eyes, always seemed ready to laugh. By the time I knew him his hair was turning gray, but the twinkle in his eyes was just as bright. He married the love of his life at a very young age, and did hard labor all his life. He was a hard worker, and a very strict parent to my mother and her brother.

He was not as strict with us, though. In fact, it seemed like he devoted his entire life to making his grandchildren happy. He was a heavy smoker for over 30 years, and to this day I associate the smell of cigarette smoke with a safe place, and with nights spent sleeping in a cot next to grandpa's bed. When I was little he used to do jigsaw puzzles with me, he taught me how to play cards, and made me believe that I really won all those times we played. He helped me cut out paper dolls and make dresses for them, and he showed me how to play Tetris on the Nintendo and beat the high score every single time. In the summers he took us to the house at the lake and watched over us as we learned how to swim. He took us out in the little boat, all the way across to the other shore, where he bought us doughnuts.

He showed me how to build a little boat out of bark and to put resin from the tree on the end of it to break the surface tension and propel the bark boat forward. He showed me how to build animals from pine cones by giving them stick legs, and how to loosen the bark from a branch of goat willow and make a whistle out of it. And every year he made a ginger bread house with us for Christmas. This tradition we kept going even after he got sick, with me and my sister making the ginger bread house while grandpa and Anton watched and offered smart-ass comments. On the wall by his bed he hung a huge picture of me as a 5-year old, dressed as a pirate, and when I was little and sleeping over he used to run his finger slowly over my nose, lulling me to sleep.

When he was diagnosed with cancer I spent all my spare time with him, either at the hospital, or at home if he was having a good week. I don't remember doing any studying that year at all. I barely remember the entire year, in fact. From the moment I got the call from mom, saying that he was sick, to a year later when I got the call from mom, saying he wouldn't live through the night, it's all just a big blur. But we did share many laughs, even during that difficult year. I stayed with him that night after mom called, and in the morning I held his hand as he passed away.

I think about him a lot, and I cherish the memories I have of him. For this picture I went out and got some pine cones and gave them stick legs. They're cows, I decided, but M thought they looked more like sheep, and he's right. So they're sheep. The one on the left is Rosa, that's Billy in the middle, and little Eugenia on the right.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: When I Was Young

Thirty Days of Photographs: Different

“Colourscape is made up of one hundred colourful sphere-like chambers, linked together into a giant labyrinth.” When I read that very British sentence I knew this was something I had to experience. So on Tuesday afternoon, M and I found ourselves standing in line, waiting to be swallowed by the giant vagina-like entrance to the enormous blow-up labyrinth. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Now you might be wondering why there was a giant labyrinth with a vagina entrance in a park near my house, and I assure you, it’s not something that happens all the time. Some people might even call it “different.” Personally, I call it freaky as hell. The reason for this is perfectly logical, though; Turku is the cultural capital of Europe this year, and as such, full of crazy art installations, floating saunas and exhibitions.

And so M and I decided to enjoy some culture. We entered the labyrinth and stepped into a world of color. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The spheres were all different colors, and the strange thing is, the different colors actually felt physically different. I felt drawn to the red spheres, but they were almost too intense to step into. The black sphere was like a big bubble of nothing, and the grey spheres a lovely calm neutral. Yellow made me feel mellow and happy, and green was just plain weird. In the very middle of the labyrinth, we found a band, playing very unique music that sounded throughout the labyrinth. The entire experience was sort of like swimming through light and color, very strange indeed.

These pictures don’t do the experience justice, but I’ll post them anyway. If you ever have the chance to visit Colourscape, you definitely should. Just don’t do drugs before you go in.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Different

Thirty Days of Photographs: Black

Black is the color of my hair when it’s wet. It’s the color of my car’s steering wheel, which gets intensely hot in the sun. Black is also the color of most of my clothes, and sometimes the color of the music I listen to. It’s the name of a girl who sings annoying songs about weekdays, and the color of the sky on cold winter nights. It’s the color of my computer, of the remote control and the TV. The cover of my copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is black, as is the cover of the dreadfully boring Environmental Law and Justice in Context that I should be reading instead of silly space adventures. Black absorbs all frequencies of light in the visible spectrum, and it’s the color of sorrow. That didn’t stop the Rolling Stones from painting it black, though, and it certainly didn’t stop the Man in Black from being awesome. Black is not the color of the rainbow, but sometimes it’s the color of my mood when I’m trying to figure out what to photograph for a certain theme, like Black, for example.

But most importantly, black is the color of my favorite kind of candy; ammonium chloride, the Finnish way. Salmiakki is black as the night, saltier than the Dead Sea and a candy only the most daring of connoisseurs would put in their mouth. I could live only on salmiakki, but I’m Finnish, it’s in my DNA. I’ve tried offering it to Americans, but they spit it out and thought I was joking when I told them it’s edible. If any of you feel like you’re up for the challenge of tasting it though, I’ll be happy to send you some.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Black

Thirty Days of Photographs: Tears

Today is the 18th day of this 30-day photography project, and when I first started the project, I thought today’s theme might prove very difficult. However, it was one of the easiest. A few days into the project I visited one of my best friends, Dani, and her young boys. This is Noah, a little tired, a little hungry, and so incredibly adorable.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Tears

Thirty Days of Photographs: A Moment

Every photograph is in itself, by definition, a moment. When the shutter opens and closes, that moment in time is frozen forever, available for anyone to look at. I've experienced many moments that I wish I could have frozen and gone back to time and time again, relived, re -experienced and perhaps even made a little better. But somehow it seems the camera is never around for those precious moments, and when you don't have the camera in your hand, you often don't even notice the moments slipping by. But when you do have the camera handy, all you see are moments in time, just waiting for you to capture them. You regret that you weren't fast enough to catch the butterfly on the flower, or to get a picture of the child jumping straight into the puddle. You smile to yourself when you realize that you just got a one in a million shot, and you didn't even do it on purpose. And sometimes, like it was for me with this picture, you just look up, and you realize that you're experiencing a perfect, peaceful moment. You lift your camera and you make the moment last forever.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: A Moment

Thirty Days of Photographs: Old

When I was eleven years old I had already spent many summers by the sea, and had learned all the important things like digging for worms and catching my own fish, and doing the puppy dog eyes at dad to make him clean it for me. And next, I wanted to learn how to drive a boat. My dad had a fast motorboat that I was dying to drive, but while I was pointing at the motorboat, my dad simply shook his head and pointed to this old, blue, rowboat, owned by my mother before me and her father before her. There was an old outboard motor attached to the appropriate end, but that was about it. I looked at it and shook my head. I wanted to learn how to drive the big boat. But dad wouldn’t give in, and eventually I just hopped into the rowboat. Aaand hopped out. The holes needed fixing first.

When the boat was sufficiently waterproof, I jumped in again and listened intently to everything dad told me about the outboard motor. Steer left, boat will go right, steer right, boat will go left. Simple enough. It took me about 72 tries to start the motor, though. But eventually I did learn to drive the thing, and I drove it everywhere, at staggering speeds capable of overtaking any wet cat out for a swim.

My mom and dad figured I was old enough to take care of my younger sister out at sea, and so our adventures begun. I’d drive, and she’d look out for underwater rocks, never shouting out in time. We drove from island to island, in to town for ice cream and back again. More often than not we’d run out of gas and have to row the boat several miles back. And if we didn’t run out of gas, someone had mysteriously taken our sparkplug, or forgotten to open the tank vent, or gotten rid of one of our oars. We were a menace out at sea, and if dad had known how and where I drove that boat, I’m not sure he would have let me do it.

I grew to really love that little old boat and the crappy motor. I promised myself I’d paint it some day, but now my brother has taken over ownership of the boat, and it’s still not painted. Dad did buy him a new motor, though, which you can see in the picture. The old held together only with love and duct tape and had to go when the propeller blades started to fall off.

I’m amazed that boat still floats, and something tells me it’ll still be floating long after I’m dead. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Old

Thirty Days of Photographs: Love

For this theme, I tried to think of things that I love. People that I love, places that I love. Surprisingly, I really struggled with coming up with something to take a photo of that would properly convey that feeling of utter love for someone else, be it love for your significant other, for your children, for your friends or family.
So I Googled love. I know, I'm pathetic. Wikipedia told me that love is "an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment." But that didn't exactly help me with the picture, now did it? So I read some more. I learned that the Greek have about as many words for love as the Inuit have for snow. I also learned that in a philosophical context, "love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection". Big words, huh? Not much to take a picture of, though.

Wikipedia listed all sorts of different kinds of love, and even went as far as to say that some people argue that what we understand as love is just "an evolved state of the survival instinct, primarily used to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species through reproduction." Yikes. Try to take a picture of that one.

When Wikipedia couldn't tell me any more, I Google love again and found something called a Love Calculator. I entered M's name and my own, and found out that our relationship has a 68% chance of success. Then I entered my own name and the name of my secret lover, and found out we only have a 17% chance of success. I knew the race thing would come back to bite us in the ass, what with him being a monkey and all. Then I entered in the name of the Ex, and learned that our chances of success were 93%. Since my relationship with the Ex ended so well, I decided that the calculator was probably defect.

Then I ran an anti-virus program to help with the sudden pop-up problem I had after visiting that site.

Next, I came across some love quotes.

Aristotle went all sappy on me and said, "love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Aww. Aphra Behn countered with, "each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life." So profound. Next, Ralph Waldo Emerson did a little soul searching and came up with: Thou art to me a delicious torment." Short, to the point. I like it. And Jeremy Taylor said, "love is friendship set on fire." Ouch. And someone who preferred to remain anonymous finished the sappy party with the words, "to be your friend was all I ever wanted; to be your lover was all I ever dreamed."

After reading the quotes I felt a little teary-eyed, so I kicked a dog and immediately felt better. And I promised myself I was done researching love.

And the picture?

Just some flowers on my balcony. Sometimes the simplest things say the most.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Love

Thirty Days of Photographs: A Winter Picture

Winter for me means snow. Lots and lots of snow. I mean, snow like you wouldn’t believe it. So for this picture I went out and looked for snow. I looked everywhere; under the bushes in the yard, behind the dumpster, on the roof, under the bed, behind the TV. The closest I came to finding snow was in the freezer, but when I took it out, it melted.

Realizing that snow wouldn’t work, I tried Christmas next. But when I asked M to go out and get me a Christmas tree, he thought I’d gone crazy and tried to have me committed. So yeah, that didn’t work either.

Every idea I had seemed to melt away in the heat and I started to long for the cold of winter. And it hit me; I’ve been looking forward to winter for a long time already. Not because I like the snow or the cold, but because for the first time in ages I’m actually prepared for it. I haven’t had a decent pair of winter boots in years and the only thing keeping my frostbitten toes attached to my feet has been sheer determination. That, and a very good seamstress. This year will be different, though. Just as the weather turned warmer last winter, I finally took the bull by the horns and forked up an insane amount of money for these, the most awesome of winter boots. They’re not only pretty to look at, but they’re also guaranteed to keep my feet warm in -30 degree weather. And for the first time since I was a child, I’m excited about winter.

Bring it on!

Please don’t remind me of this post when I’m whining about winter and the cold in a couple of months.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: A Winter Picture

Thirty Days of Photographs: Pain

There is so much pain in the world. Countless civilians suffer and die for the wars fought by politicians. Terrorists use violence to cause pain and suffering in the name of their conviction, and students go on killing sprees through their schools. Yesterday it was Norway’s turn to suffer when one of their own turned against his people and killed almost 100 men, women and children in two separate, unprovoked attacks.

I’ve never understood what makes someone want to cause that much pain and suffering to other living beings. Someone once said that human compassion is what separates us from animals. Someone else said it is the fact that we’re capable of evil that distinguishes us from animals.

In my studies of human rights, I’ve read about genocide, torture, the death penalty and crimes against humanity. I know for a fact how evil man can be, and how much pain a single man with a crazy idea can cause. And there’s always a man with a crazy idea.

Today my candle burns for the victims of the attack in Norway. Tomorrow it will burn for someone else. There will always be someone else.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Pain

Thirty Days of Photographs: Light

Last weekend M and I went to a concert/one-day music festival. It was held inside a big open limestone quarry, 350 feet below sea level. I’ve been down in the quarry before, but the ride down the steep sides of the mine never ceases to amaze me. Down in the quarry everything is white, and the sun so bright it hurts your eyes.

The main artist of the night was Roxette, the Swedish wonder duo behind It Must Have Been Love, Listen to Your Heart, Joyride, The Look and several other annoying song that have plagued mankind since the early 90’s. Luckily Roxette wasn’t the only band there, and I got to see my good friend Zelma’s band play, a very good local cover band do their versions of famous 80’s songs, and the band Suurlähettiläät. You won’t know who or what Suurlähettiläät are, but they sing in this long since extinct language called Finnish and are really quite big in the small forgotten European country of Finland.

The bands were great. And then came Roxette. After realizing that M sang along to every single song they played and actually knew the lyrics by heart, I briefly considered breaking up with him, but I guess you can’t break up with someone just because they have a lousy taste in music. And he does love Kent, which has to be a redeeming quality. Luckily, I survived both the sappy performance and M’s singing, and I was able to take these pictures for you.

*

Thirty Days of Photographs: Light