HyperBob's blog/

Don't play with your food

Do you see that blood, er jam on the upper lip of that jaffa cake. Well it is not a jaffa cake because the filling is raspberry and not orange marmalade. So technically it should be a rasp cake.

But no, everybody recognises the image as something else. because it harks back to a time before Doom or internet gaming addictions. Back before the time when wives filed for divorce because husbands spent more time at the computer than in bed with them.

Back before the invention of joy-sticks, back to a time when movement was controlled by cursor keys. Back to a time when it was milk and cookies before bed. Innocence

 

If you want to photograph buildings that were built ages ago, well at least before you were born, and photograph them in a way that they mght have looked when they had just been erected, then modern life gets in the way.

Esplanade Kioski

You have traffic lights, neon signs, power cables, modern cars, litter bins, bill boards, advertisments, graffitti, skateboards, teen-agers in baggy pants, and grandmothers with zimmer frames to cope with. It is a challenge to try and take a photo of downtown Helsinki that is devoid of any of the trappings of the naughties.

It means creeping about at unearthly hours of the morning when decent people are all in their beds sound asleep, You have to anchor artifacs from the past into the photo and choose your angles and composition so all that is modern day is missing,

Lady in waiting

Why bother you might ask... why not just point and shoot? Well because it is too easy. If you set youself a task to make your photo ageless or timeless then you have to scout a location out, and you have to really look at it from many different angles until you get the shot that is missing all the modern visual noise.

Do you get better pictures for all your effort, All that huffing and puffing and scraping around on your belly and knees. Not really. It is rare that anybody would even notice what you have attempted to do.

The only satisfaction you get is a very simple one. That of getting an idea and then fullfilling it. And while you are looking to obscure the present the past architectural details will open up before your eyes.

 

Tableau Vivant

I used to be the piano player for Harry Belefonte, You might remember the hit record that we had... "The bannana boatsong"

No that is a lie I just made that up In actual fact I am a evil giant who commanded a hungry pack of gummy bears to tie an innocent fork to a bread-board.

Well that has an element of truth to it given the visual evidence, but in actual fact the photo is a homage to Pablo Picaso who did it better with bread in a photo by Robert Doisneau

I can not make uo my mind if Picaso inspired Chaplin to do his dancing potatoes, or if Chaplin whispered in Picaso's ear that he should have bread-roll fingers.

 

To ponder those types of coincidences could easily turn your brain to train oil, I know it drove me bannanas.

The daily grind

This type of photography is staged, almost like a still life and in the trade it is know as a Tableau Vivant. It is a challenge to take a well known photograph and put yourself in the picture. To really succeed you need to find a photo that you love, and some props you can use to set the scene.

Breadboards, gummy bears, fork, twine bowtie and bannanas will do it for you if you want to go completely overboard. But if you want to keep it simple a wooden coffee grinder will do the trick.

Oh and the coffee grinder photo is also a Tableau Vivant, but from where, is for me to know, and for you to find out.

Experimental liquorice Pan pip…

There is a Finnish artist Alvar Gullichsen who invents machines that do nothing. They look as though they might work since they have lots of knobs and levers and lights and cables and inlets and outlets. All of Alvars machines are fully dysfunctional but they do have leading-edge photon radiation technology for Power Presence.

He has a company called Bonk Business Inc and it is based on Anchovy power. That is correct. You heard correctly Anchovy power.

They have produced a snack, er... which does not exist, called Bermuda triangles that looks incredibly similar to a triangular chocolate from Switzerland.

But Bermuda triangles which quite possibly are better than sex since they peak ten times is made out of anchovies, I think.

 

Bearing in mind Alvar Gullichsen makes machines that don't work and products that don't exist, I thought I would turn my hand to making a musical instrument out of liqourice. And so I have made various attempts to construct Pan pipes out of liqourice, but sad to say these experimental liqourice pan-pipes have always failed at the planning stage.

The only success I have had is making salt and pepper savoury biscuits

The moon and the choo-choo dan…

It is midnight, and they are playing tangos and polkas. This is midsummer in Finland and the big celebrations are held in Seurasaari, where they burn bonfires. It is a great attraction for tourists, especially Japanese tourists.

Lots of the Finnish dancers are dressed in national costume and it is not unusual to see a line of 20 japanese couples queued up behind a pair of Finnish dancers, and all of them frantically trying to immiate the complicated dance steps made by the flying feet of the Finns. The results are both disasterous and hilarious.

Even though Finland is the land of the midnight sun the light for taking pictures is rather limited, and the speed at which the dancers are moving results in pictures that are blurred and out of focus, even though you have used some night portrait setting on your camera.

Dance me to the end of love

Because of low light you can increase the ISO, but that increases the graininess and noise on the picture. If you are using night portrait then the shutter speed is slow so all the images are blurred. The end result is that you get photos that are grainy blurred and out of focus.

To the rescue comes Neat Image a small utility that removes noise from digital photos. If you process your really bad out of focus grainy pictures to remove all of the noise then you end up with a photo that looks like a painting.

And the results can be quite pleasing and romantic.

You can't go out dressed like…

The Victorians might be considered to be very uptight, so uptight in fact that for fear of being turned on by a piano leg, they had to design special pantaloons that they could slip over the piano leg so that it would not be so provocative.

To me this is a very strange idea that furniture should be viewed in a sexual way. Imagine having a crush on a chaise longue, or going into a swoon over a sofa, or becoming enraptured by the sleek lines of a wardrobe.

Well just how wrong can you be? You see when I set eyes on an Alvar Aalto designed chair by Artek I was possesed with a passion that I must have it. I loved the look of it, the simplicity of the design.

I was compelled to buy not just one of them, You know the one man, one chair, monogimous relationship. I had to go the whole poligimous route and get four of them.

To stop me from sitting in these chairs I have to dress them up so they somehow reminded me of my grandmother. I think it was the red felt slippers that cooled my ardour. There is something about Huopakotitossut that are so... well... grandmotherly, that you don't want to take advantage of a chair that is wearing them.  Don't get me started on dressing up kitchen utensils.

Rock and Doris

Dew on a rose

Today I was in the garden with a pillowcase. It was draped over a wire support. I was getting some wierd looks from the neighbours as I moved around positioning this pillowcase behind various flowers. Looking for the perfect angle.

Not every angle is good. You need the sun to be shining through the pillowcase and illuminating the flower, and it also helps if the pillowcase is free from creases or wrinkles, becasue they are so easily caught on camera.

The wife offered a black pillowcase, she is dark like that, but I told her that I was not taking photos of costume jewelry for a catalogue, so I would give the black pillowcase a miss this time.

You can buy yourself a light tent to slip over flowers or build yourself a light box, but  for me at least,  or starters, a pillowcase and a bent bit of wire did the trick quite nicely.

Slender red poppy

If you can adjust the EV on your camera then to get that brilliant white background you can overexpose. The best results are obtained when the sun is shining strongly though the pillowcase, and you are shooting towards the sun. You may have to play with the white balance to get exposures that you like.

If you shoot with your back to the sun then shadows are always getting in the way. Other plants, grases and weeds often get in the way so you have to manicure the surroundings to get rid of any extraneous visual noise.

By concentrating on just one subject, you can make a bold visual statement. The only troubles that I had was that because the pillowcase was too short for some tall plant specimens.

I am thinking a bed-sheet might solve the problem.

Soap Bubbles in the wind

John Muir is perhaps more famous in America that in his native Scotland. He is known as the saviour of California, and he was largely resonponisble for the preservation of the redwood forests.

Even though much of what he wrote comes from another time and age, he certainly knew how to string a sentence or two together.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Don't need to be a weatherman.…

There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially those of the conifers.

Muir climbs a 100ft douglas fir in a storm.

I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced.

The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf.

That is OK by me

I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

John Muir

 

 

A good start is essential

If you really really really want to win a motorbike race then you need the fasterest motorbike in the whole wide world, and it is very important to get a really really really good fast start. A whippy neck start that makes your hair go horiznorckel, cos the accel... acceleramation is really really big, like really big. And don't forget to check over your shoulder for scarves and things what might get caught in your big spinning back wheel.

Don't be scared on the corners

When you go into the bendy bits, the really really twisty turns, you have to lean like you were on your mommies hip, like way way out on the curvey-wurvies, and that can be scary-wary, what with hair flying in the wind, so you have to get a really really good grip on the handlespars, and brake and accelermate, and brake and accelermate, one after the other for a long long long time.

Braking can be hard

If you brake too hard you will nearly fly over the handlespars. Wouldn't that be aweful to go whee and fly willy-nilly up in the airy-fairy like a cannon-ball shooter-outer in the circus.

The win is worth it

But if you are like clever, and do everything really really well, like make alot of smoke so the other little girls on their motorbikes can't see, and if you always keep them behind you, then at the end of the day you win. And that is how you win a motorbike race. It is really really simple. Really!!!

But don't go near a Vincent Black Lightning 1952

Sunset at Kärkjärvi

It is true that summer in Finland is often short and glorious. Every Finn will tell you that in Finland there are so many lakes that every Finn could have one kilometer of lake shoreline all to themselves... if ever there was a plan to meet out lake shorelines on an individual basis.

I the summer it seems that the cities empty and everybody disappears to their summer cottage. It has been remarked that the Finns have only recently come out of the forest and at every opportunity they go back into it. This is what keeps them sane.

Ilona at dusk

Most weekends will be spent at the summerhouse, and the day job will be left behind. Many summerhouses are very rudimentary. No running water, you get the water from a well, No gas or electric stove, you chop wood and build a fire to cook and heat water for tea or coffee. It is a return to simple methods from a simpler time.

Then of course there is sauna. It is the ultimate pleasure at the end of the day. Sweat in the sauna, swim in the lake, wash and then watch the sun go down.

Simple things, and getting back to basics, is some sort of remedy for the stresses of modern life. It is good to take time out.

We should all do it more often.