Valoisa Huone

Photography, wabi-sabi, cafe con leche, meaning of life, fixed gear, urban culture, visual poetry, humanism, tree in a pot. Personal and universal. Words about and around photography. Less photo blog, more blog about photography. I will not post, link or tell about every shot I've taken. Instead I try to gather thoughts and ideas that swirl around my mind - if they have some kind of connection with photography. And with this definition I reserve myself right to write about almost anything. This blog is connected with a website, which is also called Valoisa Huone. And which is also run by independent photographer Petteri Sopanen, a.k.a me. Valoisa Huone | About | Contact

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Now On Air

Nine views is available as a range of prints until 12 May 2019.

Previous blog about this set.

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Qualities

In this previous blog I mentioned my new tool. It’s called Leica Q, my first piece of this famous manufacturer.

Lux, as a light art show in the dark night of Finnish winter is quite a tough test for a camera. I think The Q performed well. Not that I was terribly unhappy for performance of several M43-bodies I have been shooting for many years previously. Actually, it’s quite amazing how well recent Olympus bodies have handled conditions like these Lux nights – considering their small sensors.

What have disturbed me in basically all my M43-cameras has been handling. It’s nice that camera body is light and small – but it not so nice if it still has almost as many buttons as bigger DSLRs. They just are smaller and closer each other. Handling of The Q is simplier, it hasn’t yet really grown into my hand, but I already think I’ll like its handling much more.

I’m not sure if any digital camera can fit your hand like a glowe to your hand, but The Q comes close. For me it’s important. Photographing is about seeing and reacting quickly. Which means that camera has to have so straightforward handling that you don’t have to pay attention for it when shooting.

Suitable object for a Leica Q test shot: Campagnolo Record Ultra 10-speed lever. Top quality road bike component. Probably the best one of it’s era – arguably, of course. It’s after all a matter of taste, Canon/Nikon vs. Leica, Dura-Ace vs. Record…

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Moderna

Ferry cruises between Finland and Sweden are quite big business. Typically it’s has been about partying, getting drunked and all that stuff. I have never been a big fan of that, even when I was young and single.

But during last years I have found other approach to these cruises, which is quite nice. Get abroad in the evening, have a nice dinner – restaurants on these boats are actually quite good these days, not only that same old buffet food again. Sleep the night. Ship arrives Stockholm at ten in the morning and leaves at five in the afternoon, so there is good time to visit some exhibition.

Stockholm has good museums. Fotografiska as a world class photographic museum of course is my favourite. Herb Ritts’ and Francesca Woodman’s exhibitions come to mind first from previous visits.

But this time it was turn of Moderna Museet with their Warhol 1968. I have seen Warhol’s works before in another exhibition. So it was actually nice that Moderna’s exhibition was more about Warhol as a phenomenon than just ordinary art exhibition showing artist’s works.

Sure there were Brillo boxes and Chelsea Girls was screened. But what raised thoughts more than his works was how he made them. He made a brand of himself, was probably more a producer than an artist, he borrowed and stole ideas, drove for media attention. Sounds like 2019 – but he made it some 50 years ago. All this we can like or hate or even ignore – but fact is he was hugely ahead of his time. And that made him star – today he would meet a lot competition, at worst he might be just another instagram celebrity. Our world is so warholish.

Was he serious with all he did? Or was he fooling his audience? Making parody or even some kind of a dystopia? I don’t know, but it leads to a question what would he think about our time? Love it or puke over our social media pushes?

Harbor crane in giraffe livery was photographed from a vaporetto which ran from ferry terminal to Skeppsholmen.

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Red Dot Lux

For several years tradition for beginning of the year has been visiting Lux Helsinki light art event.

This year it was quite mild weather. But I remember difficulties of shooting on some earlier years events. Either because cold made my fingers so numb that I couldn´t handle camera or in other year camera itself freezing because batteries could not give enough power. In both cases solution has been to escape into some cafe for warming up. Hot chocolate (with maybe some rhum in it…) is good for photographer. For a camera just sitting for a while on table inside is enought to wake up.

This year Lux was also test event for a new camera I bought just before christmas – nice little present for myself. But I’m not going further with that issue now…

This was about Lux itself.

It was a bit disappointment for mee. Too much light spectacle, not enough small, clever, funny ideas. It’s of course matter of taste. Large projections onto walls of famous buildings are often impressive, but they easily turn showy.

Maybe the event has grown in it’s popularity over it’s own limits. It has to go big, if there are big masses of people visiting. Small and funny things of Lantern Parks of previous years might just disappear into crowds. Maybe.

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Nine views

I have never thought myself as a great black and white photographer. Quite opposite, color has been my strong field. I don’t actually ”look for colors” when shooting, but when I´m going through and editing photos I don´t have to do a deep self analysis to notice that colors are The Thing in many succesful shots of mine. So I guess that colors are somewhere in me all the time, some kind of natural or intuitional thing that just is there, influencing my photography in background.

Despite of that, when I started to think about offering a small collection of prints I right away turned towards black an white. Even for my own surprise, maybe. Going outside of comfort zone? Not really. I played around with few photos for a while, maybe couple of days, on my Mac and that was it. When I found the recipes I liked then rest of the process was just doing it, with small individual adjustments.

The result is set of nine images shot during autumn 2014 exept one which dates back to 1999. No strong theme, but all are landscapes – most actually cityscapes shot in Helsinki. Couple of them are pure nature shots, one is about pure brutalistic construction of urban environment. Most have a combination of nature and human intervention. So I guess that might be the loose theme of this set. How we build our environment successing or failing in fitting our doings with all that has been there before us. Trees and rocks, rivers and moss.

Prints will be ready for ordering later in february or early may.

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Farewell

Valoisa Huone has left the building.

Blog is now transferred, you can find it on https://valoisahuone.photo

Why?

Because of tumblr acts on December 17. Not that I am dependent on adult content, either personal or business ways. But like many others I just don’t like the idea Commercial Big Brother (Tumblr/Yahoo!/Oath/Verizon) saying what indivisuals should or should not do, write or publish in internet.

Especially because since the first days of their adult content ban it was obvious that it wasn’t working. I saw a photograph of wooden wall of an old cabin marked as adult content. And on the other hand I continued to see nipples on tumblr.

An what’s even worse, I didn’t see tumblr doing anything to the big issue of copyright violations. As a photographer myself I can’t support service where huge amount of published content is stolen. There are lots of blogs that has no original content at all, but everything is according to bloggers “taken from internet and supposed to be on public domain”.

So I post this and log out of tumblr. Without plans to come back.

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Ilmaisen itseäni ihmisoikeuksia kunnioittaen. Vihapuhe ei vaienna minua. Kannan vastuun sanoistani. #sananvastuuvala

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There is some magic in classic portrait. In good one.

Basically, tight framed portrait in black and white is something we all have seen thousands of times. Still, when photographer have succeeded in his work - has been sensitive, reactive, carefully looked and listened, felt the shooting situation - the end result is pleasure for eye of the viewer.

Like these portraits by George Holz.

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Shopping bodies

February nights are not very warm in southern Finland. Plastic mannequins don’t freeze, but my fingers were quite numb when shooting this series.

I was doing a personal documentary project around relationships. It was basically a project of portraits. I searched, interviewed and shot portraits of people, most of whom had some not so happy experiences in their relationships. These conversations lead to a reflexion, asking questions and thinking about possible answers about dynamics of our relationships in general.

Sometimes it seemed they were (and still are) quite a tough game. Not always really about loving, caring, respecting, sharing. Sometimes they are more about dealing and agreement - selling and buying approval and self-esteem.

Shooting pics of shop windows selling us fashionable clothes, make-up, all kind of things that associate with this kind of objectification was one idea to visualize it. When view of window with mannequins wearing lingerie and reflection of logo from near-by shop hit my eyes, I thought the idea might work…

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Looking Orient Express pictures reminded me of one August night in 2010 I spent sitting in a fully booked TAP Airbus 320, flying from Lisbon to Helsinki. It was four and half hours night flight and for some reason I could not sleep, so there was lots of time for thoughts.

At the height of 10 000 metres over European continent my feelings about flying were not flying very high. Actually I dreamt about making that trip by boat. I don’t know how long it would have taken, maybe a week - anyway a lot of time with no hurry to anywhere, maybe reading a good book, looking at the empty sea. Eating and drinking slowly. Just letting the time flow. Very different way to move from one place to another, compared to flying these days.

Cramped seating, flavourless food, plastic cutlery, security checks with long waiting and unresponsive officers, dull and lousy terminals, long taxiing lines to runaways… Times has changed a lot from times of Super Connies waiting in front of TWA Flight Center (Probably the most beautiful terminal building ever built, deigned by Eero Saarinen.) In the era of budget airlines there is very little luxury left in traveling by air. Fast and effective it might be, but the real exlusivity is in traveling slowly.

And it doesn’t apply only on traveling, but the life as a whole.

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I think the most alarming thing with exploitation of these new oil sources is general unawareness of what they mean. Myself I woke up only about one year ago, when reading Naomi Klein’s book This changes everything. I must confess that I had to pick up dictionary to find out what fracking was in Finnish. (For my Finnish speaking readers; it is called vesisärötys - which says almost nothing if you’re not an engineer of this particular branch.)

Americans in northern parts of U.S. and Canada might be more aware, because for them fracking is, if not everyday thing, thing that has settled down on their own backyards. Here in Europe we are still quite pristine, but how long?

It is good to remember that within energy issues everything is connected to everything. We might be more concerned about Russian efforts on arctic sea areas or our own ageing nuclear powerplants. But when we close an old coal burning powerplant, what comes instead? Fracking lies close behind the corner.

Another point is that energy has lately became very political issue, even geopolitical specially here in Europe. We are remarkably dependent of Russian energy sources. And like we have seen during last year or so, energy for Russian regime is not just strict business. Far from that. Sending tanks to eastern parts of Ukraine has been one tool in Putin’s arsenal, closing gas pipes has been another - and certainly not less significant.

The bottom line which should be remembered when considering fracking, drilling on arctic seas, nuclear or any other power production is that questions are about living conditions of future generations on this planet. Nothing less.

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Good reminder about what is important. Just swap a few terms - in my case, poetry for photography, writing for shooting picture. After all, poetry is such a universal art, kind of a ancestor of all arts. Wise words about poetry are wise words about all arts.

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What’s important, what’s beautiful.

I mostly shoot images that are related to human life. Not always including people actually. But structures we build, as individuals or as societies. Roads and houses, monuments and airplanes. Architecture and design. Infrastructure and memories. All kind of marks of human life we leave around us every day.

But sometimes all those marks just would be too much.

Sometimes nature has composed all things so completely and harmoniously that there is nothing left to add, take away, or alter by a man without disturbing the scene. Just shoot it.

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Demolition men

My hometown Helsinki was founded in 1550 on the mouth of Vantaa River. Place is known as Vanhakaupunki, meaning old town. City begun to grow around this area.

Industrialization meant that the power of rapids were needed, first for mills, later for electicity. Dam that exists today is built in 1876 and there is also power plant from that era. It’s owned by local energy production company Helen and it’s the oldest working power plant in Helsinki, still producing 0,2 MW.

20th. century brought new way of transportation, flying. First commercial flights in Finland were operated by float planes, so the first airports were actually air harbors. 1930’s brought air traffic on ground. Helsinki-Malmi Airport located in Tattarisuo is the first land airport of Helsinki.

It was opened in 1938. Round terminal building is a masterpiece of functionalist architecture, designed by Dag Englund and Vera Rosendahl. There were few reasons why commercial aviation left Malmi as soon as 1952 for the new Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Malmi was left for general aviation use, which meant that there wasn’t need to expand it. Malmi Airport looks today very much the same as it was before years of WW2.

The future of these pieces of local history is very uncertain. During last few years voices demanding demolishing of these environments have risen.

In case of dam driving forces have been amateur fishermen who want to free the rapid so that salmons, trouts and other fish could climb up to the river. Malmi Airport is threatened by growth of the City of Helsinki, which wants to build a new suburb on the site.

I understand these demands. Fish are nice and people need apartments. But there are dozens of other rivers in this country and dozens of square kilometres of unbuilt land in this city. Why should these unique pieces of cultural history be demolished?

And even more philosophically - what kind of citizens and townsmen we are if we are destroying living pieces of our own roots? How thin is our civilization if we demolish the layers of our city?

Dam and airport can be destroyed once, never can they be brought back.

Photos: Rapid of Vanhakaupunki | Malmi Airport

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Gear junkie, part II

One of the most interesting books I’ve read about life and work of a photographer is On Being a Photographer by David Hurn.

It’s not one of those thin guides which promise that following their step-by-step method everyone can become succesful and admired professional photographer. Instead it’s a thick book which draws a picture of branch in which it’s not enough to be a business person or an artist, but one need to have skills in many areas - often contradictory to each other. No cheap promises of instant wins, but honest and true wisdom by a photographer, to photographers.

David Hurn writes about styles, subjects, genres, philosophy of photography. But also, like title says, about the life as a photographer, paying bills, traveling, carrying one’s gear, walking…

Because as a photographer one must walk. Walk a lot.

According to David Hurn, best shoes for photographer are Dr. Martens Chelsea boots. Not absolutely perfect in any special feature, but very good in many. Suitable for long walks in rough pathways, suitable even climbing on rocks. But also, elegant enough fo flaneuring on boulevards and transit halls on airports.

I am not a copycat, but since the book convinced me in many other aspects, I decided to trust Hurn’s opinion and give these shoes a try.

He was right. Dr. Martens 2976 are The Shoes for photographer, versatility being the keyword. The have kept me going as well in wet and cold winter at home in Helsinki as the heat of Barcelona spring. Snow or dust outside, my feet feeling comfortable inside. I guess they will serve me many years to come. And I guess that after this pair has done it’s job, it will be replaced with another. I suppose that classics like these will not be dropped out of production in nearest future.

Previous part: Me, a gear junkie?

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Eleven months ago I posted a link to a documentary about James Nachtwey.

So, it’s obvious that today I should post a link to an essay by Wim Wenders.

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Peace, mr. Putin.

Rukkilill - cornflower. Memorial to the victims of Stalinism. Tartu, Estonia.

"Never again" was tought of many people in Europe in 1945. Sadly, for many in eastern parts of the continent 1945 was just a beginning of another era of oppression behind The Iron Curtain. That’s what I’ve learned from history books. 

Events of 1991 I remember myself very well. I was 19, at Santahamina island, Helsinki, doing my military service - playing war games. On the other side of the Gulf of Finland people were stopping Red Army tanks - by bare hands. Before that year ended, Soviet Union was history too. “Never again”, thought many people then, myself included.

In 2015, we unfortunately see it happening again. We are witnessing certain geopolitical goals being advanced by violence and power-politics, we are hearing certain leaders telling lies to international community, time after time. Big disappointment for Europeans who have disappointed many times before.

Back to Tartu. Rukkilill monument is located next block to an old office building in which underground cells people were questioned, tortured, and sent to Siberia by KGB, security agency of Soviet Union. For this very same KGB, in former East Germany, worked also a young intelligence officer Vladimir Putin.

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