I’ve been following the slow transformation of the former harbour area Sompasaari with a keen eye for years, looking for clues of transient life and soon lost memoirs. Now the construction project finally is sweeping the slate clean for the new housing area, which probably means an end to endlessly renewing graffiti, abandoned ship wrecks, and the post-industrial emptiness. Sad but inevitable, I guess.

Whoops, long time no posts. Well here’s a quick catch-up from various places during May – August 2017. No particular theme in here, just bunch of things.

By chance I got info about a photo competition I had never hear of before, Kaunas Photo, two days ago, and for some reason decided to see if I could submit a series. As you might know I’m not a professional photographer, or even striving to become one, but the theme for the year, water, was interesting and I knew I would have quite a nice stash of possibly material around.

So I spent most of my free moments of yesterday to sieve through my photo archive to come up with a set of 12-15 photos suitable for submission. By ten or so in the evening I had a set of my 12 water shots, well in time for the submission deadline at midnight. But while I tried to come up with a title for the series, abstract and a short bio about myself, it hit me: This is not a real series, I’m not a real photographer, what am I doing? The photos are nice, but really??

And so I missed the deadline. Bummer. Maybe.

Anyway, here are some of the picks I had ready for the set. Comments are welcome, I guess that’s what I was really after anyway.

Continuing my archive postings from the backbacking trip from Helsinki to Hong Kong through Siberia and China in 2005, here are photos from the four days along the Trans-Siberian railway route from Moscow to Irkutsk. Mostly just idling and watching the Siberian plain scenery pass by. Intermediate stops at the stations only lasted about half an hour, so no chance to see the cities. The essence of traveling, I’d say.

Another Saturday with signs of spring in the air. This is the time where nothing really grows yet, but pretty soon will. I just can’t resist the temptation of the light pouring in after the dark winter months.

So nice to camera walk in the neighbourhood today after spending the last few days within the four walls getting rid of a winter flu. Spring truly was in the air today in Helsinki.

By chance just before noon I caught a special museum train at the Helsinki main railway station about to leave for the Lahti Ski competition event: a mix of carriages from the really old ones warmed by wood-burning stoves to a bit more modern ones. The seldom seen pufs of smoke combined with a piercing winter sun through the platform root created interesting photo opportunities.

I took these photos between 21st and 23rd May 2005 when visiting Moscow for the first time. Three of us were on a one-month backpacking trip waiting to hop on the train to Irkutsk, Mongolia and China via the Trans-Siberian railway line.

What a nice days for a photo walk in Helsinki today, temperature just a few centigrades below zero, and a spring-promising sunshine.

For some strange, semi-rational reason I decided to concentrate my photo publishing here at kuvitelmaa.net. I’ve squashed my photo galleries both at Flickr and at 500px today, which is probably a bit dramatic move, but it feels easier to give them up.

So this is the place to find my new photos now, exclusively (until I change my mind again).

I’m just old enough that it feels difficult for me to publish photos of our little baby girl in the Internet: What if she does not like it when she gets older? Are these photos really good enough (for me), or am I blinded by my own affection?

I can’t really ask her yet, so I try to be careful and pick some that I feel have a value apart from mere home photo album documentation of her early days.