This week’s letter in Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday is Y. Y is for Young Barnacle Gooses that I saw 10 days ago in Kulosaari as they walked acress the driveway.
If you look old books about birds, Barnacle Gooses used to be rare birds in Finland, but in last couple years they’ve turned out to be very common as their population keeps on growing in rapid pace. This year officials calculated that there are at least 500 goose couples living in Helsinki. When you see them in parks, it is almost like they would know that they are protected by the legistelation from European Union. They don’t seem to be afraid of anyone or anything as they calmly move around and if they get tired, they simply sit down and rest a while.

Technidal information: Canon EOS 40D & Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (320mm, 1/800s, f/8, ISO400)

This week’s photo of a week is photograph about Vuosaari harbor area (in Vuosaari, Helsinki), which is going to replace three smaller harbors (West Harbor among others) and it is going to be main port of Helsinki for handling goods (containers, trucks, etc.). When construction is completed, harbor will cover 150 hectares of land. They are also building new business park right next to the harbor, which is going to cover additional 75 hectares of land.
This photograph was taken from landfill area that rises about 60 meters above sea level. It is one of those places, where you have to either walk or ride with a bicycle. Even so, it is worth a visit, because this place has good visibility to all directions. As an example, we were able to see Roihuvuori water tower from here.

More information:
Information about Vuosaari
Photo album about Vuosaari
Vuosaari Harbor in Wikipedia

Technical details: Canon EOS 20D & Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM (1/500s, f/11, ISO200)

Just as quick notification, brids page now has album about Common Gull (Larus canus). As most of my albums about common bird species, size of this album is limited to 16 photographs. If something better turns up, it replaces one of the older images.

Photograph in this post is yet another sample of bird photography on 100mm macro lens. I’ve used f/8 stop, because there is nothing in background that would have to be faded away, I still got fast shutter speed and I was able to make sure that all relevant parts of the birds are sharp in focus.

Technical details: Canon EOS 40D & Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro (1/1000s, f/8, ISO200)

Its once again time for weekly Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday. This week’s letter is X. 30 years ago, this might have been tough challenge, but nowdays english language is using X quite freely as replacement for ex, cross, christ, …
After careful consideration, I decided that I am going to choose Xmas tree as my answer to this week’s task. It is actually Norway Spruce, that lives in Vallila, where I used to live couple years ago. Each christmas it gets christmas lights and lights stay up untip Epiphany.

Technical details: Canon EOS 20D & Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM (29mm, 1s, f/4, ISO100)

In good old days, when most of the cruising ships headed out to Stockholm instead of Tallinn, ships used pretty traditional (and dull) colors. All Viking Line ships were red and white and Silja Lines had blue on white background.
In last couple years, Tallink has brought bunch of new ships to Helsinki-Tallinn route and these new ships have some pretty wild colors on them. Some of them are green, like this one, at least one of them has white clouds on light blue background and one has purple starts on white background.
I haven’t found any particular favorite among those, but I don’t think that is what Tallink was even looking for. Whenever new Tallink cruise ship shows up in horizon, I stop to wonder, what the heck is that and this is probably the effect that they’ve been looking for.

In case someone is interested about numbers, Tallink Superstar is 175.1 meters long, 27.6 meters wide. It can transport 2080 passengers, some cars and it has 186 cabins. Top speed is 27.5 knots and it travels from Helsinki to Tallinn in two hours.

Technical details: Canon EOS 40D & Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro (1/1000s, f/8, ISO200)

This week’s topic in ‘Photo Theme for Thursday’ is ‘ROCKS (Pebbles, Stones, Boulders, Mountains, Stone Buildings, Concrete, Jewels,…)’. My take on this theme is photograph from peak of Guivi fell in Kevo Strict Nature Reserve in northern Finland. Many hikers in Kevo trail make 20km sidetrip (10km each way) to be able to visit Guivi fell. This place has quite good cellular network and you only have to walk 4km downhill to reach nearest wilderness hut (Kuivin autiotupa).

More photographs available in Kevo Trail (+Guivi) photo album.

Technical details: Canon EOS 20D & Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM (22mm, 1/125s, f/8, ISO200)

In Mrs. Nesbitt’s ABC Wednesday, we’ve reached letter ‘W’. W could be used for wide range of topics: Winter, White, Wildlife, …. and at the sametime it seems that I’ve used quite many of those options within last couple months in this blog. As a result, I have to come up with something new and I finally chose W for Whitewater Kayaking.

This photograph was taken in iceBREAK 2007. iceBREAK is yearly event in Helsinki, where whitewater paddlers gather together in April, when the water is high, so that they can have fun in Vantaa river “delta”. In delta river is split to eastern and western branch. Western branch of river has old dam, which creates nice vertical drop, while eastern branch has more natural flow with rocks, etc. These rapids are classified to be III or IV+ depending on how much water is flowing in a river and whether you are going to paddle through the eastern or western branch of river.
I don’t have any personal experience from paddling these rapids, but it sure is fun to photograph paddlers, who are brave enough to go there in kayaks.

Technical information: Canon EOS 20D & Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM (109mm, 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO200)

We had all sort of plans for midsummer week, but due to weather forecasts we never executed those plans. Instead of them, I spent time on postprocessed bunch of old photographs and doing other similar kind of tasks.
This time photo of a week was taken at the end of Sunday evening walk, when we went to Strömsinlahti to see how gulls, terns and swallows were circling in the air. I still lack experience for tracking swallows. However, I am getting better in tracking terns.

More photographs: Common Tern.

Technical information: Canon EOS 40D & Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (400mm, 1/1000s, f/8, ISO400)