Year of the Monkey

Happy Fence Friday folks! =)

Found from the vaults. Picture taken in 2016.

In languages like German and Finnish it is typical to use combined compound words, and in German they can become even ridiculously long, like in case of German 'Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law' of 1999 . I saved you from horizontal scrolling, and did not past that German word here ;-) In English there are only rather limited number of such combined compounds, where words become written together, with no space or hyphen in the middle. Here is an unofficial complete list of those . One fun wordplay is to combine such combined compounds, and form sort of "non-words", like "lifetimetable". In languages like Finnish, it even can be turned into a game, where each player has to try continue the combined compound from one end, and form an endless compound word. The person who can not come up with any good continuation, will then drop out from the game. Or then more playful game could be to form these long ridiculous and funny compounds, and try to illustrate them. The challenge then would be to come up with the funniest one. And what you see here in the example image is a modest attempt to illustrate one. You will find help from the notes on the image, to find out what I was after. But try not to cheat ;-) Or just click here!

Soundtrack by Cisou, Radio Pulsar: soundcloud.com/user-199025910/brain-twist-again-1 Which is of course kind of a "parody" from Kal Mann's and Dave Appell's song Let's Twist Again, and melody Brain Damage by Roger Waters. If Youtube works for you, here are those two separate songs: Acoustic version of Brain Damage by Roger Waters: youtu.be/tmDbEVEiJA4 Chubby Checker performing Let's Twist Again: youtu.be/eh8eb_ACLl8

Soundtrack by Kalabi: soundcloud.com/kraak-records/13-kalabi-found Because there is the rhythm, on music, and on fences! =D

Pictures from archives. Taken in 2016. An image often starts with a whim. I see something interesting along my way to work, or when having a leisure walk. It can be just as simple as reflections on the metal plate covered wall. But for enthusiastic photographer that is only the beginning. On photo editor I then let my imagination and previously learned tricks to complete the idea. Very often the colours are pale and contrasts flat on the original image. Sometimes they can be improved with particular tools to enhance the saturation and increase the contrasts. Sometimes curves tool does to job. And sometimes Photoshop or GIMP layer mode like 'Hard Light' is enough to boost the image. My goal often is to "manipulate the image but not change it". This means I do not add or remove much, except some accidental small twigs close to the edges of the image, or small dust or dirt particles on the photographed surfaces. I also may "correct" the perspective, for example to make the vertical lines parallel, or fix the tilted horizon. I have a somewhat "annoyingly absolute eye" for unlevel horizon, thus being able to see even less than 0.5 degree aberration from the absolute level. Finally, on editor, I often find some surprising details which I did not notice when taking the shot. On the example image it was the clouds, which seemed to complete the original composition. I first planned to crop this into a square, but the original aspect ratio was almost perfect, and I only cropped the image to make the diagonal line of the roof to meet the corner. All this makes the hobby of amateur photography so interesting. At one stage I thought the ideal is to record the reality as it is, not to change anything of it during post processing. But then I discovered the reality for me is the illusions and dreams I have, and those are what I want to share. So, the scene you see in the image is the reality how I like to see it. In Finnish there is a word 'mielikuva', which means something like a 'mental image', 'vision', or a 'conception'. But it is also like a 'created image' one sees on advertisements, which try to sell us conceptions like 'family', 'freedom', 'beauty' etc. So, to "sell" something like 'futurism', which I kind of hope you to see on the example image, requires the boosting of such features like deep blue sky, going almost as black as space, and turning the reflections almost blinding bright. But 'mielikuva' can mean also something like a 'favorite image' (mieli = favorite). In other words I'm sharing my favorite images as well.

Found from the vaults. Picture taken in 2016.

Soundtrack by egoistorms: soundcloud.com/egoistorms/egoistorms-re-alan-watts-reflection-ft-who-am-i And video: youtu.be/v-w2rEsYuNo Music by The Peace Orchestra and speech by Alan Watts. Because "I would like like to see 
is the 'I' that knows 'me' 
when I know that I know that I know".

EDIT: Aka Chef's Nightmare Soundtrack by ashtring (Balázs Fejes): soundcloud.com/asthring/kafkas-kitchen Because I have no idea what to cook today...

Soundtrack by Melorman (Antonis Haniotakis): soundcloud.com/melorman/your-day Because I can imagine the past.

Happy Fence Friday folks! =) Here I used Nik Collection linked with GIMP editor. I keep getting nasty error messages though, and some effects like HDR did not seem to work at all. More here: shoottell.blogspot.fi/2016/03/nik-collection.html